Short Fiction

I

At times Sashka wished to give up what is called living: to cease to wash every morning in cold water, on which thin sheets of ice floated about; to go no more to the grammar school, and there to have to listen to everyone scolding him; no more to experience the pain in the small of his back and indeed over his whole body when his mother made him kneel in the corner all the evening. But, since he was only thirteen years of age, and did not know all the means by which people abandon life at will, he continued to go to the grammar school and to kneel in the corner, and it seemed to him as if life would never end. A year would go by, and another, and yet another, and still he would be going to school, and be made to kneel in the corner. And since Sashka possessed an indomitable and bold spirit, he could not supinely tolerate evil, and so found means to avenge himself on life. With this object in view he would thrash his companions, be rude to the Head, impertinent to the masters, and tell lies all day long to his teachers and to his mother⁠—but to his father only he never lied. If in a fight he got his nose broken, he would purposely make the damage worse, and howl, without shedding a single tear, but so loudly that all who heard him were fain to stop their ears to keep out the disagreeable sound. When he had howled as long as thought advisable, he would suddenly cease, and, putting out his tongue, draw in his copybook a caricature of himself howling at an usher who pressed his fingers to his ears, while the victor stood trembling with fear. The whole copybook was filled with caricatures, the one which most frequently occurred being that of a short stout woman beating a boy as thin as a lucifer-match with a rolling pin. Below in a large scrawling hand would be written the legend: “Beg my pardon, puppy!” and the reply, “Won’t! blow’d if I do!”

Before Christmas Sashka was expelled from school, and when his mother attempted to thrash him, he bit her finger. This action gave him his liberty. He left off washing in the morning, ran about all day bullying the other boys, and had but one fear, and that was hunger, for his mother entirely left off providing for him, so that he came to depend upon the pieces of bread and potatoes which his father secreted for him. On these conditions Sashka found existence tolerable.

One Friday (it was Christmas Eve) he had been playing with the other boys, until they had dispersed to their homes, followed by the squeak of the rusty frozen wicket gate as it closed behind the last of them. It was already growing dark, and a grey snowy mist was travelling up from the country, along a dark alley; in a low black building, which stood fronting the end of the alley, a lamp was burning with a reddish, unblinking light. The frost had become more intense, and when Sashka reached the circle of light cast by the lamp, he saw that fine dry flakes of snow were floating slowly on the air. It was high time to be getting home.

“Where have you been knocking about all night, puppy?” exclaimed his mother doubling her fist, without, however, striking. Her sleeves were turned up, exposing her fat white arms, and on her forehead, almost devoid of eyebrows, stood beads of perspiration. As Sashka passed by her he recognized the familiar smell of vodka. His mother scratched her head with the short dirty nail of her thick forefinger, and since it was no good scolding, she merely spat, and cried: “Statisticians! that’s what they are!”

Sashka shuffled contemptuously, and went behind the partition, from whence might be heard the heavy breathing of his father, Ivan Savvich, who was in a chronic state of shivering, and was now trying to warm himself by sitting on the heated bench of the stove with his hands under him, palms downwards.

“Sashka! the Svetchnikovs have invited you to the Christmas tree. The housemaid came,” he whispered.

“Get along with you!” said Sashka with incredulity.

“Fact! The old woman there has purposely not told you, but she has mended your jacket all the same.”

“Non⁠—sense,” Sashka replied, still more surprised.

The Svetchnikovs were rich people, who had put him to the grammar school, and after his expulsion had forbidden him their house.

His father once more took his oath to the truth of his statement, and Sashka became meditative.

“Well then, move, shift a bit,” he said to his father, as he leapt upon the short bench, adding:

“I won’t go to those devils. I should prove jolly well too much for them, if I were to turn up. Depraved boy,” drawled Sashka in imitation of his patrons. “They are none too good themselves, the smug-faced prigs!”

“Oh! Sashka, Sashka,” his father complained, sitting hunched up with cold, “you’ll come to a bad end.”

“What about yourself, then?” was Sashka’s rude rejoinder. “Better shut up. Afraid of the old woman. Ba! old muff!”

His father sat on in silence and shivered. A faint light found its way through a broad clink at the top, where the partition failed to meet the ceiling by a quarter of an inch, and lay in bright patches upon his high forehead, beneath which the deep cavities of his eyes showed black.

In times gone by Ivan Savvich had been used to drink heavily, and then his wife had feared and hated him. But when he had begun to develop unmistakable signs of consumption, and could drink no longer, she took to drink in her turn, and gradually accustomed herself to vodka. Then she avenged herself for all she had suffered at the hands of that tall narrow-chested man, who used incomprehensible words, had lost his place through disobedience and drunkenness, and who brought home with him just such long-haired, debauched and conceited fellows as himself.

In contradistinction to her husband, the more Feoktista Petrovna drank the healthier she became, and the heavier became her fists. Now she said what she pleased, brought men and women to the house just as she chose, and sang with them noisy songs, while he lay silent behind the partition huddled together with perpetual cold, and meditating on the injustice and sorrow of human life. To everyone, with whom she talked, she complained that she had no such enemies in the world as her husband and son, they were stuck-up statisticians!

For the space of an hour his mother kept drumming into Sashka’s ears:

“But I say you shall go,” punctuating each word with a heavy blow on the table, which made the tumblers, placed on it after washing, jump and rattle again.

“But I say I won’t!” Sashka coolly replied, dragging down the corners of his mouth with the will to show his teeth⁠—a habit which had earned for him at school the nickname of Wolfkin.

“I’ll thrash you, won’t I just!” cried his mother.

“All right! thrash away!”

But Feoktista Petrovna knew that she could no longer strike her son now that he had begun to retaliate by biting, and that if she drove him into the street he would go off larking, and sooner get frostbitten than go to the Svetchnikovs, therefore she appealed to her husband’s authority.

“Calls himself a father, and can’t protect the mother from insult!”

“Really, Sashka, go. Why are you so obstinate?” he jerked out from the bench. “They will perhaps take you up again. They are kind people.” Sashka only laughed in an insulting manner.

His father, long ago, before Sashka was born, had been tutor at the Svetchnikovs’, and had ever since looked on them as the best people in the world. At that time he had held also an appointment in the statistical office of the Zemstvo, and had not yet taken to drink. Eventually he was compelled through his own fault to marry his landlady’s daughter. From that time he severed his connection with the Svetchnikovs, and took to drink. Indeed, he let himself go to such an extent, that he was several times picked up drunk in the streets and taken to the police station. But the Svetchnikovs did not cease to assist him with money, and Feoktista Petrovna, although she hated them, together with books and everything connected with her husband’s past, still valued their acquaintance, and was in the habit of boasting of it.

“Perhaps you might bring something for me too from the Christmas tree,” continued his father. He was using craft to induce his son to go, and Sashka knew it, and despised his father for his weakness and want of straightforwardness; though he really did wish to bring back something for the poor sickly old man, who had for a long time been without even good tobacco.

“All right!” he blurted out; “give me my jacket. Have you put the buttons on? No fear! I know you too well!”

II

The children had not yet been admitted to the drawing-room, where the Christmas tree stood, but remained chattering in the nursery. Sashka, with lofty superciliousness, stood listening to their naive talk, and fingering in his breeches pocket the broken cigarettes which he had managed to abstract from his host’s study. At this moment there came up to him the youngest of the Svetchnikovs, Kolya, and stood motionless before him, a look of surprise on his face, his toes turned in, and a finger stuck in the corner of his pouting mouth. Six months ago, at the instance of his relatives, he had given up this bad habit of putting his finger in his mouth, but he could not quite break himself of it. He had blonde locks cut in a fringe on his forehead and falling in ringlets on his shoulders, and blue, wondering eyes; in fact, he was just such a boy in appearance as Sashka particularly loved to bully.

“Are ’oo weally a naughty boy?” he inquired of Sashka. “Miss said ’oo was. I’m a dood boy.”

“That you are!” replied Sashka, considering the other’s short velvet trousers and great turndown collars.

“Would ’oo like to have a dun? There!” and he pointed at him a little popgun with a cork tied to it. The Wolfkin took the gun, pressed down the spring, and, aiming at the nose of the unsuspecting Kolya, pulled the trigger. The cork struck his nose, and rebounding, hung by the string. Kolya’s blue eyes opened wider than ever, and filled with tears. Transferring his finger from his mouth to his reddening nose he blinked his long eyelashes and whispered:

“Bad⁠—bad boy!”

A young lady of striking appearance, with her hair dressed in the simplest and the most becoming fashion, now entered the nursery. She was sister to the lady of the house, the very one indeed to whom Sashka’s father had formerly given lessons.

“Here’s the boy,” said she, pointing out Sashka to the bald-headed man who accompanied her. “Bow, Sashka, you should not be so rude!”

But Sashka would bow neither to her, nor to her companion of the bald head. She little suspected how much he knew. But, as a fact, Sashka did know that his miserable father had loved her, and that she had married another; and, though this had taken place subsequent to his father’s marriage, Sashka could not bring himself to forgive what seemed to him like treachery.

“Takes after his father!” sighed Sofia Dmitrievna. “Could not you, Plutov Michailovich, do something for him? My husband says that a commercial school would suit him better than the grammar school. Sashka, would you like to go to a technical school?”

“No!” curtly replied Sashka, who had caught the offensive word “husband.”

“Do you want to be a shepherd, then?” asked the gentleman.

“Not likely!” said Sashka, in an offended tone.

“What then?”

Now Sashka did not know what he would like to be, but upon reflection replied: “Well, it’s all the same to me, even a shepherd, if you like.”

The bald-headed gentleman regarded the strange boy with a look of perplexity. When his eyes had travelled up from his patched boots to his face, Sashka put out his tongue and quickly drew it back again, so that Sofia Dmitrievna did not notice anything, but the old gentleman showed an amount of irascibility that she could not understand.

“I should not mind going to a commercial school,” bashfully suggested Sashka.

The lady was overjoyed at Sashka’s decision, and meditated with a sigh on the beneficial influence exercised by an old love.

“I don’t know whether there will be a vacancy,” dryly remarked the old man avoiding looking at Sashka, and smoothing down the ridge of hair which stuck up on the back of his head. “However, we shall see.”

Meanwhile the children were becoming noisy, and in a great state of excitement were waiting impatiently for the Christmas tree.

The excellent practice with the popgun made in the hands of a boy, who commanded respect both for his stature and for his reputation for naughtiness, found imitators, and many a little button of a nose was made red. The tiny maids, holding their sides, bent almost double with laughter, as their little cavaliers with manly contempt of fear and pain, but all the same wrinkling up their faces in suspense, received the impact of the cork.

At length the doors were opened, and a voice said: “Come in, children; gently, not so fast!” Opening their little eyes wide, and holding their breath in anticipation, the children filed into the brightly illumined drawing-room in orderly pairs, and quietly walked round the glittering tree. It cast a strong, shadowless light on their eager faces, with rounded eyes and mouths. For a minute there reigned the silence of profound enchantment, which all at once broke out into a chorus of delighted exclamation. One of the little girls, unable to restrain her delight, kept dancing up and down in the same place, her little tress braided with blue ribbon beating meanwhile rhythmically against her shoulders. Sashka remained morose and gloomy⁠—something evil was working in his little wounded breast. The tree blinded him with its red, shriekingly insolent glitter of countless candles. It was foreign, hostile to him, even as the crowd of smart, pretty children which surrounded it. He would have liked to give it a shove, and topple it over on their shining heads. It seemed as though some iron hand were gripping his heart, and wringing out of it every drop of blood. He crept behind the piano, and sat down there in a corner unconsciously crumpling to pieces in his pocket the last of the cigarettes, and thinking that though he had a father and mother and a home, it came to the same thing as if he had none, and nowhere to go to. He tried to recall to his imagination his little penknife, which he had acquired by a swap not long ago, and was very fond of; but his knife all at once seemed to him a very poor affair with its ground-down blade and only half of a yellow haft. Tomorrow he would smash it up, and then he would have nothing left at all!

But suddenly Sashka’s narrow eyes gleamed with astonishment, and his face in a moment resumed its ordinary expression of audacity and self-confidence. On the side of the tree turned towards him⁠—which was the back of it, and less brightly illumined than the other side⁠—he discovered something such as had never come within the circle of his existence, and without which all his surroundings appeared as empty as though peopled by persons without life. It was a little angel in wax carelessly hung in the thickest of the dark boughs, and looking as if it were floating in the air. His transparent dragonfly wings trembled in the light, and he seemed altogether alive and ready to fly away. The rosy fingers of his exquisitely formed hands were stretched upwards, and from his head there floated just such locks as Kolya’s. But there was something here that was wanting in Kolya’s face, and in all other faces and things. The face of the little angel did not shine with joy, nor was it clouded by grief; but there lay on it the impress of another feeling, not to be explained in words, nor defined by thought, but to be attained only by the sympathy of a kindred feeling. Sashka was not conscious of the force of the mysterious influence which attracted him towards the little angel, but he felt that he had known him all his life, and had always loved him, loved him more than his penknife, more than his father, more than anything else. Filled with doubt, alarm, and a delight which he could not comprehend, Sashka clasped his hands to his bosom and whispered:

“Dear⁠—dear little angel!”

The more intently he looked the more fraught with significance the expression of the little angel’s face became. He was so infinitely far off, so unlike everything which surrounded him there. The other toys seemed to take a pride in hanging there pretty, and decked out, upon the glittering tree, but he was pensive, and fearing the intrusive light purposely hid himself in the dark greenery, so that none might see him. It would be a mad cruelty to touch his dainty little wings.

“Dear⁠—dear!” whispered Sashka.

His head became feverish. He clasped his hands behind his back, and in full readiness to fight to the death to win the little angel, he walked to and fro with cautious, stealthy steps. He avoided looking at the little angel, lest he should direct the attention of others towards him, but he felt that he was still there, and had not flown away.

Now the hostess appeared in the doorway, a tall, stately lady with a bright aureole of grey hair dressed high upon her head. The children trooped round her with expressions of delight, and the little girl⁠—the same that had danced about in her place⁠—hung wearily on her hand, blinking heavily with sleepy eyes.

As Sashka approached her he seemed almost choking with emotion.

“Auntie⁠—auntie!”4 said he, trying to speak caressingly, but his voice sounded harsher than ever. “Auntie, dear!”

She did not hear him, so he tugged impatiently at her dress.

“What’s the matter with you? Why are you pulling my dress?” said the grey-haired lady in surprise. “It’s rude.”

“Auntie⁠—auntie, do give me one thing from the tree; give me the little angel.”

“Impossible,” replied the lady in a tone of indifference. “We are going to keep the tree decorated till the New Year. But you are no longer a child; you should call me by name⁠—Maria Dmitrievna.”

Sashka, feeling as if he were falling down a precipice, grasped the last means of saving himself.

“I am sorry I have been naughty. I’ll be more industrious for the future,” he blurted out. But this formula, which had always paid with his masters, made no impression upon the lady of the grey hair.

“A good thing, too, my friend,” she said, as unconcernedly as before.

“Give me the little angel,” demanded Sashka, gruffly.

“But it’s impossible. Can’t you understand that?”

But Sashka did not understand, and when the lady turned to go out of the room he followed her, his gaze fixed without conscious thought upon her black silk dress. In his surging brain there glimmered a recollection of how one of the boys in his class had asked the master to mark him 3,5 and when the master refused he had knelt down before him, and putting his hands together as in prayer, had begun to cry. The master was angry, but gave him 3 all the same. At the time Sashka had immortalised this episode in a caricature, but now his only means left was to follow the boy’s example. Accordingly he plucked at the lady’s dress again, and when she turned round, dropped with a bang on to his knees, and folded his hands as described above. But he could not squeeze out a single tear!

“Are you out of your mind?” exclaimed the grey-haired lady, casting a searching look round the room; but luckily no one was present.

“What is the matter with you?”

Kneeling there with clasped hands, Sashka looked at her with dislike, and rudely repeated:

“Give me the little angel.”

His eyes, fixed intently on the lady to catch the first word she should utter, were anything but good to look at, and the hostess answered hurriedly:

“Well, then, I’ll give it to you. Ah! what a stupid you are! I will give you what you want, but why could you not wait till the New Year?”

“Stand up! And never,” she added in a didactic tone, “never kneel to anyone: it is humiliating. Kneel before God alone.”

“Talk away!” thought Sashka, trying to get in front of her, and merely succeeding in treading on her dress.

When she had taken the toy from the tree, Sashka devoured her with his eyes, but stretched out his hands for it with a painful pucker of the nose. It seemed to him that the tall lady would break the little angel.

“Beautiful thing!” said the lady, who was sorry to part with such a dainty and presumably expensive toy. “Who can have hung it there? Well, what do you want with such a thing? Are you not too big to know what to do with it? Look, there are some picture-books. But this I promised to give to Kolya; he begged so earnestly for it.” But this was not the truth.

Sashka’s agony became unbearable. He clenched his teeth convulsively, and seemed almost to grind them. The lady of the grey hair feared nothing so much as a scene, so she slowly held out the little angel to Sashka.

“There now, take it!” she said in a displeased tone; “what a persistent boy you are!”

Sashka’s hands as they seized the little angel seemed like tentacles, and were tense as steel springs, but withal so soft and careful that the little angel might have imagined himself to be flying in the air.

“A-h-h!” escaped in a long diminuendo sigh from Sashka’s breast, while in his eyes glistened two little teardrops, which stood still there as though unused to the light. Slowly drawing the little angel to his bosom, he kept his shining eyes on the hostess, with a quiet, tender smile which died away in a feeling of unearthly bliss. It seemed, when the dainty wings of the little angel touched Sashka’s sunken breast, as if he experienced something so blissful, so bright, the like of which had never before been experienced in this sorrowful, sinful, suffering world.

“A-h-h!” sighed he once more as the little angel’s wings touched him. And at the shining of his face the absurdly decorated and insolently growing tree seemed to be extinguished, and the grey-haired, portly dame smiled with gladness, and the parchment-like face of the bald-headed gentleman twitched, and the children fell into a vivid silence as though touched by a breath of human happiness.

For one short moment all observed a mysterious likeness between the awkward boy who had outgrown his clothes, and the lineaments of the little angel, which had been spiritualised by the hand of an unknown artist.

But the next moment the picture was entirely changed. Crouching like a panther preparing to spring, Sashka surveyed the surrounding company, on the lookout for someone who should dare wrest his little angel from him.

“I’m going home,” he said in a dull voice, having in view a way of escape through the crowd, “home to Father.”

III

His mother was asleep worn out with a whole day’s work and vodka-drinking. In the little room behind the partition there stood a small cooking-lamp burning on the table. Its feeble yellow light, with difficulty penetrating the sooty glass, threw a strange shadow over the faces of Sashka and his father.

“Is it not pretty?” asked Sashka in a whisper, holding the little angel at a distance from his father, so as not to allow him to touch it.

“Yes, there’s something most remarkable about him,” whispered the father, gazing thoughtfully at the toy. And his face expressed the same concentrated attention and delight, as did Sashka’s.

“Look, he is going to fly.”

“I see it too,” replied Sashka in an ecstasy. “Think I’m blind? But look at his little wings! Ah! don’t touch!”

The father withdrew his hand, and with troubled eyes studied the details of the little angel, while Sashka whispered with the air of a pedagogue:

“Father, what a bad habit you have of touching everything! You might break it.”

There fell upon the wall the shadows of two grotesque, motionless heads bending towards one another, one big and shaggy, the other small and round.

Within the big head strange torturing thoughts, though at the same time full of delight, were seething. His eyes unblinkingly regarded the little angel, and under his steadfast gaze it seemed to grow larger and brighter, and its wings to tremble with a noiseless trepidation, and all the surroundings⁠—the timber-built, soot-stained wall, the dirty table, Sashka⁠—everything became fused into one level grey mass without light or shade. It seemed to the broken man that he heard a pitying voice from the world of wonders, wherein once he had dwelt, and whence he had been cast out forever. There they knew nothing of dirt, of weary quarrelling, of the blindly-cruel strife of egotism, there they knew nothing of the tortures of a man arrested in the streets with callous laughter, and beaten by the rough hand of the night-watchman. There everything is pure, joyful, bright. And all this purity found an asylum in the soul of her whom he loved more than life, and had lost⁠—when he had kept his hold upon his own useless life. With the smell of wax, which emanated from the toy, was mingled a subtle aroma, and it seemed to the broken man that her dear fingers touched the angel, those fingers which he would fain have caressed in one long kiss, till death should close his lips forever. This was why the little toy was so beautiful, this was why there was in it something specially attractive, which defied description. The little angel had descended from that heaven which her soul was to him, and had brought a ray of light into the damp room, steeped in sulphurous fumes, and to the dark soul of the man from whom had been taken all: love, and happiness, and life.

On a level with the eyes of the man, who had lived his life, sparkled the eyes of the boy, who was beginning his life, and embraced the little angel in their caress. For them present and future had disappeared: the ever-sorrowful, piteous father, the rough, unendurable mother, the black darkness of insults, of cruelty, of humiliations, and of spiteful grief. The thoughts of Sashka were formless, nebulous, but all the more deeply for that did they move his agitated soul. Everything that is good and bright in the world, all profound grief, and the hope of a soul that sighs for God⁠—the little angel absorbed them all into himself, and that was why he glowed with such a soft divine radiance, that was why his little dragonfly wings trembled with a noiseless trepidation.

The father and son did not look at one another: their sick hearts grieved, wept, and rejoiced apart. But there was a something in their thoughts which fused their hearts in one, and annihilated that bottomless abyss which separates man from man and makes him so lonely, unhappy, and weak. The father with an unconscious motion put his arm around the neck of his son, and the son’s head rested equally without conscious volition upon his father’s consumptive chest.

“She it was who gave it to thee, was it not?” whispered the father, without taking his eyes off the little angel.

At another time Sashka would have replied with a rude negation, but now the only reply possible resounded of itself within his soul, and he calmly pronounced the pious fraud: “Who else? of course she did.”

The father made no reply, and Sashka relapsed into silence.

Something grated in the adjoining room, then clicked, and then was silent for a moment, and then noisily and hurriedly the clock struck “One, two, three.”

“Sashka, do you ever dream?” asked the father in a meditative tone.

“No! Oh, yes,” he admitted, “once I had one, in which I fell down from the roof. We were climbing after the pigeons, and I fell down.”

“But I dream always. Strange things are dreams. One sees the whole past, one loves and suffers as though it were reality.”

Again he was silent, and Sashka felt his arm tremble as it lay upon his neck. The trembling and pressure of his father’s arm became stronger and stronger, and the sensitive silence of the night was all at once broken by the pitiful sobbing sound of suppressed weeping. Sashka sternly puckered his brow, and cautiously⁠—so as not to disturb the heavy trembling arm⁠—wiped away a tear from his eyes. So strange was it to see a big old man crying.

“Ah! Sashka, Sashka,” sobbed the father, “what is the meaning of everything?”

“Why, what’s the matter?” sternly whispered Sashka. “You’re crying just like a little boy.”

“Well, I won’t, then,” said the father with, a piteous smile of excuse. “What’s the good?”

Feoktista Petrovna turned on her bed. She sighed, cleared her throat, and mumbled incoherent sounds in a loud and strangely persistent manner.

It was time to go to bed. But before doing so the little angel must be disposed of for the night. He could not be left on the floor, so he was hung up by his string, which was fastened to the flue of the stove. There it stood out accurately delineated against the white Dutch-tiles. And so they could both see him, Sashka and his father.

Hurriedly throwing into a corner the various rags on which he was in the habit of sleeping, Sashka lay down on his back, in order as quickly as possible to look again at the little angel.

“Why don’t you undress?” asked his father as he shivered and wrapped himself up in his tattered blanket, and arranged his clothes, which he had thrown over his feet.

“What’s the good? I shall soon be up again.”

Sashka wished to add that he did not care to go to sleep at all, but he had no time to do so, since he fell to sleep as suddenly as though he had sunk to the bottom of a deep swift river.

His father presently fell asleep also. And gentle sleep and restfulness lay upon the weary face of the man who had lived his life, and upon the brave face of the little man who was just beginning his life.

But the little angel hanging by the hot stove began to melt. The lamp, which had been left burning at the entreaty of Sashka, filled the room with the smell of kerosene, and through its smoked glass threw a melancholy light upon a scene of gradual dissolution. The little angel seemed to stir. Over his rosy fingers there rolled thick drops which fell upon the bench. To the smell of kerosene was added the stifling scent of melting wax. The little angel gave a tremble as though on the point of flight, and⁠—fell with a soft thud upon the hot flags.

An inquisitive cockroach singed its wings as it ran round the formless lump of melted wax, climbed up the dragonfly wings, and twitching its feelers went on its way.

Through the curtained window the grey-blue light of coming day crept in, and the frozen water-carrier was already making a noise in the courtyard with his iron scoop.

I

“You lie! I know you lie!”

“What are you shouting for? Is it necessary that everyone should hear us?”

And here again she lied, for I had not shouted, but spoken in the quietest voice, holding her hand and speaking quite gently while that venomous word “lie” hissed like a little serpent.

“I love you,” she continued, “and you ought to believe me. Does not this convince you?”

And she kissed me. But when I was about to take hold of her hand and press it⁠—she was already gone. She left the semi-dark corridor, and I followed her once more to the place where a gay party was just coming to an end. How did I know where it was? She had told me that I might go there, and I went there and watched the dancing all the night through. No one came near me, or spoke to me, I was a stranger to all, and sat in the corner near the band. Pointed straight at me was the mouth of a great brass instrument, through which someone hidden in the depths of it kept bellowing, and every minute or so would give a rude staccato laugh: “Ho! ho! ho!”

From time to time a scented white cloud would come close to me. It was she, I knew not how she managed to caress me without being observed, but for one short little second her shoulder would press mine, and for one short little second I would lower my eyes and see a white neck in the opening of a white dress. And when I raised my eyes I saw a profile as white, severe, and truthful as that of a pensive angel on the tomb of the long-forgotten dead. And I saw her eyes. They were large, greedy of the light, beautiful and calm. From their blue-white setting the pupils shone black, and the more I looked at them the blacker they seemed, and the more unfathomable their depths. Maybe I looked at them for so short a time that my heart failed to make the slightest impression, but certainly never did I understand so profoundly and terribly the meaning of Infinity, nor ever realised it with such force. I felt in fear and pain that my very life was passing out in a slender ray into her eyes, until I became a stranger to myself⁠—desolated, speechless, almost dead. Then she would leave me, taking my life with her, and dance again with a certain tall, haughty, but handsome partner of hers. I studied his every characteristic⁠—the shape of his shoes, the width of his rather high shoulders, the rhythmic sway of one of his locks, which separated itself from the rest, while with his indifferent, unseeing glance he, as it were, crushed me against the wall, and I felt myself as flat and lifeless to look at as the wall itself.

When they began to extinguish the lights, I went up to her and said:

“It is time to go. I will accompany you.”

But she expressed surprise.

“But certainly I am going with him,” and she pointed to the tall, handsome man, who was not looking at us. She led me out into an empty room and kissed me.

“You lie,” I said very softly.

“We shall meet again tomorrow. You must come,” was her answer.

When I drove home, the green frosty dawn was looking out from behind the high roofs. In the whole street there were only we two, the sledge-driver and I. He sat with bent head and wrapped-up face, and I sat behind him wrapped up to the very eyes. The sledge-driver had his thoughts, and I had mine, and there behind the thick walls thousands of people were sleeping, and they had their own dreams and thoughts. I thought of her, and of how she lied. I thought of death, and it seemed to me that those dimly-lightened walls had already looked upon my death, and that was why they were so cold and upright. I know not what the thoughts of the sledge-driver may have been, neither do I know of what those hidden by the walls were dreaming. But then, neither did they know my thoughts and reveries.

And so we drove on through the long and straight streets, and the dawn rose from behind the roofs, and all around was motionless and white. A cold scented cloud came close to me, and straight into my ear someone unseen laughed:

“Ho! ho! ho!”

II

She had lied. She did not come, and I waited for her in vain. The grey, uniform, frozen semidarkness descended from the lightless sky, and I was not conscious of when the twilight passed into evening, and when the evening passed into night⁠—to me it was all one long night. I kept walking backwards and forwards with the same even, measured steps of hope deferred. I did not come close up to the tall house, where my beloved dwelt, nor to its glazed door which shone yellow at the end of the iron covered way, but I walked on the opposite side of the street with the same measured strides⁠—backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. In going forward I did not take my eye off the glazed door, and when I turned back I stopped frequently and turned my head round, and then the snow pricked my face with its sharp needles. And so long were those sharp cold needles that they penetrated to my very heart, and pierced it with grief and anger at my useless waiting. The cold wind blew uninterruptedly from the bright north to the dark south, and whistled playfully on the icy roofs, and rebounding cut my face with sharp little snowflakes, and softly tapped the glasses of the empty lanterns, in which the lonely yellow flame, shivering with cold, bent to the draught. And I felt sorry for the lonely flame which lived only by night, and I thought to myself, when I go away all life will end in this street, and only the snowflakes will fly through the empty space; but still the yellow flame will continue to shiver and bend in loneliness and cold.

I waited for her, but she came not. And it seemed to me that the lonely flame and I were like one another, only that my lamp was not empty, for in that void, which I kept measuring with my strides, there did sometimes appear people. They grew up unheard behind my back, big and dark; they passed me, and like ghosts suddenly disappeared round the corner of the white building. Then again they would come out from round the corner, come up alongside of me and then gradually melt away in the great distance, obscured by the silently falling snow. Muffled up, formless, silent, they were so like to one another and to myself that it seemed as if scores of people were walking backwards and forwards and waiting, as I was, shivering and silent, and were thinking their own enigmatic sad thoughts.

I waited for her, but she came not. I know not why I did not cry out and weep for pain. I know not why I laughed and was glad, and crooked my fingers like claws, as though I held in them that little venomous thing which kept hissing like a snake: a lie! It wriggled in my hands, and bit my heart, and my head reeled with its poison. Everything was a lie! The boundary line between the future and the present, the present and the past, vanished. The boundary line between the time when I did not yet exist, and the time when I began to be, vanished, and I thought that I must have always been alive, or else never have lived at all. And always, before I lived and when I began to live, she had ruled over me, and I felt it strange that she should have a name and a body, and that her existence should have a beginning and an end. She had no name, she was always the one that lies, that makes eternally to wait, and never comes. And I knew not why, but I laughed, and the sharp needles pierced my heart, and right into my ear someone unseen laughed:

“Ho! ho! ho!”

Opening my eyes I looked at the lighted windows of the lofty house, and they quietly said to me in their blue and red language:

“Thou art deceived by her. At this very moment whilst thou art wandering, waiting, and suffering, she, all bright, lovely, and treacherous, is there, listening to the whispers of that tall, handsome man, who despises thee. If thou wert to break in there and kill her, thou wouldst be doing a good deed, for thou wouldst slay a lie.”

I gripped the knife I held in my hand tighter, and answered laughingly: “Yes, I will kill her.”

But the windows gazed at me mournfully, and added sadly: “Thou wilt never kill her. Never! because the weapon thou holdest in thy hand is as much a lie as are her kisses.”

The silent shadows of my fellow-watchers had disappeared long ago, and I was left alone in the cold void, I⁠—and the lonely tongues of fire shivering with cold and despair. The clock in the neighbouring church-tower began to strike, and its dismal metallic sound trembled and wept, flying away into the void, and being lost in the maze of silently whirling snowflakes. I began to count the strokes, and went into a fit of laughter. The clock struck 15! The belfry was old, and so, too, was the clock, and although it indicated the right time, it struck spasmodically, sometimes so often that the grey, ancient bell-ringer had to clamber up and stop the convulsive strokes of the hammer with his hand. For whom did those senilely tremulous, melancholy sounds, which were embraced and throttled by the frosty darkness, tell a lie? So pitiable and inept was that useless lie.

With the last lying sounds of the clock the glazed door slammed, and a tall man made his way down the steps.

I saw only his back, but I recognized it as I had seen it only last evening, proud and contemptuous. I recognized his walk, and it was lighter and more confident than in the evening: thus had I often left that door. He walked, as those do, whom the lying lips of a woman have just kissed.

III

I threatened and entreated, grinding my teeth:

“Tell me the truth!”

But with a face cold as snow, while from beneath her brows, lifted in surprise, her dark, inscrutable eyes shone passionless and mysterious as ever, she assured me:

“But I am not lying to you.”

She knew that I could not prove her lie, and that all my heavy massive structure of torturing thought would crumble at one word from her, even one lying word. I waited for it⁠—and it came forth from her lips, sparkling on the surface with the colours of truth, but dark in its innermost depths:

“I love thee! Am not I all thine?”

We were far from the town, and the snow-clad plain looked in at the dark windows. Upon it was darkness, and around it was darkness, gross, motionless, silent, but the plain shone with its own latent coruscation, like the face of a corpse in the dark. In the overheated room only one candle was burning, and on its reddening flame there appeared the white reflection of the deathlike plain.

“However sad the truth may be, I want to know it. Maybe I shall die when I know it, but death rather than ignorance of the truth. In your kisses and embraces I feel a lie. In your eyes I see it. Tell me the truth and I will leave you forever,” said I.

But she was silent. Her coldly searching look penetrated my inmost depths, and drawing out my soul, regarded it with strange curiosity.

And I cried: “Answer, or I will kill you!”

“Yes, do!” she quietly replied; “sometimes life is so wearisome. But the truth is not to be extracted by threat.”

And then I knelt to her. Clasping her hand I wept, and prayed for pity and the truth.

“Poor fellow!” said she, putting her hand on my head, “poor fellow!”

“Pity me,” I prayed, “I want so much to know the truth.”

And as I looked at her pure forehead, I thought that truth must be there behind that slender barrier. And I madly wished to smash the skull to get at the truth. There, too, behind a white bosom beat a heart, and I madly wished to tear her bosom with my nails, to see but for once an unveiled human heart. And the pointed, motionless flames of the expiring candle burnt yellow⁠—and the walls grew dark and seemed farther apart⁠—and it felt so sad, so lonely, so eery.

“Poor fellow!” she said. “Poor fellow!”

And the yellow flame of the candle shivered spasmodically, burnt low, and became blue. Then it went out⁠—and darkness enveloped us. I could not see her face, nor her eyes, for her arms embraced my head⁠—and I no longer felt the lie. Closing my eyes, I neither thought nor lived, but only absorbed the touch of her hands, and it seemed to me true. And in the darkness she whispered in a strangely fearsome voice:

“Put your arms round me⁠—I’m afraid.”

Again there was silence, and again the gentle whisper fraught with fear!

“You desire the truth⁠—but do I know it myself? And oh! don’t I wish I did? Take care of me; oh! I’m so frightened!”

I opened my eyes. The paling darkness of the room fled in fear from the lofty windows, and gathering near the walls hid itself in the corners. But through the windows there silently looked in a something huge, deadly-white. It seemed as though someone’s dead eyes were searching for us, and enveloping us in their icy gaze. Presently we pressed close together, while she whispered:

“Oh! I am so frightened!”

IV

I killed her. I killed her, and when she lay a flat, lifeless heap by the window, beyond which shone the dead-white plain, I put my foot on her corpse, and burst into a fit of laughter. It was not the laugh of a madman; oh, no! I laughed because my bosom heaved lightly and evenly, and within it all was cheerful, peaceful, and void, and because from my heart had fallen the worm which had been gnawing it. And bending down I looked into her dead eyes. Great, greedy of the light, they remained open, and were like the eyes of a wax doll⁠—so round and dull were they, as though covered with mica. I was able to touch them with my fingers, open and shut them, and I was not afraid, because in those black, inscrutable pupils there lived no longer that demon of lying and doubt, which so long, so greedily, had sucked my blood.

When they arrested me I laughed. And this seemed terrible and wild to those who seized me. Some of them turned away from me in disgust, and went aside; others advanced threateningly straight towards me, with condemnation on their lips, but when my bright, cheerful glance met their eyes, their faces blanched, and their feet became rooted to the ground.

“Mad!” they said, and it seemed to me that they found comfort in the word, because it helped to solve the enigma of how I could love and yet kill the beloved⁠—and laugh. One of them only, a man of full habit and sanguine temperament, called me by another name, which I felt as a blow, and which extinguished the light in my eyes.

“Poor man!” said he in compassion, although devoid of anger⁠—for he was stout and cheerful. “Poor fellow!”

“Don’t!” cried I. “Don’t call me that!”

I know not why I threw myself upon him. Indeed, I had no desire to kill him, or even to touch him; but all these cowed people who looked on me as a madman and a villain, were all the more frightened, and cried out so that it seemed to me again quite ludicrous.

When they were leading me out of the room where the corpse lay, I repeated loudly and persistently, looking at the stout, cheerful man:

“I am happy, happy!”

And that was the truth.

V

Once, when I was a child, I saw in a menagerie a panther, which struck my imagination and for long held my thoughts captive. It was not like the other wild beasts, which dozed without thought or angrily gazed at the visitors. It walked from corner to corner, in one and the same line, with mathematical precision, each time turning on exactly the same spot, each time grazing with its tawny side one and the same metal bar of the cage. Its sharp, ravenous head was bent down, and its eyes looked straight before it, never once turning aside. For whole days a noisily chattering crowd trooped before its cage, but it kept up its tramp, and never once turned an eye on the spectators. A few of the crowd laughed, but the majority looked seriously, even sadly, at that living picture of heavy, hopeless brooding, and went away with a sigh. And as they retired, they cast once more round at her a doubting, inquiring glance and sighed⁠—as though there was something in common between their own lot, free as they were, and that of the unhappy, eager wild beast. And when later on I was grown up, and people, or books, spoke to me of eternity, I called to mind the panther, and it seemed to me that I knew eternity and its pains.

Such a panther did I become in my stone cage. I walked and thought. I walked in one line right across my cage from corner to corner, and along one short line travelled my thoughts, so heavy that it seemed that my shoulders carried not a head, but a whole world. But it consisted of but one word, but what an immense, what a torturing, what an ominous word it was.

“Lie!” that was the word.

Once more it crept forth hissing from all the corners, and twined itself about my soul; but it had ceased to be a little snake, it had developed into a great, glittering, fierce serpent. It bit me, and stifled me in its iron coils, and when I began to cry out with pain, as though my whole bosom were swarming with reptiles, I could only utter that abominable, hissing, serpent-like sound: “Lie!”

And as I walked, and thought, the grey level asphalt of the floor changed before my eyes into a grey, transparent abyss. My feet ceased to feel the touch of the floor, and I seemed to be soaring at a limitless height above the fog and mist. And when my bosom gave forth its hissing groan, thence⁠—from below⁠—from under that rarifying, but still impenetrable shroud, there slowly issued a terrible echo. So slow and dull was it, as though it were passing through a thousand years. And every now and then, as the fog lifted, the sound became less loud, and I understood that there⁠—below⁠—it was still whistling like a wind, that tears down the trees, while it reached my ears in a short, ominous whisper:

“Lie!”

This mean whisper worked me up into a rage, and I stamped on the floor and cried:

“There is no lie! I killed the lie.”

Then I purposely turned aside, for I knew what it would reply. And it did reply slowly from the depths of the bottomless abyss:

“Lie!”

The fact is, as you perceive, that I had made a grievous mistake. I had killed the woman, but made the lie immortal. Kill not a woman till you have, by prayer, by fire, and torture, torn from her soul the truth!

So thought I, and continued my endless tramp from corner to corner of the cell.

VI

Dark and terrible is the place to which she carried the truth, and the lie⁠—and I am going thither. At the very throne of Satan I shall overtake her, and falling on my knees will weep; and cry:

“Tell me the truth!”

But God! This is also a lie. There, there is darkness, there is the void of ages and of infinity, and there she is not⁠—she is nowhere. But the lie remains, it is immortal. I feel it in every atom of the air, and when I breathe, it enters my bosom with a hissing, and then rends it⁠—yes, rends!

Oh! what madness it is⁠—to be man and to seek the truth! What pain!

Help! Help!

I

On a moonlight night in May, when the nightingales were singing, his wife came to Father Ignaty who was sitting in his study. Her face was expressive of suffering, and the small lamp trembled in her hand. She came up to her husband, touched him on the shoulder, and said sobbing:

“Father, let us go to Verochka!”

Without turning his head, Father Ignaty frowned at his wife over his spectacles, and looked long and fixedly, until she made a motion of discomfort with her free hand, and sat down on a low divan.

“How pitiless you both are,” said she slowly and with strong emphasis on the word “both,” and her kindly puffed face was contorted with a look of pain and hardness, as though she wished to express by her looks how hard people were⁠—her husband and her daughter.

Father Ignaty gave a laugh and stood up. Closing his book, he took off his spectacles, put them into their case, and fell into a brown study. His big black beard, shot with silver threads, lay in a graceful curve upon his chest, and rose and fell slowly under his deep breathing.

“Well, then, we will go!” said he.

Olga Stepanovna rose quickly, and asked in a timid, ingratiating voice:

“Only don’t scold her, father! You know what she is.”

Vera’s room was in a belvedere at the top of the house, and the narrow wooden stairs bent and groaned under the heavy steps of Father Ignaty. Tall and ponderous, he was obliged to stoop so as not to hit his head against the ceiling above, and he frowned fastidiously when his wife’s white jacket touched his face. He knew that nothing would come of their conversation with Vera.

“What, is that you?” asked Vera, lifting one bare arm to her eyes. The other arm lay on the top of the white summer counterpane, from which it was scarcely distinguishable, so white, transparent and cold was it.

“Verochka!” the mother began, but gave a sob and was silent.

“Vera!” said the father, endeavouring to soften his dry, hard voice. “Vera, tell us what is the matter with you?”

Vera was silent.

“Vera, are your mother and I undeserving of your confidence? Do we not love you? Have you anyone nearer to you than ourselves? Speak to us of your grief, and believe me, an old and experienced man, you will feel the better for it. And so shall we. Look at your old mother, how she is suffering.”

“Verochka⁠—!”

“And to me⁠—” his voice trembled, as though something in it had broken in two, “and to me, is it easy, think you? As though I did not see that you were devoured by some grief, but what is it? And I, your father, am kept in ignorance. Is it right?”

Vera still kept silence. Father Ignaty stroked his beard with special precaution, as though he feared that his fingers would involuntarily begin to tear it, and continued:

“Against my wishes you went to St. Petersburg⁠—did I curse you for your disobedience? Or did I refuse you money? Or do you say I was not kind? Well, why don’t you speak? See, the good your St. Petersburg has done you!”

Father Ignaty ceased speaking, and there rose before his mind’s eye something big, granite-built, terrible, full of unknown dangers, and of strange callous people. And there alone and weak was his Vera, and there she had been ruined. An angry hatred of that terrible incomprehensible city arose in Father Ignaty’s soul, together with anger towards his daughter, who kept silent, so obstinately silent.

“St. Petersburg has nothing to do with it,” said Vera crossly, and closed her eyes. “But there is nothing the matter with me. You had better go to bed, it’s late.”

“Verochka!” groaned her mother. “My little daughter, confide in me!”

“Oh! mamma!” said Vera, impatiently interrupting her.

Father Ignaty sat down on a chair and began to laugh.

“Well then, nothing is the matter after all?” he asked ironically.

“Father,” said Vera, in a sharp voice, raising herself up on her bed, “you know that I love you and mamma. But⁠—I do feel so dull. All this will pass away. Really, you had better go to bed. I want to sleep, too. Tomorrow, or sometime, we will have a talk.”

Father Ignaty rose abruptly, so that his chair bumped against the wall, and took his wife’s arm.

“Let’s go!”

“Verochka!”

“Let’s go⁠—I tell you,” cried Father Ignaty. “If she has forgotten God, shall we too! Why should we!”

He drew Olga Stepanovna away, almost by main force, and as they were descending the stairs, she, dragging her steps more slowly, said in an angry whisper:

“Ugh! pope, it’s you who have made her so. It’s from you she has got this manner. And you’ll have to answer for it. Ah! how wretched I am⁠—”

And she began to cry, and kept blinking her eyes, so that she could not see the steps, and letting her feet go down as it were into an abyss below into which she wished to precipitate herself.

From that day forward Father Ignaty ceased to talk to his daughter, and she seemed not to notice the change. As before, she would now lie in her room, now go about, frequently wiping her eyes with the palms of her hands, as though they were obstructed. And oppressed by the silence of these two people, the pope’s wife, who was fond of jokes and laughter, became lost and timid, hardly knowing what to say or do.

Sometimes Vera went out for a walk. About a week after the conversation related above, she went out in the evening as usual. They never saw her again alive, for that evening she threw herself under a train, which cut her in two.

Father Ignaty buried her himself. His wife was not present at the church, because at the news of Vera’s death she had had a stroke. She had lost the use of her feet and hands and tongue, and lay motionless in a semi-darkened room, while close by her the bells tolled in the belfry. She heard them all coming out of church, heard the choristers singing before their house, and tried to raise her hand to cross herself, but the hand would not obey her will. She wished to say: “Goodbye, Vera,” but her tongue lay inert in her mouth, swollen and heavy. She lay so still that anyone who saw her would have thought that she was resting, or asleep. Only⁠—her eyes were open.

There were many people in the church at the funeral, both acquaintances of Father Ignaty’s and strangers. All present compassionated Vera, who had died such a terrible death, and they tried in Father Ignaty’s movements and voice to find signs of profound grief. They were not fond of Father Ignaty, because he was rough and haughty in his manners, harsh and unforgiving with his penitents, while, himself jealous and greedy, he availed himself of every chance to take more than his dues from a parishioner. They all wished to see him suffering, broken-down; they wished to see him acknowledge that he was doubly guilty of his daughter’s death⁠—as a harsh father, and as a bad priest, who could not protect his own flesh and blood from sin. So they all watched him with curiosity, but he, feeling their eyes directed on his broad powerful back, endeavoured to straighten it, and thought not so much of his dead daughter as of not compromising his dignity.

“A well-seasoned pope,” Karzenov the carpenter, to whom he still owed money for some frames, said with a nod in his direction.

And so, firm and upright, Father Ignaty went to the cemetery, and came back the same. And not till he reached the door of his wife’s room did his back bend a little; but that might have been because the door was not high enough for his stature. Coming in from the light he could only with difficulty distinguish his wife’s face, and when he succeeded in so doing, he perceived that it was perfectly still and that there were no tears in her eyes. In them was there neither anger nor grief; they were dumb, and painfully, obstinately silent, as was also her whole obese feeble body that was pressed against the bed-rail.

“Well, what? How are you feeling?” Father Ignaty inquired.

But her lips were dumb, and her eyes were silent. Father Ignaty laid his hand on her forehead; it was cold and damp, and Olga Stepanovna gave no sign whatever that she had felt his touch. And when he removed his hands from her forehead, two deep, grey eyes looked at him without blinking; they seemed almost black on account of the dilation of the pupils, and in them was neither grief nor anger.

“Well, I will go to my own room,” said Father Ignaty, who had turned cold and frightened.

He went through the guest-chamber, where everything was clean and orderly as ever, and the high-backed chairs stood swathed in white covers, like corpses in their shrouds. At one of the windows hung a wire cage, but it was empty and the door was open.

“Nastasya!” Father Ignaty called, and his voice seemed to him rough, and he felt awkward, that he had called so loud in those quiet rooms, so soon after the funeral of their daughter. “Nastasya,” he called more gently, “where’s the canary?”

The cook, who had cried so much that her nose was swollen and become as red as a beet, answered rudely:

“Don’t know. It flew away.”

“Why did you let it go?” said Father Ignaty, angrily knitting his brows.

Nastasya burst out crying, and wiping her eyes with the ends of a print handkerchief she wore over her head, said through her tears:

“The dear little soul of the young mistress. How could I keep it?”

And it seemed even to Father Ignaty that the happy little yellow canary, which used to sing always with its head thrown back, was really the soul of Vera, and that if it had not flown away it would have been impossible to say that Vera was dead. And he became still more angry with the cook, and shouted:

“Get along!” and when Nastasya did not at once make for the door, added “Fool!”

II

From the day of the funeral silence reigned in the little house. It was not stillness, for that is the mere absence of noise, but it was silence which means that those who kept silence could, apparently, have spoken if they had pleased. So thought Father Ignaty when, entering his wife’s chamber, he would meet an obstinate glance, so heavy that it was as though the whole air were turned to lead, and was pressing on his head and back. So he thought when he examined his daughter’s music, on which her very voice was impressed; her books, and her portrait, a large one painted in colours which she had brought with her from St. Petersburg. In examining her portrait a certain order was evolved.

First he would look at her neck, on which the light was thrown in the portrait, and would imagine to himself a scratch on it, such as was on the neck of the dead Vera, and the origin of which he could not understand. And every time he meditated on the cause. If it had been the train which struck it, it would have shattered her whole head, and the head of the dead Vera was quite uninjured.

Could it be that someone had touched it with his foot when carrying home the corpse; or was it done unintentionally with the nail?

But to think long about the details of her death was horrible to Father Ignaty, so he would pass on to the eyes of the portrait. They were black and beautiful, with long eyelashes, the thick shadow of which lay below, so that the whites seemed peculiarly bright, and the two eyes were as though enclosed in black mourning frames. The unknown artist, a man of talent, had given to them a strange expression. It was as though between the eyes, and that on which they rested, there was a thin, transparent film. It reminded one of the black top of a grand piano, on which the summer dust lay in a thin layer, almost imperceptible, but still dimming the brightness of the polished wood. And wherever Father Ignaty placed the portrait, the eyes continually followed him, not speaking, but silent; and the silence was so clear that it seemed possible to hear it. And by degrees Father Ignaty came to think that he did hear the silence.

Every morning after the Eucharist Father Ignaty would go to the sitting-room, would take in at a glance the empty cage, and all the well-known arrangement of the room, sit down in an armchair, close his eyes and listen to the silence of the house. It was something strange. The cage was gently and tenderly silent; and grief and tears, and faraway dead laughter were felt in that silence. The silence of his wife, softened by the intervening walls, was obstinate, heavy as lead; and terrible, so terrible that Father Ignaty turned cold on the hottest day. Endless, cold as the grave, mysterious as death, was the silence of his daughter. It was as though the silence were a torture to itself, and as though it longed passionately to pass into speech, but that something strong and dull as a machine, held it motionless, and stretched it like a wire. And then somewhere in the far distance, the wire began to vibrate and emit a soft, timid, pitiful sound. Father Ignaty, with a mixture of joy and fear, would catch this incipient sound, and pressing his hands on the arms of the chair, would stretch his head forward and wait for the sound to reach him. But it would break off, and lapse into silence.

“Nonsense!” Father Ignaty would angrily exclaim, and rise from the chair, tall and upright as ever. From the window was to be seen the marketplace, bathed in sunlight, paved with round, even stones, and on the other side the stone wall of a long, windowless storehouse. At the corner stood a cab like a statue in clay, and it was incomprehensible why it continued to stand there, when for whole hours together not a single passerby was to be seen.

III

Out of the house Father Ignaty had much talking to do: with his ecclesiastical subordinates, and with his parishioners when he was performing his duties; and sometimes with acquaintances when he played with them at “Preference.” But when he returned home he thought that he had been all the day silent. This came of the fact that with none of these people could he speak of the question which was the chief and most important of all to him, which racked his thoughts every night: Why had Vera died?

Father Ignaty was unwilling to admit to himself that it was impossible now to solve this difficulty, and kept on thinking that it was still possible.

Every night⁠—and they were all now for him sleepless⁠—he would recall the moment when he and his wife had stood by Vera’s bed at darkest midnight, and he had entreated her “Speak!” And when in his recollections he arrived at that word, even the rest of the scene presented itself to him as different to what it had really been. His closed eyes preserved in their darkness a vivid, unblurred picture of that night; they saw distinctly Vera lifting herself upon her bed and saying with a smile⁠—But what did she say? And that unuttered word of hers, which would solve the whole question, seemed so near, that if he were to stretch his ear and still the beating of his heart, then, then he would hear it⁠—and at the same time it was so infinitely, so desperately far.

Father Ignaty would rise from his bed, and stretching forth his clasped hands in a gesture of supplication, entreat:

“Vera!”

And silence was the answer he received.

One evening Father Ignaty went to Olga Stepanovna’s room, where he had not been for about a week, and sitting down near the head of her bed, he turned away from her doleful, obstinate gaze, and said:

“Mother! I want to talk to you about Vera. Do you hear?”

Her eyes were silent, and Father Ignaty raising his voice began to speak in the loud and severe tones with which he addressed his penitents:

“I know you think that I was the cause of Vera’s death. But consider, did I love her less than you? You judge strangely⁠—I was strict, but did that prevent her from doing as she pleased? I made little of the respect due to a father; I meekly bowed my neck, when she, with no fear of my curse, went away⁠—thither. And you⁠—mother⁠—did not you with tears entreat her to remain, until I ordered you to be silent. Am I responsible for her being born hard-hearted? Did I not teach her of God, of humility, and of love?”

Father Ignaty gave a swift glance into his wife’s eyes, and turned away.

“What could I do with her, if she would not open her grief to me. Command? I commanded her. Intreat? I intreated. What? Do you think I ought to have gone down on my knees before the little chit of a girl, and wept, like an old woman! What she had got in her head, and where she got it, I know not. Cruel, heartless daughter!”

Father Ignaty smote his knees with his fists.

“She was devoid of love⁠—that’s what it was! I know well enough what she called me⁠—a tyrant. You she did love, didn’t she? You who wept, and⁠—humbled yourself?”

Father Ignaty laughed noiselessly.

“Lo⁠—o⁠—ved! That’s it, to comfort you she chose such a death⁠—a cruel, disgraceful death! She died on the ballast, in the dirt⁠—like a d⁠—d⁠—og, to which someone gives a kick on the muzzle.”

Father Ignaty’s voice sounded low and hoarse:

“I’m ashamed! I’m ashamed to go out into the street! I’m ashamed to come out of the chancel! I’m ashamed before God. Cruel, unworthy daughter! One could curse you in your grave⁠—”

When Father Ignaty glanced again at his wife, she had fainted, and did not come to herself for some hours. And when she did come to herself her eyes were silent, and it was impossible to know whether she understood what Father Ignaty had said to her, or no.

That same night⁠—it was a moonlight night in July, still, warm, soundless⁠—Father Ignaty crept on tiptoe, so that his wife and her nurse should not hear him, up the stairs to Vera’s room. The window of the belvedere had not been opened since the death of Vera, and the atmosphere was dry and hot, with a slight smell of scorching from the iron roof, which had become heated during the day. There was an uninhabited and deserted feeling about the apartment from which man had been absent so long, and in which the wood of the walls, the furniture and other objects gave out a faint smell of growing decay.

The moonlight fell in a bright stripe across the window and floor, and reflected by the carefully washed white boards it illumined the corners with a dim semi-light, and the clean white bed with its two pillows, a big one and a little one, looked unearthly and ghostly. Father Ignaty opened the window, and the fresh air poured into the room in a broad stream, smelling of dust, of the neighbouring river, and the flowering lime, and bore on it a scarcely audible chorus, apparently, of people rowing a boat, and singing as they rowed.

Stepping silently on his naked feet, like a white ghost, Father Ignaty approached the empty bed, and bending his knees fell face-down on the pillows, and embraced them⁠—the place where Vera’s face ought to have been.

He lay long so. The song became louder, and then gradually became inaudible; but he still lay there, with his long black hair dishevelled over his shoulders and on the bed.

The moon had moved on, and the room had become darker, when Father Ignaty raised his head, and throwing into his voice all the force of a long suppressed and long unacknowledged love, and listening to his words, as though not he, but Vera, were listening to them, exclaimed:

“Vera, my daughter! Do you understand what it means, daughter! Little daughter! My heart! my blood, my life! Your father, your poor old father, already grey and feeble.”

His shoulders shook, and all his heavy frame was convulsed. With a shudder Father Ignaty whispered tenderly, as to a little child:

“Your poor old father asks you. Yes, Verochka, he entreats. He weeps. He who never was so wont. Your grief, my little daughter, your suffering, are my own. More than mine.”

Father Ignaty shook his head.

“More, Verochka. What is death to me, an old man? But you⁠—. If only you had realized, how tender, weak and timid you were! Do you remember how when you pricked your finger and the blood came, you began to cry. My little daughter! And you do indeed love me, love me dearly, I know. Every morning you kiss my hand. Speak, speak of what is grieving you⁠—and I with these two hands will strangle your grief. They are still strong, Vera, these hands.”

His locks shook.

“Speak!”

He fixed his eyes on the wall, and stretching out his hands, cried:

“Speak!”

But the chamber was silent, and from the far distance was borne in the sound of the long and short whistles of a locomotive.

Father Ignaty, rolling his distended eyes, as though there stood before him the frightful ghost of a mutilated corpse, slowly raised himself from his knees, and with uncertain movement lifted his hand, with the fingers separated and nervously stretched out, to his head. Going out by the door, Father Ignaty sharply whispered the word:

“Speak!”

And silence was the answer he received.

IV

The next day, after an early and solitary dinner, Father Ignaty went to the cemetery⁠—for the first time since the death of his daughter. It was close, deserted, and still, as though the hot day were but an illumined night; but Father Ignaty as his habit was, with an effort straightened his back, looked sternly from side to side, and thought that he was the same as heretofore. He did not regard the new, but terrible, weakness of his legs, nor that his long beard had grown completely white, as though bitten by a hard frost. The way to the cemetery led through the long, straight street, which sloped gently upwards, and at the end of which gleamed white the roof of the lychgate, which was like a black, ever-open mouth edged with gleaming teeth.

Vera’s grave lay in the very depth of the cemetery, where the gravelled pathways ended; and Father Ignaty had to wander for long on the narrow tracks, along a broken line of little mounds which protruded from the grass, forgotten of all, deserted of all. Here and there he came upon monuments sloping and green with age, broken-down railings, and great heavy stones cast upon the ground, and pressing it with a sort of grim senile malignity.

Vera’s grave was next to one of these stones. It was covered with new sods, already turning yellow, while all around it was green. A rowan tree was intertwined with a maple, and a widely spreading clump of hazel stretched its pliant branches with rough furred leaves over the grave. Sitting down on the neighbouring tomb, and sighing repeatedly, Father Ignaty looked round, cast a glance at the cloudless desert sky, in which the red-hot disc of the sun hung suspended in perfect immobility⁠—and then only did he become conscious of that profound stillness, like nothing else in the world, which holds sway over a cemetery, when there is not a breath of wind to rustle the dead leaves. And once more the thought came to Father Ignaty, that this was not stillness, but silence. It overflowed to the very brick walls of the cemetery, climbed heavily over them, and submerged the city. And its end was only there⁠—in those grey, stubbornly, obstinately silent eyes.

Father Ignaty shrugged his shoulders, which were becoming cold, and let his eyes fall on Vera’s grave. He gazed long at the short little seared stalks of grass, which had been torn from the ground somewhere in the wide windswept fields, and had failed to take root in the new soil; and he could not realize that there, under that grass, at a few feet from him, lay Vera. And this nearness seemed incomprehensible, and imbued his soul with a confusion and strange alarm. She, of whom he was accustomed to think as having forever disappeared in the dark depth of infinity, was here, close⁠—and it was difficult to understand that nevertheless she was not, and never would be again. And it seemed to Father Ignaty that if he spoke some word, which he almost felt upon his lips, or if he made some movement, Vera would come forth from the tomb, and stand up as tall and beautiful as ever. And that not only would she arise; but that all the dead, who could be felt, so awesome in their solemn cold silence, would rise too.

Father Ignaty took off his black wide-brimmed hat, smoothed his wavy locks, and said in a whisper:

“Vera!”

He became uneasy lest he should be heard by some stranger, and stood upon the tomb and looked over the crosses. But there was no one near, and he repeated aloud:

“Vera!”

It was Father Ignaty’s old voice, dry and exacting, and it was strange that a demand made with such force remained without answer.

“Vera!”

Loud and persistently the voice called, and when it was silent for a moment it seemed as though somewhere below a vague answer resounded. And Father Ignaty looked once more around, removed his hair from his ears, and laid them on the rough prickly sod.

“Vera! Speak!”

And Father Ignaty felt with horror that something cold as the tomb penetrated his ear, and froze the brain, and that Vera spoke⁠—but what she said was ever the same long silence. It became ever more and more alarming and terrible, and when Father Ignaty dragged his head with an effort from the ground, pale as that of a corpse, it seemed to him that the whole air trembled and vibrated with a resonant silence, as though a wild storm had arisen on that terrible sea. The silence choked him: it kept rolling backwards and forwards through his head in icy waves, and stirred his hair; it broke against his bosom, which groaned beneath the shocks. Trembling all over, casting from side to side quick, nervous glances, he slowly raised himself, and strove with torturing efforts to straighten his back and to restore the proud carriage to his trembling body. And in this he succeeded. With slow deliberation he shook the dust from his knees, put on his hat, made the sign of the cross three times over the grave, and went with even, firm gait, and yet did not recognize the well-known cemetery, and lost his way.

“Lost my way!” he laughed, and stood still at the branching paths.

He stood still for a moment, and then without thinking turned to the left, because it was impossible to stand still and wait. The silence pursued him. It rose from the green graves; the grim grey crosses breathed it; it came forth in thin suffocating streams from every pore of the ground, which was sated with corpses. Father Ignaty’s steps became quicker and quicker. Dazed, he went round the same paths again and again, he leapt the graves, stumbled against the railings, grasped the prickly tin wreaths, and the soft stuff tore to pieces in his hands. Only one thought, that of getting out, was left in his head. He rushed from side to side, and at last ran noiselessly, a tall figure, almost unrecognizable in his streaming cassock, with his hair floating on the air. More frightened than at the sight of a corpse risen from the grave, would have been anyone who had met this wild figure of a man running, leaping, waving his arms⁠—if he had recognized his mad, distorted face, and heard the dull rattle that escaped from his open mouth.

At full run Father Ignaty jumped out upon the little square at the end of which stood the low white mortuary chapel. In the porch on a little bench there dozed an old man who looked like a pilgrim from afar, and near him two old beggar-women were flying at one another, quarrelling and scolding.

When Father Ignaty reached home, it was already getting dark, and the lamp was lit in Olga Stepanovna’s room. Without change of clothes or removing his hat, torn and dusty, he came hurriedly to his wife and fell on his knees.

“Mother⁠—Olga⁠—pity me!” he sobbed; “I am going out of my mind.”

He beat his head against the edge of the table, and sobbed tumultuously, painfully, as a man does who never weeps. He lifted his head, confident that in a moment a miracle would be performed, and that his wife would speak, and pity him.

“Dear!”

With his whole big body he stretched out towards his wife, and met the look of the grey eyes. In them there was neither compassion nor anger. Maybe his wife forgave and pitied him, but in those eyes there was neither pity nor forgiveness. They were dumb and silent.

And the whole desolate house was silent.

I

I and another leper cautiously drew near to the very wall, and looked up. From where we stood its top was not visible, but it rose straight and smooth, and as it were bisected the sky. Our half of the sky was dark grey, toned gradually into dark blue on the horizon, so that it was impossible to say where the black earth began, and where the sky ended. The dark night sighed and groaned dull and sad, crushed between the earth and the sky, and with each sigh there spluttered out from her bosom sharp hot grains of sand, which intensified the torture of our burning sores.

“Let us try and climb over,” said my companion, and his breath, as he spoke, was loathsome and fœtid, even as my own. He bent his back and I stood on it, but the wall towered as high above us as ever. As it bisected the sky, so it divided the earth, lying on it like a sated boa-constrictor, going down into the abysses and up into the mountains, while its head and its tail stretched beyond the horizon.

“Then, let us pull it down,” the leper proposed.

“Let us pull it down,” I agreed.

So we threw ourselves with our breasts against the wall, and it became red with the blood of our wounds, but remained dull and immovable as before. We fell into despair.

“Kill us! kill us!” we groaned as we crawled along, and people turned their faces from us in disgust, so that we saw only their backs convulsed with profound loathing.

So we dragged ourselves along, until we met with a man dying of starvation. He was sitting leaning against a stone, and it seemed as though the very granite was sore with the sharpness of his pointed shoulder-blades. There was not an ounce of flesh upon him, and as he moved, his bones rattled and his dry skin crackled. His under jaw was dropped, and from the dark aperture of his mouth there issued a dry, rasping voice:

“I am star⁠—ving.”

But we only laughed, and slouched on the faster, till we came upon a quartette who were dancing. They advanced and retired, they took one another by the waist and wheeled round, but their faces were pale, and tortured, and smileless. One of them began to weep, because he was tired of their endless dance, and begged to be allowed to stop; but one of the others, without speaking, gripped him by the waist and whirled him round, and once again he began to advance and retire, and at each step a great troubled tear dropped from his eye.

“I should like to dance,” said my companion with a snuffle. But I dragged him away. And once more the wall rose before us, and by it two persons were squatting on their heels. One of them at regular intervals kept striking his forehead against the wall, and then would fall down insensible. Then the other would regard him seriously, feel with his hand first the man’s head and then the wall, and as soon as the other recovered consciousness would say:

“Try again; there’s not much of it left.”

And the leper laughed.

“They’re fools,” said he cheerfully, puffing out his cheeks. “They think that there is light beyond. But it is dark there also, and there too are lepers dragging themselves along, and entreating ‘Kill us!’ ”

“But what about the old man, eh?” I asked.

“Well! what of him?” retorted the leper. “He was indeed a stupid blind and deaf old man. Who could discover the hole he picked through the wall? Could you? Could I?”

I was enraged at this answer, and beat my companion cruelly on his blistered skull, exclaiming:

“Why, then, do you try to climb over it?”

And he began to weep, and we wept together, and continued on our way, entreating:

“Kill us! kill us!”

But faces were shudderingly turned from us, and none was willing to kill us. And yet, they slay the handsome and the strong; us they are afraid to touch! The bastards!

II

For us time was not; there was neither yesterday, nor today, nor tomorrow. Night never left us, never reposed behind the mountains, so as to return strong, coal-black, and still. Therefore was she always so tired, out of breath, and morose. She was malign. It would come to pass, that she could no longer endure to listen to our sobs and groans, to look upon our sores, our grief and evil case, and then her dark, dully working breast would boil over with a stormy rage. She would roar at us like a mad imprisoned beast, and angrily wink her fearful flaming eyes, which shed a red light on the bottomless pits, on the sombre proudly quiescent wall, and on the miserable group of trembling humanity. They pressed against the wall, as though it were a friend, and entreated it to protect them, but it was ever our enemy⁠—ever. The Night was disgusted at our pusillanimity and cowardice, and burst into angry laughter, which shook her speckled grey paunch, and the bald, ancient mountains caught up that satanic laughter. The wall with grim mirth sonorously reechoed it, playfully showering stones upon us, breaking our heads and flattening out our bodies. So those great ones made merry, and shouted one to the other, while the wind whistled a wild accompaniment, and we lay prone, and listened in horror, as within the bosom of the earth a tremendous something kept growling⁠—and will dully keep on so doing⁠—tapping and demanding freedom. Then we all prayed: “Kill us!”

But, though we were dying every second, we were immortal, like the gods.

And there passed by a gust of anger mingled with delight, and the Night, weeping tears of rue, sadly sighed, and like a consumptive spat out upon us damp sand. We with joy forgave her, laughed at her in her exhaustion and weakness, and became jocund as children. The sob of the starving man seemed to us a sweet song, and with cheerful envy we watched the quartette which kept on advancing, and retiring, and floating round in the endless dance.

And pair by pair we ourselves began to whirl round, and I, the leper, found a temporary partner. Oh, it was so cheery, so charming! I put my arm round her, and she laughed, and her little teeth were so milky white, her little cheeks so rosy pink. It was so charming!

One could not understand how it came about, but suddenly her teeth, which were displayed in joyful laughter, began to chatter, our kisses turned to bites, and with a shriek, from which all joy had not yet departed, we fell to gnawing and killing one another. And she of the milk white teeth beat me even on my sick weak head, and stuck her sharp nails into my breast, piercing to the very heart⁠—she smote me, me the leper, the miserable, so miserable. And this was more terrible than the anger of the Night, or the soulless laughter of the Wall. And I, the leper, wept and trembled with fear, and quietly, unobserved of any, I kissed the hideous feet of the Wall, and besought it to let me, me alone, pass through into that world where there are no madmen, and where people do not slay one another. But the Wall would not let me through, and then I spat on it, beat it with my fists, and called out:

“Look at this murderess! She is laughing at you.”

But my voice was hideous, and my breath fœtid, and no one cared to listen to me⁠—the leper.

III

And again we crept on, I and the other leper; and again a noise arose around us, and again the quartette circled noiselessly, shaking the dust from their dresses, and licking our bleeding wounds. But we were weary, we were sick, our life was a burden to us. My fellow-traveller sat down, and rhythmically beating the ground with his swollen hands, he jerked out the horrid words:

“Kill us! kill us!”

We then jumped with a sudden movement to our feet, and hurled into the crowd; but they gave way before us, and we saw only their backs. We cursed their backs, and entreated:

“Kill us!”

But immovable and deaf were the backs, like a second wall. It was so terrible never to see the faces of people, but only their backs⁠—immovable, silent. Now my companion deserted me. He had seen a face⁠—the first face⁠—and it was, even as his own, full of sores and horrible. But it was the face of a woman. And he began to smile and walk round her, stretching out his neck, and diffusing a fœtid odour; but she too smiled at him with her mouth all fallen-in, and casting down her eyes which had lost the lashes.

And they married one another. And for a moment all faces were turned towards them, and appealing round of laughter shook people’s sturdy bodies. And I, the leper, laughed too: surely it is a stupid thing to get married when one is ugly and sick.

“Fool,” said I in derision. “What wilt thou do with her?”

The leper answered with a pompous smile:

“We will deal in stones, which fall from the wall.”

“And the children?”

“We will kill them.”

How stupid to beget children only to kill them! But then she will soon deceive him; she has such shifty eyes.

IV

They had finished their work⁠—the one who was occupied in knocking his head against the wall, and the other who was helping him. When I arrived there, one of them was hanging by a hook driven into the wall. He was still warm, and the other was quietly singing a cheerful song.

“Go and tell the starving man,” said I, and he obeyed, singing as he went. And I saw the starving man struggle up from his stone. Trembling and stumbling, hitting against everything with his sharp elbows, sometimes on all fours, sometimes staggering, he managed to reach the wall, where the man was swinging. His teeth chattered; he laughed gleefully like a child:

“Only a little piece of a foot!” But he was too late; already others, being the stronger, had forestalled him. Pressing one against the other, clawing and biting, they clung round the corpse; they gnawed and munched his feet with relish, and crunched the bones they had worried. But they would not let him have any. He squatted down on his heels, and watched the others as they ate, swallowing with furred tongue, and emitted a prolonged howl from his great empty mouth:

“I am st⁠—ar⁠—ving.”

Was it not laughable! He had died for the famished one, and the latter did not get even a piece of his foot! And I laughed, and the other leper laughed, and his wife too winked her crafty eyes in derision.

But he howled only the more loudly and furiously:

“I am st⁠—ar⁠—ving.”

And the hoarseness went out from his voice, which rose in a pure metallic sound, piercing and clear; and striking against the wall, then reverberating, it flew over the dark abysses and the hoary tops of the mountains.

And presently those, who were near the wall, began to howl; and they were numerous, and as greedy and hungry, as locusts, and it seemed as though the burnt-up earth howled in unbearable tortures, opening wide her stony jaws. It was as though a forest of dried-up trees, bent in one direction by a violent wind, stretched forth their trembling hands to the wall, gaunt, piteous, prayerful; and so great was their despair that the very rocks trembled, and the purple white-capped thunder clouds fled in terror. But the wall remained high and immovable, and unconcernedly reechoed the moan in multiplied reverberations into the dense fetor-laden atmosphere.

All eyes were turned to the wall, and darted on it fiery rays. They hoped and believed, that it would soon be falling and open out a new world, and in their blind belief began already to see the stones rock, the stone serpent, which had battened on the blood and brains of men, tremble from top to bottom. Maybe it was the tremble of the tears in our eyes, which we mistook for the trembling of the wall⁠—and still more piercing was our cry. Anger and exultation at the near approach of victory resounded in it.

V

But this is what happened then. High upon a rock there stood a gaunt old woman, her parched cheeks fallen in, her long locks uncombed like the grey mane of a starving old wolf. Her clothing was in rags, and exposed her yellow, bony shoulders, and her emaciated breasts, which had supported the life of many and been exhausted with maternity. She stretched forth her hands to the wall, and all eyes followed them. She began to speak, and in her voice was so much suffering, that the despairing moans of the starving man were silenced for very shame.

“Give me back my child!” cried the woman.

And we all kept silence, with a smile of fury upon our lips, and waited for the answer of the wall. The brains of him the woman called “her child” stood out upon the wall in grey patches, streaked with red, and we awaited impatiently and austerely the answer of the dastardly murderess. So still was it that we could hear the rustling of the thunderclouds passing over our heads, and dark night locked up her groans within her breast, only spitting out with a slight sibilant sound the fine burning sand, which ate into our wounds. Then once more resounded the stern, bitter demand:

“Cruel one! give me back my child.” Ever more stern and furious grew our smile, but the dastardly wall was silent.

And then from the speechless crowd there came forth an old man handsome and austere, and took his stand by the woman.

“Give me back my son,” said he.

How terrible it was, and withal how joyous! A cold shivering went down my spine, and my muscles contracted with the influx of an unknown threatening strength; but my companion nudged me in the side with chattering teeth, and a fœtid breath in a broad spurning wave issued from his decomposing mouth.

Then there came out from the crowd another person, who said “Give me back my brother!” And yet another who cried “Give me back my daughter!”

And then men and women, old and young, began to come forth, and stretching out their hands, shouted their implacable, bitter demand:

“Give me back my child!”

And then I too, the leper, feeling within me strength and hardihood, stepped forward in my turn, and cried loud and threateningly:

“Murderess! Give me back my Self!”

But she⁠—was silent. So false and dastardly was she, that she made as though she heard not, and my seamed cheeks contracted with malignant laughter, and a mad rage filled our sickened hearts. But she, stupidly unconcerned, remained silent!

Then the woman angrily stretched out her lean yellow hands, and yelled implacably:

“Then, be thou damned! Thou slayer of my child.”

And the austere handsome old man repeated:

“Be thou damned!”

And the whole earth repeated with resonant thousand-throated groan:

“Be thou damned! damned! damned!”

VI

And the black night sighed deeply: and, like a sea upheaved by a hurricane, dashed in all its heavy roaring mass upon the cliffs: the whole visible world rocked and swayed, and with a thousand tense and furious breasts beat against the wall. High to the heavily rolling thunderclouds was splashed the bloodstained foam, and stained them with red so that they became fiery and terrible, and cast a bloodred reflection down below to where there thundered and roared a low, but wondrously multitudinous, black, and savage Something. With an expiring groan, full of unspoken pain, it rolled back⁠—but the wall stood immovable and silent. But there was no timidity or shame in her silence. Lowering and threateningly calm was the glance of her baleful eyes, and proudly, like a queen, she let fall from her shoulders her purple mantle all adrip with blood, and trailed it amid mutilated corpses.

But dying as we were every second, we were immortal, like the gods.

And once more a mighty stream of human bodies broke out into a roar, and with all their strength hurled themselves against the wall. And again, and over and over again it was rolled back, until fatigue supervened, and a deathlike sleep, and stillness. But I, the leper, was close to the wall, and saw that it began to quake⁠—the proud queen⁠—and that the fear of falling ran in a shudder through its stones.

“It is falling. Brothers! it is falling,” I cried.

“Thou art mistaken, leper,” replied my brothers.

And then I began to question them:

“Supposing it does stand, what then? Is not every corpse a step towards the top? We are many, and our lives a burden. Let us strew the ground with corpses; upon them let us heap yet other corpses; and so mount to the top. And if there be left but one⁠—he will see a new world.”

And I gave a cheerful glance of hope around⁠—and there met it only backs, indifferent, fat and weary. The quartette circled round in endless dance, advancing and retiring, and black night, like an invalid, spat out its moist sand, and the wall stood firm in its indestructible massiveness.

“Brothers!” I entreated; “Brothers!”

But my voice was hideous, and my breath fœtid, and no one would listen to me, the leper.

Woe! woe! woe!

I

He belonged to no one, he had no name of his own, and none could say where he spent the long, frosty winter, or how he was fed. The house dogs hungry as himself, but proud and strong from the consciousness of belonging to a house, would chase him away from the warm cottages. When driven by hunger or an instinctive need of company, he showed himself in the street, the boys pelted him with stones and sticks, while the grownups gave a merry whoop, or a terribly piercing whistle. Distraught with fear he would dart about from side to side, and stumbling against the fences and people’s legs, would run as fast as he could to the end of the village, and hide himself in the depths of a large garden in a place known only to himself. There he would lick his bruises and wounds, and in solitude heap up terror and malice.

Once only had he been pitied and petted. This was by a peasant, a drunkard, who was returning from the public house. Just then he loved all things, and pitied all, and said something in his beard about kind people, and the trust he himself put in kind people. He pitied even the dirty, unlovely dog, on which by chance his drunken, aimless glance had fallen.

“Doggie,” said he, calling it by a name common to all dogs; “Doggie, come here, don’t be afraid.”

Doggie wanted very much to come. He wagged his tail, but could not make up his mind. The peasant patted his knee with his hand, and repeated reassuringly:

“Come along, then, silly. I swear I won’t hurt you.”

But while the dog was hesitating, wagging its tail more and more energetically, and advancing with short steps, the humour of the drunkard changed. He recalled all the insults that had been heaped on him by kind people, and felt angry and dully malicious, so that when Doggie lay on his back before him, he gave him a vicious kick in the side with the toe of his heavy boot.

“Garn! Dirty! Where are you coming to!”

The dog began to whimper, more from surprise and the insult, than from pain, and the peasant staggered home, where he gave his wife a savage beating, and tore to pieces a new kerchief which he had bought for her as a present the week before.

From this time forth the dog ceased to trust people who wished to pet it, and either put his tail between his legs and ran away, or sometimes would fly at them angrily and try to bite them, until they succeeded in driving him away with stones or a stick. For one winter he had taken up his abode under the verandah of an unoccupied bungalow which was without a caretaker, and took care of it for nothing. By night he ran about the streets and barked till he was hoarse, and long after he had lain himself down in his place, he would keep up an angry growl, but beneath the anger there was apparent a certain amount of content, and even pride, in himself.

The winter nights dragged themselves out slowly, and the black windows of the empty bungalow gazed grimly on the motionless, icy garden. Sometimes blue lights seemed to kindle in them, at others a falling star would be reflected in the panes, or again the sharp-horned moon would throw on them its timid ray.

II

Spring came on, and the quiet bungalow was all a-voice with loud talk, the creaking of wheels, and the stamping of people moving heavy things. The owners had arrived from the city, a whole merry troop of grownup people, of half-grown ups and children, all intoxicated with the air, the warmth and the light. Some shouted, some sang, and some laughed with shrill female voices.

The first with whom the dog made acquaintance was a pretty girl, who ran out into the garden in a formal, cinnamon-coloured dress.6 Greedily and impatiently desiring to seize and hug in her embrace everything visible, she looked at the clear sky, at the reddish cherry twigs, and lay quickly down on the grass with her face towards the burning sun. Then she got up again as suddenly, and hugging herself, and kissing the Spring air with her fresh lips, said expressively and seriously:

“Well, this is jolly!”

She spoke, and then suddenly turned round. At this very moment the dog noiselessly approached, and furiously seized the extended skirt of her dress in its teeth and tore it, and then as noiselessly disappeared into the thick gooseberry and currant bushes.

“Oh! bad dog!” cried the girl, running away, and for long might be heard her agitated voice: “Mamma! children! don’t go into the garden. There is a dog there, such a great, big, fierce one!”

At night the dog crept up to the sleeping bungalow, and noiselessly lay down in its place under the verandah. It smelt of people, and through the open windows was borne the soft sound of gentle breathing. The people were asleep, they were powerless and no longer terrible, and the dog jealously guarded them. He slept with one eye open, and at every rustle stretched out his head with its two motionless phosphorescent eyes. But the alarming noises were so many in the sensitive Spring night: in the grass something small and unseen rustled, and came quite close to the shiny nose of the dog; last year’s twigs crackled under the feet of sleeping birds, and on the neighbouring road a cart rumbled, and heavily-laden wains creaked. And afar off round about in the motionless air was diffused the sweet, fresh scent of resin, and lured one into the lightening distance.

The owners who had arrived at the bungalow were very kind people, and all the more so now that they were far from the city, breathing pure air, seeing around them everything green, and blue and harmless. The sunlight went into them in warmth, and came out again in laughter and goodwill towards all things living. At first they wished to drive away the dog, of which they were afraid, and even shot at it with a revolver, when it would not take itself off; but later they became accustomed to its barking at night, and even sometimes remembered it in the morning:

“But where’s our Snapper?”

And this new name “Snapper” stuck to it. Sometimes even by day they would notice among the bushes its dark body, which would fall flat on the ground at the first motion of a hand throwing bread⁠—as though it were a stone, not bread⁠—and soon all became accustomed to Snapper, and called him “our dog,” and joked about the cause of his shyness and unreasonable fear. Each day Snapper diminished by one step the distance which separated him from the people; he grew accustomed to their faces, and adopted their habits. Half an hour before dinner he would be already standing in the shrubs, blinking with a conciliatory air. And that same little schoolgirl it was, who, forgetting the former outrage, brought the dog definitely into the happy circle of cheerful, restful people.

“Snapper, come here,” said she, calling him. “Good dog, come here. Do you like sugar? I’ll give you a lump. Come along, then.”

But Snapper would not come; he was afraid. Then cautiously patting her knee, and speaking with all the caressing kindness of a beautiful voice and a pretty face, Lelya approached the dog, but was in her turn afraid; suddenly he snapped.

“I am so fond of you, Snapper, dear; you have such a nice little nose, and such expressive eyes. Won’t you trust me, Snapperkin?”

Lelya raised her eyebrows, and her own little nose was so pretty and her eyes so expressive, that the sun acted wisely in covering all her little youthful, naively charming face with hot kisses, till her cheeks were red.

Snapper for the second time in his life turned on his back and closed his eyes, not knowing for a certainty whether he was to be kicked or petted. But he was petted. Small warm hands touched irresolutely his woolly head, and as though this were a sign of undeniable authority, began freely and boldly to run over the whole of his hairy body, rumpling, petting, and tickling.

“Mamma! children! look here, I’m petting Snapper,” cried Lelya.

When the children ran up, noisy, loud-voiced, quick and bright as drops of uncontrollable mercury, Snapper cowed down in fear and helpless expectancy: he knew that if anyone struck him now, he would no longer be in a position to fix his sharp teeth in the body of the offender: his unappeasable malice had been taken from him. And when they all began to vie in caressing him, he for a long time could not help trembling at each touch of the caressing hand, and the unwonted fondling hurt him as though it had been a blow.

III

All Snapper’s doggy nature expanded. He had now a name, at the sound of which he rushed headlong from the green depths of the garden; he belonged to people, and could serve them. What more did a dog need to make him happy!

Being accustomed to the moderation induced by years of a vagrant, hungry life, he ate but little, but that little changed him out of recognition. His long coat, which formerly had hung in foxy dry tufts on his back and on his belly, which had been covered eternally with dried mud, now became clean, and grew black, and became as glossy as velvet. And when he, having nothing better to do, would run to the gates and stand on the threshold, looking up and down the street with a dignified air, no one ever took it into his head to tease him or throw stones at him.

But such pride and independence he could enjoy only to himself. Fear had not as yet been wholly evaporated from his heart by the fire of caresses, and so every time people appeared, or approached him, he hid himself expecting a beating. And still for a long time every caress came to him as a surprise, and a wonder, which he could neither understand, nor respond to. He did not know how to receive caresses. Other dogs could stand and walk about on their hind legs and even smile, and thus express their feelings, but he did not know how.

The one only thing that Snapper was able to do was to roll on his back, shut his eyes, and whimper gently. But this was insufficient, it could not express his delight, his thankfulness and love. By a sudden inspiration, however, Snapper began to do something, which maybe he had seen done by other dogs, but had long since forgotten. He turned absurd somersaults, leapt awkwardly, and ran after his tail; and his body, which had been always so supple and active, became stiff, ridiculous, and pitiful.

“Mamma! children! look, Snapper is performing,” cried Lelya, and choking with laughter, said: “Once more, Snapper, once more. That’s right!”

And they gathered together and laughed, and Snapper kept on twisting round, and turning somersaults and falling, and no one saw the strange entreating look in his eyes. And as formerly they used to howl and shout at the dog to see his despairing fear, so now they caressed him on purpose to excite in him an ebullition of love, so infinitely laughable in its awkward, absurd manifestations. Hardly an hour passed but some one of the half-grownups or the children would cry:

“Now then, Snapper dear, perform!”

And Snapper would twist about, turn somersaults, and fall, amid merry, irrepressible laughter. They praised him to his face and behind his back, and lamented only one thing, viz., that he would not show off his tricks before strangers, who came to visit, but would run away into the garden, or hide himself under the verandah.

Gradually Snapper became accustomed to not being obliged to trouble himself about his food, since at the appointed hour the cook would give him scraps and bones, while he confidently and quietly lay in his place under the verandah, and even sought and asked for caresses. And he grew heavy: he seldom ran away from the bungalow, and when the little children called him to go with them to the forest, he would wag an evasive tail, and disappear unseen. But all the same at night his bark would be loud and wakeful as ever.

IV

Autumn began to glow with yellow fires, and the sky to weep with heavy rain, and the bungalows became quickly empty, and silent, as though the incessant rain and wind had extinguished them one by one, like candles.

“What are we to do with Snapper?” asked Lelya, with hesitation. She was sitting embracing her knees and looking sorrowfully out of the window, down which were rolling glistening drops of rain.

“What a position you’re in, Lelya; that’s not the way to sit!” said her mother, and added: “Snapper must be left behind, poor fellow.”

“That’s⁠—a⁠—pity,” said Lelya lingeringly.

“But what can one do? We have no courtyard at home, and we can’t keep him in the house, that you must very well understand.”

“It’s⁠—a⁠—pity,” repeated Lelya, ready to cry. Her dark brows were raised, like a swallow’s wings, and her pretty little nose puckered piteously, when her mother said:

“The Dogayevs offered me a puppy some time ago. They say that it is very well bred, and ready trained. Do you see? But this is only a yard-dog.”

“A⁠—pity,” repeated Lelya, but she did not cry.

Once, more strangers arrived, and wagons creaked, and the floors groaned beneath heavy footsteps, but there was less talk, and no laughter was heard at all. Terrified by the strange people, and dimly prescient of calamity, Snapper fled to the extreme end of the garden, and thence through the thinning bushes gazed unceasingly at that corner of the verandah which was open to his view, and at the figures in red shirts which were moving about on it.

“You there! my poor Snapper,” said Lelya as she came out. She was already dressed for the journey in the same cinnamon skirt, out of which Snapper had torn a piece, and a black jacket. “Come along!”

And they went out into the road. The rain kept coming and going, and the whole expanse between the blackened earth and the sky was full of clubbed, swiftly-moving clouds. From below it could be seen how heavy they were, impenetrable to the light on account of the water which saturated them, and how weary the sun must be behind that solid wall.

To the left of the road stretched the darkened stubble field, and only on the near hummocky horizon short uneven trees and shrubs appeared in lonesome patches. In front, not far off, was the barrier, and near it a wine-shop with red iron roof, and by it was a group of people teasing the village idiot Ilyusha.

“Give us a ha’penny,” snuffled the idiot in a drawling voice, and evil, jeering voices replied all together:

“Will you chop up some wood?”

Ilyusha reviled foully and cynically, and the others laughed without mirth. A sunray broke through, yellow and anaemic, as though the sun were hopelessly sick; and the foggy Autumn distance became wider, and more melancholy.

“I’m sorry, Snapper!” Lelya gently let fall the words, and went back without looking round. It was not till she reached the station that she remembered that she had not said goodbye to Snapper.

Snapper long followed the track of the people as they went away, he ran as far as the station, and wet through and muddy, returned to the bungalow. There he performed one more new trick, which no one, however, was there to see. For the first time he went on to the verandah, stood on his hind legs, looked in at the glass door, and even scratched at it. But the rooms were all empty, and no one answered him.

A violent rain poured down, and on all sides the darkness of the long Autumn night began to close in. Quickly and dully it filled the empty bungalow: noiselessly it crept out from the shrubs and in company with the rain, poured down from the uninviting sky. On the verandah, from which the awning had been taken away, and which for that reason looked like a broad and unknown waste, the light had long been in conflict with the darkness, and mournfully illumined the marks of dirty feet; but soon it gave in.

Night had come on.

When there was no longer any doubt that the night was upon him, the dog began to howl in loud complaint. With a note resonant, and sharp as despair, that howl broke into the monotonous, sullenly persistent sound of the rain, rending the darkness, and then dying down was carried over the dark naked fields.

The dog howled⁠—regularly, persistently, desperately, soberly⁠—and to anyone who heard that howling it seemed as though the impenetrable dark night itself were groaning and longing for the light, and he would wish himself with his wife by his warm fireside.

The dog howled.

I

At 6:30 I was certain that she would come, and I was desperately happy. My coat was fastened only by the top button, and fluttered in the cold wind; but I felt no cold. My head was proudly thrown back, and my student’s cap was cocked on the back of my head; my eyes with respect to the men they met were expressive of patronage and boldness, with respect to the women of a seductive tenderness. Although she had been my only love for four whole days, I was so young, and my heart was so rich in love, that I could not remain perfectly indifferent to other women. My steps were quick, bold and free.

At 6:45 my coat was fastened by two buttons, and I looked only at the women, but no longer with a seductive tenderness, but rather with disgust. I only wanted one woman⁠—the others might go to the devil; they only confused me, and with their seeming resemblance to Her gave to my movements an uncertain and jerky indecision.

At 6:55 I felt warm.

At 6:58 I felt cold.

As it struck seven I was convinced that she would not come.

By 8:30 I presented the appearance of the most pitiful creature in the world. My coat was fastened with all its buttons, collar turned up, cap tilted over my nose, which was blue with cold; my hair was over my forehead, my moustache and eyelashes were whitening with rime, and my teeth gently chattered. From my shambling gait, and bowed back, I might have been taken for a fairly hale old man returning from a party at the almshouse.

And She was the cause of all this⁠—She! “Oh, the Dev⁠⸺! No, I won’t. Perhaps she could not get away, or she is ill, or dead. She’s dead!”⁠—and I swore.

II

“Eugenia Nikolaevna will be there tonight,” one of my companions, a student, remarked to me, without the slightest arrière pensée. He could not know how that I had waited for her in the frost from seven to half-past eight.

“Indeed,” I replied, as in deep thought, but within my soul there leapt out: “Oh, the Dev⁠⸺!” “There” meant at the Polozovs’ evening party. Now the Polozovs were people with whom I was not upon visiting terms. But this evening I would be there.

“You fellows!” I shouted cheerfully, “today is Christmas Day, when everybody enjoys himself. Let us do so too.”

“But how?” one of them mournfully replied.

“And where?” continued another.

“We will dress up, and go round to all the evening parties,” I decided.

And these insensate individuals actually became cheerful. They shouted, leapt, and sang. They thanked me for my suggestion, and counted up the amount of “the ready” available. In the course of half an hour we had collected all the lonely, disconsolate students in town; and when we had recruited a cheerful dozen or so of leaping devils, we repaired to a hairdresser’s⁠—he was also a costumier⁠—and let in there the cold, and youth, and laughter.

I wanted something sombre and handsome, with a shade of elegant sadness; so I requested:

“Give me the dress of a Spanish grandee.”

Apparently this grandee had been very tall, for I was altogether swallowed up in his dress, and felt there as absolutely alone as though I had been in a wide, empty hall. Getting out of this costume, I asked for something else.

“Would you like to be a clown? Motley with bells.”

“A clown, indeed!” I exclaimed with contempt.

“Well, then, a bandit. Such a hat and dagger!”

Oh! dagger! Yes, that would suit my purpose. But unfortunately the bandit whose clothes they gave me had scarcely grown to full stature. Most probably he had been a corrupt youth of eight years. His little hat would not cover the back of my head, and I had to be dragged out of his velvet breeks as out of a trap. A page’s dress was no go: it was all spotted like the pard. The monk’s cowl was all in holes.

“Look sharp; it’s late,” said my companions, who were already dressed, trying to hurry me up.

There was but one costume left⁠—that of a distinguished Chinaman. “Give me the Chinaman’s,” said I with a wave of my hand. And they gave it me. It was the devil knows what! I am not speaking of the costume itself. I pass over in silence those idiotic flowered boots, which were too short for me, and reached only halfway to my knees; but in the remaining, by far the most essential part, stuck out like two incomprehensible adjuncts on either side of my feet. I say nothing of the pink rag which covered my head like a wig, and was tied by threads to my ears, so that they protruded and stood up like a bat’s. But the mask!

It was, if one may use the expression, a face in the abstract. It had nose, eyes, and mouth all right enough, and all in the proper places; but there was nothing human about it. A human being could not look so placid⁠—even in his coffin. It was expressive neither of sorrow, nor cheerfulness, nor surprise⁠—it expressed absolutely nothing! It looked at you squarely, and placidly⁠—and an uncontrollable laughter overwhelmed you. My companions rolled about on the sofas, sank impotently down on the chairs, and gesticulated.

“It will be the most original mask of the evening,” they declared.

I was ready to weep; but no sooner did I glance in the mirror than I too was convulsed with laughter. Yes, it will be a most original mask!

“In no circumstances are we to take off our masks,” said my companions on the way. “We will give our word.”

“Honour bright!”

III

Positively it was the most original mask. People followed me in crowds, turned me about, jostled me, pinched me. But when, harried, I turned on my persecutors in anger⁠—uncontrollable laughter seized them. Wherever I went, a roaring cloud of laughter encompassed and pressed on me; it moved together with me, and I could not escape from this circle of mad mirth. Sometimes it seized even myself, and I shouted, sang, and danced till everything seemed to go round before me, as if I was drunk. But how remote everything was from me! And how solitary was I under that mask! At last they left me in peace. With anger and fear, with malice and tenderness intermingling, I looked at her.

“ ’Tis I.”

Her long eyelashes were lifted slowly in surprise, and a whole sheaf of black rays flashed upon me, and a laugh, resonant, joyous, bright as the spring sunshine⁠—a laugh answered me.

“Yes, it is I; I, I say,” I insisted with a smile. “Why did you not come this evening?”

But she only laughed, laughed joyously.

“I suffered so much; I felt so hurt,” said I, imploring an answer.

But she only laughed. The black sheen of her eyes was extinguished, and still more brightly her smile lit up. It was the sun indeed, but burning, pitiless, cruel.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Is it really you?” said she, restraining herself. “How comical you are!”

My shoulders were bowed, and my head hung down⁠—such despair was there in my pose. And while she, with the expiring afterglow of the smile upon her face, looked at the happy young couples that hurried by us, I said: “It’s not nice to laugh. Do you not feel that there is a living, suffering face behind my ridiculous mask⁠—and can’t you see that it was only for the opportunity it gave me of seeing you that I put it on? You gave me reason to hope for your love, and then so quickly, so cruelly deprived me of it. Why did you not come?”

With a protest on her tender, smiling lips, she turned sharply to me, and a cruel laugh utterly overwhelmed her. Choking, almost weeping, covering her face with a fragrant lace handkerchief, she brought out with difficulty: “Look at yourself in the mirror behind. Oh, how droll you are!”

Contracting my brows, clenching my teeth with pain, with a face grown cold, from which all the blood had fled, I looked at the mirror. There gazed out at me an idiotically placid, stolidly complacent, inhumanly immovable face. And I burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. And with the laughter not yet subsided, but already with the trembling of rising anger, with the madness of despair, I said⁠—nay, almost shouted:

“You ought not to laugh!”

And when she was quiet again I went on speaking in a whisper of my love. I had never spoken so well, for I had never loved so strongly. I spoke of the tortures of expectation, of the venomous tears of mad jealousy and grief, of my own soul which was all love. And I saw how her drooping eyelashes cast thick dark shadow over her blanched cheeks. I saw how across their dull pallor the fire, bursting into flame, threw a red reflection, and how her whole pliant body involuntarily bent towards me.

She was dressed as the Goddess of Night, and was all mysterious, clad in a black, mist-like face, which twinkled with stars of brilliants. She was beautiful as a forgotten dream of far-off childhood. As I spoke my eyes filled with tears, and my heart beat with gladness. And I perceived, I perceived at last, how a tender, piteous smile parted her lips, and her eyelashes were lifted all a-tremble. Slowly, timorously, but with infinite confidence, she turned her head towards me, and⁠—

And such a shriek of laughter I never heard!

“No, no, I can’t,” she almost groaned, and throwing back her head, she burst into a resonant cascade of laughter.

Oh, if but for a moment I could have had a human face! I bit my lips, tears rolled over my heated face; but it⁠—that idiotic mask, on which everything was in its right place, nose, eyes, and lips⁠—looked with a complacency staidly horrible in its absurdity. And when I went out, swaying on my flowered feet, it was long before I got out of reach of that ringing laugh. It was as though a silvery stream of water were falling from an immense height, and breaking in cheerful song upon the hard rock.

IV

Scattered over the whole sleeping street and rousing the stillness of the night with our lusty, excited voices, we walked home. A companion said to me:

“You have had a colossal success. I never saw people laugh so⁠—Halloa! what are you up to? Why are you tearing your mask? I say, you fellows, he’s gone mad! Look, he’s tearing his costume to pieces! By Jove! he’s actually crying.”

I

He drank hard, lost his work and his acquaintances, and took up his abode in a cellar in the company of thieves and unfortunates, living on the last things he had.

His was a sickly, anaemic body, worn out with work, eaten up by sufferings and vodka. Death was already on the watch for him, like a grey bird-of-prey blind in the sunshine, sharp-eyed in the black night. By day death hid itself in the dark corners, but at night it took its seat noiselessly by his bedside, and sat long, till the very dawn, and was quiet, patient, and persistent. When at the first streak of light he put out his pale head from under the blankets, his eyes gleaming like those of a hunted wild animal, the room was already empty. But he did not trust this deceptive emptiness, which others believe in. He suspiciously looked round into all the corners; with crafty suddenness he cast a glance behind his back, and then leaning upon his elbows he gazed intently before him into the melting darkness of the departing night. And then he saw something, such as ordinary people do not see: the rocking of a monster grey body, shapeless, terrible. It was transparent, embraced all things, and objects were seen in it as behind a glass wall. But now he feared it not; and it departed until the next night, leaving behind it a cold impression.

For a short time he was wrapped in oblivion, and terrible, extraordinary dreams came to him. He saw a white room, with white floor and walls, illumined by a bright, white light, and a black serpent which was creeping away under the door with a gentle rustling-like laughter. Pressing its sharp flat head to the floor, it wriggled and quickly glided away, and was lost somewhere or other, and then again its black flattened nose appeared through a crevice under the door, and its body drew itself out in a black ribbon⁠—and so again and again. Once in his sleep he dreamed of something pleasant, and laughed, but the sound seemed strange, and more like a suppressed sob⁠—it was terrible to hear it⁠—his soul somewhere in the unknown depths laughing, or perhaps weeping, while the body lay motionless as the dead.

By degrees the sounds of nascent day began to invade his consciousness: the indistinct talk of passersby, the distant squeaking of a door, the swish of the dvornik’s broom as he brushed away the snow from the windowsill⁠—all the undefined bustle of a great city awakening. And then there came upon him the most horrible, mercilessly clear consciousness that a new day had arrived, and that he would soon have to get up, in order to struggle for life without any hope of victory.

One must live.

He turned his back to the light, threw the blanket over his head, so that not the minutest ray might penetrate to his eyes, squeezed himself together into a small ball, drawing his legs up to his very chin, and so lay motionless, dreading to stir and to stretch out his legs. A whole mountain of clothes lay upon him as a protection against the cold of the basement, but he did not feel their weight, and his body remained cold. And at every sound speaking of life he seemed to himself to be monstrous and unveiled, and he hugged himself together all the tighter, and silently groaned⁠—neither with voice nor in thought⁠—since he feared now his own voice and his own thoughts. He prayed to someone that the day might not come, so that he might always lie under the heap of rags, without movement or thought, and he concentrated his whole will to keep back the coming day, and to persuade himself that it was still night. And more than anything in the world he wished that someone from behind would put a revolver to the back of his head, just at the place where there is a cavity, and blow his brains out.

But daylight unfolded, broad, irresistible, calling forcibly to life, and all the world began to move, to talk, to work, to think. The first in the basement to wake was the landlady, old Matryona. She got up from the side of her twenty-five-year-old lover, and began to stamp about the kitchen, clatter with the buckets, and busy herself about something close to Khinyakov’s very door. He felt her approach, and lay quiet, determined not to answer if she called him. But she kept silence, and went away somewhere. In the course of an hour or two the two other lodgers woke up, an unfortunate named Dunyasha, and the old woman’s lover Abram Petrovich. He was so called in spite of his youth out of respect, because he was a daring and skilful thief, and something else besides, which was guessed at, but not spoken about.

The waking up of these terrified Khinyakov more than anything, since they had a hold on him, and the right to come in and sit on his bed, to touch him, and recall him to thought and speech. He had become intimate with Dunyasha one day when he was drunk, and had promised her marriage, and although she had laughed and slapped him on the back, she sincerely considered him as her lover, and patronized him, although she was herself a stupid, dirty, unwashed slut, who had spent many a night at the police-station. With Abram Petrovich he had only the day before yesterday been drinking, and they had kissed one another and sworn eternal friendship.

When the fresh loud voice of Abram Petrovich and his quick steps resounded near the door, Khinyakov’s heart’s blood curdled with fear and suspense, and he could not help groaning aloud, and then was all the more frightened. In one distinct picture that drinking-bout passed before him: how they had sat in some dark tavern or other, illumined by a single lamp, amid dark people who kept whispering together about something, while they themselves also whispered together. Abram Petrovich was pale and excited, and complained of the hardships of a thief’s life; for some reason or other he had bared his arms and allowed him to feel the badly-mended bones of his once broken arm, and Khinyakov had kissed him and said:

“I love thieves, they are so bold,” and proposed to him that they should drink to “brotherhood,” although they had for long been on quite intimate terms.

“And I love you, because you are educated, and understand us so well,” replied Abram Petrovich.

“Look again at my arm; here it is, eh?”

And again the white arm had passed before his eyes, seeming to be sorry for its own whiteness, and suddenly realizing something (which he did not now remember or understand), he had kissed that arm, and Abram Petrovich had proudly cried:

“Indeed, brother, death before surrender!”

And then something dirty whirling round and round, howls, whistles, and jumping lights. Then he had felt cheerful, but now when death was hiding in the corners, and when day was rushing in upon him from every direction with the inexorable necessity to live and do something, to struggle after something and ask for something⁠—he felt tortured and inexpressibly frightened.

“Are you asleep, sir?” Abram Petrovich inquired sarcastically through the door, and receiving no answer, added:

“Well, then, sleep away; devil take you!”

Many acquaintances visited Abram Petrovich, and throughout the day the door squeaked on its hinges, and bass voices were to be heard. And it seemed to Khinyakov at every sound that they were coming for him, and he buried himself the deeper in his bedclothes, and listened long to catch to whom the voice belonged. He waited and waited in agony, trembling all over his body, although there was no one in the whole world who would come to fetch him.

He had once had a wife⁠—long ago⁠—but she was dead. Still further back in the past he had had brothers and sisters, and still earlier⁠—something indistinct and beautiful, which he called Mother. All these were dead, or possibly some one of them might be still alive, only so lost in the wide, wide world, that he was as though dead. And he himself would soon be dead too⁠—he knew it. When he should get up today his legs would tremble and give way under him, and his hands would make uncertain strange motions⁠—and this was death. But meanwhile he must need live, and that is such a serious task for a man who has neither money, health, nor will, that Khinyakov was seized with despair. He threw off his blanket, clasped his hands, and breathed out into the void such prolonged groans, that they seemed to proceed from a thousand suffering breasts, therefore was it that they were so full, brimming over with insupportable torture.

“Open, you devil!” cried Dunyasha from the other side of the door, pounding it with her fists. “Or I’ll break the door down!”

Trembling with tottering steps, Khinyakov reached the door, opened it, and quickly lay down again, nay almost fell, on his bed. Dunyasha, already befrizzled and bepowdered, sat down at his side, shoving him against the wall, and, crossing her legs, said with an air of importance:

“I have brought you news. Katya expired yesterday?”

“What Katya?” asked Khinyakov, using his tongue clumsily and uncertainly, as though it did not belong to him.

“Come, now, you can’t have forgotten!” laughed Dunyasha. “The Katya who used to live here. How can you have forgotten her, when she has been gone only a week?”

“Died?”

“Why, of course died, as all die.” Dunyasha moistened the tip of her little finger and wiped the powder from her thin eyelashes.

“What of?”

“What all die of. Who knows what? They told me yesterday at the café, Katya was dead.”

“Did you love her?”

“Certainly I loved her! What are you talking about!”

Dunyasha’s stupid eyes looked at Khinyakov in dull indifference as she swung her fat leg. She did not know what more to say, and tried to look at him, as he lay there, in such a manner as to show to him her love, and with that intent she gently winked her eye, and dropped the corners of her full lips.

The day had begun.

II

That day, a Saturday, the frost was so severe that the boys did not go to school, and the horse-races were postponed for fear of the horses catching cold. When Natalya Vladimirovna came out from the lying-in hospital, she was for the first moment glad that it was evening, that there was no one on the embankment, that none met her⁠—an unmarried girl, with a six-day-old child in her arms. It had seemed to her that, as soon as she should cross the threshold, she would be met by a shouting, hissing crowd, among whom would be her senile, paralytic, and almost blind father, her acquaintances, students, officers and their young ladies; and that all these would point the finger at her and cry:

“There goes a girl who has passed through six classes at the high-school, had acquaintances among the students both intellectual and of good birth, who used to blush at a word spoken unadvisedly, and who six days ago gave birth to a child, in the lying-in hospital, side by side with other fallen women.”

But the embankment was deserted. Along it the icy wind traveled unrestrained, lifted a grey cloud of snow, ground by the frost into a biting dust, and covered with it everything living and dead which met it in its path. With a gentle whistle it wove itself round the metal pillars of the railings, so that they shone again, and looked so cold and lonely that it was a pain to look at them. And the girl felt herself to be just such a cold thing, an outcast from mankind and life. She had on a little short jacket, the one which she usually wore skating, and which she had hurriedly thrown on when she left her home suffering the premonitory pains of childbirth. And when the wind seized her, and wrapped her thin skirt about her ankles, and chilled her head, she began to fear that she might be frozen to death; and her fear of a crowd disappeared, and the world expanded into a boundless icy wilderness, in which was neither man, nor light, nor warmth. Two burning teardrops gathered in her eyes, and froze there. Bending her head down, she wiped them away with the formless bundle she was carrying, and went on faster. Now she no longer loved herself nor the child, and both lives seemed to her worthless; only certain words, which had, as it were, sunk into her brain, persistently repeated themselves, and went before her calling:

“Nyemchinovskaya Street, the second house from the corner. Nyemchinovskaya Street, the second house from the corner.”

These words she had repeated for six days as she lay on the bed and fed her infant. They meant, that she must go to Nyemchinovskaya Street, where her foster-sister, an unfortunate, lived, because only with her could she find an asylum for herself and her child. A year ago, when all was still well and she was continually laughing and singing, she had visited Katya, who was ill, and had helped her with money, and now she was the only human being remaining before whom she was not ashamed.

“Nyemchinovskaya Street, the second house from the corner. Nyemchinovskaya Street, the second house from the corner.”

She walked on, and the wind whirled angrily round her; and when she came upon the bridge it greedily dashed at her bosom, and dug its iron nails into her cold face. Vanquished, it dropped noisily from the bridge, and circled along the snow-covered surface of the river, and again swept upwards, overshadowing the road with cold, trembling wings. Natalya Vladimirovna stood still, and in utter weakness leaned against the rail. From the depth below there looked up at her a dull black eye⁠—a spot of unfrozen water⁠—and its gaze was mysterious and terrible. But before her resounded and called persistently the words:

“Nyemchinovskaya Street, the second house from the corner. Nyemchinovskaya Street, the second house from the corner.”

Khinyakov dressed, and lay down again on his bed rolled to the very eyes in a warm overcoat, his sole remaining possession. The room was cold, there was ice in the corners, but he breathed into the astrakhan collar, and so became warm and comfortable. The whole long day he kept deceiving himself, that tomorrow he would go and seek work, and ask for something; but meanwhile he was content not to think at all, but merely to tremble at the sound of a raised voice the other side of the wall, or at the sound of a sharply slammed door. He had lain long in this way, perfectly still, when at the entrance door he heard an uneven rapping, timid, and yet hurried and sharp, as if someone was knocking with the back of the hand. His room was the one next to the entrance door, and by craning his head and pricking up his ears he could distinguish everything which took place near it. Matryona went to the door and opened it, let someone in and closed it again. Then followed an expectant silence.

“Whom do you want?” asked Matryona in a hoarse, unfriendly tone. A stranger’s voice, gentle and broken, bashfully replied:

“I want Katya Nyechayeva. She lives here?”

“She did. But what do you want with her?”

“I want her very badly. Is she not at home?” and in her voice there was a note of fear.

“Katya is dead. She died, I say⁠—in the hospital.”

Again there was a long silence, so long indeed that Khinyakov felt a pain at his back; but he did not dare to move it, while the people there kept silence.

Then the stranger’s voice pronounced gently and without expression, the one word:

“Goodbye!”

But evidently she did not go away, since in the course of a minute Matryona asked: “What have you there? Have you brought something for Katya?”

Someone knelt down, striking her knees on the floor, and the stranger’s voice, convulsed with suppressed sobs, uttered quickly the words:

“Take it, take it! For the love of God, take it! And then I⁠—I’ll go away.”

“But what is it?”

Again there was a long silence, and then a gentle weeping, broken, and hopeless. There was in it a deadly weariness, and a black despair, without a single gleam of hope. It was as though a hand had impotently drawn the bow across the over-tightened, the last remaining, string of an expensive instrument, and when the string snapped the soft wailing note had been silenced forever.

“Why, you have nearly smothered it!” exclaimed Matryona in a rough, angry tone. “You see what sort of people undertake to bear children. How could you do it? Whoever would wrap up babies like that? Come now, come along; do, I say. How could you do such a thing?”

Once more all was silent near the door.

Khinyakov listened a little longer and then lay down, delighted that no one had come to fetch him, and not taking the trouble to guess the truth about what he had not understood in that which had just taken place. He began already to feel the approach of night, and wished that someone would turn the lamp up higher. He became restless, and, clenching his teeth, he endeavoured to restrain his thoughts. In the past there was nothing but mire, falls, and horror, and⁠—there was the same horror in the future. He was just beginning by degrees to snuggle himself together, and draw up his hands and feet, when Dunyasha came in, dressed to go out in a red blouse, and already slightly intoxicated. She plopped down on the bed, and said with a gesture of surprise:

“Oh Lord!” She shook her head and smiled. “They have brought a little baby here. Such a tiny one, my friend, but he shouts just like a police-inspector. Just like a police-inspector!”

She swore whimsically, and coquettishly flipped Khinyakov’s nose.

“Let’s go and see. Why not, indeed! Yes, we’ll just take a look at him. Matryona is going to bathe it; she is boiling the samovar. Abram Petrovich is blowing up the charcoal with his boot. How funny it all is. And the baby is crying: ‘Wa, wa, wa!’ ”

Dunyasha made a face which she meant to represent the baby, and again went on puling: “ ‘Wa, wa, wa!’ Just like a police-inspector! Let’s go. Don’t you want to?⁠—well, then devil take you! Turn up your toes where you are, rotten egg, you!”

And she danced out of the room. But half an hour after Khinyakov, tottering on his weak legs and hanging on to the doorposts, hesitatingly opened the door of the kitchen.

“Shut it! You’ve made a draught,” cried Abram Petrovich.

Khinyakov hastily slammed the door behind him, and looked round apologetically; but no one took any notice of him, so he calmed down. The combined heat of the stove, the urn, and the company made the kitchen pretty warm, and the vapour rose, and then rolled down the colder walls in thick drops. Matryona with a severe and irritated mien was washing the child in a trough, and with pockmarked hands was splashing the water over him, while she crooned:

“Little lambkin, then, it s’all be clean. It s’all be white.”

Whether it was because the kitchen was light and cheerful, or because the water was warm and caressing, at all events the child was quiet, and wrinkled up its little red face as though about to sneeze. Dunyasha looked at the tub over Matryona’s shoulder, and seizing her opportunity, splashed the little one with three fingers.

“Get away!” the old woman cried in a threatening tone, “where are you coming to? I know what to do without your help. I have had children of my own.”

“Don’t meddle. She’s quite right, children are such tender things,” said Abram Petrovich, in support of her; “they want some handling.”

He sat down on the table, and with condescending satisfaction contemplated the little rosy body. The baby wriggled its fingers, and Dunyasha with wild delight wagged her head and laughed.

“Just like a police-inspector!”

“But have you seen a police-inspector in a trough?” asked Abram Petrovich.

All laughed, and even Khinyakov smiled; but almost immediately the smile left his face affright, and he looked round at the mother. She was sitting wearily on the bench, with her head thrown back, and her black eyes, abnormally large from sickness and suffering, lighted up with a peaceful gleam, and on her pale lips hovered the proud smile of a mother. And when he saw this Khinyakov burst into a solitary, belated laugh:

“He! he! he!”

He even looked proudly round on all sides. Matryona took the baby out of the tub, and wrapped it in a bath-sheet. The child burst into loud crying, but was soon quieted again, and Matryona, unrolling the sheet, smiled in confusion, and said:

“What a dear little body, just like velvet.”

“Let me feel,” entreated Dunyasha.

“What next!”

Dunyasha began suddenly to tremble all over, and stamped her feet; choking with longing, and mad with the desire, which overwhelmed her, she cried in such a shrill voice as none had ever heard from her:

“Let me! let me!”

“Yes, let her,” entreated Natalya Vladimirovna in a fright. And Dunyasha just as suddenly became quiet again. She cautiously touched the child’s little shoulder with two fingers, and following her example, Abram Petrovich, with a condescending wink, also reached out to that little red shoulder.

“Yes, indeed, children are tender things,” said he in self-justification.

Last of all Khinyakov tried it. His fingers felt for a moment the touch of something living, downy like velvet, and withal so tender and feeble that his fingers seemed no longer to belong to him, and became as tender as the something he touched. And thus, craning their necks, and unconsciously lighting up into a smile of strange happiness, stood the three, the thief, the prostitute, and the lonely broken man, and that little life, feeble as a distant light on the steppe, was vaguely calling them somewhither, and promising them something beautiful, bright, immortal. And the happy mother looked proudly on, while above the low ceiling the house rose in a heavy mass of stone, and in the upper flats the rich sauntered about, and yawned with ennui.

Night had come on, black, malign, as all nights are, and had pitched her tent in darkness over the distant snowy fields; and the lonely branches of trees became chilled with fear, just those branches which first welcomed the morning sun. With feeble artificial light man fought against her, but strong and malign she girded the isolated lights in a hopeless circle, and filled the hearts of men with darkness. And in many a heart she extinguished the feeble flickering sparks.

Khinyakov did not sleep. Huddled up together into a little ball, he hid himself under a soft heap of rags from the cold and from the night, and wept, without effort, without pain or convulsion, as those weep whose heart is pure and without sin, as the heart of a little child. He pitied himself huddled up into a heap, and it seemed to him that he pitied all mankind and the whole of human life, and in this feeling there was a secret, profound gladness. He saw the child, just born, and it seemed to him that he himself was reborn to a new life, and would live long, and that his life would be beautiful. He loved and yet pitied this new life, and he felt so happy, that he laughed so that he shook the heap of rags, and then asked himself:

“Why am I weeping?”

But he could not discover the answer to his own question, and so replied:

“So!”

And such a profound thought was conveyed by this short word, that this wreck of a man, whose life was so pitiable and lonely, was convulsed with a fresh burst of scalding tears.

But at his bedside rapacious death was noiselessly taking its seat, and waiting⁠—quietly, patiently, persistently.

I

During that hot and ill-omened summer everything was burning. Whole towns, villages and hamlets were consumed; forests and fields were no longer a protection to them, but even the forests themselves submissively burst into flame, and the fire spread like a red tablecloth over the parched meadows. During the day the dim red sun was hidden in acrid smoke, but at nighttime in all quarters of the sky a quiet red-glow burst forth, which rocked in silent, fantastic dance; and strange confused shadows of men and trees crept over the ground like some unknown species of reptile. The dogs ceased their welcoming bark, which from afar calls to the traveller and promises him a roof and hospitality, and either uttered a prolonged melancholy howl, or crept into the cellar in sullen silence. And men, like dogs, looked at one another with evil, frightened eyes, and spoke aloud of arson, and secret incendiaries. Indeed, in one remote village they had killed an old man who could not give a satisfactory account of his movements, and then the women had wept over the murdered man, and pitied his grey beard all matted with dark blood.

During this hot and ill-omened summer I lived at the house of a country squire, where were many women, young and old. By day we worked and talked, and thought little of conflagrations, but when night came on we were seized with fear. The owner of the property was often absent in the town. Then for whole nights we slept not a wink, but in fear and trembling made our rounds of the homestead in search of an incendiary. We huddled close together and spoke in whispers; but the night was still, and the buildings stood out in dark, unfamiliar masses. They seemed to us as strange, as if we had never seen them before, and terribly unstable, as though they were expecting the fire and were already ripe for it. Once, through a crack in the wall, there gleamed before us something bright. It was the sky, but we thought it was a fire, and with screams the womenkind rushed to me, who was still almost a boy, and entreated my protection.

But I⁠—held my breath for fear, and could not move a step.

Sometimes in the depth of night I would rise from my hot, tumbled bed and creep through the window into the garden. It was an ancient, formal and stately garden, so protected that it answered the very fiercest storm with nothing more than a suppressed drone. Below it was dark and deadly still as at the bottom of an abyss; but above there was a continual indistinct rustling and sound, like the far-off speech of the steppe. Concealing myself from someone, who seemed to be following at my heels, and looking over my shoulder, I would make my way to the end of the garden, where upon a high bank stood a wattle-fence, and beyond the fence far below extended fields and forests and hamlets hidden in the darkness. Lofty, gloomy, silent lime-trees opened out before me, and between their thick black stems, through the interstices of the fence, and through the space between the leaves I could see something terrible, extraordinary, which would fill my heart with an uneasy dread feeling, and make my legs twitch with a slight tremor. I could see the sky, not the dark, still sky of night, but rosy-red, such as is neither by day nor night. The mighty limes stood grave and silent, like men expecting something, but the sky was unnaturally rosy, and the ominous reflection of the burning earth beneath darted in fiery red spasms about the sky. And curling columns would go slowly up and disappear in the height; and it was a puzzle, as strangely unnatural as the pink colouring of the sky, how they could be so silent, when below all was gnashing of teeth; how they could be so unhurried and stately there above, when everything was tossing in restless confusion here below.

As though coming to themselves the lofty limes would all at once begin to talk together with their tops, and then suddenly relapse into silence, congealed, as it were, for a long time in sullen expectation. It would become still as at the bottom an abyss, while far behind me I felt conscious of the house on the alert, full of frightened people; the limes crowded watchfully around me, and in front silently rocked a rose-red sky, such as is not nor by night nor day.

And because I saw it not as a whole, but only through the interstices between the trees, it was all the more terrible and incomprehensible.

II

It was night and I was dosing restlessly, when there reached my ear a dull staccato sound, rising as it seemed from below the ground; it penetrated my brain, and settled there like a round stone. After it another forced its way in, equally short and dolorous, and my head became heavy and sick, as though molten lead were falling upon it in thick drops. The drops kept boring and burning into my brain; they became ever more and more, and soon they were filling my head with a dripping rain of impetuous staccato sounds.

“Boom! boom! boom!” Someone tall, strong and impatient kept jerking out from afar.

I opened my eyes, and at once understood that it was the alarm-bell, and that Slobodishtchy, the next village, was on fire. It was dark in the room and the window was closed, and yet at the terrible call the whole room, with its furniture, pictures and flowers, went out, as it were, into the street, and no longer was one conscious of wall or ceiling.

I do not remember how I got dressed, and know not why I ran alone and not with the others; whether it was that they forgot me, or I did not remember their existence. The tocsin called persistently and dully, as though its sounds were falling, not from the transparent air, but were cast forth from the immeasurable thickness of the earth. I ran on.

Amid the rosy sheen of the sky the stars twinkled above my head, and in the garden it was strangely light, such as is neither by day, nor by majestic, moonlit night, but when I reached the hedge something bright-red, seething, tossing desperately, looked up at me through the fissures. The lofty limes, as though sprinkled with blood, trembled in their rounded leaves, and turned them back in fear, but their sound was inaudible on account of the short, loud strokes of the swinging bell. Now the sounds became clear and distinct, and flew with mad speed like a swarm of red-hot stones. They did not circle in the air like the doves of the peaceful angelus, neither did they expand in the caressing waves of the solemn call to prayer; they flew straight like grim harbingers of woe, who have no time to glance backward and whose eyes are wide with terror.

“Boom! boom! boom!” they flew with unrestrainable impetuosity, the strong overtaking the weak, and all of them together delving into the earth and piercing the sky.

And, as straight as they, I ran over the immense tilled plain, which faintly scintillated with bloodred gleams like the scales of a great black wild-beast. Above my head, at a wonderful height, bright isolated sparks floated by, and in front was one of those terrible village conflagrations, in which in one holocaust perish houses, cattle and human beings. There behind the irregular line of dark trees now round, now sharp as pikes, the dazzling flame soared aloft, arched its neck proudly, like a maddened horse, leaped, threw burning flocks from its midst into the black sky, and then greedily stooped for fresh prey. The blood surged in my ears with the swiftness of my running, and my heart beat loud and rapidly; but the irregular strokes of the tocsin overtook my heartbeats and struck me full on head and breast. And so full of despair was it that it seemed not the clanging of a metal bell, but as though the very heart of the much-suffering earth were beating wildly in the agony of death.

“Boom! boom! boom!” the red-hot conflagration ejaculated. And it was difficult to realize that the church belfry, so small and slight, so peaceful and still, like a maiden in a pink dress, could be giving forth those loud, despairing cries.

I kept falling down on my hands against clods of dry earth, which scattered beneath them, and again I would rise and run on, and the fire and the summoning sound of the bell ran to meet me. One could already hear the wood crackling as it caught fire, and the many-voiced cry of human beings with the dominating notes of despair and terror. And when the serpent-like hissing of the fire ceased for a moment, a prolonged groaning became clearly differentiated: it was the wailing of women, and the bellowing of cattle in a panic of terror.

A swamp intercepted my path. A wide, weed-grown swamp, which ran far to right and left. I went into the water up to my knees, then to the breast, but the swamp began to suck me down, and I returned to the bank. Opposite, quite close, raged the fire, throwing up into the sky golden sparks like the burning leaves of a gigantic tree: while the water of the swamp stood out like a mirror sparkling with fire in a black frame of reed and sedge. The tocsin called, despairingly in deadly agony:

“Come! do come!”

III

I flung along the strand, and my dark shadow flung after me, and when I stooped down to the water to find a bottom, the spectre of a fire-red form gazed at me from the black abyss, and in the distorted lineaments of its face, and in its dishevelled hair, which seemed as though it were lifted up upon the head by some terrific force, I failed to recognize myself.

“Ah! what is it? O Lord!” I prayed with outstretched hands.

But the tocsin kept calling. The bell no longer entreated, it shouted like a human being, and groaned and choked. The strokes had lost their regularity, and piled themselves one on the top of the other, rapidly and without echo; they died down, were reproduced and again died down. Once more I bent down to the water, and alongside of my own reflection I perceived another fiery spectre, tall and erect, and to my horror just like a human being.

“What’s that?” I screamed, looking round. Close to my shoulder stood a man looking at the conflagration in silence. His face was pale, his cheeks were covered with still moist blood, which gleamed as it reflected the fire. He was dressed simply, like a peasant. Possibly he had been already here when I ran up, and had been stopped like myself by the swamp, or possibly he may have arrived after me; but at all events I had not heard his approach, nor did I know who he was.

“It burns,” said he, without removing his eyes from the fire. The reflected fire leapt in them, and they seemed large and glassy.

“Who are you? Where do you come from?” I asked; “you are all bloody.” With long, thin fingers he touched my cheeks, looked at them, and again fixed his gaze upon the fire.

“It burns,” he repeated, without paying any attention to me. “Everything is burning.”

“Do you know how to get there?” I asked, drawing back. I guessed that this was one of the many maniacs, which this ill-omened summer had produced.

“It burns!” he replied; “ho! ho! don’t it burn!” he cried, laughing, and looked at me kindly, wagging his head. The hurried strokes of the tocsin suddenly stopped, and the flame crackled louder. It moved like a living thing, and with long arms, as though weary, dragged itself to the silent belfry, which now seemed near and tall, and clothed no longer in pink but in red. Above the dark loophole, where the bells were hung, there appeared a timid quiet tongue of fire, like the flame of a candle, and was reflected in pale rays on their metal surface. Once more the bell began to tremble, sending forth its last madly-despairing cries, and once more I flung myself along the shore, and my black shadow flung after me.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” I cried, as though in reply to someone calling me. But the tall man was quietly seated behind me, embracing his knees, and kept singing a loud secondo to the bell: “Boom! boom! boom!”

“Are you mad?” I shouted to him. But he only sang the louder and the merrier, “Boom! boom! boom!”

“Be quiet!” I entreated. But he smiled and sang on, wagging his head, and the fire flared up in his glassy eyes. He was more terrible than the fire, this maniac, and I turned round and took to flight along the shore. But I had scarcely gone a few steps, when his lanky figure appeared silently alongside of me, his shirt fluttering in the wind. He ran in silence, even as I did, with long untiring strides, and in silence our black shadows ran along the upturned field.

The bell was suffocating in its last death-struggle and cried out like a human being who, despairing of assistance, has lost all hope. And we ran on in silence aimlessly into the darkness, and close to us our black shadows leapt mockingly.

I

“So you’ll come, won’t you?” Senista repeated this for the third time, and for the third time Sazonka answered hastily:

“Sure I’ll come, sure I’ll come. Why shouldn’t I? Sure I’ll come.”

And again they were silent. Senista was lying on his back, covered up to the chin with a gray hospital blanket, and was looking steadily at Sazonka. He did not want Sazonka to go away, wanted him to say again that he would come to see him, and not leave him a prey to loneliness, disease, and fear. Sazonka, on the other hand, was anxious to get away, but he did not know how to do it without giving offense to the boy. He would blow his nose every little while, slide off the chair, and then sit straight and firmly again, as though resolved to remain there for all time. He would have stayed longer if there were anything to talk about. But there was no subject he could converse upon and the thoughts that came to his head were so foolish, that he felt ashamed of himself. He wanted all the time to call Senista by his full name, Semyon Erofeyevich, which, of course, would have been preposterous. Senista was only a boy, a mere apprentice, while he was a full master in his trade and a drunkard into the bargain. Everybody called him Sazonka merely through force of habit. Only two weeks ago, he had given Senista his last box on the ear, which, of course, was very bad of him; but he could not talk about that in the hospital.

Sazonka began to slide off his chair determinedly, but before getting off halfway he suddenly slid back again, and said half-reproachfully, half-sympathetically:

“So that’s the way it goes. Hurts, don’t it?”

Senista nodded and answered quietly:

“Well, I guess it’s time for you to go. You’ll get it, if you don’t.”

“That’s so, too,” answered Sazonka cheerfully, glad to have found a good excuse. “As it is, he told me to get back as soon as I could. ‘Take it over,’ said he, ‘and get back the same moment. And see that you don’t touch whiskey on the way.’ The devil!”

But, together with the realization that he could leave any moment, Sazonka began to feel a great pity for the large-headed Senista. The whole environment predisposed him to pity. The room was filled with beds placed close to each other, on which lay pale, gloomy men. The air was spoiled to the last ounce with the nauseating odors of medicines and human perspiration. Everything reminded him of his own health and strength. No longer trying to avoid Senista’s questioning glance, Sazonka bent over him and said:

“Don’t be afraid Semyon⁠ ⁠… Senia, I mean. I’ll come, all right. Soon as I have time, I’ll come right over. Ain’t I human? My Lord, I can understand something, too. D’you believe me?”

And Senista answered with a smile on his black, parched lips:

“Yes, I believe you.”

“Now you see!” Now Sazonka felt light and comfortable. He could even talk of the box on the ear he had given Senista two weeks ago. He mentioned it casually, touching Senista’s head.

“And if people hit you on the head, it wasn’t because they meant you harm. Lord, no! Only because your head is so handy. It’s so big, and the hair is all cut so low.”

Senista smiled again and Sazonka got up from his chair. He was very tall, and his curly hair, combed with a fine comb, rose like a soft cap. His shining eyes with their swollen eyelids, smiled at the boy.

“Well, good-a-bye,” said he, without moving away from his place, however. He purposely said “good-a-bye,” instead of “goodbye,” because he thought it would sound more sincere and heartfelt. But it did not seem enough. He felt that he ought to do something even more sincere, something good and big, after which Senista would not mind remaining at the hospital, and he, himself, could go away with a light heart. And he stood there in childish embarrassment, when Senista again helped him out:

“Goodbye,” said he in a thin childish voice, for which he was nicknamed “flute,” and freed his hand from under the blanket and quite simply, as though he were Sazonka’s equal, extended it to the man. And Sazonka, feeling that this was precisely what he was looking for, gently clasped the thin fingers with his large hand, held them for a while, and then let them go. There was something sad and mysterious in the slight pressure of those fingers, as though Senista were not only an equal of all men on earth, but above them all, freer than all. And it seemed so because he now belonged to an unknown, though terrible and powerful master. Sazonka felt that he could call him Semyon Erofeyevich.

“So you’ll come, won’t you?” For the fourth time Senista begged of him, and this plaintive appeal drove away that something awful and magnificent, which but a moment ago had enveloped the boy in its noiseless wings. Senista again became for Sazonka a poor, sick boy, and he was again full of pity for him.

When Sazonka walked away from the hospital, he thought that he was followed for some time by the odor of medicines and the piteous appeal:

“So you’ll come, won’t you?”

And Sazonka answered his absent implorer,

“Sure, I’ll come. Ain’t I human?”

II

Easter was coming on, and there was so much work in the tailor’s shop that Sazonka got a chance to get drunk only once, on a Sunday. He had to sit all day long near his window. He had a sort of platform, on which he sat Turkish fashion. The spring days were very light and very long, and Sazonka sat there sewing, gloomily whistling a melancholy tune. In the morning there was no sun in Sazonka’s window, and streams of cool air forced their way through the loose woodwork. But towards midday a sharp yellow band appeared in the window, and in it particles of dust were dancing merrily. And half an hour later, the whole windowsill, with the scissors and the scraps of cloth scattered over it, was already burning with a blinding light, and it became so hot that the window had to be opened. And together with a stream of fresh air, mixed with the odors of manure, drying mud, and opening buds, a weak, early fly flew into the room, followed by the confused noises of the street. Chickens were pecking the ground near the house wall, or cackling contentedly, lying in the round holes they had made for themselves in the soft ground. On the opposite side of the street, children were playing “knuckle-bones,” and their loud, joyous voices, mixed with the sounds of small iron boards hitting the bones, rang with vigor and freshness. There was very little traffic in this street, situated on the outskirts of the city of Orel, and only occasionally a peasant cart would rattle by slowly, jumping from one deep rut still filled with mud, to another. The parts of the cart, loosely made, constantly struck against each other, producing dull sounds that reminded one of the coming summer and the vast expanses of fields.

When Sazonka’s back bones would begin to ache, and his tired fingers would be able to hold the needle no longer, he would jump out into the street, barefooted as he was, make a couple of gigantic leaps over the pools of water, and join the playing children.

“Come on, let me try it,” he would say, and a dozen dirty hands would extend the boards towards him, and a dozen eager voices would beg him:

“Do it for me, Sazonka! For me!”

Sazonka would choose a heavy board, roll up his sleeve and, assuming the posture of the athlete hurling the disk, he would begin measuring the distance with his eyes. Then the heavy board would leave his hand with a soft “swish,” and, bounding up and down on the ground, would cut its way into the very center of the long cone, scattering the bones all around. The feat would be applauded by the enthusiastic shouts of the children. After a couple of throws, Sazonka would sit down to rest and say to the children:

“And Senista is still in the hospital, boys.”

But the children, busy with their own affairs, would take this piece of news coolly and indifferently.

“I ought to take him some present. Well, just wait, I’ll do it.”

The word “present” aroused the interest of several of the boys. Little Mishka, nicknamed the Suckling Pig, holding his breeches with one hand, and with the other his upturned shirt in which lay the sheep-bones, advised him:

“You give ’im a dime.”

A dime was the sum that Mishka’s grandfather had promised him for Easter, and the boy’s conception of human happiness did not go beyond this. But there was no time for discussing the question of the present. A couple of gigantic leaps brought Sazonka back to the other side of the street, and to his work.

His eyelids were still swollen, but his face became pale-yellow and the freckles on his nose and around the eyes became even more numerous and darker than before. Only his carefully combed hair still had the appearance of a fine cap, and whenever his employer, Gabriel Ivanovich, loked at Sazonka’s head, he was, for some reason or other, reminded of a small saloon and of whiskey⁠—which recollection would cause him to spit, and curse furiously.

Sazonka’s head was heavy. Sometimes the same thought would roll over in his mind for hours; and it would be either about his new boots, or his new harmonica. But he often thought of Senista and the present he was going to take over to him. The sewing machine was running monotonously, the proprietor cursed everybody, but Sazonka’s tired brain could only conceive of the picture of how he would come to the hospital and give Senista a present, wrapped up in a red handkerchief. Sometimes a heavy drowsiness would come over him and then he would not be able to recall even Senista’s face. He only saw clearly the red handkerchief, and it seemed to him all the time that the knots were not well tied. He told everybody that he would go to see Senista on the first day of Easter.

“Got to do it,” he would repeat. “I’ll comb my hair and run straight over. ‘Here you are, kid, that’s for you!’ ” But as he would be saying this, another scene would come before him. He would see the open doors of the saloon, with the counter wet with spilled whiskey, inside. A bitter realization of his own weakness, against which he could not struggle, would overwhelm him, and an irresistible desire would come over him to shout out:

“I’ll go to Senista! To Senista!”

And his brain would again become heavy and irresponsive to everything, except the red handkerchief. But there was no joy in this one thought that persisted in his brain; rather a stern lesson, a terrible warning.

III

On the first day of Easter, Sazonka was drunk. On the second day, he was still more drunk, got into a fight, and had to spend the night in jail. It was only on the fourth day that he finally decided to visit Senista.

The sunlit street was bright with red shirts and the brilliant glitter of white teeth shelling the sunflower seeds. Harmonicas were heard here and there; iron boards struck piles of knuckle-bones, scattering them in all directions; a rooster was crowing bravely, challenging another rooster to combat. But Sazonka paid attention to none of these things. His face, with one eye blackened, and the lip cut, was gloomy and serious, and his hair was dishevelled, no longer having the appearance of a fine cap. He was ashamed of his debauch, ashamed because he had broken his word, because he could not go to see Senista in the holiday array he had planned⁠—wearing a red woolen shirt and a vest⁠—ashamed because he was going, dirty, unkempt, his breath reeking with liquor. But the nearer he came to the hospital, the calmer he grew. More and more his eyes sought the bundle containing the present which he was carrying carefully in his left hand. And Senista’s face, with its appealing look and parched lips seemed to be constantly before him, as clear and as lifelike as though the boy himself were there.

“Ain’t we human, kid? Oh, Lord!” Sazonka kept on saying to himself, as he hurried along. Now he is in front of the large yellow hospital-building, with its black-framed windows, which look like gloomy eyes. Now he is in the long corridor, in the midst of the medicine odors and an atmosphere of indistinct fear and unpleasantness. Now he is in the ward, right by Senista’s bed⁠ ⁠…

But where is Senista?

“Whom are you looking for,” asked the nurse, following him into the ward.

“There was a boy here, Semyon. Semyon Erofeyev. Right in this place.” And Sazonka pointed to the empty bed.

“You ought to ask first, and not break in like this,” said the nurse rudely. “It wasn’t Semyon Erofeyev, either, but Semyon Pustoshkin.”

“Erofeyev, that’s according to his father. His father’s name was Erofey, so he is Erofeyich,” explained Sazonka, slowly turning paler and paler.

“Oh, he’s dead, your Erofeyich. And we don’t care for his father’s name. For us, he’s Semyon Pustoshkin. He’s dead, I say.”

“Is that so?” There was reverent astonishment in Sazonka’s voice, as he stood there, so pale that the freckles on his face appeared almost like ink stains. “When did he die?”

“Last night.”

“And may I⁠ ⁠…” Sazonka did not finish his stammered request.

“Why not?” answered the nurse indifferently. “Just ask where the morgue is, they’ll show you. If I were you, I wouldn’t be so upset about it. He was sickly anyhow; couldn’t live long.”

Sazonka’s tongue inquired about his way, very politely. His legs bore him in the direction indicated, but his eyes saw nothing. Only when the face of the dead Senista was directly in front of him did his eyes begin to see. Then, too, he began to feel the coldness of the morgue. The walls of the dreary room were bespotted with moisture, the single window was covered with a thick layer of spiders’ webs. No matter how brightly the sun shone outside, its rays never penetrated through this window, and the sky always appeared gray and gloomy, as in autumn. A fly was buzzing somewhere. Drops of water were falling from the ceiling. After each drop, the air would reverberate with a pitiful, ringing noise.

Sazonka stepped back and said aloud:

“Goodbye, Semyon Erofeyich.”

Then he knelt down, touched the wet floor with his forehead, and rose up again.

“Forgive me, Semyon Erofeyich,” said he, just as loudly and distinctly, and then knelt down again, and pressed his head against the floor.

The fly stopped buzzing, and everything was still, with that peculiar stillness which sets in when a dead man is in the room. At regular intervals drops of water fell into a metal basin, striking the bottom gently and softly.

IV

The hospital stood on the outskirts of the city, and immediately beyond it began a large field. Sazonka went there. The level field, uninterrupted by a single tree or building, stretched in all directions, and the light breeze seemed to be its warm, even breath. Sazonka followed a dry road at first, but after a while he turned to the left and began to walk across the field itself, towards the river. In some places the ground was still wet and his boots left deep marks in it.

Reaching the river, Sazonka lay down on its bank in a spot where the air was warm and perfectly still, as in a greenhouse. He closed his eyes. The rays of the sun passed through his lowered eyelids in red waves. A lark was pouring forth its song in the blue sky, and it was so pleasant to lie there without a single thought in his head. The spring waters had already subsided, leaving the marks of their recent activity in the form of large pieces of ice, stranded on the opposite shore. The white triangular pieces of ice were steadily disappearing under the merciless, hot rays of the sun. Sazonka lay there half asleep, and, accidentally, threw out one arm. His hand came in contact with a hard object, covered with cloth.

The present!

Jumping up to a sitting position, Sazonka exclaimed:

“God! What is this?”

He had forgotten his bundle entirely and now looked at it with frightened eyes. It seemed to him that the bundle had come there by its own will, and he was afraid to touch it. Sazonka gazed at it, without lifting his eyes, and a stormy, rumbling pity, a furious wrath was rising in him. He looked at the bundle, and he seemed to see how on the first day, and the second, and the third, Senista was waiting for him, turning his head towards the door, expecting him in vain. And he died lonely, forsaken, like a puppy thrown out into the backyard. Only one day sooner, and the boy’s closing eyes might have seen the present, and his childish heart might have been filled with joy, and his soul might have soared to Heaven without suffering the torment of loneliness.

Sazonka began to sob, tearing his fine hair, and rolling on the ground. He cried aloud, lifting his hands to Heaven in pitiful justification:

“O God! Ain’t we human?”

And then he fell on the ground, his cut lip touching the earth. And there he remained, overwhelmed with dumb grief. The new grass tickled his face gently; a sweet, quieting odor came from the ground, and the earth seemed to exhale a feeling of mighty power, of a passionate appeal for life. The eternal mother earth was enfolding a sinning son in her embrace, and was filling his suffering heart with warmth, love, and hope.

And far away, in the city, the joyful holiday bells were ringing their discordant melody.

I

Till the present moment, gentlemen experts, I have concealed the truth; but now circumstances compel me to reveal it. Realizing this, you will comprehend that this business is not at all so simple a matter as it would seem to the ignorant; not at all a matter of the straitjacket or the handcuffs. The thing involved here is neither the one nor the other, but is more terrible than the two combined.

My victim, Alexis Konstantinovich Saveloff, was my companion in the gymnasia and in the university, though in our professions our ways were apart. I, as you know, am a physician; while he completed a course of jurisprudence. I cannot say that I did not love the man; he was always sympathetic toward me, and I never had a more intimate friend than he. Notwithstanding the possession of these sympathetic traits, he did not belong to the class of men capable of commanding my respect. The astonishing softness and yieldingness of his nature, his strange uncertainty in the domain of thought and feeling, the capricious extremes of his views, and the unsoundness of his constantly changing judgments impelled me to regard him as a child or a woman. Those near to him, suffering now and then from his caprices, and at the same time, owing to an illogical human nature, loving him, found a justification for his shortcomings and their own attitude, by calling him an “artist.” Indeed this worthless word seemed to justify him completely; and that which to the normal mind would appear as silly was made to seem indifferent or even good. Such is the power of words that even I at one time succumbed to the popular misconception and eagerly overlooked the petty shortcomings of Alexis. Of grand faults, as indeed of all big things, he was incapable. His literary productions amply attest this fact; they are full of things petty and empty, notwithstanding those shortsighted critics who delight to assail newly-revealed talents. Handsome and shallow were his productions, even as their author was handsome and shallow.

When Alexis died he was thirty-one years old, about a year younger than myself.

Alexis was married. Gazing upon his wife now, in mourning for her husband, you can have but a faint idea of her former beauty. She has grown ugly. Her cheeks are colorless and the skin of her face is flabby, aged⁠—aged like a worn glove. And she has wrinkles. They are wrinkles now, but another year will pass and these will become deep furrows and trenches. How she did love him! And her eyes have ceased to sparkle, and they laugh no longer; formerly they were wont to laugh always, even when they ought to have wept. I have had the opportunity to see her for about a minute, having met her by accident at the district attorney’s office, and was astounded at the change. She was powerless even to cast an angry look upon me. What a pitiful figure!

Only three persons⁠—Alexis, I and Tatiana Nikolayevna⁠—knew that five years ago, two years before the marriage of Alexis, I had proposed to Tatiana Nikolayevna and had been rejected. Of course, it is a mere conjecture about the three; more likely Tatiana Nikolayevna has another half-score of friends who had been apprised in detail of Dr. Kerzhentseff’s onetime desire to marry, and of his humiliating rejection. I do not know whether she remembers that she laughed then; probably she does not remember⁠—she laughed so often. Remind her, if you will: on the fifth of September she laughed. If she should deny it⁠—and she will deny it⁠—recall to her the circumstances. I, that strong man who never had shed a tear, stood before her and trembled. I trembled and saw how she bit her lips, and I already had stretched out my arms to embrace her, when she lifted her eyes, and there was laughter in them. My arms remained suspended in the air. She began to laugh and she laughed for a long time⁠—as long as it pleased her. Later, however, she apologized.

“Please forgive me,” she said, but her eyes laughed.

I also smiled, and though I could forgive her laughter, I never could condone my own smile. This was on the fifth of September, six o’clock in the evening, according to St. Petersburg time. I have added the last remark because we were at that moment in a railroad station; and I see now before me clearly the big white time schedule and the rows of figures running up and down.

Alexis Konstantinovich also had been killed precisely at six o’clock⁠—a curious coincidence which might reveal much to the perspicacious person.

One of the reasons for placing me here has been the absence of motive responsible for the crime. Do you perceive now that a motive existed? Of course, it was not jealousy. The latter presupposes an ardent temperament and a weakness of mental faculties⁠—that is something directly antagonistic to a cool, reasoning nature like mine. Revenge? Yes, sooner that⁠—if it is necessary to employ an old word for defining a new and unfamiliar emotion. The case is this: Tatiana Nikolayevna once more had caused me to blunder, and it irritated me. Knowing Alexis well, I was convinced that Tatiana Nikolayevna, married to him, would be unhappy and would long for me; therefore I insisted that Alexis, who was in love with her, should marry her. Only a month preceding his tragic death he remarked to me:

“It is to you that I owe my present happiness. Isn’t that so, Tanya?”

She glanced at me and said: “That’s true,” while her eyes smiled. I also smiled. Presently we all laughed, as, embracing Tatiana Nikolayevna⁠—they never felt abashed before me⁠—he added:

“Yes, brother, you missed your stroke.”

This misplaced and tactless joke shortened his life a whole week, as originally I had intended to kill him on the eighteenth of December.

Their marriage turned out to be a happy one, and especially happy was she. His love toward Tatiana Nikolayevna was not intense; and in general he was not capable of deep love. He had his favorite occupation⁠—literature⁠—which carried his interests beyond the bounds of the bedchamber. She, however, loved only him, and lived only in him. He was a victim to physical indispositions, such as frequent headaches and insomnia, and these, of course, caused him much suffering. And she considered it a happiness to look after the sick man and to gratify his capricious desires. When a woman loves she becomes altogether incomprehensible.

Day after day I saw her smiling face, her happy face, young, beautiful, without care. I thought: this is my doing. I wished to give her a dissolute husband and deprive her of my company, but instead I have given her a husband whom she loves, and at the same time she manages to keep me near her. Here is an explanation of this singularity: she was more clever than her husband, and loved to chat with me, and, having had her chat, she would go to sleep with him and be happy.

I cannot recall when the thought to kill Alexis first came to me. It appeared somehow imperceptibly; but from the first minute it became old, as if I had been born with it. I know that I wished to make Tatiana Nikolayevna unhappy, and that at first I had thought of various schemes less fatal to Alexis. I have been always an enemy of unnecessary violence. Taking advantage of my influence over Alexis, I had thought of causing him to fall in love with another woman or of making a drunkard of him (he had an inclination toward this last), but none of these plans was practical. The obstacle consisted in the fact that Tatiana Nikolayevna would have contrived to remain happy, even in the event of her husband’s taking to another woman, or in spite of having to listen to his drunken chatter and being compelled to accept his drunken caresses. It was essential to her that this man should live, and in one way or another she would have served him. Such slavish natures exist. Slave-like, they cannot understand or value the strength of others than their master. The world has seen clever women, good women and talented women, but it has yet to see a just woman.

I candidly admit that this is not for the purpose of securing your unnecessary condescension, but rather to demonstrate the straightforward and normal manner in which was born my resolution, and that it was a no slight struggle with my compassion towards the man whom I had sentenced to death. I had pity for the terror he experienced just before he died, and for those moments of suffering he endured when his head was being crushed. I had pity⁠—I don’t know whether you’ll comprehend⁠—for the head itself. There is extraordinary beauty in a harmoniously working living organism, and death, like disease, like age, is first of all deformity. I remember how, many years ago, upon graduating from the university, I had gotten hold of a young and beautiful dog having extraordinarily strong limbs. It cost me much mental effort to take its skin, as my experiment demanded. For a long time afterward I recalled the animal with regret.

If Alexis had not been so sickly and weak⁠—who knows, perhaps I should not have killed him. To this day, however, I am sorry for his beautiful head. Tell this to Tatiana Nikolayevna, if you please. Beautiful, beautiful was that head. Its eyes were its only weakness. They were pale, without fire and energy.

I should not have killed Alexis had the critics really been justified in attributing to him the supreme literary gift. The roads of life are dark, and great is the need of masterly men as beacon-bearers. Each of them should be guarded as a rare jewel. It is these few who justify the existence of a thousand good-for-nothings and the commonplace. Alexis, however, was not a genius.

This is not the place for a critical article, but if you will read the more well-known productions of the deceased you cannot but agree with me that they are unnecessary to life. They are necessary to a lot of satiated people in want of diversion, but not to life, nor to us, engaged upon solving life’s problems. At a time when the author, employing the power of his thought and genius, should have created new life, Saveloff clung in his books to the old, not making an effort to solve life’s hidden significance. His solitary story which appealed to me, encroaching as it did upon the domain of the unexplored, was a story called “A Secret”⁠—that was the sole exception. Worse still, Alexis was beginning to show evidence of having “written himself out,” his happy existence having deprived him of his last teeth, which are so essential to the “biting into” life and to the gnawing of it. He frequently spoke to me of his doubts, and I saw that they were fundamental. I sounded him on his plans of his future labors exactly and minutely. His lamenting admirers may rest assured there was nothing new or grand in them. From among those near to Alexis only his wife failed to see the decline of his talent; nor would she ever have seen it. Do you know why? She did not always read her husband’s productions. When I once made an attempt to open her eyes even slightly, she simply considered me a wretch. Seeing that we were alone, she said:

“You cannot forgive him something else.”

“What is that?”

“That he is my husband and that I love him. If Alexis were not so attached to you⁠ ⁠…”

She faltered, and I anticipatingly finished her thought.

“You’d drive me out?”

Her eyes flashed laughter. And, smiling innocently, she pronounced slowly:

“No. I would let you remain.”

And I, understand, never, even by a single word or gesture, let her know that I continued to love her. I thought to myself: so much the better that she has guessed.

The thought of taking a man’s life did not leave me. I knew that this was a crime severely punishable by the law; but then nearly all we do is considered as criminal; only the blind do not perceive this. Those believing in God consider a crime as committed before God; others consider a crime as before the people; such as I consider a crime as before myself. It would have been a great crime if, having decided it necessary to kill Alexis, I had failed to carry out this resolution. That people classify crimes as grand and petty, and call murder a grand crime, is nothing more than a conventional and pitiful lie before oneself⁠—an attempt to conceal oneself from the answer behind one’s own spine.

I did not fear myself⁠—that was more important than all else. The most terrible thing to the murderer, the criminal, is not the police, nor the court, but he himself, his nerves, the potent protest of his entire body trained in the familiar traditions. You will recall Raskolnikoff, that pitifully and absurdly lost man, and the benightedness of his like. I had given much time and much thought to this question, imagining myself as I should be after the murder. I will not say that I became convinced fully of my tranquillity. Such a conviction could not find existence in a thinking man capable of considering all possibilities. However, having gathered carefully all facts of my past, taking into account the strength of my will, the vigor of my unexhausted nervous system, my deep and sincere contempt of the existing morals, I could maintain a relative confidence in the successful issue of the undertaking. It would not be amiss to relate here one interesting fact out of my life.

Upon one occasion, when I was yet a student of the fifth semester, having stolen fifteen roubles of students’ money confided to my care, I asserted that the cashier had made a mistake in his accounts, and all believed me. It was more than a simple theft. It was not a case where the needy one stole from the rich man. Here was not solely a violated confidence; it was the deprivation of a hungry one, a comrade at that, and a student, and by a man with means⁠—that is why they believed me. This action, no doubt, seems more contemptible to you than the murder of my chum. Isn’t that so? I, on the contrary, recall that I felt jolly because I could do it so well and adroitly, and I looked into the eyes, directly into the eyes of those to whom I so boldly and freely lied. My eyes are dark, beautiful, frank⁠—and they were believed. Above all, I was proud because I had felt no remorse. To this day I recall with particular gratification the menu of the unnecessarily festive dinner which I had ordered with the stolen money and had eaten with appetite.

Do I experience remorse even now⁠—repentance of the act? Not a bit.

I feel sad. I feel intensely sad, as no other person in this world feels; and my hairs are turning grey; but that is something else. Something else. Something terrible, unanticipated, incredible in its fearful simplicity.

II

Here was my problem. It was necessary not only that I should kill Alexis, but that Tatiana Nikolavevna should know that I had slain her husband and that I should evade the punishment provided by the law. Aside from the fact that it might give Tatiana Nikolayevna another occasion for mirth, the idea of penal servitude did not at all appeal to me. I love life exceedingly.

I love to see the golden wine play in the thin glass; I love, when weary, to drag myself towards the clean bed; I love to breathe in the pure air of the springtime, to see the beautiful sunset, to read interesting and clever books. I love myself, the strength of my muscles, the strength of my thought, clear and exact. I am happy that I am alone, and that not a single curious look has penetrated the depth of my soul with its dark caves and abysses, at the edge of which the head grows dizzy. Never have I understood or known that which people call the weariness of life. Life is interesting, and I love it for the grand mystery imprisoned within it; I love it even for its rigors, for its ferocious vindictiveness and its satanically-gay play with people and events.

I was the sole person whom I respected. How then could I risk to send this person off to prison, where he would be deprived of all possibility to lead the so-essential to him, variegated, complete and deep existence? Even from your viewpoint I was right in desiring to escape prison. I am good at doctoring. Having means, I cured many poor people. I am useful⁠—surely more useful than the murdered Saveloff.

It would not have been difficult to have escaped punishment. A thousand devices exist whereby to kill a man unnoticed, and I, in my physician’s role, could have resorted easily to one of these. Among my thought out and discarded plans, which consumed a great deal of time, was this one: to inoculate Alexis with an incurable and loathsome disease. The objections to the plan are evident: the lingering sufferings of the victim himself, the something ugly about it all, its coarseness, and its somewhat too⁠—well, it’s not exactly clever; and finally, not even the illness of her husband would have deprived Tatiana of joy. One imperative demand of my problem was that Tatiana should know whose hand smote her husband. Only cowards shrink before obstacles; such as I they only draw on.

An accident, that great ally of able men, came to my help. And I wish to call your especial attention, gentlemen experts, to this detail: Precisely an accident, i.е., something external, not depending upon me, served as the basis and motive for what followed. In a newspaper I stumbled upon an item concerning a cashier, or some clerk or other, (the clipping is probably at my home or in the district attorney’s office), who simulated a fit of epilepsy and made a pretense of having lost money during the attack⁠—actually, of course, having stolen it. The clerk proved a coward, and confessed, revealing even the place of the stolen money; but the idea itself was not stupid but could be realized. To simulate insanity and kill Alexis in a moment of aberration, and then “to become cured”⁠—this was the plan which, conceived in a moment, needed much time and labor to assume a more definite and concrete form. At that time I was acquainted with psychiatry only superficially, like any physician not a specialist, and I spent about a year in consulting authorities and in reflection. In the end I became convinced that my plan was altogether feasible. First of all, the attention of the experts should be directed to hereditary influences⁠—and my heritage, to my great joy, seemed altogether consistent. My father was a drunkard; one uncle, his brother, ended his life in the hospital for the insane, and finally, my only sister, Anna, now dead, suffered from epilepsy. It is true, that on my mother’s side all were healthy; still a single drop of the poison of madness is sufficient to affect several generations. In physical health I resembled my mother, but I was possessed of some harmless eccentricities which could be depended upon to do me service. My relative unsociableness; which is simply an indication of a healthy mind, preferring to spend its time in solitude, with self and books, rather than upon idle and empty chatter; could be misinterpreted as an unhealthy misanthropy; my soberness of temperament⁠—non-seeking coarse, sensual pleasures⁠—as a manifestation of degeneracy. My stubbornness itself in reaching a once resolved upon goal⁠—plenty examples could be drawn upon in my rich life⁠—would have received, in the language of the experts, the terrible name of monomania, the domination of fixed ideas.

The ground for simulation was, therefore, unusually favorable⁠—the statics of madness were upon the face of things, it remained for dynamics to do the work. To the unintentional touches of nature it would be necessary to add two or three successful brush strokes to make the picture of madness complete. And I delineated very clearly to myself how it should all be, not with programmic thoughts, but with live images: even though I do not write stupid stories, I am far from deficient in artistic sense and imagination.

I saw that I was in a position to enact my role. A tendency to dissemble has been always in my character and was one of the forms whereby I strove to inner freedom. Yet in the gymnasia I simulated friendship: walked the corridor embracing someone, as do real friends, artfully making a frank, friendly utterance, and at the same time sounding the fellow. When the softened comrade revealed himself entirely, I cast aside from me his little soul and walked away with the proud consciousness of my own strength and inner freedom. This same duality maintained at home among kin; as a home of the Starover sect has special dishes for strangers, so I also had everything special for various people⁠—a special smile, special conversations and candor. I observed that people commit against themselves much that is stupid, injurious and unnecessary, and it seemed to me that if I should begin to tell the truth about myself, I would become, as they, and all this stupidity and superficiality would dominate me.

It has pleased me always to be deferential towards those whom I despised and to kiss those whom I abhorred, which made me free and a lord over others. Hence, I never was conscious of a lie before myself⁠—that more general and lowest form of human subjection. The more I lied to people the more unsparingly just I became before myself⁠—a dignity at which few have arrived.

Generally speaking, I think that within me was concealed an uncommon actor, capable of enacting the naturalness of the play⁠—reaching at times a complete merging with the character personified⁠—with an indefatigable, cold control of mind. Even when reading a book I would enter entirely into the psychology of the represented character, and⁠—would you believe it?⁠—grown man that I am, I have wept bitter tears over Uncle Tom’s Cabin. How wonderful this faculty of the supple, sharpened, cultured mind⁠—that of reincarnation! You live through a thousand lives; now you descend into the darkness of Hades; now you ascend the clear mountain heights; with one glance you observe the infinite universe. If man is destined to become a God, his throne shall be a book⁠ ⁠…

Yes. That is how it is. Incidentally, I wish to make a complaint about the rules here. They put me to bed when I wish to write, when I must write. The doors are permitted to remain open, and I am compelled to listen how some madman bawls. He bawls and he bawls: it is simply unendurable. Here you really can make a man go out of his mind, and then say that he was insane previously. And have they no extra candle that I must injure my eyes with electric light?

Well then. I once even thought of going on the stage, but cast aside the stupid idea: simulation, which everyone knows to be simulation, has little value. Likewise, the cheap laurels of the official actor on government pay attracted me but little. As to the quality of my art you can judge from the fact that many donkeys consider me even now the most sincere and veracious of men. And what is strange: I have been always successful in deceiving not so much the donkeys⁠—I said that in haste⁠—as especially clever people; on the other hand, there exist two classes of beings of a lower order, whose confidence I never could succeed in obtaining. I refer to women and dogs.

Do you know that the respectable Tatiana Nikolayevna never believed in my love, and does not yet believe in it, I think, even after I had killed her husband. According to her logic I did not love her, but killed Alexis because she loved him. And this nonsense, doubtless, seems to her sound and convincing. Yet she is a clever woman!

The role of a madman did not strike me as being very difficult of enactment. Some of the necessary directions I got from books; others I had to obtain⁠—like any actor worthy of the name⁠—through my own creative faculty; the rest had to be left to be recreated by the public itself, whose emotions had been developed through constant contact with books and the theatre, where, by means of two or three vague contours, it had been taught to recreate live types. There still remained certain gaps to be filled; there was the prospect of a stern and erudite investigation by experts to which I should be subjected, but I looked for no serious danger even here. The extensive realm of psychopathology has been so little explored; there is yet so much that is dark and accidental, so much freedom for the imagination and subjectivity, that I boldly committed my fate into your hands, gentlemen experts. I trust I have not offended you. I do not wish to reflect upon your scholarly authority, and am confident that you will coincide with me, as men accustomed to conscientious scientific thought.

… At last that fellow has ceased bawling. It is simply unendurable.

During the period that my plan still remained a project, a thought struck me, which hardly could have penetrated an insane mind. This thought was concerning the danger of my experiment. Do you comprehend? Madness is a fire dangerous for jesting. Having thrown a match into a powder magazine, one may feel greater safety than if but the slightest thought of madness should steal into one’s head. And I knew this, I knew⁠—yet did danger ever daunt a brave man?

Moreover, was I not conscious of my thought, firm and clear, as of hammered steel, and absolutely obedient to me? As a rapier of keen edge, it bent, pricked, bit, pierced through the web of facts; truly, as a serpent it glided noiselessly in unexplored and dark depths, concealed for ages from the light of day; I held its hilt in my hand; it was the iron hand of a deft and experienced fencer. How obedient, expeditious and rapid was my thought, and how I loved it, my slave, my terrible power, my sole treasure!

… He howls again, and I am unable to continue. How awful to hear a man howl. I have heard many terrible sounds, but none so terrible as this, none so awful. There is nothing it resembles⁠—it is the voice of a wild animal, passing through a human throat. It is something ferocious and frightened; free and yet piteous to abjectness. The mouth twists to one side, the muscles of the face become rigid, like ropes, the teeth show, doglike, and from the dark opening of the mouth issues forth this disgusting, bellowing, whistling, laughing, wailing sound⁠ ⁠…

Yes. Yes. Such was my idea. Incidentally you will direct your attention, doubtless, to my handwriting, and I request you not to attach significance to the fact that at times it trembles and seems to change. It is a long time since I have written; certain recent occurrences and insomnia have weakened me⁠—whence the hand trembles occasionally. It is something which used to occur even before.

III

Now you understand the significance of the terrible fit into which I had fallen one evening at the house of the Kurganoffs. That was my first experiment and successful beyond all expectation. It is as if they really knew beforehand what was going to happen⁠—as if the sudden madness of a person in full health were altogether natural, and to be expected at any time. No one was astonished, and each tried to outdo the other in coloring my play with the play of his own fantasy. It is a rare gastriloquist who has such a fine troupe of naive, stupid, credulous people. Did they tell you how pale I was and how terrible? How cold⁠—yes, precisely cold⁠—sweat covered my entire body? How my eyes gleamed with an insane flame? When they told me later their impressions, I seemed morose and depressed, but in truth I trembled from head to foot with pride, happiness and derision.

Tatiana Nikolayevna and her husband were not there that evening⁠—I do not know whether you made note of that. It was not an accident; I feared to frighten her; or, still worse, to arouse her suspicion. If there existed a person who could see through my play, it was she and none other.

Nothing that occurred that evening was accidental. On the contrary, every detail, the most petty, was planned with care. I timed my fit to occur after supper; I chose that moment because there was sure to be a gathering, and those present would be affected somewhat by wine. I sat at the edge of the table, a little distance from the candelabra with the lighted candles, as I did not want to cause a fire or to burn my nose. At my side sat Pavel Petrovich Pospeloff, that fat pig whom for a long time I desired to play a trick. He is especially disgusting when eating. When I first saw him at this occupation, the thought came into my head that eating is an immoral business. Everything occurred opportunely. Apparently no one noticed that the plate flying in fragments from the blow of my fist was covered with a napkin, so that I should not cut my hands.

The whole trick was astoundingly clumsy, even stupid, but I counted on that. They could not have comprehended a more subtle prank. I began by swinging my arms and talked “excitingly” with Pavel Petrovich, until that individual opened wide his eyes in amazement; I followed this by falling into “concentrated thought,” which called forth the question from the solicitous Irene Pavlovna:

“What is the matter with you, Anton Ignatyevich? Why are you so sad?”

When they all turned their faces upon me I smiled tragically.

“Are you ill?”

“Yes. Just a trifle. My head feels dizzy. But do not concern yourself, please. It will pass away shortly.”

That reassured the hostess, but the suspicious Pavel Petrovich looked disapprovingly askance. And when, a moment later, smiling with gratification, he lifted a glass of wine to his lips, I quickly struck the glass from under his nose⁠—then my fist descended on the plate with a crash. The fragments flew, Pavel Petrovich sprawled and grunted, the women shrieked, and I, showing my teeth, pulled the table cover containing all⁠—it was an exceedingly humorous picture.

Then I was surrounded and held; someone brought water, another led me to an armchair; and I roared like a lion confined in a “Zoo,” and glared with my eyes. It was all so absurd, and they all were so stupid that, believe me, the desire was born in me to smash a few of those jaws in earnest, taking advantage of the privileges of my condition. Naturally I restrained myself.

Gradually I grew calmer, while my breast heaved convulsively; and I rolled my eyes and gnashed my teeth and asked weakly such questions as:

“Where am I? What is the matter with me?”

Even that absurd French phrase “Where am I?” succeeded with this folk, and not less than three imbeciles made haste to say:

“At the Kurganoffs.” Then in a sweetened voice: “Do you know, dear doctor, who is Irene Pavlovna Kurganoff?”

Seriously, they were too petty for big play!

After a day⁠—having given sufficient time for reports to reach the Saveloffs⁠—I talked with Tatiana Nikolayevna and Alexis. The latter dismissed the matter with a single question:

“What was that rumpus you raised at the Kurganoffs?”

Saying this, he turned on his heels and entered his working chamber⁠—from which I gathered that if I had become actually mad he wouldn’t have choked himself on account of it. To make up for it, his spouse proved especially loquacious, fervid and, of course, insincere, in the expression of her sympathy. And then⁠ ⁠… not that I regretted what I had begun, the question simply occurred to me: Is it worth while?

“Do you love your husband intensely?” I said to Tatiana Nikolayevna, whose gaze followed Alexis. She turned quickly.

“Yes. What of it?”

“Oh, nothing, only⁠—” and after momentary silence, cautious and full of unuttered thoughts, I added: “Why have you no confidence in me?”

She quickly and directly looked into my eyes, without replying. During this minute I forgot that some time in the past she laughed, and my mind was free from malice against her, and that which I was doing seemed to me unnecessary and strange. It was my weariness, natural after a severe ordeal of the nerves, and it lingered but a single moment.

“And may one trust you?” asked Tatiana Nikolayevna after a prolonged silence.

“Of course not!” I replied in jesting tone, while within me flared up an extinguished flame. A force, a courage, a determination stopping before no obstacle⁠—these I felt in me. Proud of the success thus far achieved, I resolved to go boldly to the end. In combat is the joy of life.

The second fit occurred a month after the first. There was less premeditation upon this occasion, and this was really unnecessary in view of the general plan. Indeed, I had no especial intention to arrange the matter for this evening, but when circumstances are favorable it is foolish not to make use of them. And I remember clearly how it all happened. We sat in the drawing-room, when I became very sad. With great mental vividness I realized⁠—this was a rare occurrence⁠—that I was a stranger to all these people and that I was alone in the world⁠—I, forever confined within this head, within this prison. They all became disgusting to me. And in my rage I shot out my fist and shouted something coarse and saw with joy the fright in the paled countenances.

“Good-for-nothings!” cried I. “Miserable, contented good-for-nothings! Liars, hypocrites, vipers! I hate you!”

It is true that I wrestled with them, then with the lackeys and coachmen. I was conscious, however, that I wrestled, and knew that it was for a purpose. I felt pleasant in punishing them, telling them straight to their faces the truth about themselves, what sort they were. Is everyone who dares tell the truth mad? I assure you, gentlemen experts, that I was altogether conscious that, when striking, I felt the contact of my hand with a live body experiencing pain. Later at home, where I was alone, I laughed and thought what a wonderful, excellent actor I was. Then I went to bed and spent the night reading a book; I even can recall the author⁠—it was Guy de Maupassant. I enjoyed him, as always, and afterward slept like an infant. Do madmen read books and enjoy them? Do they sleep like infants?

Madmen do not sleep. They suffer, and in their head everything revolves. Yes, revolves and falls⁠ ⁠… And they desire to howl, to scratch themselves with their nails. They desire to go down on all fours and crawl softly, softly, and then to spring up all at once and to shriek out:

“Aha!”

And to laugh. And to howl. To raise up one’s head and to howl long⁠—long, protractedly⁠—protractedly, piteously⁠—piteously.

Yes. Yes.

And I slept like an infant. Do madmen sleep like infants?

IV

Nurse Masha asked me last evening:

“Anton Ignatyevich! Do you never pray to God?”

She spoke seriously and she believed that I would answer sincerely and seriously. And I replied, without a smile, as she wished:

“No, Masha, never. But if it will afford you pleasure, you may make the sign of the cross over me.”

Maintaining the same grave demeanor, she made the sign of the cross over me thrice, and I was very glad that I afforded a minute of joy to this excellent woman. Like all highly-bred and free people, you, gentlemen experts, do not direct your attention to the servant; but to us prisoners and “madmen” it is given to observe her closely and to make astonishing discoveries occasionally. I may take it for granted that it never has occurred to you that the nurse Masha, hired by you to look after the insane, is herself insane? But such is the fact.

Observe her walk, noiseless, gliding, somewhat timid and astonishingly guarded and graceful⁠—it is as if she were walking between invisible, drawn swords. Examine her face well, when she is not observing and is unaware of your presence. When Masha sees one of you approach her face assumes a serious, grave aspect, and smiles indulgently⁠—the very same expression which dominates your face at the moment. The explanation is that Masha possesses the strange and significant faculty of reflecting involuntarily in her face the expression of other faces. Occasionally she will look at me and smile. It is a pale, reflected smile⁠—not her own. And I surmise that I must have smiled when she looked at me. At times Masha’s countenance will express suffering, will seem morose, her brows will contract at the nose, the comers of the mouth will descend; the entire face will age ten years and grow sombre⁠—evidently my own face is thus at times. Now and then I frighten her with my gaze. You know how strange and somewhat awesome is the gaze of every deeply thoughtful man. Seeing me thus the eyes of Masha will open wide, the pupils will grow darker, and, approaching me noiselessly, with uplifted hand, she will do something friendy and unexpected⁠—smooth my hair or arrange my dress.

“Your belt will become undone,” she will say, while her face will maintain its frightened expression.

However, there are moments when I see her alone. And when she is alone her face strangely seems to lack all expression. It is pale, handsome and enigmatic, like the face of a corpse. Cry out: “Masha!” and she will turn, smiling with her own gentle and timorous smile, and ask:

“Is there anything I can bring you?⁠ ⁠…”

She is always bringing or taking away something, and if there is nothing to bring, take away or arrange, she will show signs of worriment. Her noiselessness is remarkable. Not once have I noticed her drop anything, or make a noise. I have attempted to talk with her about life, and she is strangely indifferent to everything, even to murders, conflagrations and other horrors which affect uncultured people.

“Do you realize they are being killed, wounded, and they leave behind them at home little hungry children?” said I to her concerning war.

“Yes, I understand,” she replied, and then, as if lost in thought, asked: “Had I not better bring you some milk; you have eaten so little today?”

When I laugh she responds with a somewhat frightened laugh. Never has she been in a theatre, she does not know that Russia is an empire and that there are other empires; she cannot read, and her acquaintance with the New Testament is limited to the quotations she has heard read in the church. Every evening she goes down on her knees and prays at length.

For a long time I considered her simply a limited, blunt being, born for bondage, but a single incident compelled me to change my view. You probably know, you must have been informed, that I have lived through one nasty minute here, which, of course, doesn’t demonstrate anything except weariness and a temporary collapse of one’s strength. I refer to the towel incident. Being stronger than Masha I could have killed her, as there was no one present but us two, and if she had cried out or caught my hand⁠ ⁠… but she did nothing of the kind. She merely said:

“No need of that, golubchik.”2

I have thought often about this phrase and till now cannot grasp the astonishing power concentrated in it and felt by me. It is not in the words, which in themselves are meaningless and empty; rather is it somewhere in the unknown to me and unfathomable depths of Masha’s soul. She knows something. Yes, she knows, but cannot or will not say. I have tried often to secure from Masha an explanation of her words, but she cannot explain.

“Do you think suicide a sin? That it is forbidden by God?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then why no need of that?”

“Just so. Simply no need for it,” she said smilingly, and inquired: “May I bring you something?”

Without a doubt she is insane, but quiet and useful, like many insane people. Please do not molest her.

I have permitted myself to depart from my narrative, as something Masha did yesterday has recalled to me memories of childhood. I do not remember my mother, but I had an aunt named Anphisa, who made the sign of the cross over me every night. She was a taciturn old maid, with pimples on her face, and she felt ashamed when my father joked with her about a husband. I was still a youngster aged eleven when she strangled herself in the tiny barn where we kept our coals. Later she continued to appear to father, and that jolly atheist ordered prayers and masses.

My father was very clever and talented, and his speeches in court made not only nervous women, but also serious and balanced people weep. Only I did not weep, listening to him, because I knew him and knew that he himself understood little of what he was saying. He possessed considerable knowledge, many ideas and even more words; and his words and ideas and knowledge frequently combined themselves successfully and beautifully; but of this he had no comprehension. I often even doubted as to whether he existed⁠—to such an extent did he exist in sounds and gestures that it some times occurred to me that this was not a human being, but an image flashed by a cinematograph, combined with a gramaphone. He did not comprehend that he was a human being, that today he lived and that tomorrow he might die, and he sought nothing. And when he went to bed he ceased to move and fell into a slumber; to all appearances he had no dreams and ceased to exist. With his tongue⁠—he was an attorney⁠—he earned his thirty thousand a year, and not once was he astonished or thoughtful over this circumstance. I recall having visited with him a newly-purchased estate, and pointing at the trees in the grounds I remarked:

“Clients?”

He smiled indulgently and replied:

“Yes, my boy, talent is a big thing.”

He drank much, and his intoxication found expression in more rapid movements, which finally would cease altogether, and he would end invariably by falling into a deep slumber. Everyone considered him extraordinarily endowed, and he often asserted that had he not become a famous attorney he would have been equally distinguished as an artist or as an author. Unfortunately, this is true.

Least of all he understood me. Once we were threatened with the loss of all our property. The thought gave me anguish. Nowadays, when only wealth gives freedom, I do not know what I should have become if fate had placed me in the ranks of the proletariat. I cannot picture to myself without anger anyone daring to place his hand upon me, compelling me to do that which I do not wish, purchasing for money my labor, my blood, my nerves, my life. This horror, however, I experienced only for one minute, as it immediately dawned upon me that such as I never remain poor. But father did not understand that. He sincerely considered me a dull youth and viewed with apprehension my supposed helplessness.

“Oh, Anton, Anton, what will become of you?” he would say. He himself seemed weary; his long, unkempt hair descended over the forehead; his face was yellow. I replied:

“Don’t worry about me, papa. As I am not talented, I will kill Rothschild or rob a bank.”

My father became angry, as he accepted my answer as an untimely and flat jest. He saw my face, he heard my voice and nevertheless accepted it as a jest. Wretched pasteboard clown, through misapprehension thou art called a man!

He did not know my soul, although the outward order of my life perturbed him, as he did not enter into its understanding. I was an apt pupil at the gymnasia, and this distressed him. Once when we had visitors⁠—lawyers, litterateurs and artists⁠—he directed his finger at me and said:

“I have a son; he is the first in his class. What have I done that God should punish me so?”

And they all laughed at me, and I laughed at them all. Even more than by my successes he was distressed by my conduct and attire. He would enter my room purposely to rearrange, unnoticed by me, the books on the table, and to create even a little bit of disorder. My neat way of combing my hair robbed him of his appetite.

“The superintendent has ordered a close hair cut,” I would say seriously and respectfully.

He scolded vehemently, but my entire inner being throbbed with contemptuous laughter.

Nothing, however, aroused my father’s ire so much as my copybooks. Once, when drunk, he looked through them, seeming very hopeless and comical in his despondency.

“Haven’t you ever made a blot?” he asked.

“Yes, papa, it happened once. It was when I was doing my trigonometry.”

“Did you lick it up?”

“What do you mean by ‘lick it up?’ ”

“Just what I said⁠—did you lick up the blot of ink?”

“No, papa, I applied blotting paper.”

My father waved his hand with a drunken gesture and growled as he arose:

“No, you are no son of mine.⁠ ⁠… No! No!”

Among my despised copybooks, however, was one which afforded him gratification⁠—notwithstanding the fact that it contained not a single crooked line, not a blot or erasure. It contained, however, approximately the following: My father is a drunkard, a thief and a coward.

This was followed by some details, which, out of respect to my father’s memory and to the law, I consider unnecessary to state.

I now recall one forgotten fact, which I think should prove of interest to you, gentlemen experts. I am very happy to have recalled it, very happy. How could it have slipped my memory?

We had in our house a maidservant named Katia, who was the mistress of my father, and simultaneously my mistress. She loved father because he gave her money, and me because I was young, had beautiful dark eyes and did not give her money. The night that my father’s corpse lay in the parlor I entered Katia’s room. It was not far from the parlor, whence could be heard clearly the voice of the chanter.

I think that the immortal spirit of my father must have experienced complete gratification!

This is really an interesting fact, and I don’t understand how I could have forgotten it. To you, gentlemen experts, it may seem a small matter, a childish prank, having no serious significance, but that isn’t so. It was a hard struggle, gentlemen experts, and the victory was not bought cheaply. My life was at stake. Had I trembled, turned back, proved thyself a fainthearted lover, I should have killed myself. I recall, that was decided.

What I did was not an easy matter for a youth of my years. Now I know that I fought with a windmill, but at that time it appeared to me in a different light. It is difficult for me to relate now all that I had lived through, but I can recall the feeling⁠—it seemed as if with one act I had demolished all laws, divine and human. And I trembled terribly, to the point of the ridiculous; nevertheless I nerved myself, and when I entered Katia’s room I was prepared for her kisses like a Romeo.

At that time I was yet a romanticist. Happy time, how distant it is! I remember, gentlemen experts, that returning from Katia I stepped before the corpse, crossed my arms on my chest like Napoleon, and with laughable pride gazed upon the corpse. Then I shuddered, frightened at seeing the shroud stir. Happy, distant time!

I fear to think upon it, but it is possible that I never have ceased to be a romanticist. And I came near being an idealist. I believed in human thought and its boundless force. The entire history of man seemed to me as one triumphant thought, and that was not so long ago. It is terrible for me to reflect that my entire life has been an illusion, that all life long I have been a fool like that crazy actor once confined in the next ward. He had gathered from everywhere strips of blue and red paper, and he had designated each strip a million roubles; he had begged them from visitors; had stolen and carried them from the closet, to the amusement of the keepers, whom it gave an opportunity to indulge in vulgar jests. He sincerely and deeply detested them, but me he liked, and upon parting handed me a million.

“It’s a trifle,” said he, “only a million, but you will forgive me, I have such expenses, such expenses.”

Taking me aside, he explained in a whisper:

“I am about to start to Italy. I want to banish the Pope and to introduce new moneys into the country⁠—these. Then, on Sunday, I will declare myself a Saint. The Italians will rejoice; they are always happy when given a new Saint.”

Have I not lived upon this million?

It is strange for me to reflect upon the fact that my books⁠—my companions and friends⁠—have remained in their cases and silently guard that which I considered the wisdom of the earth, its hope and happiness. I am aware, gentlemen experts, that whether or not I am insane, from your viewpoint I am a good-for-nothing and a scamp⁠—you should see this good-for-nothing when he enters his library!

Go, gentlemen experts, examine my house⁠—you will find it interesting. In the left-hand upper drawer of my writing-table you will discover a detailed catalogue of my books, pictures and trifles; there also you will find the keys to the cases. You are men of culture, and I am confident that you will conduct yourself toward my property with due respect and care. I also request you to see that the lamp doesn’t smoke. There is nothing worse than this smoke; it gathers everywhere, and it then takes the hardest kind of labor to get rid of its effects.

Remark.

The assistant doctor Petroff has refused me chloralamide in the dose which I demand. I am a physician and know what I am doing, and if it is refused me I will take decisive measures. I have not slept two nights, and do not in the least desire to become insane. I demand that chloralamide be given me. I demand it. It is infamous to make one insane.

V

After my second attack they were afraid of me. In many houses the doors were quickly closed at my approach. At accidental meetings acquaintances shrank from me, smiled meanly and inquired significantly:

“Well, golubchik, how is your health?”

The situation developed to such a degree that I could have committed the most unlawful act and would not have lost the respect of those present. I looked at people and thought: If I so wish it, I may kill this one and that one, and nothing will happen to me. That which I experienced at this thought was something new, pleasant and a bit terrifying. Man ceased to be something strongly defended, a something which we fear to touch; in a word, some sort of shell fell from him; he seemed naked, and to kill him seemed easy and even tempting.

Fear, like a dense wall, protected me from inquisitive eyes, so that the necessity for a third preliminary attack was avoided. Only in this instance did I depart from the formulated plan; for the strength of genius does not build itself a frame for its confinement, and, to conform with changing conditions, does not even hesitate to alter the entire course of battle. It yet remained for me to obtain official absolution from past sins and sanction for those of the future⁠—I refer to the necessity of securing scientifico-medical testimony of my illness.

At this time a happy concurrence of circumstances made it possible for me to turn to a psychiatrist, without it seeming more than by merest chance, or by obligation. This, perhaps, was an unnecessary but artistic touch in the interpretation of my role. It was Tatiana Nikolayevna and her husband who sent me to the psychiatrist.

“Do, please, go to the doctor, dear Anton Ignatyevich,” said Tatiana Nikolayevna. Never before did she call me “dear.” Apparently it was necessary to pass for mad to receive this meaningless caress.

“Very good, dear Tatiana Nikolayevna, I’ll go,” I replied submissively. We three⁠—Alexis also being present⁠—sat in the drawing-room, subsequently the scene of the murder.

“Yes, Anton, you must go without fail,” reiterated Alexis in a tone of authority, “or else you might do some mischief.”

“What sort of mischief could I do?” I timidly protested before my stern friend.

“Who knows? You may break someone’s head.”

I fondled in my hand a heavy, cast-iron paperweight. Looking now at that object, now at Alexis, I asked:

“Head? You say⁠—head?”

“Yes, head. Catch a thing like that on your head and you’re done for.”

It was becoming interesting. It was precisely the head, and precisely with that thing that I had planned to crush it, and now that same head was telling how it would all end. It was telling and smiling, as without care. And yet there: are people who believe in presentiments, and that death sends before it invisible heralds. What nonsense!

“One can’t do much with this thing,” said I. “It is altogether too light.”

“So you think it’s too light!” returned Alexis hotly, as he snatched the paperweight from my hand and flourished it by its thin handle several times in the air. “Just try it!”

“Yes, I know⁠ ⁠…”

“No, take hold and see.”

I smiled, as unwillingly I took the heavy object. Just then Tatiana Nikolayevna interfered. Pale, her teeth chattering, she said, or rather shrieked:

“Stop that, Alexis, stop that!”

“Why, Tanya? What is the matter with you?” said he in an astonished tone.

“Stop that! You know I don’t like such jokes.”

We laughed, and the paperweight was replaced on the table.

On my visit to Professor T⁠⸺ everything happened as I had anticipated. He was cautious, controlled in his utterances and grave; he inquired whether I had any relatives in whose care I could trust myself; he counselled me to go home, take a rest and live quietly. Assuming the privilege due me as a member of the medical profession, I made a slight attempt at remonstrance. My boldness removed whatever doubts may have remained in the physician’s mind, and he definitely placed me in the ranks of the demented. I trust, gentlemen experts, you will not attribute undue significance to this harmless jest aimed against one of our colleagues. As a scholar, Professor T⁠⸺ undoubtedly deserves respect and honor.

The few days which followed were among the happiest of my life. Sympathy was extended me in my role of invalid, visits were paid me, and everyone addressed me in a broken, clumsy tongue. Only I knew that I was perfectly healthy, and I enjoyed to the full the well-planned, mighty labor of my mind. In a consideration of all that is wonderful and incomprehensible of life’s riches, nothing can be found to equal the human mind. There is divinity in it, a pledge of immorality and an indomitable force acknowledging no obstacles. People are overcome with ecstasy and wonderment when they behold the snowy summits of huge mountains. If they only would understand themselves, neither mountains, nor all the wonders and beauties of the earth, could transport them to such a degree as the consciousness of the power of thought. The simple mental process of the laborer as he expediently lays one brick upon the other⁠—that is the supreme marvel and the deepest mystery.

I enjoyed my thought. Innocent in her beauty, she gave herself up to me with passion as a mistress; served me like a slave; and upheld me like a friend. Don’t take it for granted that all these days spent at home between the four walls were employed only in thinking about my project. No, that was all clear and prepared. I meditated upon many things. I and my thought played with life and death and soared high, high above them. Among other things I solved during those days two very interesting chess problems over which I had labored for a long time without success. Probably you are aware of the fact that three years ago I participated in the international chess tourney and was second only to Lasker. Had I not been an avowed enemy of publicity and continued to contend, Lasker would have been compelled to surrender his kingdom.

From the moment that the life of Alexis was delivered in my hands I was strangely disposed towards him. It was pleasant for me to think that he lived, drank, ate and rejoiced, simply because I permitted it. It was a feeling akin to that of a father toward a son. What alarmed me was his health. Notwithstanding his ill health, he was unpardonably careless, refusing to wear a waist-jacket and venturing outdoors without galoshes in the most threatening, raw weather. Tatiana Nikolayevna reassured me. She paid me a visit and told me that Alexis was in sound health and even slept well, which was unusual for him. Overjoyed, I requested Tatiana Nikolayevna to take with her a gift I had intended to make Alexis⁠—a rare volume which accidentally fell into my hands and had struck for some time the literary man’s fancy. Possibly the gift was a mistake from the standpoint of my plan. My action could be suspected as a premeditated manoeuvre; but I wished so much to afford Alexis pleasure that I decided to run a small risk. I even ignored the circumstance that the gift sacrificed something of the artistic effect of my play.

Upon this occasion I was very amiable and frank, and made a favorable impression on Tatiana Nikolayevna. Neither she nor Alexis had witnessed a single one of my attacks, and hence it was difficult, even impossible, for them to imagine me as mad.

“Come and see us,” said Tatiana Nikolayevna at parting.

“Musn’t do it,” said I smilingly. “Doctor forbade.”

“Oh, fiddlesticks! That doesn’t mean us. In our house you are at home. And Alexis misses you.”

I promised, and never did I make a promise with such assurance of fulfillment as this one. When reflecting upon these happy coincidences, does it not strike you, gentlemen experts, that Alexis had been condemned not by me alone, but also by someone else? In truth, however, there was no one else. Nothing could be more simple or logical.

The cast-iron paperweight lay in its place, when on the eleventh of December, five o’clock in the afternoon, I entered the drawing-room of the Saveloffs. Both Alexis and Tatiana had been accustomed to rest the hour preceding dinner, which usually occurred at seven o’clock. They greeted me effusively.

“Thanks for the book, brother,” said Alexis, grasping my hand. “I was about to visit you, when Tanya told me that you were quite well again. We are going to the theatre this evening. Will you join us?”

A conversation began. I decided not to dissemble at all that evening⁠—it was an occasion when the absence of dissembling was the subtlest kind of dissembling⁠—and giving myself up to the mental exhilaration of the moment, I spoke at length and well. If the admirers of Saveloff’s glories only knew how many of “his” best ideas had their inception and development in the brain of one unknown Doctor Kerzhentseff!

I spoke clearly, precisely, emphasizing each phrase, at the same time keeping my eye on the hand of the clock, thinking that when it should point at six I would become a murderer. I said something funny and they laughed, and I made an effort to retain an impression of the sensation of one who was about to become a murderer. I understood the life process in Alexis not in the abstract, but rather in the physical sense⁠—the beating of his heart, the coursing of the blood through the veins, the suppressed vibrations of the brain, and then⁠—the interruption of this process, the cessation of the heart and the blood flow, and the death of the brain.

What would be its last thought?

Never did the clearness of my consciousness reach such height and power. Never was the sensation of the many-sided, harmoniously-working I so complete. Truly a god: not looking, I saw; not listening, I heard; not thinking, I understood.

Seven minutes remained, when Alexis lazily arose from the divan, stretched himself and went out.

“I’ll be right back,” he called after him.

I did not want to look upon Tatiana Nikolayevna, so I made my way to the window, threw aside the draperies and stood still. Without looking, I was conscious that Tatiana Nikolayevna had glided quickly through the room and was standing beside me. I heard her breathing, and knew that she was not looking through the window, but upon me, and I was silent.

“How beautifully the snow sparkles!” said Tatiana Nikolayevna, but I remained unresponsive. Her breath came quicker, then seemed to cease.

“Anton Ignatyevich!” said she, and stopped short.

I remained silent.

“Anton Ignatyevich!” she repeated in the same irresolute tone, and now I looked at her. Suddenly she tottered back, almost fell, as if she had been thrust back by the terrible force that was in my glance. She tottered and threw herself towards her husband, who had entered the room.

“Alexis!” she mumbled. “Alexis⁠ ⁠… He⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, what about him?”

Without smiling, but in a jesting tone, I said:

“She thinks that I want to kill you with that thing.”

Then, in an unperturbed manner, without attempt at concealment, I picked up the paperweight, and, raising it in my hand, calmly approached Alexis. He, without blinking, gazed upon me with his pale eyes and repeated:

“She thinks⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, she thinks.”

Slowly, easily, I began to raise my hand, and Alexis also slowly began to raise his, without removing his eyes from me.

“Hold a moment!” said I sternly.

The hand of Alexis remained where it was, while he, pale, still keeping his eyes upon me, smiled incredulously with his lips alone. Tatiana Nikolayevna uttered a strange cry, but it was too late. I struck him with the sharp edge nearer the temple than the eye. And when he fell I bent over and struck him two times more. The district attorney declared that I had struck him several times, because his head was badly crushed. But that is untrue. I struck him only three times: once when he was standing, and twice on the floor.

It is true that the blows were very hard, but there were only three. That I remember for certain⁠—three blows.

VI

Please do not attempt to make clear what is crossed out at the end of the fourth part, and in general do not attach undue significance to my markings or accept them as evidences of deranged thought. In the strange position in which I find myself, I admit I am forced to exercise the greatest care, as you may well understand.

The dusk of night always acts strongly upon an exhausted nervous system, and that is why we are visited so frequently at night by horrible thoughts. On that night, following the murder, my nerves were, of course, in a particularly tense state. Despite my self-control, it is no jest to kill a man. After tea, having made my toilet, manicured my nails and changed my dress, I called in Maria Vasilyevna to keep me company. She was my housekeeper and a substitute for a wife. I think she had a lover on the side, but she is a pretty woman, gentle and not greedy, and I easily reconciled myself with this slight fault, which is almost unavoidable when a man obtains love for money. This stupid woman was the first to strike me a blow.

“Kiss me!” said I.

She smiled stupidly and remained unmoved.

“Come, now!”

All of a sudden she trembled, blushed and with frightened eyes drew herself appealingly toward me from across the table and said:

“Anton Ignatyevich, little soul, go to the doctor!”

“What next?” I exclaimed angrily.

“Oh, please, don’t shout so, I’m afraid! I’m so afraid of you, little soul mine, little angel!”

Yet she knew nothing of my fits, nor of the murder, and I had been always kind with her and reasonable. It was to be inferred that there was something in my person that other people did not have⁠—something that frightened. The thought flashed through my mind and was gone quickly, leaving a strange sensation of cold in the legs and spine. It dawned upon me that Maria Vasilyevna must have learned something from the servant-maid or had stumbled across some spoiled apparel discarded by me, and this altogether naturally explained her fright.

“Leave me!” I commanded.

Then I retired to the divan in my library. I had no desire to read; my entire body felt weary, and my condition in general was such as experienced by an actor after a brilliantly played role. It was pleasant to gaze upon the books and pleasant to think that some time later I would read them. I was pleased with my entire apartment, with the divan and with Maria Vasilyevna. There flashed through my mind fragments of phrases from my role. Mentally I reenacted certain motions which I had made, and occasionally critical thoughts glided languidly: In such and such a situation it could have been better said or done. However, I was much gratified with my improvised “Hold a moment!” This will seem flimsy to him who himself has not experienced such an incredible instance of the power of inspiration.

“Hold a moment!” I repeated, closing my eyes, and smiled. My eyelids began to grow heavy, and I wanted to sleep, when languidly, very simply, like the other thoughts, there entered into my head a new thought, dominating with all the qualities of my thought: clearness, preciseness and simplicity. Languidly it entered and remained. Here it is, speaking, as it were, in the third person:

“It is very possible that Dr. Kerzhentseff is really insane. He thought that he simulated, but he is really insane⁠—insane at this very instant.”

Three or four times this thought reappeared, but I still smiled, uncomprehending:

“He thought that he simulated, but he is really insane⁠—insane at this very instant.”

When I realized⁠ ⁠… at first I thought that Maria Vasilyevna had uttered this phrase, because it seemed as if there were a voice, and this voice appeared to be hers. Then I thought it was the voice of Alexis. Yes, Alexis, who was dead. Then I understood that it was my thought, and this was terrifying. Clutching my hair, I found myself somehow standing in the middle of the room. I mumbled:

“So that’s how it is. All is ended. That which I feared has happened. I approached too closely to the border line, and now there is only one thing before me⁠—madness.”

When they came to arrest me, I appeared, according to their words, in an awful state⁠—disheveled, in torn apparel, pale and terrible. But, oh. Lord! To live through such a night and not to go out of one’s mind⁠—does it not indicate the possession of an invincible brain? And, really, I only tore my attire and broke a mirror. Apropos, permit me to make a suggestion. If it ever falls to the lot of any of you to live through that which I had lived through this night, hang a mirror in the room where you will toss about. Hang it the same as you do when there is a corpse in the house. Hang a mirror!

It is terrible for me to write about it. I fear that which I must recall and tell. But I dare not delay it longer, and perhaps with half-words I may only heighten the terror.

That evening!

Imagine to yourselves a drunken snake, yes, yes, precisely a drunken snake: it has saved its venom; it has increased its agility and swiftness, and its teeth are sharp and poisonous. It is drunk, and it is in a closed room, where are many trembling people. With its cold body it savagely glides among them, coils around their legs, buries its fangs in the very face, in the lips, and coils itself into a ball and stings into its own body. And it seems that it is not alone, but a thousand snakes toss about and sting and devour themselves. Such was my thought, the same in which I believed, and in the sharpness and poison of whose teeth I saw my salvation and safeguard.

The single thought scattered in a thousand thoughts, each of which was strong and hostile. They circled in a wild dance, and their music was a monstrous voice, sounding as from a horn, and issuing from some invisible depth. This was an evasive thought, the most terrible of all snakes, as it concealed itself in the darkness. From within my head, where I held it strongly, it entered into the secret recesses of the body, into its dark and invisible depths. And from thence it cried out, like a stranger, like an escaping slave, insolent and bold, in the consciousness of his security:

You thought that you simulated, but you were insane. You are small, you are bad, you are stupid, you, Dr. Kerzhentseff. Some sort of a Dr. Kerzhentseff, insane Dr. Kerzhentseff!⁠ ⁠…

Thus it cried out and I did not know whence came that monstrous voice. I do not even know who uttered it; I call it a thought, but perhaps it was not a thought. The other thoughts, like birds hovering over flames, circled in the head, while this one cried from somewhere below, above, the sides, where I could not see it or catch it.

And the most terrible thing which I experienced was the consciousness that I did not know myself and never did. As long as my I found itself within my brilliantly lighted head, where all moved and lived in law-conforming order, I had understood and known myself, had reflected upon my character and plans, and was, as I had thought, a lord. Now, however, I saw that I was not a lord, but a slave, wretched and helpless. Imagine to yourself that you are living in a house containing many rooms, that you occupy one room and think that you dominate the entire house. And suddenly you discover that the other rooms are occupied. Yes, occupied. Occupied by some mysterious beings, perhaps people, perhaps something else, and the house belongs to them. You wish to learn who they are, but the door is locked, and no sound issues therefrom, no voice. At the same time you are conscious that precisely there, behind the silent door, your fate is being decided.

I approach the mirror⁠ ⁠… Hang a mirror. Hang one!

I do not remember what happened afterward, until the arrival of the court authorities and the police. I asked what hour it was, and was told it was nine o’clock. For a long time I found it difficult to realize that only two hours had elapsed since my return home, and only three since the murder of Alexis.

I ask your forgiveness, gentlemen experts, for treating of a moment so important from your standpoint, of the terrible state following the murder, in such general and indefinite terms. That, however, is all I remember and all that I can express by means of the human tongue. It is impossible for me to express in human language the terror I experienced in that brief space of time. Aside from this, I cannot vouch for the actuality of that which so vaguely impressed itself upon my mind. Perhaps it was not that which happened, but something else. Only one thing I remember distinctly⁠—it was a thought, or a voice, or perhaps something else:

“Dr. Kerzhentseff thought that he simulated madness, but he is actually insane.”

I have just felt my pulse: 180! And that at the mere recollection of it!

VII

In the preceding pages I have written much that was unnecessary and absurd, and unfortunately you have received and read them. I fear that it will give you a false conception of my person, as well as of the actual condition of my mental faculties. However, I have faith in your knowledge and in your clear intellect, gentlemen experts.

You understand, of course, that only grave reasons could have induced me, Dr. Kerzhentseff, to reveal the entire truth concerning the murder of Saveloff. And you will easily understand and appreciate them when I tell you that I do not know even now whether I feigned madness to kill and go unpunished, or killed because I was actually mad; that, probably, I shall never know. The nightmare of that evening is gone, but it has left in its wake sparks of fire. I have no absurd fears but I feel the terror of a man who has lost all. I have the cold consciousness of the fall of perdition, deceit and insolubility.

You learned men will argue about me. Some of you will say that I am mad, others will demonstrate that I am normal, and will admit only certain limitations in the name of degeneracy. With all your learning, however, you cannot demonstrate my madness or my normality as clearly as I can. My mind has returned to me, as you shall be convinced. It lacks neither in power nor in keenness. Excellent, energetic thought, giving even its enemies their due!

I am mad. Shall I give you reasons?

First of all, I will be judged by hereditary influences, those same influences the discovery of which rejoiced me so exceedingly when I first conceived my plan. The fits I had in my childhood⁠ ⁠… Guilty, gentlemen. I wished to conceal from you this detail about the fits, and have written that from childhood on I have enjoyed perfect health. Not that these trifling, short-lived attacks alarmed me to any extent. Candidly, I did not wish to encumber my account with unimportant details. Now this detail becomes necessary to a strictly logical structure, and, as you see, I give it unhesitatingly.

Therefore, hereditary influences and the attacks testify to my susceptibility to psychic illness. It began, unknown to myself, considerably prior to my plan. Dominating, however, as all madmen, with an unconscious cunning and a faculty to conform insane acts to norms of sober reflection, I began to deceive, not others, as I had thought, but myself. Borne along by a strange power, I made it appear that I went of my own accord. One can finish the model from the remaining evidence as from wax. You will agree with me.

It is not worth while to show that I did not love Tatiana Nikolayevna⁠—that a true motive for the crime did not exist, but was invented. Whether in the strangeness of my plan, in the cold-bloodedness of its execution, or in the attention to the innumerable details, one may detect easily the same unreasoning will. The very cunning and development of my thought preceding the crime demonstrate my abnormality.

“Wounded, death awaiting, in the arena I played,
The dying gladiator enacting⁠ ⁠…”

Not a single detail out of my life did I leave unrevealed. I searched through my entire life. I gave the aspect of madness to all my steps, to all my words; and in each case I made the mood fit the word and the thought. It seems, and this is the most astonishing thing of all, that even until tonight I have entertained the thought: perhaps I am actually mad. Yet somehow or other I have avoided the thought and ignored it.

While demonstrating my madness do you know what I have perceived? That I am not mad⁠—that is what I have perceived. I will explain.

The leading fact behind my hereditary impulses and my fits is degeneracy. I am of the degenerate, whose like can be found in large numbers if only sought for more diligently, even amongst you, gentlemen experts. This gives a substantial key to the rest. My moral views you may attribute not to conscious reflection but to degeneracy. Truly, moral instincts are lodged so deeply that only in some deviation from the normal type is complete freedom from them possible. As to science, it maintains a too bold attitude in its generalizations, relegating all such deviations to the domain of degeneracy, even where physically the man may boast of the perfections of an Apollo, or the health of the lowest idiot. So be it. I have nothing against degeneracy⁠—it brings me among excellent company.

Nor will I defend my motive for the crime. I tell you altogether candidly that Tatiana Nikolayevna really had wounded me by her laughter, and the offence lodged very deeply, as it happens with hidden, solitary natures such as mine. Suppose this is untrue. Suppose even that I did not love her. Is it not possible to admit that by killing Alexis I simply had attempted to test my powers? Do you not freely admit the existence of men who, risking their lives, clamber inaccessible summits simply because they are inaccessible; and yet you do not call them mad? You dare not pronounce as mad Nansen, that mighty man of the expiring century! Moral life also has its poles, and one of these I tried to reach.

You are confused by the absence of jealousy, vengeance, cupidity and similar really stupid motives, which you have become accustomed to consider as the only ones that are real and normal. Hence, you men of science judge Nansen together with those fools and ignoramuses who even consider his enterprise as madness.

My plan⁠ ⁠… It was unusual, it was original, it was bold to audacity; but then was it not intelligent from the viewpoint set by my purpose? It was precisely my inclination to dissimulation, already explained reasonably and fully, that inspired the plan. Madness? Is then genius really insanity? Cold-bloodedness? But is it absolutely necessary that a murderer should tremble, grow pale and be agitated? Cowards always tremble, even when embracing their servant-maids. Is then bravery madness?

How simply my own doubts of my health explain themselves! Like a true artist I threw myself too deeply into my role, identified myself temporarily with the represented character and for a moment lost my aptitude for self-account. Will you say that even in the courts, there is none who, pleading among the lawyer-actors, struggling daily Othello, has felt the actual need to slay?

Sufficiently convincing, isn’t it, most learned gentlemen? Do you not experience a strange consciousness of my seeming sanity when I try to prove my madness and the converse feeling of seeming madness⁠—when I try to prove my normality?

Yes. That is because you do not believe me⁠ ⁠… I, too, do not believe myself, as I do not know whom in me to believe. Shall it be in thought, dastardly and worthless⁠—that unfaithful servant who waits upon all? It is good only with which to clean one’s boots, and I made it my friend, my god. Off with you from the throne, wretched, impotent thought!

What am I then, gentlemen experts⁠—insane or not?

Masha, charming woman, you know something that I do not know. Tell me, of whom shall I seek help?

I know your answer, Masha. No, I don’t mean that. You are a good and gracious woman, Masha, but you know neither physics nor chemistry. Not once have you been to the theatre, and, busily bent upon your daily tasks, you do not so much as suspect that the object upon which you live twirls. It twirls, Masha, it twirls, and we twirl with it. You are a child, Masha, a dull-witted creature, almost a plant, and I envy you exceedingly, nearly as much as I contemn you.

No, Masha, not you shall answer me. It is untrue; you do not know anything. Within one of the dark chambers of your ingenuous domicile lives something very useful to you, but in my house this chamber is empty. That something which had lived there died long ago, and on its grave I have erected a magnificent monument. It died, Masha, died, without hope of resurrection.

What am I then, gentlemen experts, insane or not? Pardon me if I, with such rude persistence, dog you with this question; but then you are “men of science,” as my father called you when he wished to flatter you; you possess books and you dominate, with clear, precise and infallible human thought. It is likely that half of you will maintain one opinion, the other half of you will maintain another; but I will believe you, learned gentlemen, believe the one and the other. Tell me, then⁠ ⁠… and to assist your enlightened minds I will reveal an interesting little fact.

During one calm and peaceful evening passed between these white walls I observed that Masha’s countenance, each time it met my eyes, expressed fear, confusion and a subjection to something irresistible and terrible. Presently she departed, and I sat on the made bed and continued to think about one thing and another. And I yearned to do strange things. I, Dr. Kerzhentseff wished to howl. Not shout, but howl, like that fellow. I wished to tear my clothes and to scratch myself with my nails. I wished to seize my shirt at the collar, and at the start go slowly, slowly, and then tear it asunder, with one quick jerk, to the very bottom. And I, Dr. Kerzhentseff, wished to go down on all fours and crawl. All around was calm, and the snow beat against the window, and somewhere not far off silently prayed Masha. And I reflected long upon what to do. If I should howl I would be heard, and trouble would ensue. If I should tear my shirt it would be noticed on the morrow. So very shrewdly I chose the third: I would crawl. No one could hear me, and if caught I would say that a button came off and I was looking for it.

As long as I tried to hit upon a choice the feeling was that of contentment; it was not at all terrible, it was even pleasant; so that I recall I dangled my foot. Presently I reflected:

“But why crawl? Am I really insane?”

All at once a terrible feeling came upon me, and simultaneously I wished to do all: crawl, howl, scratch. And I became angry.

“Do you wish to crawl?” asked I. But it was silent. The desire was gone.

“No, you do wish to crawl,” insisted I. And it was silent.

“Well, crawl then!”

So, tucking up my sleeves, I went down on my fours and crawled. And when I had traversed about half of the room in this manner, the absurdity of it aroused my risibility, so I sat me down on the floor and laughed, laughed, laughed.

With my habitual and unextinguished faith in the possibilities of knowledge, I thought that I had discovered the source of my insane desires. Evidently the desire to crawl, as well as other desires, were the result of autosuggestion. The persistent thought that I was a madman had called forth the insane desires, and as soon as I had gratified them it seemed that such desires were absent and I was not insane. The argument, as you see, is very simple and logical. But⁠ ⁠…

But then I did crawl? I did crawl? What am I⁠—a madman justifying himself, or a normal man leading himself out of his mind?

So help me, oh, erudite men! Let your authoritative word incline the scales to one side or the other and solve this terrible, ferocious dilemma. And so I wait!⁠ ⁠…

Vainly I wait. Oh, my dear dull-heads⁠—are you not I? Does not the same dastardly human thought, ever lying, treacherous, illusory, labor within your bald heads as within mine? And wherein is mine inferior to yours? If you should venture to prove me insane, I shall prove to you that I am normal; if you should try to prove me normal, I shall prove to you that I am insane. You will say that it is forbidden to steal, kill and deceive because it is immoral and criminal, and I will demonstrate that one may kill and plunder and that it is very moral. And you will think and speak, and I will think and speak, and we all shall be right, and none of us shall be right. Where is the judge who can decide between us and find the truth?

You have one formidable advantage which confers upon you the possession of truth: you did not commit a crime, you are not under judgment, and you have been invited, with substantial fees, to investigate my psychic condition. Ergo, I am insane. On the other hand, if you had been placed in confinement here, Professor Derzhembitzky, and I had been invited to observe you, then you would have been the madman and I the privileged bird⁠—an expert, a liar, who differs from other liars only in that he lies not otherwise than under oath.

It is true, you have killed no one, have not stolen for the sake of stealing; and when you hire a cabby you consider it obligatory to haggle him out of a small coin, which demonstrates your spiritual health. You are not insane. However, something might happen, altogether unexpectedly⁠ ⁠…

Suddenly on the morrow, now, this moment, after you had read these lines, there comes into your head a stupid, but unwary thought: Perhaps I am insane? What will be your position then, professor? What a stupid, absurd thought⁠—what reason is there to go out of one’s mind? But try if you will to banish it. You have drank milk and thought it pure until someone said that it was mixed with water. Then an end⁠—no more pure milk.

You are insane. Have you no desire to crawl on all-fours? Of course, you have none. What normal man wants to crawl? Well, for all that?⁠ ⁠… are you not disturbed by the appearance of just a slight desire, altogether slight, altogether trifling, mirth-provoking, to glide off the chair, and to crawl a little, just a little? Of course, no such desire appears. Whence could it appear within a normal man, who only a moment ago drank tea and chatted with his wife? Yet, do you not experience a something unusual in your legs, though previously you had not experienced it, and a strange feeling in your knees: a heavy numbness wrestling with the desire to bend the knees, and then⁠ ⁠… And actually, Professor Derzhembitzky, is there anyone to restrain you if you wish to crawl a bit?

No one.

But don’t crawl yet for a little while, I need you still. My battle is not yet ended.

VIII

One of the manifestations of the paradoxicalness of my nature is that I exceedingly love children, altogether small children, just when they are beginning to lisp and resemble all tiny animals: pups, kittens and diminutive snakes. Even snakes can be attractive when young. One serene, sunny day in autumn, I witnessed the following little scene: A very small girl, in a wadded overcoat and a broad-brimmed bonnet, from under which were visible only her rosy cheeks and her little nose, wished to approach a very little, thin-limbed, slender-headed dog, standing tremblingly with its tail between its legs. And suddenly the tot became scared, turned on her heels, and, looking like a little white ball, scampered over to her nurse, in whose lap she hid her face, making no outcry and shedding no tears. As to the pup, it blinked affectionately and bent its tail as if frightened, while the face of the nurse seemed so good and simple.

“Do not fear,” said the nurse, as she looked smilingly at me, and her face seemed so good and simple.

I do not know why, but I have recalled often the little maiden, while yet free, while planning the murder, and here. Gazing upon that lovely group, under the bright autumn sun, I experienced the strange feeling of one who possessed the solution to something, and my projected murder seemed to me like a cold lie from out of another, altogether different world. That both of them, the little girl and the little dog, were so small and lovely, and that they laughably feared each other, and that the sun shone so brightly⁠—all was so simple and full of benign and deep wisdom, as if namely here, in this group, was located the key to existence. Such was the feeling I experienced. And I said to myself: “I shall have to think about this”⁠—but I thought about it no more.

I do not remember now the meaning of the incident; painfully I try to grasp it, but cannot. Nor do I know why I have related this amusing and unnecessary tale, when I have so much that is more serious and important to tell. It is urgent that I should finish.

The dead we will permit to rest in peace. Alexis is dead; it is a long time since he began to decompose; he is no more⁠—the devil with him! There is something pleasant in being dead.

Nor will we speak of Tatiana Nikolayevna. She is unhappy, and I eagerly join in the general sympathy; but what is her unhappiness and all the unhappiness of the earth compared with that which I, Dr. Kerzhentseff, am living through now! Not a few wives in the world lose their beloved husbands, and more husbands remain to be lost! We will leave them⁠—let them weep!

But here, within this head⁠ ⁠…

You comprehend, gentlemen experts, the terrible happening. I loved no one on earth except myself, and if was not the vile body, loved by the vulgar, that I loved in myself⁠—I loved my human thought, my freedom. I never have known anything surpassing my thought; I worshipped it⁠—and did it not deserve it? Did it not, like a giant, wrestle with the entire world and its delusions? It lifted me upon the summit of a high mountain, and I saw how far below me swarmed little people with their animal passions, with their eternal dread of life and death, with their churches, liturgies and prayers.

How mighty I felt, how free, how happy! Like a medieval baron secluded in his impregnable castle, truly an eagle in his nest, proudly and imperiously surveying the valleys below⁠—so I was, invincible and proud in my castle, behind these bones of the cranium. A lord over myself, I also was a lord over the world.

I have been betrayed⁠—basely, insidiously; thus women betray, and slaves⁠—and thought. My castle became my prison. My enemies fell upon me in my castle⁠—where’s salvation? In the impregnability of the castle, in the thickness of its walls is my perdition. My voice cannot penetrate outside, and who is so strong as to save me? No one. For none is stronger than I⁠—and I am the sole enemy of my “I.”

Base thought has betrayed me who so intensely believed in thought and loved it. It has not lost in beauty; it is not a whit less bright, keen or elastic⁠—it is still like a rapier, but its hilt is no longer in my hand. And it is slaying me, its creator, its lord, with the same stolid indifference with which I once employed it to slay others.

Night comes on and I am seized with unspeakable terror. I was strong and my feet stood firmly upon the earth, and now I am thrown into the emptiness of boundless space. Exceeding great and terrible is my solitude⁠—behind me, before me and around me a yawning emptiness. It is the fearful loneliness of one who lives, feels and thinks, and is incomprehensibly alone; how small I seem, absurdly null, and so weak that I expect to be extinguished any moment. It is an ill-boding solitude; in myself I constitute but an infinitesimal part; within myself I am surrounded and suffocated by enemies, morosely silent and mysterious. Whither I go they go with me; I am solitary midst a vast emptiness, and cannot confide in myself. It is the solitude of madness, and I have no means of knowing who I am, because my lips, my mind, my voice, are all given to utter the thoughts of the unknown they.

One cannot live thus. Meanwhile the world slumbers and husbands kiss their wives and learned men read their lectures, and the beggar rejoices in the penny thrown his way. Oh, stupid world, happy in thy stupidity, terrible will be thy awakening!

Who amongst the strong shall come to my aid? None! None! Where shall I seek that eternal something to which I may cling with my piteous, powerless, awesomely solitary “I?” Nowhere! Nowhere! Oh, dear, dear little girl, why is it that towards thee I stretch my bloodstained hands? Art thou not human like myself, and equally insignificant and lonely and subject to death? Is it that I pity thee or that I invite thy pity; but I would, as behind a shield, hide me behind thy helpless little body, from the hopeless void of ages and space. But no, no, it is all a lie!

I will ask you, gentlemen experts, to confer upon me a great and important service, and if you are possessed even of a little humanity you cannot refuse me. I trust we understand each other sufficiently not to believe each other. And if I should request you to say in court that I am in a normal state least of all shall I believe you. You may decide for yourselves, but no one can decide for me the question:

Did I simulate madness in order to slay, or did I slay because I was mad?

But the judges will believe you and sentence me to that which I wish: hard labor.3 Please do not place a false construction upon my intentions. I do not repent of slaying Saveloff; I do not seek in punishment an expiation of sin; and if it is essential that in order to demonstrate my well-being I should kill someone, presumably for plunder, I shall kill and plunder with pleasure. But in penal servitude I seek something else, I myself do not know what.

I am being drawn toward these people by a vague hope, that in their midst, among violators of your laws⁠—murderers and thieves⁠—I shall find unknown sources of life and once again be on terms of friendliness with myself.

Supposing that I am doomed to disappointment, that hope should deceive me⁠—I still desire to be with them. Oh, I know you well! You are cowards and hypocrites; your peace of mind is your first concern, and you would gladly confine in the insane asylum every thief who has stolen a loaf of bread⁠—in your overzealousness you would acknowledge yourself as madmen rather than disturb your pet theories. I know you well. The criminal and the crime⁠—that is your perpetual anxiety; that is the terrible voice coming from an unknown abyss; that is the inexorable condemnation of your wise and moral life, and howsoever you wad your ears with cotton that voice penetrates⁠—it penetrates! And I wish to go to them. I, Dr. Kerzhentseff wish to take a place in the ranks of this much-dreaded army⁠—as an eternal reproach, as one who asks and awaits an answer.

I do not cringe before you, but I demand that you report me as in normal health. Lie, if you do not believe it. However, if you pusillanimously wash your learned hands and sentence me to the insane asylum, or open the doors to freedom, I forewarn you in a friendly way that I’ll commit some considerable unpleasantries.

I acknowledge no judge, no law, no forbidden thing. All is permissible. Can you imagine a world, having no laws of gravitation, having no above nor below, in which everything is a matter of whim and chance?

I, Dr. Kerzhentseff, am that new world. All is permissible. And I, Dr. Kerzhentseff, shall prove that. I will simulate normality. I will attain freedom. I will spend the remainder of my life in learning. I will surround me with your books, I will take from you all the might of your knowledge, of which you are so proud, and will seek the one thing of which the world has stood in need for so long a time. That will be the explosive essence. The equal of its force has not been seen: it is more powerful than dynamite, than nitroglycerine, more powerful than the very thought of it. I possess talent, I am persistent, I will find it. And when I do find it, I shall scatter in the air your accursed earth, which has so many gods and not one eternal God.

Upon his appearance in the court room. Dr. Kerzhentseff maintained a very calm demeanor, and remained during the entire proceedings in one and the same non-expressive attitude. He replied to questions indifferently and impassively, occasionally calling for their repetition. Once he aroused the mirth of the select public that crowded that court room in large numbers. It was when the presiding judge turned with some order to the usher, and the accused, evidently not having heard or because of abstraction, arose and asked loudly:

“What? You tell me to go?”

“Go where?” asked the astonished presiding official.

“I don’t know. I thought you said something.”

The crowd laughed, and the presiding judge explained to Kerzhentseff what was the matter.

Four expert psychiatrists were called to the stand, and their opinions were equally divided. After the speech of the district attorney, the presiding judge turned to the accused, who had refused to accept the services of an attorney.

“Accused, what have you to say in your justification?”

Dr. Kerzhentseff arose. He slowly surveyed the judges with his dull, unseeing-like eyes and glanced at the public. And those upon whom fell that heavy, unseeing gaze experienced a strange and painful sensation: it was as if out of the hollow orbs of a skull there had glanced upon them nothing less than death itself, mute and impassive.

“Nothing!” replied the accused.

Having cast another look upon the people gathered in judgment upon him, he repeated:

“Nothing!”

I

A strange and mysterious fate pursued Vassily Feeveysky all through his life. As though damned by some unfathomable curse, from his youth on he staggered under a heavy burden of sadness, sickness and sorrow, and the bleeding wounds of his heart refused to heal. Among men he stood aloof, like a planet among planets, and a peculiar atmosphere, baneful and blighting, seemed to enshroud him like an invisible, diaphanous cloud.

The son of a meek and patient parish priest, he was meek and patient himself, and for a long time failed to observe the ominous and mysterious deliberation with which misfortunes persistently broke over his unattractive shaggy head.

Swiftly he fell, and slowly rose to his feet; fell again, and slowly rose once more, and laboriously, speck by speck, grain by grain, set to work restoring his frail anthill by the side of the great highway of life.

But when he was ordained priest and married a good woman, begetting by her a son and a daughter, he commenced to feel that all was now well and safe with him, just as with other people, and would so remain forever. And he blessed God, for he believed in Him solemnly and simply, as a priest and as a man in whose soul there was no guile.

And it happened in the seventh year of his happiness, in the noon hour of a sultry day in July, that the village children went to the river to swim, and with them went Father Vassily’s son, like his father Vassily by name, and like him swarthy of face and meek in manner. And little Vassily was drowned. His young mother, the Popadya,9 came running to the river bank with the crowd, and the plain and appalling picture of human death engraved itself indelibly on her memory: the dull and ponderous thumping of her own heart, as though each heart beat threatened to be her last; and the odd transparence of the atmosphere in which moved hither and thither the humdrum familiar figures of people, though now they seemed so strangely aloof, as if severed from the earth; and the disconnected, confused hubbub of voices, with each word rounding in the air and slowly melting away as new sounds come into being.

And she conceived a lifelong fear of bright and sunny days. For at such times she saw again the barricade of muscular backs gleaming white in the light of the sun, and the bare feet planted firmly among the trampled cabbage heads, and the rhythmic swing of something bright and white in the trough of which freely rolled a light little body, so gruesomely near, so gruesomely far, and forever estranged. And long after little Vassya10 had been buried, and the grass had grown over his grave, the Popadya kept repeating that prayer of all bereaved mothers: “Lord, take my life, but give me back my child.”

Soon Father Vassily’s whole household learned to dread the bright days of summer time, when the sun shines too glaringly and sets ablaze the treacherous river until the eyes cannot bear the sight of it. On such days, when the people, the beasts and the fields all around were radiant with gladness, the members of Father Vassily’s household were wont to watch his wife with awestricken eyes, engaging purposely in loud conversation and laughter, while she, sluggish and indolent, rose to her feet, eyeing the others so fixedly and queerly that they were forced to avert their gaze, and languidly lolled through the house, as though hunting for some needless article, a key, or a spoon or a glass. Whatever she needed was carefully placed in her path, but she continued to seek, and her search increased in intentness and agitation in the measure that the bright and merry orb of the sun rose higher in the firmament. And she approached her husband, placing her lifeless hand on his shoulder and kept repeating in a pleading voice.

“Vassya! Vassya! I say!”

“What is it, dear?” meekly and hopelessly responded Father Vassily, trying to smooth her disheveled hair with trembling fingers that were sunburnt and black with the soil and were badly in want of trimming. She was still young and pretty, and her arm rested upon the shabby cassock of her husband as though carved of marble, white and heavy.

“What is it, dear? Will you have some tea now? You have not had any yet.”

“Vassya! Vassya, I say!” she repeated pleadingly, removing her arm from his shoulder like some needless, superfluous object, and returned to her searching, only still more restlessly and excitedly. Walking all through the house, not a room of which had been tidied, she passed into the garden, from the garden into the court yard, and again into the house, while the sun rose higher and higher, and through the trees could be seen a flash of the warm sluggish river. And step after step, clinging tightly to her mother’s skirt, Nastya,11 the Popadya’s daughter, shambled after her, morose and sullen, as though the black shadow of impending doom had lodged itself even over her little six-year-old heart. She anxiously hurried her little steps to keep pace with the distracted big stride of her mother, casting furtively yearning glances upon the familiar, but ever mysterious and enticing garden, and she longingly stretched out her disengaged hand towards a bush of sour gooseberries, and stealthily plucked a few, though the sharp thorns cruelly scratched her. And the prick of these thorns that were sharp as needles, and the acid taste of the berries, intensified the scowl on her face, and she longed to whimper like an abandoned pup.

When the sun reached the zenith, the Popadya closed tightly the shutters in the windows of her room, and in the darkness gave herself up to liquor until she was drunken, drawing from each drained glassful fresh pangs of agony and searching memories of her perished child. She shed bitter tears, and in the awkward drone of an ignorant person trying to read aloud out of a book, she kept telling over and over again the story of a meek and swarthy little boy who had lived, laughed and died; and with this bookish singsong she resurrected his eyes and his smile and his oldfashioned manner of speech.

“ ‘Vassya,’ I say to him, ‘why do you tease kitty? Don’t tease her, dear. God told us to be merciful to all⁠—to the little horsies, and to the kittens and to the little chicks.’ And he lifts up his sweet eyes to me, the darling, and says: ‘And why isn’t kittie merciful to little birdies? See the pigeons have raised their little ones, and kittie eats up the pigeons, and the little birdies are calling, calling for their mamma.’ ”

And Father Vassily listened meekly and hopelessly, while outside, under the closed shutters, amid burdocks, nettles and thistles, little Nastya sat sprawling on the ground, and played sulkily with her doll. And always her play was this: dollie refused to mind and was punished and she twisted dollie’s arms till she thought they hurt and whipped her with a twig of nettles.

When Father Vassily had first found his wife in a state of inebriety, and from her rebelliously agitated, bitterly exulting face had realized that this thing had come to stay, he shriveled up and the next moment burst cut in a fit of subdued, senseless laughter, rubbing his hot dry hands. And a long time he laughed, a long time he kept rubbing his hands; he strove to restrain this desire to laugh, which was so obviously out of place, and turning aside from his sobbing wife, he snickered softly into his fist like a naughty school boy. Then just as abruptly he turned serious, his jaws snapped like metal; but not a word of comfort could he utter to the hysterical woman, not a caressing word could he find for her. But when she had fallen asleep, the priest bent down, making three times the sign of the cross over her. Then he went cut and found little Nastya in the garden, coldly patted her on the head and stalked out into the fields.

For a long time he followed a little path through the rye which was standing fairly high in the field and looked down into the soft white dust which here and there retained the impress of heels and the outline of someone’s bare feet. The sheaves nearest to the path were crushed to the ground, some lying across the path, and the grain was crushed, blackened and flattened.

Where the path turned, Father Vassily stopped. Ahead of him and all around him swayed the full grain on slender stalks, overhead was the shoreless blazing sky of July grown white with the heat, and nothing more: not a tree, not a hut, not a man. Alone he stood, lost in the dense field of grain, alone before the face of Heaven⁠—set high above him and blazing.

Father Vassily lifted up his eyes⁠—they were little eyes, sunken and black as coal; they were aglow with the bright reflection of the heavenly flame, and he pressed his hands to his breast and tried to say something. The iron jaws quivered, but did not yield. Gnashing his teeth the priest forced them apart, and with this movement of his lips that resembled a convulsive yawn, loud and distinct came the words:

“I⁠—believe!”

Unechoed in the wilderness of sky and of fields was lost this wailing orison that so madly resembled a challenge. And as though contradicting someone, as though passionately pleading with someone and warning him, he repeated once more:

“I⁠—believe.”

And returning home, once more, speck by speck, grain by grain, he fell to the work of restoring his wrecked anthill: he watched the milking of cows, with his own hands he combed Nastya’s long and coarse hair, and despite the late hour he drove ten versts into the country for the district physician in order to seek his advice with regard to his wife’s ailment. And the doctor prescribed her some drops.

II

No one liked Father Vassily, neither his parishioners, nor the vestry of the church. He intoned the service awkwardly, without decorum: his voice was dry and indistinct, and he either hurried so that the deacon had a hard time to keep up with him, or he fell behind without rime or reason. He was not covetous, but he accepted money and donations so clumsily that all believed him to be greedy and scoffed at him behind his back. And everybody knew that he was unlucky in his private life and avoided him, considering it a poor omen to meet him or to talk with him. His Saint’s Day12 was celebrated on November the twenty-eighth. He had invited many to dinner, and in compliance with his ceremonious invitation everyone promised to come, but only the vestrymen made their appearance, and of the better parishioners not a soul attended. And he was humiliated before the vestrymen, but the Popadya felt the insult most keenly, for the delicacies and wines which she had ordered from the city had to go to waste.

“No one even cares to come and see us,” she said, sober and downcast, when the last of their few guests had departed, noisy and drunken, after a senseless gorging, having paid no regard to the rare vintage of wines or to the quality of the food.

But it was the head of the vestry, Ivan Porfyritch Koprov, who treated the priest worse than the rest of the parishioners. He openly exhibited his contempt for the luckless man, and when the Popadya’s periodical lapses into appalling inebriety had become a public scandal, he refused to kiss the priest’s hand. And the good-natured deacon tried vainly to reason with him.

“Shame on thee. It is not the man, but his holy office that must be respected.”

But Ivan Porfyritch stubbornly refused to dissociate the office from the man, and replied:

“He is a worthless man. He can neither keep himself in order, nor his wife. Is it right for a spiritual adviser’s wife to persist in drunkenness, without shame or conscience? Let my wife try and go on a spree, I’d stop her quickly.”

The deacon shook his head reproachfully and mentioned the long-suffering of Job, how God had loved him, but turned him over to Satan to be tried, but later rewarded him an hundredfold for all his sufferings. But Ivan Porfyritch smiled scornfully into his beard and without the slightest compunction cut short the disagreeable admonition.

“Don’t tell me, I know. Job, so to speak, was a righteous man, a holy man, but what is this one? Where is his righteousness? Rather remember, deacon, the old proverb: God marks a rogue. There is sound sense in that proverb.”

“Wait, the priest will get even with thee, for refusing to kiss his hand. He’ll drive thee out of the church.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“All right, we’ll see.”

And they bet a gallon of cherry brandy whether the priest would expel him or not. The vestry man won; next Sunday he turned his back on the priest with an insolent air, and the hand which the priest had extended to be kissed, burnt brown it was from the sun⁠—remained desolately suspended in midair, and Father Vassily flushed a deep purple, but did not say a word.

And after this incident which was much talked about in the village, Ivan Porfyritch became still more firmly convinced that the priest was a bad and an unworthy man and began to incite the villagers to complain to the bishop and to ask for another parish priest.

Ivan Porfyritch himself was a man of wealth, very fortunate in all things, and enjoyed general esteem. He had an impressive face, with firm round cheeks and an immense black beard, and his whole body was covered with a growth of dense black hair, particularly his legs and his chest, and he believed that hairiness was a sign of great good luck. He believed in his luck as firmly as he believed in God, and considered himself an elect among the people; he was proud, self-reliant and invariably in good spirits. In a terrible railroad wreck in which a multitude of people had perished, he merely lost a cap which had been trampled into the mire.

“And it was an old one at that!” he was wont to add with much self-satisfaction, evidently considering this incident an eloquent proof of his merits.

He regarded all men as rogues and fools, and knew no mercy towards either variety. It was his habit with his own hands to strangle the pups, of whom his black setter Gipsy presented him yearly a generous litter; only the strongest one among them he suffered to live for breeding purposes, though he willingly distributed some of the others to those who wanted a dog, for he considered dogs to be useful animals. In forming opinions Ivan Porfyritch was rash and unreasonable, but he easily departed from them, without noticing his inconsistencies; yet his actions were uniformly firm and resolute and only rarely erroneous.

And all this made the head of the vestry a terrible and an extraordinary personage in the eyes of the hunted priest. When they met, he was the first to raise his broad-rimmed hat, which he did with indecorous haste, and as he walked away, he felt that his gait grew faster and more shuffling, revealing itself as the gait of a man who was scared and ashamed, and his scrawny legs were tangled in the folds of his cassock. It seemed as though his very fate, cruel and enigmatic, was personified in that immense black beard, in those hairy hands, and in that resolute, straight stride, and if he did not crumple up and slink away and hide behind his four walls, this menacing monster would crush him like an ant.

And whatever pertained to Ivan Porfyritch or belonged to him, aroused the eager interest of the priest, so that some times for days at a stretch he could think of nothing else but of the churchwarden, his wife, his children, his wealth. Working with the peasants in the fields, (in his coarse, tarred boots and in his cheap working blouse he greatly resembled an humble peasant) Father Vassily would often turn his face to the village, and the first sight that greeted his eyes alongside of the church, was the red iron roof of the churchwarden’s two-story house. Then behind the greying green of wind-wrecked willows he traced with difficulty the outline of the weather-beaten shingle roof of his own little home; and the sight of these two so contrasting roofs filled the heart of the priest with the anguish of hopelessness.

One feast day the Popadya returned from the church in tears and told her husband that Ivan Porfyritch had grossly insulted her. As she was making her way to her place, he remarked from behind the lectern, loudly enough for the whole congregation to hear:

“This drunken wench ought not to be allowed in the church at all. She’s a disgrace!”

As the Popadya sobbingly related this incident to her husband, Father Vassily observed with horrible and merciless clearness how she had aged and come down in the four years which had passed since Vassya’s death. She was still young, but silver threads were running through her hair, the teeth once so white had turned black, and her eyes were baggy.

She was now a confirmed smoker, and it was painful to watch her puffing a cigarette which she held in a clumsy, feminine fashion between two rigidly extended fingers. She smoked and wept and the cigarette trembled between her lips that were swollen with sobbing.

“Why, oh why, oh Lord?” she kept repeating in anguish, and with the intentness of stupor she gazed through the window against which pattered the chill drops of a September rainstorm. The panes were dim with water, and the birch outside, heavy with rain drops, seemed to sway back and forth with the shadowy deliquescence of a specter. In their efforts to save fuel, they had not yet started heating the house, and the air in the room was damp and chilly and almost as uncomfortable as outdoors.

“What can you do with him, Nastenka?”13 retorted the priest rubbing his dry warm hands. “We must bear it.”

“Lord, Lord, is there not a soul to take my part?” wailed the Popadya, and in the corner gazed dry and immobile the wolfish eyes of skulking little Nastya through a hedge of coarse and unkempt hair.

The Popadya was drunk before bedtime, and then ensued that appalling, abominable, piteous scene which Father Vassily could never thereafter recall without a sense of chaste horror and of consuming, unbearable shame. In the morbid gloom of tightly closed shutters, amid the monstrous visions born of alcohol, in the wake of obstinate wails for her lost firstborn, his wife had conceived the insane notion of bringing a new son into the world. To resurrect his sweet smile, to resurrect those eyes that once had sparkled with benign radiance, to bring back his calm and sensible speech: to resurrect the lad himself, as he had lived in the glory of his sinless childhood, as he had appeared on that horrible day in July when the sun blazed so brightly and the treacherous river glistened so blindingly. And consumed with a frenzy of hope, all beauteous and hideous with the flames that had enwrapped her, the Popadya stormily demanded her husband’s caresses, pleaded for them with piteous humility. She coyly primped herself, she coquetted with him, but the expression of horror never passed from his face. She strove with the energy of passionate anguish to become again as tender and desirable as she had been ten years back, and she tried to assume a shy, maidenly look, whispering coy, girlish words, but her liquor-lamed tongue refused to obey her, and through her shyly lowered eyelashes ever more luridly and obviously flashed the flame of passionate desire, while the swarthy face of her husband remained transfixed with horror. He had covered his burning head with his hands, weakly whispering:

“Don’t! Don’t!”

And she sank to her knees and hoarsely pleaded:

“Have pity on me! Give me back my Vassya! Give him back to me, priest! I say, give him back to me, curse you!”

And the autumnal rain gusts beat fiercely against the tightly closed shutters, and the stormy night heaved deep and painful sighs.

Cut off from world and life by the walls and the curtain of night, they seemed to be whirling in the throes of a frenzied labyrinthic nightmare, and around them swirled wails and curses that would not die. Madness stood guard at the door; the searing air was its breath; and its eyes the lurid glare of the oil lamp stifling in the maw of a soot-grimed globe.

“You will not? You will not?” cried the Popadya, and with maniacal yearning for motherhood she tore off her raiment, shamelessly baring her body, ardent and terrible like a Bacchante, piteous and pathetic like a mother mourning for her child. “You will not? Then before God I tell you I’ll go out into the street. I will throw myself on the neck of the first man I meet. Give me back my Vassya, curse you!”

And her passion vanquished the chaste-hearted priest. To the weird moaning of the autumnal storm, to the sound of her frenzied babble, life itself, the eternal liar, seemed to bare her dark and mysterious loins, and through his darkening consciousness flashed like a gleam of distant lightning a monstrous conception: of a miraculous resurrection, of some far-off miraculously hazardous chance. And to the demoniac passion of the Popadya, heart-chaste and shamefaced, he responded with a passion as frenzied, wherein all things blended: the glory of hope, and the fervor of prayer, and the boundless despair of a great malefactor.

In the dead of night, when the Popadya had fallen into a heavy sleep, Father Vassily took his hat and his stick, and without stopping to dress, in a shabby nainsook cassock went out into the fields. The storm had subsided. The vapory drizzle had spread a moist and chilly film over the rainsoaked earth. The sky was as black as the earth, and the night of autumn breathed utter desolation. Within its gloomy maw the man had vanished, leaving no trace. Once his stick knocked against a boulder that chanced to lie in its path, then all was still, and a lasting silence ensued. A lifeless vapory mist stifled each timid sound in its icy embrace. The moribund foliage did not stir, not a voice, not a cry, not a groan was heard. Long lasted the silence⁠—and it was the silence of death.

And far beyond the village, away from any human habitation, an invisible voice pierced the gloom. It was a voice that was broken, choking and hoarse, like the moaning of infinite loneliness. But the words it spoke were as clear as celestial fire:

“I⁠—believe!” said the invisible voice. And in it were mingled menace and prayer, warning and hope.

III

In the spring the Popadya knew that she would be a mother; all through the summer she abstained from liquor, and a peace, serene and joyous, was enthroned in Father Vassily’s household. But the invisible foe still dealt his blows: now the twelve-pood14 hog which they had fattened for the market took sick and died; now little Nastya broke out all over her body in a malignant rash and refused to respond to treatment. But all these blows were borne lightly, and in the innermost recesses of her heart the Popadya even secretly rejoiced thereat: she was still doubtful of her great good fortune, and all these calamities seemed to be a premium which she was glad to pay for its assurance. She felt that if the prize hog fattened at such expense had died on her hands, if Nastya ailed so persistently, if anything else went wrong and caused repining, then no one would dare to lay a finger on her coming son or to harm him. But as for him, why, she would give up not only the whole household and her little daughter Nastya, but even her own body and soul would she gladly yield to that relentless unseen one who clamored for continual sacrifices.

She had improved in looks and ceased even to fear Ivan Porfyritch himself, and as she walked to her accustomed place in church she proudly paraded her rounded form and looked about with daring and self-reliant glances. And lest she should harm the babe in her womb, she had stopped all housework and was passing daily long hours in the neighboring fiscal forest, amusing herself by picking mushrooms. She was in mortal terror of the ordeal of birth, and resorted to fortune telling with mushrooms, trying to forecast whether the birth would pass off favorably or not; and mostly the answer was favorable. Sometimes under the impenetrable green dome of lofty branches, in some dark and fragrant bed of last season’s leaves, she gathered a small family of little white mushrooms, all huddled together, darkheaded and naive, and resembling a brood of little children, and their appearance evoked in her keen pangs of tenderness and affection. With that saintly smile peculiar to people who in solitude yield themselves up to truly pure and noble meditation, she cautiously dug the fibrous ashen-gray soil around the roots, and seating herself on the ground beside her mushrooms, gazed at them for a long time caressingly, a little pale from the greenish shadows of the forest, but fair to look upon, gentle and serene. And then she rose and walked on with the cautious waddling gait of a woman on the eve of childbirth, and the ancient forest, the hiding place of numberless little mushrooms, seemed to her a thing of life, wisdom and goodness. Once she took Nastya along for company, but the child capered, frolicked and raced through the bushes like a boisterous wolf-pup and interfered with her mother’s thoughts; and she never took her again.

And the winter was passing quietly and happily. She spent her evenings busily sewing a multitude of tiny shirts and swaddling cloths, or pensively stroking the linen with her white fingers upon which the oil lamp threw its bright glow.

She smoothed the soft fabric and stroked it with her hand, as though caressing it, thinking the while intimate thoughts of her own, the wonderful thoughts of motherhood, and in the blue reflection of the lampshade her beautiful face seemed to the priest as though illumined by some sweet and gentle radiance that came from within. Fearing by some incautious movement to disturb her beautiful and happy dreams, Father Vassily softly paced about the room, and his feet, clad in felt slippers, touched the floor gently and noiselessly. He let his gaze dwell now on the living room, cozy and agreeable like the face of a cherished friend, now on the figure of his wife, and all seemed well, just like in other people’s homes, and everything about him breathed peace, profound and serene. And his soul was peaceful and smiling, for he neither saw, nor felt that from somewhere there had fallen the diaphanous shadow of great grief and was now silently resting on his forehead, somewhere between his eyebrows. For even in these days of rest and peace a stern and mysterious fate was hovering over his life.

On the eve of Epiphany, the Popadya gave birth to a boy and he was named Vassily. His head was large and his legs were thin and little, and there was something strangely vacant and insensate in the immobile stare of his globe-shaped eyes. For the space of three years after the child’s birth the priest and his wife lived ’twixt fears, doubts and hopes, but when three years had passed it became evident that little Vassya had been born an idiot.

Conceived in madness, he had come into the world a madman.

IV

Another year passed in the benumbed stupefaction of grief, but when they emerged from this comatose state and began to look about, they discovered that above their thoughts and their lives sat enthroned the monstrous image of the idiot. The household routine went on as in olden days; they built their fires, they discussed their daily affairs, but something new and dreadful had come into their lives: no one had any real interest in life, and all things were going to pieces. The farm hands loafed, refused to obey orders, and frequently gave notice without any apparent cause, and those who were hired in their place soon fell into the same queer state of indifference and restlessness and commenced to be insolent. Dinner was served either too late or too early, and someone was always missing from the table: either the Popadya, or little Nastya, or Father Vassily himself. From some unfathomable sources there appeared an abundance of tattered garments: the Popadya kept saying that she must darn her husband’s socks, and she even fussed with them, but the socks remained unmended and Father Vassily was footsore. And at night everyone in the house tossed about restlessly, tormented by vermin which came crawling from all crevices, and shamelessly paraded upon the walls, and try as they might, nothing seemed able to stop their loathsome invasion.

And wherever they went, whatever they undertook, they could not for a moment forget, that there in the darkened room sat one, unexpected and monstrous, the child of madness. When they left the house to go outdoors, they tried hard to keep from turning around or from glancing back, but something compelled them to glance back, and then it seemed to them that the framehouse itself in which they dwelt was conscious of some terrible change within: it stood there squat and huddled, as though in an attitude of listening, listening to that misshapen and dreadful thing that was contained within its depths, and all its bulging windows, its tightly shut doors seemed barely able to suppress an outcry of mortal anguish.

The Popadya went frequently visiting and spent hours at a stretch in the house of the deacon’s wife, but even there she failed to find rest, as though from the idiot’s side came forth threads of cobweb thinness⁠—and stretched out towards her, binding her to him indissolubly and for all eternity. And though she were to flee to the ends of the earth, though she were to hide behind the high walls of a nunnery, even though she were to seek escape in death, then into the very gloom of her grave those weblike threads would pursue her and enmesh her with fears and anguish.

And even their nights lacked peace: the faces of the sleepers seemed stolid, but within their skulls, in their dreams and waking nightmares the monstrous world of madness returned to life, and its lord was this same mysterious and dreadful image, half-child and half-brute.

He was four years old but had not yet learned to walk and could utter but one word: “give”; he was spiteful and obstinate, and if anything was denied him he screamed with piercing, ferocious animal cries and stretched out his hands with fingers that were rapaciously curved. And in his habits he was as filthy as an animal, performing his bodily functions wherever he chanced to be, and it was agonizing to attend to him: with the cunning of malice he awaited the moment when his mother’s or sister’s hair came within his reach, and then he tenaciously clutched at it, tearing it out by the roots in handfuls. Once he bit Nastya, but she flung him back on the bed and beat him long and mercilessly, as though he were not human, not a child, but a mere piece of spiteful flesh, and after this beating he developed a fondness for biting and snapped menacingly, showing his teeth like a dog.

It was also a difficult task to feed him: greedy and impatient, he could not gauge his movements, and would upset the dish, choking as he tried to swallow and wrathfully stretching his curving fingers towards the feeder’s hair. And his appearance was repulsive and horrible: on a pair of narrow, almost baby-like shoulders rested a small skull with an immense, immobile, broad face, the size of an adult’s. There was something disquieting and terrifying in this monstrous incongruity between face and body, and it seemed as though a child had for some reason put on an immense and repulsive mask.

And the tortured Popadya commenced to drink as in the days of old. She drank heavily, to unconsciousness and delirium, but even mighty alcohol could not release her from the iron circle in the centre of which reigned the horrible and monstrous image of the semichild, semi-beast. And as of yore she sought to find in liquor burning sorrowful memories of the perished firstborn, but the memories refused to come, and the lifeless insensate void yielded neither image nor sound. With every fibre of her inflamed brain she strove to resurrect the sweet face of the little gentle lad; she sang his favorite ditties; she imitated his smile; she pictured to herself his agony as he was choking and strangling in the turbid waters; and she felt his nearness, felt the flames of the great and passionately desired grief blaze up within her heart, but with abrupt swiftness⁠—unperceived by eye or ear⁠—the conjured vision, the longed for grief, vanished into nothingness, and out of the chilling lifeless void the monstrous, motionless mask of the idiot was staring into her eyes. And she felt as though she had just buried her little Vassya, buried him anew, interring him deeply in the bowels of the earth, and she longed to shatter her faithless head in the inmost depths of which so insolently reigned an alien and abominable image.

Terror-stricken she tossed about the room, calling her husband:

“Vassily! Vassily! Come⁠—quick!”

Father Vassily came and without opening his mouth sat down in a far corner of the room; and he was unconcerned and still, as though there had been no outcry, no madness, no terror. And his eyes were invisible; but under the heavy arch of his eyebrows yawned the immobile black of two sunken spots, and his haggard face resembled a skeleton’s skull. Leaning his chin on his scrawny arm, he seemed congealed in torpid silence and immobility, and remained in this attitude until the Popadya quieted down by degrees. Then with the intense care of a maniac she painstakingly barricaded the door which led into the idiot’s room. She dragged in front of it every table and chair she could find, piling cushions and clothing upon them, and still the barricade seemed too frail to suit her. And with the strength of drunkenness she wrenched a ponderous antique chest of drawers from its accustomed place, and scratching the floor in so doing she dragged it towards the door.

“Move the chair aside,” she called to her husband all out of breath, and he rose in silence, cleared the place for her and once more resumed his seat in the corner.

For a moment the Popadya appeared to regain her composure and sank into a chair, breathing heavily and holding her hand to her breast, but in the next instant she sprang to her feet again, and flinging back her disheveled hair to release her ears she listened in terror to the sounds which her morbid imagination seemed to conjure up beyond the wall:

“Hear it, Vassily? Hear it?”

The two black spots gazed upon her unmoved and a stolid distant voice answered:

“There’s nothing there. He is sleeping. Calm yourself, Nastya.”

The Popadya smiled the glad and radiant smile of a comforted child, and irresolutely sat down on the edge cf the chair.

“Do you mean it? Is he sleeping? Did you see it yourself? Don’t lie, it’s a sin to tell lies.”

“I saw him. He is asleep.”

“But who is talking back there?”

“There is no one there. You only imagine it.”

And the Popadya was so pleased that she laughed out loud, shaking her head in amusement and warding off something with an uncertain movement of her hand: as though some ill-disposed joker out of deviltry had tried to frighten her and she had seen through the joke and was now laughing at him. But like a stone that falls into a fathomless abyss her laughter fell into space without evoking an echo and died right there in loneliness, and her lips were still curved in a smile while the chill of new terror appeared in her eyes. And such stillness reigned in the room that it seemed as though no one had ever uttered a laugh there; from the scattered pillows, from the overturned chairs, so queer to look upon in their upset state, from the ponderous chest of drawers so clumsily skulking in its unwonted position, from all sides there stared upon her the greedy expectancy of some dire misfortune, of some unknown horrors which no human had ever gone through before. She turned to her husband⁠—in the dark corner she saw a dimly grey figure, lanky, erect and shadowy like a spectre; she leaned over: and a face peered at her, but it was not with its eyes that it peered; these were hidden by the dark shadow of the eyebrows; it seemed to peer at her with the white spots of its haggard cheekbones and of the forehead. She was breathing fast⁠—with loud, terrified gasps, and softly she moaned:

“Vassya, I am afraid of you! You’re so strange⁠ ⁠… Come here, come to the light!”

Father Vassily obediently moved to the table, and the warm glow of the lamp fell upon his face, but failed to evoke a responsive warmth. Yet his face was calm and was free from fear, and this sufficed her. Bringing her lips close to his ear, she whispered:

“Priest, do you hear me, priest? Do you remember Vassya⁠—that other Vassya?”

“No.”

“Ah!” joyously exclaimed the Popadya. “You don’t? I don’t either. Are you scared, priest? Are you? Scared?”

“No.”

“Then why do you groan when you sleep? Why do you groan?”

“Just so. I suppose I am sick.”

The Popadya laughed angrily.

“You? Sick? You⁠—sick?” with her finger she prodded his bony, but broad and solid chest. “Why do you lie?”

Father Vassily was silent. The Popadya looked wrathfully into his cold face, with a beard that had long known no contact with the trimming shear and protruded from his sunken cheeks in transparent clumps, and she shrugged her shoulders with loathing.

“Ugh! What a fright you have become! Hateful, mean, clammy like a frog. Ugh! Am I to blame that he was born like that? Tell me. What are you thinking about? Why are you forever thinking, thinking, thinking?”

Father Vassily maintained silence, and with an attentive, irritating gaze studied the bloodless and distorted features of his wife. And when the last sounds of her incoherent speech died away, gruesome, unbroken stillness gripped her head and breast as though with iron clamps and seemed to squeeze from her occasional hurried and unexpected gasps:

“And I know⁠ ⁠… I know⁠ ⁠… I know, priest.⁠ ⁠…”

“What do you know?”

“I know what are you thinking about.” The Popadya paused and shrunk from her husband in terror. “You⁠—don’t believe⁠ ⁠… in God. That’s what!”

And having uttered this she realized how dreadful was what she had said, and a pitiful pleading smile parted her lips that were swollen and scarred with biting, burnt with liquor and red as blood. And she looked up gladly, when the priest, with blanching cheeks, sharply and didactically replied:

“That is not true. I believe in God. Think before you speak.”

And silence once more, stillness once more, but now there was in this silence something soothing, something that seemed to envelop her like a wave of warm water. And lowering her eyes, she shyly pleaded:

“May I have a little drink, Vassya? It will help me to go to sleep, it’s getting late,” and she poured out a quarter of a glassful of liquor, adding irresolutely more and more to it, and draining the glass to the bottom with little, continuous gulps, with which women drink liquor. And the glow of warmth returned to her breast, she now longed for gaiety, noise, lights and for the sound of loud, human voices.

“Do you know what we’ll do, Vassya? Let’s play cards, let’s play ‘Fools.’15 Call Nastya. That will be nice. I love to play ‘Fools.’ Call her, Vassya, dear. I’ll give you a kiss for it.”

“It is late. She is sleeping.”

The Popadya stamped the floor with her foot. “Wake her. Go!”

Nastya came in, slender and tall like her father, with large clumsy hands, that had grown coarse with toil. Shivering with the cold, she had wrapped a short shawl about her shoulders and was counting the greasy deck of cards without emitting a sound.

Then silently they sat down to a boisterously funny card game⁠—amid the chaos of overturned furniture, in the dead of night, when all the world had long sought the oblivion of sleep⁠—men, and beasts and fields. The Popadya joked and laughed and pilfered trumps out of the deck, and it seemed to her that the whole world was laughing and jesting, but the moment the last sound of her words died in the air, the same threatening and unbroken stillness closed over her, stifling her. And it was terrible to look upon the two pairs of mute and scrawny arms that moved slowly and silently over the table, as though these arms alone were alive and the people who owned them did not exist. Then shivering, as though with a crazedly drunken expectation of something supernatural, she looked up above the table⁠—two cold⁠—pallid⁠—sullen faces loomed desolately in the darkness and swayed back and forth in a queer and wordless whirl⁠—two cold, two sullen faces. Mumbling something, the Popadya gulped down another glassful of liquor, and once more the scrawny hands moved noiselessly, and the stillness began to hum, and someone else, a fourth one made his appearance behind the table. Someone’s rapaciously curved fingers were shuffling the cards, then they shifted to her body, running over her knees like spiders, crawling up towards her throat.

“Who’s here?” she cried out leaping to her feet and surprised to find the others standing up and watching her with terrified glances. Yes there were only two of them: her husband and Nastya.

“Calm yourself, Nastya. We’re here. There’s no one else here.”

“And he?”

“He is sleeping.”

The Popadya sat down and for a moment everything stopped rocking and slipped back into place. And Father Vassily’s face looked kind.

“Vassya! And what will happen to us when he starts to walk?”

It was little Nastya who replied:

“I was giving him his supper tonight and he was moving his legs.”

“It’s not so,” said the priest, but his words sounded dead and distant, and all at once everything started to circle in a frenzied whirl, lights and gloom began to dance, and eyeless spectres nodded to her from every side. They rocked to and fro, blindly they crept upon her, tapping her with curved fingers, tearing her garments, strangling her by the throat, plucking her hair and dragging her somewhere away. But she clutched the floor with broken finger nails and screamed out loud.

The Popadya was beating her head against the floor, striving impetuously to flee somewhere and tearing her clothes. And so powerful was she in the raging frenzy which seized her that Father Vassily and Nastya could not handle her unaided, and they were forced to summon the cook and a laborer. It required the combined efforts of all four to overpower her; then they tied her arms and legs with towels and laid her on the bed, and Father Vassily remained with her alone. He stood motionless by the bedside and watched the convulsive writhings and twitchings of her body and the tears that were flowing from beneath the tightly shut eyelids. In a voice that was hoarse with screaming she pleaded:

“Help! Help!”

Wildly piteous and terrible was this desolate cry for help, and there was no response. Darkness, dull and dispassionate, enveloped it like a shroud, and in this garment of the dead the cry was dead. The overturned stools were kicking up their legs absurdly, and their bottoms blushed with shame. The ancient chest of drawers stood awry and distracted, and the night was silent. And ever fainter, ever more pitiful sounded this lonely cry for help:

“Help! I suffer! Help! Vassya, my darling Vassya.⁠ ⁠…”

Father Vassily never stirred from the spot, but with a cool and oddly calm gesture, he raised up his hands and clasped his head even as his wife had done a half hour before, and as calmly and deliberately he brought them down again, and between his fingers trembled threads of black and greying hair.

V

Among people, mid their affairs and conversations, Father Vassily was so evidently a man apart, so unfathomably alien to all, that he did not seem human at all, but a moving cerement. He did whatever others did, he talked, he worked, he ate and drank, but it seemed at times as though he merely imitated others, while he personally lived in a different world that was inaccessible to any. And all who saw him asked themselves: what is this man thinking about? so manifest on his every movement was the impress of deep thought. It was seen in his ponderous gait, in the deliberateness of his halting speech, when between two spoken words yawned black chasms of hidden and distant thought; it hung like a heavy film over his eyes, and nebulous was his distant gaze that faintly glowed beneath his shaggy overhanging eyebrows. Sometimes it was necessary to speak to him twice before he heard and responded. And sometimes he neglected to greet others, and because of this some accounted him haughty. Thus once he failed to greet Ivan Porfyritch. The churchwarden was astounded for a moment, then hurried back and overtook the priest who was walking slowly.

“You’ve grown proud, Father! Won’t even greet a man!” he said mockingly. Father Vassily looked up at him in surprise, blushed a little and apologized:

“Pardon me, Ivan Porfyritch, I did not notice you.” The churchwarden attempted to look down upon him, measuring him with a look of censure, but for the first time he realized that the priest was the taller of the two, although the churchwarden was reputed to be the tallest man in the parish. And the churchwarden found something agreeable in this discovery, for unexpectedly to himself he invited the priest to call on him:

“Come and see me some day, Father.”

And several times he glanced back, in order to size up the receding figure of the priest. Even Father Vassily was pleased, but only for a moment. He had hardly taken two steps, when the burden of persistent thought, heavy and hard like a millstone, succeeded in stifling the memory of the churchwarden’s kindly words and crushed the quiet and bashful smile that was on its way to his lips. And he lapsed again into thought⁠—thinking of God and of people and of the mysterious fate of human life.

And it happened during confession; fettered by his immovable thoughts Father Vassily was coldly putting the customary queries to some old woman, when he was suddenly struck by an odd thing which he had never noticed before: there he stood calmly prying into the innermost secret thoughts and feelings of another, and that other looked up to him with awe and told him the truth⁠—that truth which it is not given to anyone else to know. And the wrinkled countenance of the old woman assumed a peculiar expression, it became brightly radiant, as though the darkness of night reigned all around, but the light of day was falling on that face alone. And suddenly he interrupted her and asked:

“Art thou telling the truth, woman?”

But what the old woman answered he heard not. The mist had departed from before his face, with flushing eyes⁠—as though a bandage had fallen from them⁠—he was gazing in amazement upon the face of the woman, and it seemed to him to bear a peculiar expression: clearly outlined upon it was some mysterious truth of God and of life. On the old woman’s head, beneath an openwork kerchief, Father Vassily noticed a parting line, a narrow grey strip of skin running through hair that was carefully combed on either side of it. And this parting line, this absurd care for an ugly, aged head that nobody else had any use for, was likewise a truth: the sorrowful truth of the ever lonely, ever sorrowful human existence. And it was then, for the first time in his life of forty years, that Father Vassily became aware with his eyes and with his hearing and with every one of his senses that beside him there were other creatures on earth⁠—creatures that were like him, having their own lives, their own sorrows, their own fates.

“And hast thou children?” hurriedly he inquired, interrupting the old woman again.

“They’re all dead, Father!”

“All dead?” inquired the priest in surprise.

“All dead,” she repeated and her eyes became bloodshot.

“And how dost thou live?” inquired Father Vassily in amazement.

“How should I live?” cried the woman. “I live by alms.”

Stretching out his neck, Father Vassily from the height of his immense stature riveted his gaze upon the old woman but did not utter a sound. And his long, scraggy face, fringed by his disheveled hair, seemed so strange and terrible to the woman that she was chilled to the tips of the fingers which she was holding clasped before her breast.

“Go now,” sounded a stern voice above her.

Strange days commenced now for Father Vassily, and something unwonted was going on in his mind; hitherto only this had been; there had existed a tiny earth whereon lived only the enormous figure of Father Vassily. Other people did not seem to exist. But now the earth had grown, had become unfathomably big, peopled all over with creatures like Father Vassily. There was a multitude of them, each living an individual existence, suffering individual sufferings, hoping and doubting individually, and among them Father Vassily felt like a lonely tree in a field about which suddenly an immense and trackless forest had grown. Gone was the solitude; and with it the sun and the bright desert distances, and the gloom of the night had grown in intensity.

All the people gave him truth. When he did not hear their truthful utterances, he saw their homes and their faces: and upon homes and faces was engraved the inexorable truth of life. He sensed this truth, but he was unable to grasp and name it and he eagerly sought new faces and new words. Few came to confession during the fast days of Advent, but he kept them in the confessional for hours at a time, examining each one searchingly, insistently, stealing himself into the most intimate nooks of the soul where man himself looks in but rarely and with awe. He did not know what he was searching for and he mercilessly plowed up everything⁠—that the soul rests on and lives by. In his questions he was pitiless and shameless, and each thought which he conceived was a stranger to fear. But it did not take him long to realize that all these people who were telling him the whole truth, as though he were God, were themselves ignorant of the truth of life. Back of their myriads of trifling, severed, hostile truths he dimly saw the shadowy outlines of the one great and all-solving truth. Everyone was conscious of it, everyone longed for it, yet none could define it with a human word⁠—that overwhelming truth of God and of people, and of the mysterious fates cf human life.

And Father Vassily himself began to sense it, and he sensed it now a despair and frenzied fear, now as pity, wrath and hope. And as heretofore, he was stern and cold to look upon, while his, mind and his heart were already melting in the fire of unknown truth and a new life was entering his old body.

On the Tuesday of the week preceding Christmas, Father Vassily had returned from the church rather late. In the dark cold vestibule someone’s hand arrested him and a hoarse voice whispered:

“Vassily, don’t go inside.”

By the note of terror in her voice he recognized his wife and stopped.

“I’ve been waiting an hour for you, I’m all frozen,” and her teeth chattered with the cold.

“What has happened? Come.”

“No. No. Listen, Nastya! I came in and found her standing before the mirror, making faces just like him, waving her hands like him.”

“Come.”

By main force he dragged the resisting Popadya into the living room, and there, looking around in fear, she told him more. While on her way into the living room to water the plants she had found Nastya, standing still before the mirror, and in the mirror she had seen the reflection of her face, not as it always looked, but oddly idiotic, with a savagely contorted mouth and squinting eyes. Then, still in silence, Nastya raised up her hands, and curving her fingers convulsively like the idiot, she stretched them out towards her own reflection in the mirror⁠—and everything was so still, and all this was so terrible and unreal that the Popadya screamed and dropped her water pot. And Nastya ran away. And row she did not know whether it had really happened or her own imagination had been playing a trick on her.

“Call Nastya and step out!” ordered the priest.

Nastya came and stopped on the threshold. Her face was long and scraggy like her father’s, and when she was talking she copied his posture: her neck extended, inclined a little to one side, looking sullenly askance from beneath her eyebrows. And she held her hands behind her back just as he was in the habit of doing.

“Nastya, why do you do these things?” firmly, but calmly inquired Father Vassily.

“What things?”

“Mother saw you near the mirror. Why did you do that? He is sick.”

“No, he is not sick, he pulls my hair.”

“Why do you imitate him? Do you like a face like his?”

Nastya stood sullenly with downcast eyes.

“I don’t know,” she answered. And then with a queer look of candor she looked into her father’s eyes and resolutely added: “Yes, I like it.”

Father Vassily looked at her searchingly but did not say a word.

“Don’t you like it?” semi-affirmatively inquired Nastya.

“No.”

“Then why do you keep thinking about him? I would kill him if I were you.”

And it seemed to Father Vassily that even then she was making a face like the idiot: something dull and brutish flitted over her cheeks and drew her eyes together.

“Go!” he sternly commanded. But Nastya did not move and with the same queerly candid expression she kept on gazing straight into her father’s eyes. And her face no longer resembled the repulsive mask of the idiot.

“But you never think of me,” she observed simply, as though expressing an abstract truth.

And then, in the gathering gloom of the wintry dusk, there occurred between these two⁠—who were so like, yet so unlike one another⁠—a brief and curious dialog:

“You are my daughter. Why did I know nothing about it? Do you know?”

“No.”

“Come and kiss me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Don’t you love me?”

“No, I love nobody.”

“Even as I,” and the priest’s nostrils extended with repressed laughter.

“Don’t you love anybody either? And how about mama? She drinks so much. I’d kill her too.”

“And me?”

“No, not you. You talk to me at least. I feel sorry for you sometimes. It must be very hard, don’t you know, when your son is a silly. He is terribly mean.”

“You don’t begin to know how mean he is. He eats cockroaches alive. I gave him a dozen and he ate them all up.”

Without moving away from the door she sat down on the corner of a chair, cautiously, like a scullery maid, folded her hands on her knees and waited.

“It’s a weary life, Nastya,” pensively said the priest.

Unhurriedly and importantly she agreed with him:

“It certainly is.”

“And do you pray to God?”

“Of course I do. Only at night, in the morning there is too much work, I have no time. I must sweep, make up beds, put things in order, wash the dishes, get tea for Vasska,16 serve it to him, you know yourself how much work that is.”

“Just like a servant maid,” said Father Vassily indefinitely.

“What did you say?” said Nastya uncomprehendingly.

Father Vassily bowed low his head and maintained silence. Immense and black he loomed against the dull white background of the window, and his words seemed to Nastya round and shiny like glass beads. She waited long, but her father was silent and she called out timidly:

“Papa!”

Without raising his head Father Vassily commandingly waived his hand, once, then the second time. Nastya sighed and rose, but hardly had she turned in the doorway when something rustled behind her and two powerful, sinewy arms raised her up in the air and a mocking voice whispered in her very ear:

“Put your arms around my neck. I’ll carry you.”

“Why? I am big.”

“No matter. Hold fast.”

It was hard work breathing in the embrace of two arms that were holding her like hoops of iron, and she had to duck her head in the doorway in order not to knock against the transom; she did not know whether she was pleased or merely surprised. And she did not know whether she merely imagined it or her father had really whispered into her ear:

“You must be sorry for mama.”

But after she had said her prayers and was getting ready for bed, Nastya sat for a long while on her bed, lost in musing. Her slim little back with the pointed shoulder blades and the distinctly marked vertebrae was almost humped; the soiled nightshirt had slipped from the angular shoulder; folding her hands about her knees and rocking back and forth, she resembled a ruffled bird that was overtaken in the field by the frost. She was staring straight ahead with unblinking eyes that were plain and enigmatic like the eyes of a beast. And with pensive obstinacy she whispered:

“And still I’d kill her.”

Late at night, when everyone was asleep, Father Vassily silently stole into the room, and his face was cold and austere. Without casting a glance at Nastya, he set the lamp down on the table and bent over the calmly sleeping idiot. He was lying on his back, his misshapen chest stretched out, his arms spread out; his little shriveled head had fallen back, and its receding chin gleamed white. As he lay sleeping, under the pale reflected light which was falling upon him from the ceiling, his face, with the closed eyelids hiding his witless eyes, did not seem as horrible as in the daytime. It seemed wearied, like the face of an actor exhausted after playing a difficult part, and around his tightly shut enormous mouth lay the shadow of stern grief. It was as though there were in him two souls, and while one was sleeping, the other was wakeful⁠—all-knowing and sorrowful.

Father Vassily straightened up slowly, and maintaining an austere and stolid expression, walked out and proceeded to his room without casting a glance at Nastya. He was walking slowly and calmly, with the ponderous and lifeless stride of profound meditation, and the darkness scattered before him, hiding behind him in deep shadows and cunningly pursuing him at his heels. His face was shining brightly in the light of the lamp and his eyes were gazing fixedly into the distance, far ahead, into the very depths of fathomless space, while his feet slowly and clumsily pursued their automatic march.

It was late at night and the second cocks had crowed.

VI

Lent had arrived. The muffled church-bell commenced its monotonous tinkle, but its wan, melancholy, modest sounds of summons could not dispel the wintry stillness which was lying over snow-covered fields. Timidly they leaped from the belfry into the misty air below, and sank and died, and for a long time nobody came to the little church in response to its appeal⁠—faint at first, but persistent and growing more imperious every day.

Towards the end of the first week of Lent two old women came to church⁠—hoary they were, hazy and deaf like the very air of the dying winter, and for a long time they mumbled with toothless mouths, repeating, forever over and over repeating their dull, uncouth plaints which had no beginning and knew no end. Their very words and tears seemed to have grown aged in service and ready for rest. They had received absolution, but they failed to realize it, and were still praying for something, deaf and hazy like fragments of a vapid dream. But in their wake came a throng of people, and many youthful, fervid tears, many youthful words, pointed and gleaming, cut their way into Father Vassily’s heart.

When Semen Mossyagin, a peasant, had thrice bowed to the ground, and cautiously advanced towards the priest, the latter gazed upon him sharply and fixedly, but the pose which he maintained did not seem to befit the occasion.

With his neck extended, his hands folded across his chest, he was tugging at the end of his beard with the fingers of one hand. Mossyagin walked up to the priest and was astounded: the priest was watching him and smiling softly with nostrils distended like a horse.

“I have been waiting for thee for a long time,” said the priest with a snicker. “Why hast thou come, Mossyagin?”

“For confession,” quickly and eagerly replied Mossyagin and with a friendly grin exposed his white teeth⁠—they were white and even like a string of pearls.

“Wilt thou feel better after confession?” continued the priest, smiling, as it seemed to the peasant, in a merry and friendly fashion.

“Of course I will.”

“And is it true that thou hast sold thy horse and the last sheep and mortgaged thy wagon?”

Mossyagin looked at the priest seriously and with a show of annoyance: the priest’s face was stolid, his eyes were downcast. Neither broke the silence. Father Vassily turned slowly towards the lectern and commanded:

“Tell thy sins.”

Mossyagin coughed, assumed a devotional expression, and cautiously inclining his head and his chest towards the priest began to speak in a loud whisper. And while he spoke, the priest’s face became more and more forbidding and solemn, as though it had turned to stone under the hail of the peasant’s painful and constraining words. His breath came fast and heavy as though choking in that senseless, dull and savage something which was called the life of Semen Mossyagin and which seemed to grip him as though in the black coils of some mysterious serpent. It was as though the stern law of causality had no dominion over this humble but fantastic existence: so unexpectedly, with such clownish absurdity there were linked in it trivial transgressions and unmeasured suffering, a mighty, an elemental will to a mighty elemental creativeness and a monstrously vegetating existence somewhere in No-man’s land between life and death. Endowed with a fine mind that slightly inclined to sarcasm, strong in body like a ferocious beast, enduring as though fully three hearts beat in his breast, so that when one of the three died, the ethers gave life to a new one⁠—he seemed capable of overturning the very earth upon which firmly, though clumsily were planted his feet. But in reality what happened? He was forever on the verge of starvation, as were his wife, his children, his cattle; and his bedimmed mind reeled drunkenly as though unable to find the door of its own abode. Desperately straining every effort in an endeavor to build up something, to create something, he merely fell sprawling into the dust, and his work collapsed and disintegrated, rewarding him with a mock and a sneer. He was a man of compassion, and had adopted an orphan, and everybody scolded him; and the orphan lived awhile and died of constant malnutrition and illness, and then he began to scold himself and ceased to understand whether it was the right thing to be compassionate or not. It seemed as though the tears should never dry in the eyes of so unfortunate a man, or that the outcries of wrath and resentment should never die upon his lips, but strange to say he was always goodnatured and cheerful, and even his beard seemed somehow absurdly gay; blazing red it was, with each hair seemingly awhirl and agog in an interminable whimsical dance. And he even took part in the village choral dances with the young lads and lassies, singing the melancholy folksongs with a high tremolo voice that brought tears to the eyes of the hearers, while on his own lips played a smile of gentle sarcasm.

And his sins were so trivial and formal: a surveyor whom he had driven to the nearest village⁠—Petrovki⁠—had offered him a meatpie on a fast day, and he had eaten of it; and in confessing he dwelt as long upon this transgression as though he had committed a murder; and the year before, just before communion, he had smoked a cigarette and this too he described at great length and with agonized anguish.

“That’s all!” finally said Mossyagin, in a cheery voice, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

Father Vassily slowly turned his haggard face to him:

“And who helpeth thee?”

“Who helps me?” repeated Mossyagin. “Nobody. It’s a scant fare for us villagers, you know that yourself. Still Ivan Porfyritch helped me out once,” the peasant winked slyly at the priest: “he gave me three poods of flour, and promised four more towards fall.”

“And God?”

Semen sighed and his face grew sad.

“God? I daresay I’m undeserving.”

The priest’s superfluous questions were beginning to annoy Mossyagin. He glanced back over his shoulder at the empty church, carefully counted the hairs in the priest’s sparse beard, surveyed his half-rotted teeth and it occurred to him that the priest might have spoilt them by eating too much sugar. And he heaved a sigh.

“What art thou waiting for?”

“What I am waiting for? What should I be waiting for?”

And silence again. It was dark and cold in the church, and the chilly air was stealing under the peasant’s blouse.

“And must it go on like this always?” asked the priest, and his words sounded listless and distant like the thud of the earth thrown into the grave upon the lowered coffin.

“And must it go on like this always?” repeated Mossyagin listening to the sound of his own words. And all that had passed in his life rose before him again: the hungry faces of the children, the reproaches, the killing toil, the dull heartache that makes one long to drink and fight; and so it must go on, for a long time, all through life⁠—until death steps in. Blinking his white eyelashes, Mossyagin cast a teardimmed misty glance upon the priest and met his sharp and blazing gaze⁠—and in this exchange of glances they recognized an intimate sorrowful kinship. An instinctive movement drew them together, and Father Vassily laid his hand on the peasant’s shoulder: lightly and gently it rested upon it like a cobweb in autumn time. Mossyagin’s shoulder quivered affectionately, he lifted up his eyes trustingly, and pitifully smiling with a corner of his mouth he said:

“But like as not it may ease up!”

The priest removed his hand imperceptibly and was silent. The peasant’s white eyelashes blinked faster and faster, the little hairs in the blazing red beard danced ever more merrily, while his tongue babbled something unintelligible and incoherent:

“No. I dare say it won’t ease up. You’re right.”

But the priest did not suffer him to finish. He stamped his foot with repressed emotion, scared the peasant with a wrathful, hostile glance, and hissed at him like an angry adder:

“Don’t weep! Don’t dare to weep. Oh, why do they blubber like senseless calves? What can I do?” he prodded his chest with his finger. “What can I do? Am I God, am I? Ask Him! Ask Him! Ask Him! I tell thee.”

He pushed the peasant’s shoulder.

“Down on thy knees.”

Mossyagin knelt.

“Pray.”

Behind him loomed the walls of the deserted and gloomy church, above him rang the angered voice of the priest: “Pray! Pray!”, and without rendering account to himself of his actions, Mossyagin commenced to cross himself swiftly, touching the ground with his forehead. And the swift and monotonous movements of his head, the extraordinary nature of the penance, the consciousness of being at that very instant subject to some powerful and mysterious will⁠—filled the mind of the peasant with awe and at the same time with a peculiar sense of relief.

For in this very awe before something mighty and austere was born the hope of intercession and mercy. And ever more frantically he was pressing his brow to the cold floor, when the priest abruptly commanded:

“Arise!”

Mossyagin arose, made his obeisance to the nearest images, and the fiery-red hairs of his beard whirled and danced willingly and cheerfully when he again approached the priest. Now he was sure that he would find relief and he calmly awaited further commands.

But Father Vassily merely measured him with a sternly curious glance and pronounced the absolution. On his way out of the church Mossyagin looked back: still in the same spot stood the nebulous figure of the priest, the faint glimmer of a wax taper could not fully outline it, and it loomed black and immense as though it had no definite contours and limits but was merely a particle of the gloom which was filling the church.

Communicants were now flocking daily in increasing numbers to the confessional and numberless faces, both wrinkled and youthful, alternated before Father Vassily in wearisome procession. He quizzed them all insistently and severely, and timid, incoherent speeches were poured into his ears by the hour, and the purport of each speech was suffering, terror and a great expectation. All united in condemning life, but none seemed anxious to die, and everybody appeared to be waiting for something, and this expectation seemed to have been handed down as an inheritance from the father of the race. It had passed through minds and hearts long since vanished from the world, and for this reason it was so imperious and potent. And it had become bitter, for on its way it had absorbed all the grief of hope unrealized, all the bitterness of faith deceived, all the consuming anguish of infinite desolation. The blood of all hearts, living and dead, had nourished its roots, and it had branched out over the whole of life like a great and mighty tree. And losing himself among these souls like a wanderer in the forest primeval, he was also forgetting his own pent-up sufferings which had crowned his head with a stern sorrow, and he too began to wait for something with a stern impatience.

He did not wish now for human tears, but they were flowing irrepressibly, overruling his will, and every tear was a demand, and they all penetrated his heart like poisoned arrows. And with the dim sense of approaching horror he began to comprehend that he was not the master of men, not even their neighbor, but their servant, their slave, that the eyes of a great expectation were seeking him, were commanding him, were summoning him. And ever oftener he admonished, them with repressed wrath:

“Ask Him! Ask Him!”

And he turned his back upon them.

But at night the living people took on the guise of diaphanous shadows and walked by his side in a silent throng, invading his very thoughts, and they made a transparency of the walls of his house and a mock of the locks and the bars on its doors. And agonized, weirdly fantastic were the dreams that unrolled like a flaming band beneath his skull.

It was in the fifth week of Lent, when the breath of spring wafted its fragrance over the fields and the dusk was blue and diaphanous, that the Popadya had started on another drunken debauch. She had been drinking heavily for four days at a stretch, screaming with terror and struggling, and on the fifth day⁠—it was Saturday⁠—towards evening, she put out the little oil lamp before the saint’s image in her room, twisted a towel into a noose and tried to strangle herself. But the moment the noose had begun to stifle her she became frightened and cried out, and Father Vassily came running with little Nastya and released her. It all ended in mere fright. Nor, indeed, had there been any danger, for the noose was clumsily tied and it was impossible to be strangled in it. But more frightened than all was the Popadya herself. She wept and pleaded to be forgiven; her arms and legs were trembling, her head shook as with palsy; the whole evening she kept her husband by her side and clung closely to him. The extinguished oil lamp in her room was lighted again at her own request, and other oil lamps before each holy image, and it looked like the eve of some great church festival. After the first moment of excitement Father Vassily had regained his composure and was now coldly amiable, even jocular. He related a very amusing incident of his seminary days, and then his memory strolled back into the dim past of his early boyhood and he told about his escapades in stealing apples in company with other youngsters. And it was so difficult to imagine a watchman leading him away by the ear, that Nastya refused to believe or laugh, although Father Vassily himself was laughing with a gentle, childlike laughter and his face looked truthful and good.

Little by little the Popadya also regained her composure and ceased to look askance into obscure nooks, and when Nastya had been sent to bed, she smiled gently at her husband and inquired:

“Were you scared?”

Father Vassily’s face lost its truthful and kindly expression, and only his lips were smiling as he replied:

“Of course. What had come into your head anyway?”

The Popadya trembled as though chilled by a sudden draught, and picking with shaking fingers at the fringe of her warm shawl she said irresolutely:

“I don’t know, Vassya. My heart is so heavy. And I’m so afraid of everything. Afraid of everything. Things go on and I can’t make out how and why. There we have spring, and summer will follow. Then again the fall and the winter. And we shall still sit as we are sitting now, you in your corner and I in mine. Don’t be angry with me, Vassya. I realize that it can’t be different. And yet.⁠ ⁠…”

She sighed and continued without taking her eyes off the shawl.

“There was a time when I did not fear death, I thought when things went very badly with me, I should die. And now I even fear death. What’s to become of me, Vassya, dear? Must it be⁠—drink again.”

Perplexed she raised her sorrowful eyes to his face, and in them he read the pangs of mortal anguish and of boundless despair, and a dull and humble plea for mercy. In the town where Feeveysky spent his student days, he had seen on one occasion a greasy Tartar leading a horse to the flaying yeard: it had broken its hoof which was hanging by a shred and the horse was stepping up on the pavement with the mutilated stump of the crippled foot; it was a cold day and a cloud of white steam enveloped the horse, but it walked on staring ahead with an immobile gaze, and its eyes were horrible in their meekness. Even such were the eyes of the Popadya. And he thought that if someone were to dig a grave, and fling this woman into its depths burying her alive, he would be committing a kindly deed.

The Popadya with trembling lips tried to puff into life the cigarette which had long since gone out and continued:

“And then again he. You know whom I mean. Of course he’s a child, and I feel sorry for him. But soon he’ll commence to walk and he will be the death for me. And not a soul to help. Now I’ve complained to you, but what good is it? I don’t know what to do?”

She heaved a sigh and threw up her hands in despair. And in unison with her the low squat room itself seemed to sigh, and the shades of night whose silent throng surrounded Father Vassily whirled about him in agony. They were sobbing in frenzied anguish, they were extending their nerveless hands, they were pleading for mercy, for pardon, for truth.

“Ah!” responded a hoarse groan from the depths of the priest’s bony chest. He jumped to his feet, upsetting the chair with an abrupt movement, and began to pace the floor with a swift stride, shaking his folded hands, mumbling something, stumbling like a blind or an insane man against chairs and against walls. And when colliding with a wall, he hastily touched it with his scrawny fingers and turned back in his flight, and so he circled in the narrow cage of the room’s mute walls like a fantastic shade that had assumed a gruesome and weird materialization. But in an odd contrast to the frantic mobility of his body, immobile like the eyes of a blind man were his eyes, and in them glistened tears, the first tears which he had shed since Vassya’s death.

Forgetting her own self, the Popadya’s awestricken eyes followed the priest and she cried:

“Vassya, what’s the matter with you? What is the matter?”

Father Vassily turned around abruptly, hastily gained his wife’s side, as though rushing over to trample upon her, and he laid his heavy and shaking hand on her head. And for a long, long time he silently held his hand above her head, as though in benediction, as though warding off the powers of evil. And he spoke and each resonant sound that composed his words was a ringing metallic tear:

“Poor little woman; poor little woman.”

And once more he resumed his pacing, towering and awe-inspiring in his despair, like a tigress who had been robbed of her young one. His face was frantically convulsed, and his shaking lips jerked out half-formed, fragmentary, infinitely sorrowing words:

“Poor woman. Poor woman.⁠ ⁠… Poor people all. All weeping.⁠ ⁠… No help⁠ ⁠… Oh-oh-oh!”

He stopped and raising aloft his immobile eyes, with his gaze transfixing the ceiling and the misty gloom of the vernal night beyond it, he cried out in a piercing, frenzied voice:

“And thou sufferest it! thou sufferest it! Then take.⁠ ⁠…” and he clenched his fist and shook it aloft, but at his feet, with her hands wrapt about her knees, the Popadya lay writhing in hysterics, and mumbled, choking mid tears and laughter:

“Don’t! Don’t! Darling, precious! I’ll never do it again!”

The idiot woke up and was howling; Nastya came running into the room in wild affright and the jaws of the priest set with a metallic snap.

Silently, and with seeming indifference, he tended his wife, laying her down on her bed, and when she had fallen asleep he was still holding her hand between his two palms, and thus he sat until morning by her bedside⁠ ⁠… And all through the night, until morning, oil lamps were burning before each image, as though on the eve of a great and glorious festival.

The next day Father Vassily was the same as usual⁠—cool and calm, nor did he by a word recall the incidents of the day before. But in his voice, whenever he exchanged words with his wife, in the glance with which he regarded her was a gentle tenderness which only her own tormented heart could appreciate. And so mighty was this manly, silent tenderness that the tormented heart smiled a timid smile in return and retained the memory of this smile in its depths like a cherished treasure. They conversed but little, and their sparing speech was simple and commonplace; they were rarely together⁠—torn asunder by life’s vicissitudes⁠—but with hearts full of suffering they were constantly seeking one another; nor could any human being, nor cruel fate itself divine with what hopeless anguish and tenderness they loved one another. Long ago, since the birth of the idiot, they had ceased living as man and wife, and they resembled a pair of devoted unhappy lovers deprived even of a hope of happiness, dreaming dreams that dared not assume a definite shape. And shame, once abandoned, returned again into the heart of the wife, and with it a desire to appear attractive; she blushed when her husband saw her bare arms and she did something to her face and her hair that made both look fresh and youthful and strangely beautiful in spite of the sadness of her expression. But when the periodic spells of drunkenness came on again, the Popadya disappeared in the seclusion of her darkened room, even as dogs are wont to hide when they feel the approach of madness, and in silence and solitude she fought out her battle with madness and with the monstrous visions born of it.

But every night, when all were asleep, the Popadya stole to the bedside of her husband and made a sign of the cross over his head as though to dispel from his brow all grief and evil thoughts. And she longed to kiss his hand, but dared not, and silently retired to her room, vanishing in the darkness like a dim white vision similar to the nebulous and melancholy apparitions which hover at night over swamps and over the graves of deceased and forgotten people.

VII

The Lenten bell continued to send abroad its monotonous and somber summons, and it seemed as though with each muffled knell it gathered fresh power over the consciences of the village folk. In ever increasing numbers silent figures, somber as the sound of the tolling church bell, wended their way to the little church from every direction. Night still reigned over the denuded fields and a thin crust of ice still spanned the murmuring brook, when from every road and side path human figures appeared marching one by one, but united by some common bond into one solemnly chastened procession moving to the same invisible goal.

And every day, from early morn until late in the evening, Father Vassily was confronted with a succession of human faces, some with every wrinkle brightly outlined by the yellow glow of wax tapers, others dimly emerging out of obscure nooks as though the very atmosphere of the church had taken on the shape of a human being thirsting for mercy and truth. The people crowded and pushed, clumsily elbowing one another; they shuffled their feet heavily as they dropped to their knees with discordant and asymmetric movements; and heaving deep sighs, with relentless insistence they laid their sins and their sorrows before the priest.

Each one had enough suffering and grief for a dozen human existences, and it seemed to the overwhelmed and distracted priest, as though the entire living world had brought its tears and its pangs before him seeking his aid, meekly pleading for it, imperiously clamoring for it. Once he had been searching for truth, but now he was drowning in it, in this merciless truth of suffering; in the agonized consciousness of impotence he longed to die⁠—merely in order to escape seeing, hearing and knowing. He had summoned the woe of humanity and lo! it came to him. His soul was afire like the sacrificial altar, and he longed to put his arms about every one of them with a fraternal embrace, saying: “poor friend, let us struggle on side by side, let us together weep and seek. For there is no help for man from anywhere.”

But this was not what the people, worn out with the struggle of life, were expecting from him, and with anguish, with wrath, with despair he kept repeating:

“Ask of Him! Ask of Him!”

Sorrowing they believed him and departed, and in their place came others in fresh and serried ranks, and again he frantically repeated the terrible and relentless words:

“Ask of Him! Ask of Him!”

And the hours in the course of which he listened to truth seemed to him as years, and that which had passed in the morning before the confession, appeared dim and faint like all images of a distant past. When finally he came out of the church, being the last to leave, darkness had already set in, the stars sparkled sweetly, and the silent air of the vernal night seemed like a tender caress. But he had no faith in the peace of the stars; he fancied that even from these distant worlds, groans and cries and broken pleas for mercy descended upon him. And he felt crushed with a sense of personal shame as though he himself had perpetrated all the wickedness that reigned in the world, as though he himself had caused all these tears to flow, had mangled and torn into shreds all these human hearts. He was overwhelmed with shame because of these downtrodden homes which he passed on his way, he was ashamed to enter his own house where by virtue of sin and of madness the dreadful image of the semi-idiot, semi-beast, held its autocratic insolent sway.

And in the mornings he walked to the church as men walk to the scaffold to meet a shameful and agonizing death, with the whole world as executioners: the dispassionate sky, the hurrying, thoughtlessly laughing mob and his own relentless inner thoughts. Every suffering person was his executioner, a helpless tool of an all-powerful God, and there were as many hangmen as there were people, and as many lashes as there were trusting and expectant hearts. They were all inexorably insistent. No man thought of ridiculing the priest, but at any moment he tremblingly expected the outburst of some horrible satanic laughter and he feared to turn his back upon the people. All that is brutal and evil is born behind a man’s back, but while he is looking, no one dare attack him face to face. And that is why he looked at them, worrying them with his glance, and frequently turned his eyes to the place behind the lectern occupied by Ivan Porfyritch Koprov, the churchwarden.

The latter alone talked loudly in the church as he calmly sold his tapers; and twice during the service he sent up the verger and some boys to take up collections. Then noisily rattling his copper coins, he piled them up in little heaps, and frequently clicked the lock of his cash box; when others knelt, he merely inclined his head and crossed himself. And it was obvious that he regarded himself as a man needful to God, knowing that without him God would be at no small difficulty to arrange things as well as they were going and to keep them in proper order.

Since the beginning of Lent he had been very angry with Father Vassily because of the interminable time he took up in the confessional. He could not understand what great and interesting sins these people could have that could make it worth while to devote so much time to them. It was all due, he claimed, to the fact that Father Vassily knew neither how to live himself nor how to handle people.

“Dost thou think they appreciate it?” he said to the good-natured deacon who like the rest of the church officials was worn out with the heavy burden of Lenten duties. “Not a bit of it. They will only laugh at him.”

Father Vassily’s stern demeanor, on the contrary, pleased him, just as he had been pleasantly impressed when he had first observed his towering height. A genuine priest and a servant of God seemed to him akin to an honest and efficient steward who requires an exact and accurate accounting from those with whom he deals. Ivan Porfyritch himself went to confession the last week in Lent, and he made long preparations for it, trying to remember and to classify all his small transgressions. And he was inordinately proud to know that he kept his sins in the same good order as his business affairs.

On Wednesday of Holy week, when Father Vassily was fast losing his physical strength, an unusually numerous throng had gathered to confess. The last man in the confessional was a worthless scamp named Trifon, a cripple, who hobbled on crutches from village to village in the vicinity. Instead of legs which he had lost in some factory accident and which had been trimmed down to his loins, he had a pair of short little stumps around which a bag of skin had formed. His shoulders, raised up through the constant use of crutches supported a filthy head that seemed to be covered with a growth of coarse hemp, and he had an equally filthy and neglected beard; his eyes were the insolent eyes of a mendicant, drunkard and thief. He was repulsive and dirty, groveling in filth and dust like a reptile, and his soul was as dark and mysterious as the soul of a savage beast. It was difficult to understand how he managed to live and yet he lived and even had women, as fantastic and unreal and as unlike a human being as himself.

Father Vassily was forced to bend down low in order to hear the cripple’s confession. The impudently serene stench of his body, the parasites crawling about his head and neck⁠—even as he himself crawled over the face of the earth⁠—revealed to the priest in a flash the utter destitution of his crippled soul⁠—horrible, shameful, unfathomable to conscience. And with a terrible clearness he realized how dreadfully, how irrevocably this man had been deprived of all the human characteristics, of all the things to which he was as fully entitled as the kings in their palaces, as the saints in their cloistered cells, and he shuddered.

“Go. God absolveth thee of thy sins,” he said.

“Wait. I have more to confess,” hoarsely croaked the beggar, raising up his purpling face. And he related how ten years back he had in a forest violated a little girl, giving her three copper coins when she cried, and how later begrudging her this money, he strangled her to death and buried her in the woods. And there no one ever found her. A dozen times, to a dozen different priests he had related the same story, and because of this repetition it appeared to him simple and ordinary and unrelated to himself, as though it were a mere fairy tale which he had learned by heart. Sometimes he varied this story: instead of summer time he pictured the event as having occurred late in the fall; now the little girl was a blonde, now darkhaired; but the three copper coins never varied. Some priests refused to believe him and laughed at him, pointing out that for ten years past not one little girl had been killed or missed in the entire region; he was caught in numberless and crude contradictions, and it was demonstrated to him that the whole story was an obvious fabrication, born of his diseased brain while he drunkenly roamed through the woods. And this aroused him to frenzy: he shouted, he swore by the name of God, calling as frequently upon the devil as upon God to bear him witness, and began to recite such repulsive and obscene details that the oldest priests were made to blush with indignation. Now he was waiting to see if this priest of the Snamenskoye village would believe him or not, and he was content to note that the priest believed him: for the priest had shrunk back, with bloodless cheeks and raised his hand as though to strike him:

“Is this true?” hoarsely asked Father Vassily.

The beggar began to cross himself energetically.

“I swear by God it is true. Let me sink into the ground if it ain’t.⁠ ⁠…”

“But that means hell!” cried the priest. “Dost thou grasp it: hell?”

“God is merciful,” mumbled the beggar, with a sullen and injured tone. But from his wicked and frightened eyes it was plainly seen that he expected to go to hell and had become accustomed to that thought even as to his queer tale of the strangled little girl.

“Hell on earth, hell beyond. Where is thy paradise? Wert thou a worm, I would crush thee with my foot, but thou art a man. A man? Or art thou truly a worm? What art thou, speak?” cried the priest and his hair shook as though fanned by a breeze. “And where is thy God? Why has He left thee?”

“I made him believe it,” gleefully thought the beggar, feeling the words of the priest strike his head like a hail of molten metal.

Father Vassily sat down on his haunches and drawing from the degradingly unusual pose a strange and an agonizing store of pride, he passionately whispered:

“Listen. Don’t be afraid. There will be no hell. I am telling thee truly. I too have killed a human being. A little girl. Her name is Nastya. And there will be no hell. Thou wilt be in paradise. Understand? With the saints, with the righteous! Higher than all.⁠ ⁠… Higher than all, I tell thee.”

That evening Father Vassily returned home very late, after his family had finished supper. He was very tired and haggard, wet to his knees and covered with dirt, as though he had tramped for a long time over pathless and rainsodden fields. In the household preparations were being made for the Easter festival. Though very busy, the Popadya from time to time ran in for a moment out of the kitchen, anxiously scanning her husband’s features. And she tried to appear gay and to conceal her anxiety.

But at night, when according to her custom she came into his bedroom on tiptoe and having made a threefold sign of the cross over his head, was about to depart, she was stopped by a gentle and timid voice⁠—so unlike the voice of the austere Father Vassily:

“Nastya, I cannot go to church.”

There was terror in that voice, and also something pleading and childlike. As though unhappiness was so immense that it was no longer any use to put on the mask of pride and of slippery, lying words behind which people are wont to conceal their feelings. The Popadya fell to her knees by the bedside of her husband and peered into his face: in the faint bluish light of the oil lamp it seemed as pale as the face of a corpse and as immobile, and only his black eyes were open and squinted in her direction. He lay still and flat on his back like a man stricken with a painful disease, or like a child frightened by an evil dream and afraid to move.

“Pray, Vassya!” whispered the Popadya, stroking his clammy hands which were crossed upon his breast like the hands of a corpse.

“I cannot. I am afraid. Light the lamp, Nastya.”

While she was lighting the lamp, Father Vassily began to dress, slowly and awkwardly, like an invalid who had been long chained to his bed. He could not unaided fasten the hooks of his cassock, and he asked his wife:

“Hook the cassock.”

“Where are you going?” inquired the Popadya in surprise.

“Nowhere. Just so.”

And he began to pace the floor slowly and diffidently with faint and shaking limbs. His head was trembling with a measured and hardly perceptible palpitation, and his lower jaw had dropped impotently. With an effort he attempted to draw it up into its proper place, licking his dry and flabby lips, but in the next moment it dropped back again; exposing the dark gap of his mouth. Something vast, something inexpressibly horrible seemed to be impending⁠—like boundless waste and boundless silence. And there was neither earth nor people nor any world beyond the walls of the house, there was only the yawning bottomless abyss and eternal silence.

“Vassya, is it really true?” asked the Popadya, her heart sinking with the fear within her.

Father Vassily looked at her with dim, lacklustre eyes, and with a momentary access of energy waved his hand:

“Don’t. Don’t. Be silent.”

And once more he fell to pacing the floor, and once more dropped the strengthless jaw. And thus he paced the room, with the slow deliberateness of Time itself, while the pale-cheeked woman sat terror-stricken on the bed, only with the slow deliberateness of Time itself her eyes moved and followed him in his walk. And something vast was impending. There it came and stood still and gripped them with a vacant and all-embracing stare⁠—vast as the boundless waste, terrible as the eternal silence.

Father Vassily stopped in front of his wife, regarding her with unseeing eyes and said:

“It is dark. Light another light.”

“He is dying,” thought the Popadya and with shaking hands, scattering matches on the floor, she lighted a candle. And once more he begged:

“Light still another.”

And she kept lighting and lighting them. Many candles and lamps were now ablaze. Like a tiny faintly bluish star the little oil lamp before the holy image lost itself in the vivid and daring glare of the many lights, and it seemed as though the great and glorious festival had already set in. Meanwhile, with the deliberateness of Time itself he softly paced through the brilliant waste. Now, when the waste was ablaze with lights, the Popadya saw, and for one brief, terrible instant realized how lone he was, for he neither belonged to her nor to anyone else; she realized that she could never alter the fact. If all the good and strong people had gathered from the ends of the world, putting their arms about him, with words of caress and comfort, still he would stand in solitude.

And once more, with sinking heart, she thought: “He is dying.”

Thus passed the night. And as it neared its end, the stride of Father Vassily grew firm, he straightened himself, looked at the Popadya several times and said:

“Why so many lights? Put them out.”

The Popadya put out the candles and the lamps and diffidently commenced:

“Vassya!”

“We’ll talk tomorrow. Go to your room. Time for you to go to sleep.”

But the Popadya did not go, and her eyes seemed to be pleading for something. And once again strong and stalwart he walked over to her and patted her head as though she were a child.

“So, Popadya!” he said with a smile. His face was pallid with the diaphanous pallor of death, and black circles had gathered about his eyes: as though night itself had lodged there and refused to depart.

In the morning Father Vassily announced to his wife that he would resign from the priesthood, that he meant to get together some money in the fall and then to go away with her, somewhere afar off, he knew not yet where. But the idiot they would leave behind, they would give him to someone to bring up. And the Popadya wept and laughed and for the first time after the birth of the idiot she kissed her husband full upon his lips, blushing in confusion.

And at that time Vassily Feeveysky was forty years old, and his wife was thirty four.

VIII

For the three months that followed their souls were resting; gladness and hope, long strangers to their hearts, returned to their home once again. Strong through suffering endured was the Popadya’s faith in the new life to come⁠—in an altogether novel and different life elsewhere, unlike the life that anybody else had lived or could live. She sensed but vaguely what was going on in her husband’s heart, though she saw that he bore himself with a peculiar cheeriness, serene even like the flame of the candle. She saw the strange glow in his eyes such as he had lacked before, and she had an abiding faith in his power. Father Vassily attempted to talk to her at times with regard to his plans for the future, whither they would go and how they would live, but she refused to listen: words, exact and positive, seemed to frighten away her vague and formless vision and to drag the future with a strangely horrible perverseness into the power of a cruel past. Only one thing she craved: that it might be far away, far beyond the bounds of that familiar world which was still so terrible to her. As heretofore, periodically she succumbed to attacks of drunkenness, but these passed quickly and she no longer feared them: she believed that she would soon cease to drink altogether. “It will be different there, I shall have no need of liquor,” she thought all transfigured with the radiance of an indefinite and glorious vision.

With the coming of summer she once more began to stroll for days at a time through the fields and the woods; coming back at dusk she waited at the gate for Father Vassily’s return from haying. Softly and slowly gathered the shadows of the brief summer night; and it seemed as though night would never come to blot out the light of day; only when she glanced upon the dim outlines of her hands which she held folded upon her lap she felt that there was something between those hands and herself and that it was night with the diaphanous and mysterious dusk. And before vague fears had time to fill her heart, Father Vassily was back⁠—stalwart, vigorous, cheery, bringing with him the acrid and pleasant fragrance of grassy fields. His face was dark with the dusk of night, but his eyes were shining brightly, and in his suppressed voice seemed to lurk the vast expanse of the fields and the fragrance of grass and the joy of persistent toil.

“It is beautiful out in the fields,” he said with laughter that sounded subdued, enigmatic and somber, as though he derided someone, perhaps himself.

“Of course, Vassya, of course. Of course, it’s beautiful,” retorted the Popadya with conviction and they went in to supper. After the vastness of the fields Father Vassily felt crowded in the tiny living room; with embarrassment he became conscious of the length of his arms and of his legs and moved them about so clumsily and ridiculously that the Popadya teased him:

“You ought to be made to write a sermon right now, why you could hardly hold a pen in your hands,” she said.

And they laughed.

But left alone, Father Vassily’s face assumed a serious and solemn expression. Alone with his thoughts he dared not laugh or jest. And his eyes gazed forward sternly and with a haughty expectancy⁠—for he felt that even in these days of hope and peace the same inexorably cruel and impenetrable fate was hovering over his head.

On the twenty seventh day of July⁠—it was in the evening⁠—Father Vassily and a laborer were carting sheaves from the field.

From the nearby forest a lengthy shadow had fallen obliquely across the field; other lengthy and oblique shadows were falling all over the field from every side. Suddenly from the direction of the village there came the faint, barely audible sound of a tolling bell, uncanny in its untimeliness. Father Vassily turned around sharply: there where through the willows he had been wont to see the dim outlines of his shingled roof, an immobile column of smoke⁠—black and resinous⁠—had reared itself up in the air, and beneath it writhed, at though crushed down by a gigantic weight, darkly lurid flames. By the time they had cleared the cart of sheaves and had reached the village at a gallop, darkness had set in and the fire had died down: only the black, charred corner posts were glowing their last like dying candles, and faintly gleamed the tiles of the stripped fireplace, while a pall of whitish smoke that resembled a cloud of steam was hanging low over the ruins, wrapping itself about the legs of the peasants who were stamping out the fire, and against the background of the fading glow of sunset it seemed suspended in the air in the shape of flat, dark shadows.

The whole street was thronged with people; the villagers trampled through the liquid mud formed by water that had been spilled in fighting the blaze, they were conversing loudly and in agitation, peering intently into one another’s faces, as though failing to recognize immediately their neighbors’ familiar faces and voices. The village herd had been meanwhile driven in from the fields, and the animals were straying about forlorn and excited. The cows were lowing, the sheep stared ahead with immobile, glassy, bulging eyes, and distractedly rubbed against the legs of people, or startled into an unreasoning panic madly rushed from place to place pattering with their hoofs over the ground. The village women tried to chase them home, and all over the village was heard their monotonous summons “kit-kit-kit.” And these dark figures, with their dark bronze-like faces, this queer and monotonous calling of sheep, the sight of these human beings and helpless animals fused into one mass by a common, primal sense of fear created the impression of something chaotic and primordial.

It had been a windless day, and the priest’s house was the only one consumed by the blaze. It was said that the fire had started in a room where the drunken Popadya had lain down to rest, and that it had been caused by a burning cigarette or a carelessly thrown match. All the villagers were in the fields at the time, and the rescuers succeeded in saving the idiot who was badly frightened but unhurt, while the Popadya herself was discovered in a horribly burnt condition and was dragged out unconscious, though still alive. When Father Vassily who had come galloping with his cart received the report of the disaster, the villagers were prepared to witness an outburst of grief and tears, but they were astounded: he had stretched out his neck in the attitude of listening with concentrated attention, his lips were tightly compressed, and to judge from his appearance it seemed as though he had been fully apprized of the happenings and was now merely trying to check up the report; as though in that brief mad hour, while with his locks fluttering in the breeze, with his gaze riveted to the column of smoke and fire, he stood on his cart and urged on his horse to a frenzied gallop, he had divined everything: that it had been ordained that a fire should occur and that his wife and all he owned should perish, while the idiot and the little girl Nastya should be saved and remain alive.

For a moment he stood still with downcast eyes, then he threw back his head and resolutely made his way through the crowd, straight to the deacon’s house where the dying Popadya had found shelter.

“Where is she?” he loudly asked of the silent people within. And silently they showed him. He came close to her bedside, bent low over the shapeless feebly groaning mass and seeing one great white blister which had taken the place of the face once cherished and beloved, he shrank back in horror and covered his face with his hands.

The Popadya was in a flutter; doubtless she had regained consciousness and was trying to say something, but instead of words she emitted a hoarse and inarticulate bark. Father Vassily withdrew his hands from his face; not the faintest trace of a tear was to be seen thereon; it was inspired and austere like the countenance of a prophet. And when he spoke, with the loud articulation of one addressing a deaf person, his voice rang with an unshakeable and terrible faith. There was in it nothing human, vacillating or based on self-strength; thus could speak only he who had felt the unfathomable and awful nearness of God.

“In the name of God⁠—hearest thou me?” he exclaimed. “I am here, Nastya, I am near thee. And the children are here. Here is Vassily. Here is Nastya.”

From the immobile and terrible face of the Popadya it could not be gathered whether she had heard or not. And raising his voice to a higher pitch Father Vassily once more addressed himself to the shapeless mass of charred flesh:

“Forgive me, Nastya. For I have destroyed thee, and thou wast not to blame. Forgive me⁠—my one⁠—and⁠—only love. And bless the children in thy heart. Here they are: here is Nastya, here is Vassily. Bless them and depart in peace. Have no fear of death. God hath pardoned thee. God loveth thee. He will give thee rest. Depart in peace. There wilt thou see Vassya. Depart thou in peace.”

Everyone had now withdrawn with tearful eyes, and the idiot who had fallen asleep, was taken away. Father Vassily remained alone with the dying woman, to spend with her that last fleeting summer night the coming of which she had so dreaded. He knelt down, pillowed his head near the dying woman, and with the faint and dreadful odor of burnt human flesh in his nostrils, he shed profuse soft tears of infinite compassion. He wept for her in her youth and beauty, trustingly longing for joy and caresses; he wept for her in the loss of her son; frenzied and pitiful, a plaything of fears, haunted by visions; he wept for her in those latter clays, awaiting his coming in the dusk of the summer eve, humble and radiant. It was her body⁠—that tender body so thirsting for caresses that the flames had devoured, and now it reeked with the odor of burning. Had she been crying? struggling? calling for her husband?

With tear dimmed eyes Father Vassily looked about wildly and rose to his feet. All was still with a stillness such as reigns only in the presence of death. He looked at his wife. She was motionless with that peculiar immobility of a corpse, when every fold of garment and bedding seems to be carved of lifeless stone, when the glowing tints of life have faded from raiment, yielding to shades that seem drab and unnatural. The Popadya was dead.

Through the opened window poured the warm breath of the summer night and from somewhere in the distance, accentuating the stillness in the room, came the harmonious chirping of crickets. About the lamp noiselessly circled the moths of the night which had come flying through the window; striking the light some fell, others with sickly spiral movements strove anew towards the light, and either lost themselves in the darkness or gleamed white about the flame like little flakes of whirling snow. The Popadya was dead.

“No! No!” shouted the priest in a loud and frightened voice. “No! No! I believe! Thou art right! I believe.”

He fell to his knees, and pressed his face to the drenched floor, amid fragments of soiled cotton and dripping bandages, as though thirsting to be changed into dust and to mingle with dust; and with the rapture of boundless humility he eliminated from his outcry the very pronoun “I” and added brokenly: “… believe!”

Once more he prayed, without words, without thoughts, but straining taut every fibre of his mortal body that in fire and death had realized the inexplicable nearness of God. He had ceased to sense his own life as such⁠—as though the intimate bond between body and spirit has been cut, and freed from all that is earthy, freed from itself, the spirit had soared to unfathomed and mysterious heights. The terrors of doubt and of tempting thoughts, the passionate wrath and the bold outcries of resentful human pride⁠—all had crumbled into dust with the abasement of the body; only the spirit alone, having torn the hampering fetters of its “I” was living the mysterious life of contemplation.

When Father Vassily had risen to his feet it was already light, and a ray of sunshine, long and ruddy, clung like a bright colored blotch to the petrified raiment of the deceased. And this surprised him, for the last thing that he remembered was the darkened window and the moths that circled about the light. A number of these frail creatures were scattered in charred clusters about the base of the lamp, which was still burning with an invisible yellowish flame; one grey and shaggy moth, with a big misshapen head, was still alive, but had no strength to fly away and was helplessly crawling about the table. The moth was doubtless in great pain, and was groping for the shelter of night and of darkness, but the merciless light of day streamed upon it from everywhere burning its tiny ugly body that was created for darkness. Despairingly it attempted to shake into activity its pair of short and singed wings, but it failed to rise up in the air, and once more, with oblique and angular movements, it fell over on its side and continued to crawl and grope.

Father Vassily put out the lamp and threw the palpitating moth out of the window; then vigorously fresh, as though after a long and refreshing sleep, filled with the sense of strength of restoration and of a supernatural peace, he made his way into the deacon’s garden. There for a long time he paced up and down the straight foot path, with his hands behind his back, his head brushing against the lower branches of apple and cherry trees; and he walked and he thought. Finding a path between the branches the sun had commenced to warm his head, and as he turned back it beat down upon him like a current of fire and blinded his eyes; here and there a worm eaten apple fell to the ground with a dull thud, and under a cherry tree, in the loose, dry earth a hen was fussing around, cackling and tending her brood of a dozen downy yellow chicks; but he was oblivious to the light of the sun and to the falling apples and kept on thinking. And wondrous were his thoughts⁠—clear and pure they were as the air of the early morn, and strangely new; such thoughts had never before flashed through his head where sad and painful thoughts were wont to dwell. He was thinking that where he had seen chaos and the absurdity of malice, there a mighty hand had traced out a true and straight path. Through the furnace of calamity, violently snatching him from home and family and from the vain cares of life, a mighty hand was leading him to a mighty martyrdom, a great sacrifice. God had transformed his life into a desert, but only so that he might cease to stray over old and beaten paths, over winding and deceitful roads where people err, but might seek a new and daring way in the trackless waste. The column of smoke which he had seen the night before, was it not that pillar of fire which had marked for the Hebrews a path through the pathless desert? He thought: “Lord, will my feeble strength be equal to the task?” but the answer came in the flames that illumined his soul like a new sun.

He had been chosen.

For an unknown martyrdom, for an unknown sacrifice he had been chosen by God, he, Vassily Feeveysky, who so blasphemously and madly had cried out in bitter complaint against his fate. He had been chosen. Let the earth open at his feet, let hell itself look at him with its red and cunning eyes, he will disbelieve hell itself. He had been chosen. And was he not standing on solid ground?

Father Vassily stopped and stamped his foot. The frightened hen emitted an anxious cackle and calling her brood together stood on guard. One of the little chicks had strayed afar and hurried to answer his maternal call, but halfway to his goal two hands, hot, strong and bony seized him and raised him up in the air. Smiling, Father Vassily breathed upon the tiny yellowish chick with his hot and moist breath, then gently folding his hands into the semblance of a nest he tenderly pressed him to his breast and continued to pace up and down the long and straight walk.

“What martyrdom? I don’t know. But dare I want to know? Didn’t I once know my fate? And I called it cruel, and my knowledge was a lie. Did I not think of bringing a son into the world? And a monster, without form or mind, entered into my home. And again I thought to multiply my goods and to leave my house, but it had left me first, consumed by a fire from heaven. That was what my knowledge amounted to. And she⁠—an infinitely unfortunate woman, wronged in her very womb, who had exhausted all tears, who had lived through all horrors. She was waiting for a new life on earth, and this life would have been sorrowful, but now she is reclining in death, and her soul is laughing and is branding the old knowledge a lie. He knows. He has given me much. He has granted to me to see life and to experience sufferings and with the sharpness of my sorrow to penetrate into the sufferings of other people. He has granted to me to apprehend their great expectation and has given me love towards them. And are they not expecting? And do I not love? Dear brethren! God has shown mercy to us, the hour of the mercy of God has come.”

He kissed the downy head of the chick and continued:

“My path? Docs the arrow think of its path when sent forth by a mighty hand? It flies and plunges through to its goal subservient to the will of him who sent it on its way. It is given to me to see, it is given to me to love, but what will come of this vision, of this love, that will be His holy will⁠—my martyrdom, my sacrifice.”

Coddled in the hollow of his warm hand the little chick closed his eyes and fell asleep. And the priest smiled.

“There⁠—I need only close my hand and he will die. Yet he is lying in the hollow of my hand, upon my bosom, and sleeping trustingly. And am I not in His hand? And dare I disbelieve the mercy of God when this chick believes in my human kindness, in my human heart?”

He smiled softly, opening his black, half-rotted teeth and over his austere, forbidding face the smile scattered into a thousand radiant wrinkles as though a ray of sunlight suddenly set a-sparkle a pool of deep and dark waters. And the great, grave thoughts fled away scared off by human gladness, and for a long time only gladness, only laughter remained, and the light of the sun and the gently slumbering downy little chick.

But now the wrinkles smoothed, the face became once more austere and grave, and the eyes sparkled with inspiration. The greatest, the most significant arose before him⁠—and its name was Miracle. Thither his still human, all too human thought had not yet dared to stray. There was the boundary line of thought. There in the fathomless solar depths were the dim contours of a new world⁠—and it was no longer the earth. A world of love, a world of divine justice, a world of radiant and fearless countenances, undisgraced by lines of suffering, famine and pain. Like a gigantic, monstrous diamond sparkled this world in the fathomless solar depths, and the human eye could not dwell upon it without blinding pain and awe. And humbly bowing his head Father Vassily exclaimed:

“Thy holy will be done!”

People made their appearance in the garden: the deacon and his wife and many others. They had seen the priest from afar and with cordial nods hastened towards him, but as they approached him they paused and stopped as though transfixed, as people pause before a conflagration, before a turbulent flood, before the calmly enigmatic gaze of a madman.

“Why do you look at me in this manner?” inquired Father Vassily in surprise.

But they never stirred from the spot and continued to look. Before them stood a tall man, entirely unknown to them, an utter stranger, whose very calm made him all the more distant from them. Dark he was and terrible to look upon like a shade from another world, but a sparkling smile played on his face in a myriad radiant wrinkles, as though the sun was sparkling in a deep black pool of stagnant water. And in his large gnarled hands he was holding a downy yellow little chick.

“Why are you looking at me in this manner?” he repeated smiling. “Am I a miracle?”

IX

It was obvious to all that Father Vassily was hastening to sever the last ties that still bound him to the past and to the vain cares of this life. He had written his sister in the city and made hurried arrangements with her concerning Nastya, leaving the girl in her charge, nor did he delay a day in despatching her to her aunt, as though fearing that fatherly love might rise up within him and prevent this arrangement to the detriment of his ministry. Nastya departed without exhibiting either pleasure or disappointment: she was content that her mother had died and merely regretted that the idiot had not also burnt to death. Seated in the wagon, in an oldfashioned dress which had been remade from an old gown of her mother’s, with a child’s hat sitting awry on her head, she resembled a queerly attired and homely old maid rather than a girl in her early teens. With her wolfish eyes she coldly watched the fussy deacon and protested in a dry voice that was much like the voice of her father:

“Don’t bother, Father Deacon. I am comfortable. Goodbye, papa.”

“Goodbye, Nastya dear. Mind your studies, don’t be lazy.”

The wagon started off, shaking up the girl with its jolting, but in the next moment she sat up erect like a stick, swaying no longer from side to side, but merely bobbing up and down. The deacon pulled out a handkerchief in order to wave the little traveler goodbye, but Nastya never turned around; and shaking his head reprovingly the deacon heaved a deep sigh, blew his nose and put the handkerchief back into his pocket. Thus she departed never to return to the village of Snamenskoye.

“Why don’t you, Father Vassily, send the little boy away as well? It will be hard on you to take care of him with only the cook to help you. She’s a stupid wench and deaf into the bargain,” said the deacon when the wagon was out of sight and the dust which it had raised had settled.

Father Vassily eyed him pensively:

“Shirk the consequences of my own sin, and burden others with them? No, deacon, my sin is with me and must remain with me. We’ll manage somehow, the old and the young one, what do you think, Father Deacon?”

He smiled a pleasant and cordial smile, as though in stingless raillery at something known to himself alone, and patted the deacon’s portly shoulder.

Father Vassily transferred the rights to his land to the vestry, providing a small sum for his support, which he called his “dowry.”

“And perhaps I might not take even that,” he said enigmatically, smiling pleasantly, with the same stingless raillery that was a riddle to all but himself.

And he made it his business to look after another matter: he induced Ivan Porfyritch to give employment to Mossyagin who had been turning black in the face from slow starvation. When Mossyagin had first called on Ivan Porfyritch asking him for work, the churchwarden drove him away, but after a talk with the priest, he not only gave him employment, but even sent over a load of shingles for Father Vassily’s new house. And he said to his wife, a woman who never opened her mouth and was always in the family way:

“Mark my word, this priest will raise ructions.”

“What ructions?” coldly inquired the wife.

“Just plain ructions. Only as how in a manner of speaking it is none of my business.⁠ ⁠… So I keep my mouth shut. Otherwise.⁠ ⁠…” and he looked vaguely through the window in the direction of the capital city of the province.

And no one knew whence, whether as the result of the churchwarden’s mysterious words or from other sources, vague and disquieting rumors gained currency in the village and in the vicinity with regard to the priest of Snamenskoye. Like the odor of smoke from a distant forest fire these rumors moved slowly and scattered widely, no one knowing whence and how they had originated, and only as the people exchanged glances and saw the sun grow pallid behind a hazy film they began to realize that something new, unusual and disquieting had come to dwell among them.

Towards the middle of October the new house was ready for occupancy, save that only one wing was all finished and covered with a roof; the other wing still lacked roof beams and rafters, and gaping with empty and frameless window openings, clung to the finished portion like a skeleton strapped to a living person, and at night looked grimly desolate and forbidding. Father Vassily had not troubled to buy new furniture: within the four bare walls of crude logs on which the amber sap had not yet hardened, the sole furniture in the four rooms consisted of two wooden stools, a table and two beds. The deaf and stupid cook was a poor hand at building fires and the rooms were always full of smoke which gave headaches to the inmates and hung like a low grey cloud over the dirty floor with its imprint of muddy boots. And the house was cold. During the severe cold spell of early winter the widow panes had gathered a layer of downy frost on the inside and a bleak chilling twilight reigned within. The window sills had been encrusted since the early frost with a thick coating of ice which constantly dribbling, formed rivulets on the floor. Even the unpretentious peasants who came to the priest for ministrations looked askance, in guilty embarrassment, upon the penurious furnishings of the priestly abode, and the deacon referred to it wrathfully as the “abomination of desolation.”

When Father Vassily first entered his new house, he paced for a long time in joyful agitation through rooms that were as cold and barren as a barn and merrily called to the idiot:

“We’ll live like lords here, Vassily, hey?”

The idiot licked his lips with his long brutish tongue and loudly barked with jerky, monotonous bellows:

“Huh-huh-huh!”

He was pleased and he laughed. But soon he began to feel the cold and the loneliness and the gloom of the abandoned abode, and this made him angry; he screamed, slapped his own cheeks and tried to slide down on the floor, but he fell from the chair painfully hurting himself. Sometimes he lapsed into a state of heavy stupor not unlike a grotesque pensive day dream. Supporting his head with his thin long fingers he stared into space from beneath his narrow, beastlike eyelids and never stirred. And it seemed at times that he was not an idiot, but some strange creature lost in meditation, thinking peculiar thoughts of his own that were totally unlike the thoughts of other people: as though he knew something that was peculiar, simple and mysterious, something that no one else could know of. And to look at his flattened nose with the widely distended nostrils, at the slanting back of his head which in a brutish slope merged straight into his back⁠—it seemed that if one were only to lend him a pair of swift and sturdy legs he would scurry away into the woods there to live out his mysterious forest life filled with savage play and obscure forest lore.

And side by side with him, always the two together, always alone, now deafened by his impudent and malignant screaming, now haunted by his stony enigmatic stare, Father Vassily lived the equally mysterious life of the spirit, that had renounced the flesh. He longed to purge himself for the great martyrdom and the great sacrifice yet unrevealed, and his days and his nights became one ceaseless prayer, one wordless effusion. Since the death of the Popadya he had imposed upon himself an ascetic regime: he drank no tea, he tasted neither meat nor fish, and on days of abstinence, Wednesday and Friday, his food consisted merely of bread soaked in water. And with a puzzling cruelty that seemed to be akin to vindictiveness he had imposed the same strict abstinence upon the idiot, and the latter suffered like a starving beast. He screamed and scratched and even shed floods of greedy, doglike tears, but he could not procure an additional bite of food. The priest saw but few people, and these only when absolutely compelled to receive them, and he assiduously shortened all interviews, devoting every hour, with brief intervals for rest and sleep, to prayer on bended knee. And when he grew tired he sat down and read the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles and the Lives of the Saints. It had been the village custom to hold services only on Sundays and holidays, but now he celebrated the early liturgy every morning. The aged deacon had refused to officiate with him, and he was assisted by the lay-reader, a filthy and lonely old man who had been once deposed from the diaconate for drunkenness, and was now acting as verger.

Long before daybreak, shivering with the cold of the early winter morning, Father Vassily wended his way to the church. He did not have far to go, but the walk consumed much time. Frequently a snow drift covered the road at night and his feet sank and stuck fast in the dry grainy snow and each step required the effort of ten ordinary steps. The church was not properly heated and it was bitterly cold inside, with that peculiar penetrating cold which in winter time clings to public places left vacant for days at a time. Human breath turned into dense clouds of vapor, the touch of metal felt like a burn. The lay-reader, who was also the verger, built a small fire in a tiny stove, back of the altar, just for the priest’s comfort, and by its opened gate, Father Vassily, squatting on his haunches, warmed his hands before the modest blaze, for otherwise he could not have clasped the cross with his numb and unbending fingers. And during the ten minutes thus spent he joked with the old lay-reader about the cold and the gipsy sweat, and the lay-reader listened to him with sullen condescension; constant drink and cold had colored the lay-reader’s nose a deep purple, and his bristling chin (after his deposition he had shaved off his beard) moved rhythmically as though chewing a cud.

Then Father Vassily donned his tattered vestments, once embroidered with gold, of which a few ragged thread ends were the sole remaining trace. A pinch of incense was dropped into the censer and they began to officiate in semidarkness, barely able to distinguish one another’s outlines, like a couple of blind men moving by instinct in a familiar spot. Two stumps of wax tapers, one near the lay-reader, the other on the altar near the image of the Saviour, merely served to intensify the gloom; and their sharp flames slowly swayed from side to side responding to the movements of these unhurrying men.

The service was long, and it was slow and solemn. Every word trembled and deliquesced in its outlines, being caught up by the echo of the deserted church. And there was nothing within but the echo, the darkness and the two men serving God; and little by little something began to glow and blaze in the lay-reader’s heart. Pricking up his ears, he cautiously strove to catch every word of the priest and moved his chin in quick succession. And his lonely, filthy decrepit old age seemed to vanish somewhere into distance, and with it the whole of his luckless and weary existence, and that which came in the place thereof was strange and joyous to the verge of tears. Frequently to the lay-reader’s allocution there came no response; silence, protracted and solemn, ensued, and the sharp tongues of wax tapers blazed straight up without stirring. Then from the distance came a voice that was sated with tears and with gladness. And once more through the semidarkness moved sure-footedly the two unhurrying celebrants, and the flames swayed to one side and to the other in response to their deliberate measured movements.

The daylight was commencing to break when the service was finished, and Father Vassily said:

“Look, Nicon, how warm it is getting.”

A spiral of steam was issuing from his mouth. The wrinkles on Nicon’s cheeks had grown pink, he scanned the priest’s face with a severely searching expression and diffidently inquired:

“And tomorrow⁠—again? Or perhaps not?”

“Of course, Nicon, again, of course.”

Reverently he conducted the priest to the door and then returned to his watchman’s booth. There, yelping and barking, a dozen dogs came running towards him⁠—grown up dogs they were and pups. Surrounded by them as though by a family of children, he fed them and caressed them, with his thoughts dwelling constantly on the priest. And as he thought of the priest he wondered. He thought of the priest⁠—and smiled, without opening his lips, and averting his face from his dogs so that they might not see his smile. And he thought, and he thought until nightfall. But in the morning he waited to see if the priest would not fool him, if the priest would not back down in the face of the darkness and the frost. But the priest came despite the cold and the darkness, shivering, yet cheerful, and once more from the gaping mouth of the little stove into the very depths of the vacant church stretched a ribbon of a ruddy glow and along it the black and melting shadow.

At first hearing of the eccentricities of the priest many people came to the early liturgy just to see him officiate and they marveled. Some of those who came to watch him pronounced him a madman; others were edified and wept, but there were others, too, and these were many, in whose hearts was born a keen and unconquerable disquietude. For in the steady, in the fearlessly frank and luminous glance of the priest they had caught a glimmer of mystery, of the most profound and hidden mystery, full of ineffable threats, full of ominous promises. But soon the merely curious began to drop off, and for a long time the church remained vacant in these early morning hours, none disturbing the peace of the two praying men. But after a lapse of time in response to the words of the priest there had begun to come from the darkness timid, subdued sighs, someone’s knees struck the flags of the stone floor with a dull thud; someone’s lips were whispering, someone’s hands were holding a tiny fresh taper, and between the two stumps it looked like a stately young birch in a forest clearing.

And rumor, dull, disquieting, impersonal, grew apace. It crept everywhere where people assembled, leaving behind some sediment of fear, hope and expectancy. Little was said, and what was said was vague; for the most part it was the wagging of heads, followed by sighs, but in the neighboring province, a hundred miles away, someone, grey and taciturn, began to whisper of a “new faith” and was lost again in silence. And rumor kept spreading, like the wind, like the clouds, like the smoky odor of a distant forest fire.

Last of all the rumors reached the provincial capital, as though they found it hard and painful to make their way through stone walls, through the noisy and populous city streets. And like naked, ragged thieves they finally showed themselves, claiming that someone had burned himself alive, that a new fanatical sect had sprung up in Snamenskoye. And people in uniform made their appearance in the village, but they found nothing, for neither the village houses nor the stolid faces of the villagers revealed anything to them, and they drove back to town tinkling with their sleigh bells.

But after this visit the rumors became still more persistent and malicious, while Father Vassily continued to serve mass every morning as heretofore.

X

The long evenings of winter time Father Vassily passed in solitude with the idiot, imprisoned together with him in the white cage of pine log walls and ceiling, as though locked in a shell.

From the past he had retained a love for bright lights⁠—and on the table, warming the room, blazed a large oil lamp with a big-bellied globe. The window panes frozen outside and frosted within reflected the light of the lamp and sparkled, but were impenetrably opaque like the walls and cut off the people from the greying night outside. Like a boundless sphere the night enveloped the house, crushing it from above, seeking some crevice through which to plunge its greyish claws, but finding none. It raged about the doors, tapped the walls with its lifeless hands, exhaling a murderous cold, wrathfully raised a myriad of dry and spiteful snowflakes, flinging them frenziedly against the windowpanes, and frantically ran back into the fields, cavorting, singing and leaping headlong into snowbanks, clutching the stiffened earth in its crosslike embrace. Then it rose and squatted on its haunches and silently gazed into the illuminated windows gnashing its teeth. And once more shrilly shrieking it flung itself against the house, bellowing into the chimney with a greedy howl of insatiable hatred and longing, and it lied: it had no children, it had devoured them all and buried them out in the field⁠—in the field⁠—in the field.

“A snowstorm,” said Father Vassily stopping to listen for a moment and turning his eyes back to his reading.

But it found them. The flame of the big lamp melted a circle in the frosty armor, and the damp window pane glistened and it glued its grey wan eye to the exposed spot. “Two of them⁠—two⁠—two⁠—just two.” Rough, bare walls with the shining drops of amber sap, the radiant emptiness of air and the humans⁠—two of them.

With the narrow little skull bending over his work the idiot sat at the table pasting little boxes out of cardboard: he was spreading on the paste, holding the tip of the brush in his long narrow hand, or else he was cutting up the cardboard and the click of the scissors resounded noisily through the barren house. The boxes came out all askew and dirty, with overlapping bands that refused to stick, but the idiot was unconscious of these defects and continued to work. Now and then he raised his head and with a motionless glance from beneath his narrow brutish eyelids he gazed into the radiant emptiness of the room, wherein a riot of sounds was fighting, whirling and circling. Rustling, rattling, crackling, booming, explosive sounds they were, mingling with someone’s laughter and long drawn out, protracted sighing. They were hovering over him, running over his face like invisible cobwebs, and penetrating into his head⁠—those rustling, crackling, sighing sounds. And the man on the other side of the table was motionless and silent.

“Bang!” crackled the drying wood, and Father Vassily shivered and tore his eyes from the white page before him. And then he saw the bare rough walls, and the desolate windows and the grey eye of the night, and the idiot frozen in a listening attitude with a pair of shears in his hands. All this flitted past him like a vision, and once more before his lowered eyes spread the unfathomable world of the marvelous, the world of love, the world of gentle compassion and of beautiful sacrifices.

“Pa-pa,” the idiot mumbled the word which he had recently learned, and looked at his father askance, angrily, worriedly. But the man heard not and was silent, and his luminous face seemed inspired. He was dreaming the wondrous dreams of a madness that was brilliant as the sun. He believed with the faith of those martyrs who enter upon the stake as upon a couch of joy and die with a doxology on their lips. And he loved with the mighty and unrestrained love of the master who rules life and death and knows not the torture of the tragic impotence of human love. “Glory⁠—glory⁠—glory!”

“Pa-pa, Pa-pa!” once more mumbled the idiot, and receiving no reply took up his shears again. But he soon dropped them again, staring with motionless eyes and pricking up his outstanding ears to catch the sounds as they flitted past him. Hissing and rustling, laughter and whistling. And laughter. The night was in a playful mood. It squatted on the beams of the unfinished framework, rocking on the rafters and tumbling into the snow; it quietly stole into nooks and crannies, and there dug graves for those strangers, those strangers. And joyously it whirled up aloft, spreading its grey, wide wings, peering; then it tumbled again like a rock, or circling whizzed through the darkened window openings of the frosty framework, hissing and screaming. It was chasing the snowflakes⁠—pallid with fear they silently sped onward in headlong flight.

“Pa-pa,” the idiot shouted loudly. “Pa-pa!”

The man heard and raised his head with the long, black, greying locks that encircled his face like the night and the snow. For a moment before him rose again the bare, rough walls and the spiteful and frightened face of the idiot and the screaming of the rioting snowstorm, filling his heart with agonized elation. It is done⁠—it is done.

“What is it, Vassily? Paste your boxes.”

“Papa!”

“Be calm. The snowstorm? Yes, yes, the snowstorm!”

Father Vassily clung to the window⁠—eye to eye with the greying night. He peered. And he whispered in terrified wonderment:

“Why doesn’t he ring the bell?17 What if someone is lost in the fields?”

The night is sobbing. In the field⁠—in the field⁠—in the field.

“Wait, Vassily. I’ll walk over to Nicon’s. I’ll return at once.”

“Pa-pa!”

The door rattles, letting in a flood of new sounds. They first timidly edge their way near the door⁠—no one is there. It is bright and empty. One by one they steal towards the idiot, groping along the ceiling, along the floor, along the walls. They peer into his brutish eyes, they whisper, they laugh, they commence to play with growing glee, with growing abandon. They chase one another, leaping and stumbling. They are doing something in the adjoining room, fighting and screaming. No one there. Light and emptiness. No one there.

“Boom!” somewhere overhead falls the first heavy note of the church bell scattering the myriad of frightened sounds into flight. “Boom!” goes the bell once more, with a second, muffled, viscid, scattered sound, as though an onrush of wind had caught the broad maw of the bell, and it choked and groaned. And the tiny sounds flee precipitously.

“And here am I again,” says Father Vassily. He is all white and shivering. The stiff, red fingers cannot turn the page. He blows on them, rubs them together, and once more the pages rustle and all disappears, the bare rough walls, the repulsive mask of the idiot and the measured knell of the church bell. Once more his face is ablaze with joyous madness. “Glory, glory!”

“Boom!”

The night is playing with the bell. Catching its thickly reverberating notes, weaving about them a network of whizzing and whistling sounds, tearing them to pieces, scattering them abroad, rolling them ponderously over the fields, burying them in the snow, and listening with the head askew. And once more it rushes to meet the new clangor, tireless, spiteful and cunning like Satan.

“Pa-pa!” cried the idiot throwing to the ground the shears with a bang.

“What is it? Be quiet!”

“Pa-pa!”

Silence in the room, the whizzing and wrathful hissing of the snowstorm outside, and the dull, viscid sounds of the bell. The idiot is slowly turning his head, and his thin, lifeless legs, with the curving toes and the tender soles that have never known contact with firm ground stir feebly and impotently strive to flee. And he calls again:

“Pa-pa!”

“All right. Stop. Listen, I will read you something.”

Father Vassily turned back the page and began with a grave and severe voice, as though reading in church:

“And as He passed by He saw a man who was blind from birth. He raised his hand and with blanched cheeks looked up at Vassya.

“Understand: blind from birth. Had never seen the light of the sun, the face of his near ones and dear ones. He had come into the world and darkness had enveloped him. Poor man! Blind man!”

The voice of the priest resounds with the firmness of faith and with the transport of sated compassion. He is silent, he is staring ahead with a softly smiling gaze as though he cannot part with this poor man who was blind from birth and had never seen the face of a friend and had never thought that the grace of God was so nigh. Grace⁠—and mercy⁠—and mercy.

“Boom!”

“But listen, son. ‘His disciples asked Him: Master who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind? Jesus answered: neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.’ ”

The voice of the priest gathers strength and fills the barren room with its reverberations. And its sonorous sounds pierce the soft purring and hissing and whistling and the lingering cracked tolling of the choking church bell. The idiot is filled with glee over the flaming voice and the brilliant eyes and the noise and the whistling and the booming. He slaps his outstanding ears, he hums, and two streams of viscid saliva flow in two dirty currents to his receding chin.

“Pa-pa! Pa-pa!”

“Listen, listen: ‘I must work the work of Him that sent me while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ Forever and ever forever and ever!” into the teeth of the night and of the snowstorm he flings a passionately ringing challenge. “Forever and ever!” The church-bell is calling to the wanderers, and impotently weeps its aged broken voice. And the night is swinging on its black, blind notes: “Two of them, two of them, two-two-two!”

Dimly Father Vassily hears it and with a stern reproof he turns to the idiot:

“Stop that mumbling!”

But the idiot is silent, and once more eyeing him dubiously Father Vassily continues:

“I am the light of the world. When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And said unto him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam. He went his way therefore⁠—and washed, and came seeing.”

“Seeing! Vassya, seeing!” menacingly cried the priest and leaping from his seat he began to pace the floor swiftly. Then he stopped in the center of the room and loudly cried:

“I believe, O Lord, I believe.”

And all was still. But a loud galloping peal of laughter broke the silence, striking the priest’s back. And he turned about terrified.

“What sayest thou?” he asked in fear, stepping back. The idiot was laughing. The senseless, ominous laughter had torn his immense immobile mask from ear to ear and out of the wide chasm of his mouth rushed unrestrained, galloping peals of oddly vacant laughter.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

XI

On the eve of Whitsunday, the bright and happy festival of spring time, the peasants were digging sand to strew over the village roadways. The peasants of Snamenskoye had for several years past carted huge supplies of rich red sand from pits located a distance of two versts from their village, in a clearing which they had made in a dense wood of low birch, pine and young oak trees. It was in the beginning of June, but the grass was already waist high, hiding halfway the luxuriant and mighty verdure of the riotous bushes and their humid, green, broad foliage. And there were many flowers that year, with a multitude of bees flitting from blossom to blossom. The bees poured their rhythmical, ardent humming, the flowers shed their sweetly plain fragrance down the crumbling, sliding slopes of the excavation. For several days the air had been heavy with the threat of a storm. It was felt in the heated, windless atmosphere, in the dewless, stifling nights; the anguished cattle called for it, pleadingly lowed for it with stretched-out heads. And the people were gasping for breath, but abnormally elated. The motionless air crushed and depressed them, but something restless was urging them on to movement, to loud, abrupt conversation, to causeless laughter.

Two men were at work in the pits, Nicon, the verger, who was taking sand for the church, and the village elder’s laborer, Semen Mossyagin. Ivan Porfyritch loved an abundance of sand both in the street in front of his house and all over his cobblestone yard, and Semen had taken away one cartload in the morning and was now loading another wagon, briskly throwing up shovelfuls of golden, ruddy sand. He rejoiced in the heat and in the humming, in the fragrance and in the pleasure of toil: he looked up with a challenge into the face of the morose verger who was lazily scratching up the surface of the sand with a toothless scraper, and he mocked him:

“Well, old friend, Nicon Ivanytch, we’re doomed to blush unseen.”

“Say that again,” replied the verger with a lazy and indefinite menace, and as he spoke the pipe which he was smoking dropped from his mouth into the grey undergrowth of his beard and threatened to fall.

“Look out, you’ll lose your pipe,” Semen warned him.

Nicon did not reply, and Semen, unabashed, continued to dig. During the six months which he had spent in the service of Ivan Porfyritch he had grown smooth and round like a cucumber, and his simple tasks came nowhere near exhausting his overabundance of vigor and energy. He alertly attacked the sand, digging in and throwing it up with the agility and swiftness of a hen scratching for grain; he gathered the golden gleaming sand, shaking up the spade like a wide and garrulous tongue. But the pit from which many cartloads had been taken the day before seemed exhausted and Semen resolutely spat out.

“Can’t dig much here. Shall I try yonder?” he glanced up at a low little cave which had been dug in the crumbling sloping side of the pit and in which he saw a motley series of red and greenish grey layers, and he determinedly walked towards it.

The verger looked at the little cave and thought: “It might slide,” yet he did not say a word. But Semen sensed the peril in the instinctive onrush of a vague anxiety which overcame him like a sudden attack of passing nausea and he stopped:

“Do you think it will slide on me?” he asked as he turned around.

“How should I know?” replied the verger.

In the deep recesses of the cave⁠—which resembled a yawning mouth, there was something treacherous, something traplike, and Semen wavered. But from above, where the leaves of a young oak tree were sharply outlined against the azure sky, he caught the stimulating whiff of fresh foliage and blossoms, and this stimulating fragrance incited to gay and daring deeds. Semen spat out into his palm, seized his shovel, but after the second thrust a faint crunch was heard, and the whole slope of the excavation slid down without a sound and buried him. And only the young tree which barely hung on by its roots feebly moved its leaves, while a round lump of dried sand looking so bland and innocent rolled over to the feet of the verger from whose cheeks all color had fled. Two hours later Semen was taken out dead. His broad open mouth, with the clean and pearly teeth, was stuffed tight with the golden gleaming sand. And all over his face, amid the white eyelashes of his hollow eyes, mingled with his sunny hair and the flaming red beard glistened the gold of the beautiful sand. And still the tangled mass of his auburn hair was whirling and dancing, and the gay absurdity, the daredevil merriment of that dance around the pallid face that had settled into the rigor of death created the impression of a fiendish mockery.

With the curious throng attracted by the news of the accident, Senka, the little son of the perished man, had come on the run. No one thought of giving him a lift, and he had run the whole way in the rear of the village wagons; while his father’s body was being released from the slide, he was standing aside on a mound of clay, motionless, breathing heavily, and as immobile were his eyes with which he devoured the melting avalanche of sand.

The dead man was laid on a wagon, atop of the golden load of sand which he himself had thrown upon it; they covered the body with a mat, and drove away at a slow pace over the rutty forest road. In the rear of the funeral wagon stolidly strode the villagers scattering in groups among trees, and their blouses struck by the rays of the sun flashed crimson through the wood. When the cortege passed the two-story house of Ivan Porfyritch the verger suggested that the corpse be taken to his house:

“He was his farmhand, let him bury him.”

But not a soul was to be seen either in the windows or about the house and the shop was locked with a ponderous iron padlock. For a long time they knocked against the massive gates decorated with black flatheaded nails, then they rang the sonorous doorbell, and its reverberating echoes resounded sharply and loudly somewhere around the corner, but though the court dogs yelled themselves hoarse, for a long time no one came. Finally an old scullery woman came out and announced that her master ordered the body to be taken to the dead man’s home, and promised to donate the sum of ten roubles towards funeral expenses, without deducting the gift from the earnings of the deceased. While she was arguing with the throng outside, Ivan Porfyritch himself, frightened to death and wrathful, was standing behind the curtains, gazing with a shudder upon the mat that covered the corpse and he whispered to his wife:

“Remember, if that priest offers me a million roubles I shall not shake hands with him, I’d sooner see it wither away. He is a terrible man.”

And no one knew why, whether because of the churchwarden’s mysterious words or from some other source, confused and ominous rumors swiftly appeared in the village and crept back and forth like hissing snakes. The villagers talked of Semen, of his sudden and terrible death, and they thought of the priest, not knowing what they were expecting of him. When Father Vassily started on his way to the requiem mass, pale and burdened by vague musings, but cheery and smiling, the people in his path stepped aside giving him a wide berth, and for a long time wavered before they dared to step upon a spot where his heavy footsteps had burned an invisible trace. They remembered the fire in his house and talked of it at great length. They recalled the Popadya who had burned to death and her son, the crippled idiot, and back of plain, clear words scurried the sharp thorns of fear. Some woman sobbed out aloud with a vague, overwhelming compassion, and went away. Those who stayed back for a long time watched her departing sobshaken back, then in silence, avoiding to look at one another, they dispersed. The youngsters, reflecting the agitation of their elders, gathered at dusk on the threshing floor and were exchanging fanciful tales of the dead man, while their bulging eyes sparkled darkly. Cozily familiar irritated parental voices had been calling them to their homes for a long time, but their bare feet were loth to make a homeward dash through the gruesome diaphanous dusk of evening. And during the two days which preceded the funeral there was a ceaseless stream of villagers wending their way to view the corpse that was puffed-up and rapidly turning blue.

The two nights before the funeral the earth had been exhaling a breath of the most intense torridity, and the dry meadows consumed beneath the merciless heat of the sun were bare of vegetation. The sky was clear and dark, few stars were out and these shone dimly. And above all reigned on all sides the ceaseless chatter of the crickets. When after the memorial vesper service Father Vassily emerged from the hut, it was dark already, and the sleepy street was unlighted. Stifled with the close atmosphere, the priest had taken off his broad-rimmed hat and was walking with a noiseless stride as though over a soft and downy carpet. And it was rather from a vague sense of instinctive anxiety than from the sense of hearing that he realized that someone was following him, evidently suiting his stride to his own deliberate gait. The priest stopped, the pursuer who had not expected this, advanced a few steps and also stopped rather abruptly.

“Who is this?” asked Father Vassily.

The man was silent. Then he suddenly veered around, and swiftly retired without decreasing his pace, and a moment later he was lost in the trackless gloom of the night.

The same thing happened the following night; a tall, dark man followed the priest to the very gate of his house, and something in the bearing and in the stride of the heavily built stranger reminded the priest of Ivan Porfyritch, the churchwarden.

“Ivan Porfyritch, is it you?” he called. But the stranger did not reply and departed. And as Father Vassily was retiring for the night someone tapped softly at his window. The priest looked out, but not a soul was to be seen. “Why is he roaming about like an evil spirit?” thought the priest in annoyance, making ready to kneel down for his protracted devotions. And lost in prayer he forgot the churchwarden and the night that was restlessly spreading over the earth, and himself; he was praying for the deceased, for his wife and children, for the bestowal of the great mercy of God upon the earth and its inhabitants. And in fathomless sunny depths a new world was assuming vague outlines, and this world was earth no more.

While he was praying the idiot had slipped from his bed, noisily shuffling his reviving but still feeble legs. He had learned to crawl in the beginning of the spring, and frequently on returning home Father Vassily found him on the threshold, sitting motionless like a dog before the locked door. Now he had started towards the open window, moving slowly, with much effort, and shaking his head intently. He had reached it, and hooking his powerful prehensile hands in the window sill he raised himself up and peered sullenly, greedily into the darkness. He was listening to something.

Mossyagin was to be buried on Whitmonday, and the day dawned ominous and uncertain, as though the confusion of people had found its counterpart in the formless confusion of nature. It had been oppressively hot since morning, the very grass seemed to curl up and wither before one’s eyes as though seared by a merciless fire. And the dense opaque sky impended threateningly ever the earth, and its filmy blue seemed to be zigzagged with thin veins of bloody red, so ruddy it was, so sonorous with metallic nuances and shades. The enormous sun was blazing with heat, and it was so strange to see it shine so brightly, while nowhere the sharply defined and restful shadows of a sunny day were to be found, as though between sun and earth hung some invisible but none the less solid curtain intercepting its rays. And over all reigned a stillness that was mute and ponderous, as though an invalid had lost himself in a labyrinth of musing, and with drooping eyelids had lapsed into silence. Grey rows of young birches with withered leaves, cut down with the roots, stretched through the village in serried ranks, and this aimless procession of young grey trees, perishing from thirst and fire and spectrelike refusing to cast shadows, filled the mind with sadness and vague forebodings. The golden grains of sand that had been scattered over the roadways had long since turned into yellow dust, and the refuse of festive sunflower pips of the day before surprised the eye: it babbled of something peaceful, simple and pleasant, while all that had remained in paralyzed nature seemed so stern, so morbid, so pensive, so menacing.

While Father Vassily was donning his raiments Ivan Porfyritch entered into the altar enclosure. Through the sweat and the purpling flush of heat that covered his face timidly peered a grey earthy pallor. His eyes were swollen, and burning feverishly. His hurriedly combed hair, matted with cider, had dried in spots and stuck out in confused thickets, as though the man had not slept for several nights, wallowing in the throes of superhuman terror. He seemed somehow unkempt and distracted; he had forgotten the niceties of human intercourse, failing to ask the priest’s blessing or even to salute him.

“What is the matter with you, Ivan Porfyritch? Are you ill?” Father Vassily inquired sympathetically, adjusting his flowing hair that had caught in the stiff neckpiece of his chasuble; in spite of the heat his face was pale and concentrated.

The churchwarden made an attempt at a smile.

“Just so. Nothing important. I wanted to have a talk with you, Father.”

“Was it you⁠—last night?”

“Yes, and the night before, too. Pardon me, I had no intention.⁠ ⁠…”

He heaved a deep sigh and once more oblivious of niceties, he openly blurted out trembling with fear:

“I am scared. I have never been scared before in my life. And now I am scared. I am scared.”

“Of what?” asked the priest in amazement.

Ivan Porfyritch looked over the priest’s shoulder as though someone, silent and dreadful, were hiding behind him, and continued:

“Death.”

They were regarding one another in silence.

“Death. It’s got to my household. Without rime or reason it will carry off all of us. All of us! Why in my home not a hen dare die without cause: if I order chicken soup, a hen dies, not otherwise. And what is this now? Is that proper order? Pardon me, but at first I had not even guessed it. Pardon me.”

“You mean Semen?”

“Whom else? Sidor or Yevstigney?18 Say, you listen to me, lad,” coarsely continued the churchwarden, out of his mind with terror and wrath. “Leave these tricks be. We’re no fools here. Get out of here while the going is good. Away with you.”

He swung his head with an energetic nod in the direction of the door and added:

“And be lively about it.”

“What’s the matter with you? Have you lost your mind?”

“We’ll see who’s lost his mind, you or I. What devil’s tricks is this you carry on here every morning? ‘I’m praying! I’m praying!’ ”⁠—he nasally mimicked the liturgical intonation. “This is no way to pray. Bide your time, bear up patiently, don’t come with your ‘I’m praying.’ You’re a pagan, a self-willed rebel, bending things to suit yourself. And now you’re bent in return: what’s become of Semen? Where is Semen? I ask. Why have you destroyed him? Where is Semen, tell me.”

He roughly rushed towards the priest and heard a curt, stern warning:

“Away from the altar, blasphemer!”

Purple with wrath Ivan Porfyritch looked down upon the priest from his towering height and froze rigid with his mouth wide-open. Upon him gazed abysmally a pair of deep eyes, black and dreadful like the ooze of a sucking swamp, and some strange and abundant life was throbbing behind them, someone’s menacing will issued forth from behind them like a sharpened sword. Eyes alone. Neither face nor body saw Ivan Porfyritch, but only eyes, immense like a house wall, high as the altar; gaping, mysterious, commanding eyes were gazing upon him, and as though seared by a consuming flame he unconsciously wrung his hands and fled knocking his massive shoulder against the partition. And in his fear-chilled spine, through the thick masonry of the church walls, he still felt the piercing sting of those black and dreadful eyes.

XII

They were entering the church with cautious steps and took up their stations wherever they chanced to be, not where they usually stood at service, where they liked or where they were accustomed to stand, as though finding it improper or wicked on a day of such awe and anguish to stick to trifling habits or to take thought of trivial comforts. And they took up their stations, hesitating a long time ere daring to turn their heads in order to look around. The church was crowded to suffocation, yet ever fresh rows of silent newcomers pressed from the rear. And all were silent, all were gloomily, anxiously expectant, and the crowded nearness of fellow-creatures gave no sense of security. Elbow was touching upon elbow and yet it seemed to each one that he was standing alone in a boundless waste. Drawn by strange rumors men from distant villages, from strange parishes had come to the little church; these were bolder and spoke at first in loud tones, but they too soon lapsed into silence, with resentful amazement, but impotent like the rest to break through the invisible chains of leaden stillness. Every one of the lofty stained windows was opened to admit air, and through them gazed the threatening coppery sky. It seemed to be sulkily peering from window to window, casting over all a dry, metallic reflection. And in this scattered and depressing, but none the less glaring light the old gilt of the image stand shone with a dull and irresolute lustre, irritating the eye with the chaotic haziness of the saints’ features. Back of one of the windows a young maple tree greened motionless and dry, and many eyes were riveted upon its broad leaves that were slightly curled with the heat. They seemed like friends, old, restful friends in this oppressive silence, in this repressed hubbub of feelings, amid these yellow mocking images.

And above all the familiar, restful odors of church, above the sweet fragrance of incense and wax reigned the pronounced, repulsive and terrible smell of corruption. The corpse had been rapidly decomposing, and it was nauseatingly terrible to approach the black coffin which contained the decaying mass of rotting and stinking flesh. It was terrible merely to approach it, but around it four persons stood motionless like the coffin itself: the widow and the three now fatherless children. Perhaps they too smelt the stench, but they refused to believe in it. Or perhaps they smelt nothing and fancied that they were burying their dear one alive, even as most folks think when death swiftly and unexpectedly snatches away one who is near and dear and is so inseparable from their very life. But they were silent, and all was still, and the threatening coppery sky peered from window to window over the heads of the crowd scattering about its dry and distracted glances.

When the requiem mass had begun, with its wonted solemn simplicity, and the portly and kindhearted deacon had swung his censer into the throng⁠—all breathed freely with the relief of elation. Some exchanged whispers; others more resolute heavily shuffled their benumbed feet; still others, who were nearest to the doors slipped out to the church steps for a rest and a smoke. But smoking and calmly exchanging small talk about harvests, the threatening drouth and money matters, they suddenly bethought themselves and fearing lest something momentous and unexpected might occur within while they were away, they flung aside the stubs of their cigarettes and rushed back into the church, using their shoulders as a wedge to break through the crowd. And then they stopped. The service was proceeding with a solemn simplicity; the aged deacon was coughing and clearing his throat before each sentence and warningly shaking a stubby fat forefinger whenever his gaze discovered a whispering pair in the throng. Those who had stepped outside before the close of the requiem mass had observed that over the forest, towards the sun, a hazily blue cloud had risen up in the sky, gradually growing dark under the rays of the sun, and they crossed themselves joyfully. Among them was also Ivan Porfyritch; pale and ailing he looked, but he also made the sign of the cross when he saw the cloud, but immediately lowered his eyes with a sullen air.

In the brief interval between the mass and the allocution to the corpse, while Father Vassily was donning his black velvet cassock, the deacon smacked his lips and said:

“A little ice would come in handy, for he smells rather strong. But where can you get ice? In my opinion it is well to keep a supply in the church for such cases. You might tell the churchwarden.”

“He smells?” dully said the priest.

“Don’t you notice it? You must have a fine nose! I’m simply done for. It will take a week in this hot spell to get the stench out of the church. Just take notice. I’ve got the smell in my beard, I swear.”

He held the tip of his grey beard to his nose, smelt it and said reproachfully:

“Such people!”

Then commenced the chanting. And once more the leaden silence oppressed the crowd and chained each one to his place, cutting him off from among his fellow-men, surrendering him a prey to agonizing expectancy. The old verger was chanting. He had seen the coming of death to him who was now reposing in the black coffin and frightening the attending throng. He clearly recalled the innocent lump of dried earth and the young oak tree that trembled with its finely carved leaves, and the old, familiar, lugubrious words came to life in his mumbling mouth and hit the mark surely and painfully. And he was thinking of the priest with anxiety and sorrow, for in these impending hours of horror he alone of all other people loved Father Vassily with a shy and tender affection and he was close to his great rebellious soul.

“Verily all is vanity, and life is shadow and dreams; for whoso is born of earth striveth for all things, but the Scripture sayeth that when we gain the world we gain the grave, where together dwelleth the king and the beggar. O Lord Christ, give peace to thy servant, for Thou art a lover of mankind.⁠ ⁠…”

Darkness was falling upon the church, the purpling blue ominous darkness of an eclipse, and all had sensed it long before any eye had discovered it. And only those whose eyes were riveted upon the friendly foliage of the maple tree outside had noticed that something cast-iron grey and shaggy had crept up behind it, peered into the church with lifeless eyes and resumed it climb to the cross of the steeple.

“… where there are worldly passions, where there are the dreams of timeservers, where there is gold and silver, where there is a multitude of slaves and fame, all is dust and ashes and shadows,” quivered the bitter words on senile trembling lips.

Everyone had now noticed the gathering gloom and turned to the window. Back of the maple tree the sky was black and the broad leaves looked no longer green. They had grown pale, and in their frightened rigid appearance there was nothing left that was friendly and reassuring. Seeking comfort the people looked into their neighbors’ faces, and all faces were ashen-grey, all faces were pale and unfamiliar. And it seemed that the whole of that darkness⁠—pouring through the opened windows in broad and silent streams, had concentrated itself in the blackness of that coffin and in the black-garbed priest: so black was the silent coffin, so black was that man⁠—tall, frigid and stern. Surely and calmly he moved about, and the blackness of his garb seemed like the source of light amid the lacklustre gilt, the ashen-grey faces and the lofty windows that disseminated gloom. But moment by moment a puzzling hesitancy and irresoluteness seemed to take hold of him; he slowed down his steps and extending his neck regarded the throng in surprise, as though he was startled to find this transfixed multitude in the church where he was wont to worship in solitude; then forgetting the multitude, forgetting that he was the celebrant he made his way distractedly into the altar enclosure; he seemed to be inwardly torn in two; he seemed to be waiting a word, a command or a mighty, all-solving sensation⁠—and neither would come.

“I weep and I sob as I contemplate death and see reclining in coffins our beauty that was created in the image of God and is now become formless, inglorious and unsightly. O marvel! What is this mystery that surroundeth us? How are we surrendered unto corruption? How are we subjugated unto death? Verily by the word of God.⁠ ⁠…”

Brightly gleamed the tapers in the gathering gloom as though in the dusk of eve, casting ruddy reflections upon the faces of the people, and many had noticed this sudden transition from day to night while it was high noon. Father Vassily too had sensed the darkness without comprehending it; the queer notion had entered his head that it was the dark of the early winter morning when he remained alone with God, and one great and mighty feeling had given wings to his soul⁠—like a bird, like an arrow flying unerringly towards its goal. And he trembled, unseeing like a blind man, but on the point of receiving sight. Myriads of fugitive and tangled thoughts, myriads of undefined sensations slowed up their frenzied flight⁠—stopped⁠—died away⁠—a moment of terrible nothingness, precipitous falling, death, and something rose up within his breast, something immense, something undreamt of in its joyous glory, in its wondrous beauty. The heart that had stood still was thumping forth its first beats, painfully, laboriously, but he already knew. It had come! It, the mighty, all-solving sensation, master over life and death, able to command to the mountains: “Move from your place!” and the hoary and cranky mountains must move. Glory, ineffable glory! He is gazing upon the coffin, into the church, upon the faces of people and he comprehends⁠—he comprehends everything with that wonderful penetration into the depth of things which is possible only in dreams and which disappears without a trace at the approach of light. So that was it! That was the great solution! Glory! Glory! Glory!

He laughs out loudly and hoarsely, he sees the frightened expression of the deacon who had warningly raised his finger, he sees the crouching backs of the people who having heard his laughter burrow gangways through the crowd like worms, and he claps his hand over his mouth like a guilty schoolboy.

“I won’t any more,” he whispers into the deacon’s ear, while insane rejoicing is fairly splashing fire from every pore of his face. And he weeps, covering his face with his hands.

“Take some drops, some drops, Father Vassily,” the distracted deacon whispers into his ear and desperately exclaims: “Lord, Lord, how out of place! Listen, Father Vassily!”

The priest moves his folded hands an inch or two from his face, and looks from behind their shelter askance at the deacon. The deacon with a shiver, edges away on tiptoe, feels his way to the gate with his belly, and groping for the door emerges out of the altar enclosure.

“Come, let us give our last kiss, brethren, to the departed one, giving thanks unto God.⁠ ⁠…”

A commotion ensues in the church; some depart stealthily without exchanging any words with those who remain, and the darkened church is now only comfortably filled. Only about the black coffin is the surge of a silent throng, people are making the sign of the cross, bending their heads over something dreadful and repulsive and moving away with wry countenances. The widow is parting from her husband. She now believes in his death and she is conscious of the nauseating odor, but her eyes are locked to tears and there is no voice in her throat. And the children are watching her with three pairs of silent eyes.

And while the people watched the deacon plunging worriedly through the congregation, Father Vassily had come out into the chancel and stood eyeing the crowd. And those who saw him in that moment had indelibly engraved in their memory his striking appearance. He was holding on with his hands to the railing so convulsively that the tips of his fingers turned livid; with I neck outstretched, the whole of his body bent over the railing, and pouring himself into one immense glance he riveted it upon the spot where the widow stood beside her children. And it was queer to see him, for it seemed as though he delighted in her boundless anguish, so cheerful, so radiant, so daringly happy was his impetuous glance.

“What partings, O brethren, what weepings, what sobbing in this present hour; come hither, imprint a kiss upon the brow of him who from his early youth hath dwelt among you, for he is now to be consigned to his grave, surmounted by a stone, to take up his dwelling in the darkness, being buried with the dead, parting from his kin and his friends.⁠ ⁠…”

“Stop, thou madman!” an agonized voice came from the chancel. “Canst thou not see there is none dead among us?”

And here occurred that mad and great event for which all had been waiting with such dread and such mystery. Father Vassily flung open the clanging gate, and strode through the crowd cutting its motley array of colors with the solemn black of his attire and made his way to the black, silently waiting coffin. He stopped, raised his right hand commandingly and hurriedly said to the decomposing corpse:

“I say unto thee: Arise.”

In the wake of these words came confusion, noise, screams, cries of mortal terror. In a panic of fear the people rushed to the doors, transformed into a herd of frightened beasts. They clutched at one another, threatened one another with gnashing teeth, choking and roaring. And they poured out of the door with the slowness of water trickling out of an overturned bottle. There remained only the verger who had dropped his book, the widow with her children, and Ivan Porfyritch. The latter glanced a moment at the priest and leaping from his place cut his way into the rear of the departing throng, bellowing with wrath and fear.

With the radiant and benign smile of compassion towards their unbelief and fear⁠—all aglow with the might of limitless faith, Father Vassily repeated for the second time with solemn and regal simplicity:

“I say unto thee, Arise!”

But still is the corpse and its tightly locked lips are dispassionately guarding the secret of Eternity. And silence. Not a sound is heard in the deserted church. But now the resonant clatter of scattered frightened footsteps over the flagstones of the church: the widow and the orphans are going. In their wake flees the verger, stopping for an instant in the doorway he wrings his hands, and silence once more.

“It is better so. How can he rise in this state before his wife and children?” swiftly flits through Father Vassily’s mind, and for the third and last time he commands, softly and sternly:

“Simeon, I say unto thee: Arise!”

Slowly sinks his hand, he is waiting. Someone’s footsteps rustle in the sand just outside of the window and the sound seems so near as though it came from the coffin. He is waiting. The footsteps come nearer and nearer, pass the window and die away. And stillness, and a protracted agonized sigh. Who is sighing? He is bending over the coffin, seeking a movement of life in the puffed up and formless face; he commands to the eyes: “But open ye, I say,” bends still lower, closer and closer, clutches the edges of the coffin with his hands, almost touching the livid lips and trying to breathe the breath of life into them, and the shaken corpse replies with the coldly ferocious fetid exhalation of death.

He reels back in silence and for an instant sees and comprehends all. He smells the terrible odor; he realizes that the people had fled in terror, that in the church there are only he and the corpse; he sees the darkness beyond the window, but does not comprehend its nature. A memory of something horribly distant flashes through his mind, of some vernal laughter that had been ringing in a dim past and then died away. He remembers the snowstorm. The church bell and the snowstorm. And the immobile mask of the idiot. Two of them.⁠ ⁠… Two of them.⁠ ⁠… Two of them.⁠ ⁠…

And once more all is gone. The lacklustre eyes are once again ablaze with cold and leaping fires, the sinewy body is bursting once more with a sense of power and of iron firmness. Hiding his eyes beneath the stony arch of his brows, he says calmly, calmly, softly, softly as though fearing to wake a sleeper:

“Wouldst thou cheat me?”

And he lapses into silence, with downcast eyes, as though waiting for an answer. And once more he speaks softly, softly, with that ominous distinctness of a storm when all nature has bowed to its power and it is dillydallying, tenderly, regally rocking a tiny flake in the air.

“Then why did I believe?”

“Then why didst Thou give me love towards people and compassion? To mock me?”

“Then why hast Thou kept me all my life in captivity, in servitude, in fetters? Not a free thought! Not a feeling! Not a sigh! Thou alone, all for Thee! Thou only. Come then, I am waiting for Thee!”

And in the posture of haughty humility he waits an answer⁠—alone before the black and malignantly triumphant coffin, alone before the menacing face of fathomless and majestic stillness. Alone. The lights of the tapers pierce the darkness like immobile spears, and somewhere in the distance the fleeing storm mockingly chants: “Two of them⁠ ⁠… Two of them⁠ ⁠…” Stillness.

“Thou wilt not?” he asks still softly and humbly, but suddenly cries out with a frenzied scream, rolling his eyes, imparting to his face that candor of expression which is characteristic of insanity or of profound slumber. He cries out, drowning with his cry the menacing stillness and the ultimate horror of the dying human soul:

“Thou must! Give him back his life! Take it from others, but give it back to him! I beg of Thee!” Then he turns to the silent corruption of the corpse and commands it wrathfully, scornfully:

“Thou! Thou ask Him! Ask Him!”

And he cries out blasphemously, madly:

“He needs no paradise. His children are here below. They will call for him: ‘Father!’ And he will say to Thee: ‘Take from my head my heavenly crown, for there below the heads of my children are covered with dust and dirt.’ Thus he will speak!”

Wrathfully he shakes the heavy black coffin and cries:

“But speak thou, speak, accursed flesh!”

He looks with amazement, intently. And in mute horror he reels backward throwing up his swelling arms in self-defence. Semen is not in the coffin. There is no corpse in the coffin. The idiot is lying there. Clutching with his rapacious fingers at its edges, he has slightly raised his monstrous head, looking askance at the priest with eyes screwed up, and all about the distended nostrils, all about the enormous tightly compressed mouth plays the silent dawn of coming laughter. Not a sound he utters, but keeps gazing and slowly creeping out of the coffin⁠—inexpressibly terrible in the incomprehensible fusion of eternal life with eternal death.

“Back!” cries Father Vassily and his head swells to enormous proportions as he feels his hair stand on end. “Back!”

And once more the motionless corpse. And again the idiot. And the rotting mass madly alternates this monstrous play and breathes out horrors. And in maniacal anger he shrieks:

“Wouldst scare me? Then take.⁠ ⁠…”

But his words are unheard. Suddenly, all aglow with blinding light, the immobile mask is rent from ear to ear and peals of laughter mighty as the peals of thunder fill the whole silent church. With a loud roar the mad laughter splits the arching masonry, flinging the stones about like chips and engulfing in its reverberations the lone man within.

Father Vassily opens his blinded eyes, raises his head and sees all about him crumble. Slowly and ponderously reel the walls and close together, the vaults slide, the lofty cupola noiselessly collapses, the stone floor sways and bends, the whole world is being wrecked in its foundations and disintegrates.

And then with a shrill scream he rushes to the doors, but failing to find them he whirls and stumbles against walls and sharp corners and shrieks and shrieks. The door suddenly opens, precipitating him on the flags outside, but he leaps to his feet with the joy of relief, only to be caught and held in someone’s trembling, prehensile embrace. He struggles and whines, freeing his hand with maniacal strength; he rains savage blows upon the head of the verger who is attempting to hold him, and casting his body aside he rushes into the roadway.

The sky is ablaze with fire. Shaggy clouds are whirling and circling in the firmament and their combined masses fall down upon the shaken earth, the universe is crumbling in its foundations. And then from the fiery whirlpool of chaos the thunderous peals of laughter, the cackle and cries of savage merriment. In the west a tiny ribbon or azure is still to be seen, and towards that rift of blue he is rushing in headlong flight. His legs are caught in the long hairy cassock, he falls and writhes on the ground, bleeding and terrible to look upon, and rises and flees once more. The street is desolate as though at night, not a man, not a creature, neither beast, nor fowl to be seen near house or window.

“They’re all dead,” flashes through his mind⁠—his last conscious thought. He runs out of the village limits into the broad highway. Over his head the black whirling cloud throws out three lengthy tentacles, like rapaciously curved fingers; behind him something is roaring with a dull and threatening bellow. The universe is collapsing in its foundations.

Ahead in the distance, a peasant and two women who had been to the village church are wending their homeward way on their wagon. They notice the figure of a black-garbed man in precipitous flight; they stop for a moment, but recognizing the priest they whip up their horse and gallop away. The wagon leaps high on its springs, with two wheels up in the air, but the three silently crouching terror-stricken people desperately whip up the horse and gallop and gallop.

Father Vassily fell about three versts away from the village in the center of the broad highway. He fell prone, his haggard face buried in the grey dust which had been ground fine by the wheels of traffic, trampled by the feet of men and beasts. And in his pose he had retained the impetuousness of his flight: the white dead hands outstretched, one leg curled up under the body, the other⁠—clad in an old tattered boot with the sole worn through⁠—long, straight and sinewy, thrown back tense and taut, as though even in death he still continued his flight.

Part I

Part II

I

There stood once in a public place a black tower with massive fortress-like walls and a few grim bastioned windows. It had been built by robber barons, but time swept them into the beyond, and the tower became partly a prison for dangerous criminals and grave offenders, and partly a residence. In the course of centuries new structures were added to it, and were buttressed against the massive walls of the tower and against one another; little by little it assumed the dimensions of a fair sized town set on a rock, with a broken skyline of chimneys, turrets and pointed roofs. When the sky gleamed green in the west there appeared, here and there, lights in the various parts of the tower. The gloomy pile assumed quaint and fanciful contours, and it somehow seemed that at its foot there stretched not an ordinary pavement, but the waves of the sea, the salty and shoreless ocean. And the picture brought to one’s mind the shapes of the past, long since dead and forgotten.

An immense ancient clock, which could be seen from afar, was set in the tower. Its complicated mechanism occupied an entire story of the structure, and it was under the care of a one-eyed man who could use a magnifying glass with expert skill. This was the reason why he had become a clockmaker and had tinkered for years with small timepieces before he was given charge of the large clock. Here he felt at home and happy. Often, at odd hours, without apparent need he would enter the room where the wheels, the gears and the levers moved deliberately, and where the immense pendulum cleft the air with wide and even sweep. Having reached the limit of its travel the pendulum said:

“ ’Twas ever thus.”

Then it sank and rose again to a new elevation and added:

“ ’Twill ever be, ’twas ever thus, ’twill ever be, ’twas ever thus, ’twill ever be.”

These were the words with which the one-eyed clockmaker was wont to interpret the monotonous and mysterious language of the pendulum: the close contact with the large clock had made him a philosopher, as they used to say in those days.

Over the ancient city where the tower stood, and over the entire land there ruled one man, the mystic lord of the city and of the land, and his mysterious sway, the rule of one man over the millions was as ancient as the city itself. He was called the King and dubbed the “Twentieth,” according to the number of his predecessors of the same name, but this fact explained nothing. Just as no one knew of the early beginnings of the city, no one knew the origin of this strange dominion, and no matter how far back human memory reached the records of the hoary past presented the same mysterious picture of one man who lorded over millions. There was a silent antiquity over which the memory of man had no power, but it, too, at rare intervals, opened its lips; it dropped from its jaws a stone, a little slab marked with some characters, the fragment of a column, a brick from a wall that had crumbled into ruin⁠—and again the mysterious characters revealed the same tale of one who had been lord over millions. Titles, names and sobriquets changed, but the image remained unchanged, as if it were immortal. The King was born and died like all men, and judging from appearance, which was that common to all men, he was a man; but when one took into account the unlimited extent of his power and might, it was easier to imagine that he was God. Especially as God had been always imagined to be like a man, and yet suffered no loss of his peculiar and incomprehensible essence. The Twentieth was the King. This meant that he had power to make a man happy or unhappy; that he could take away his fortune, his health, his liberty and his very life; at his command tens of thousands of men went forth to war, to kill and to die; in his name were wrought acts just and unjust, cruel and merciful. And his laws were no less stringent than those of God; this too enhanced his greatness in that God’s laws are immutable, but he could change his at will. Distant or near, he always was higher than life; at his birth man found along with nature, cities and books⁠—his King; dying⁠—he left with nature, cities and books⁠—the King.

The history of the land, oral and written, showed examples of magnanimous, just and good Kings, and though there lived people better than they, still one could understand why they might have ruled. But more frequently it happened that the King was the worst man on earth, bare of all virtues, cruel, unjust, even a madman⁠—yet even then he remained the mysterious one who ruled over millions, and his power increased with his misdeeds. All the world hated and cursed him, but he, the one, ruled over those who hated and cursed, and this savage dominion became an enigma, and the dread of man before man was increased by the mystic terror of the unfathomable. And because of this wisdom, virtue and kindness served to weaken Kingcraft and made it a subject of strife, while tyranny, madness and malice strengthened it. And because of this the practice of beneficence and goodness was beyond the ability of even the most powerful of these mysterious lords though even the weakest of them in destructiveness and evil deeds could surpass the devil and the fiends of hell. He could not give life, but he imposed death, that mysterious Anointed one of madness, death and evil; and his throne rose to greater heights, the more bones had been laid down for its foundations.

In other neighboring lands there sat also lords upon their thrones, and the origin of their dominion was lost in hoary antiquity. There were years and centuries when the mysterious lord disappeared from one of the Kingdoms, though there never was a time when the whole earth was wholly without them. Centuries passed and again, no one knows whence, there appeared in that land a throne, and again there sat thereon some mysterious one, incomprehensibly combining in himself frailty and undying power. And this mystery fascinated the people; at all times there had been among them such as loved him more than themselves, more than their wives and children, and humbly, as if from the hand of God, without murmur or pity, they received from him and in his name, death in most cruel and shameful form.

The Twentieth and his predecessors rarely showed themselves to the people, and only a few ever saw them; but they loved to scatter abroad their image, leaving it on coins, hewing it out of stone, impressing it on myriads of canvases, and adorning and perfecting it through the skill of artists. One could not take a step without seeing the face, the same simple and mysterious face, forcing itself on the mind by sheer ubiquity, conquering the imagination, and acquiring a seeming omnipresence, just as it had attained immortality. And therefore people who but faintly remembered the face of their grandfathers and could not have recognized the features of their great grandfathers, knew well the faces of their lords of a hundred, two hundred or a thousand years back. And therefore, too, no matter how plain the face of the one man who was master of millions may have been, it bore always the imprint of enigmatic and awe-inspiring mystery. So the face of the dead always seems mysterious and significant, for through the familiar and well known features one gazes upon death, the mysterious and powerful.

Thus high above life stood the King. People died, and whole generations passed from the face of the earth, but he only changed his sobriquet like a serpent shedding his skin: The Eleventh was followed by the twelfth, the fifteenth, then again came the first, the fifth, the second, and in these cold figures sounded an inevitableness like that of a swinging pendulum which marks the passing of time:

“ ’Twas ever thus, ’twill ever be.”

II

And it happened that in that great country, the lord of which was the Twentieth, there occurred a revolution, a rising of the millions, as mysterious as had been the rule of the one. Something strange happened to the strong ties which had bound together the King and the people, and they began to decay noiselessly, unnoticeably, mysteriously, like a body out of which the life had departed, and in which new forces that had been in hiding somewhere commenced their work. There was the same throne, the same palace, and the same Twentieth⁠—but his power had unaccountably passed away; and no one had noticed the hour of its passage, and all thought that it merely was ailing. The people simply lost the habit of obeying and that was all, and all at once, from out the multitude of separate trifling, unnoticed resistances, there grew up a stupendous, unconquerable movement. And as soon as the people ceased to obey, all their ancient sores were opened, and wrathfully they became conscious of hunger, injustice and oppression. And they made an uproar. And they demanded justice. And they reared a gigantic beast bristling with wrath, taking vengeance on its tamer for years of humiliation and tortures. Just as they had not held counsels to agree to obedience, they did not confer about rebelling; and straightway, from all sides there gathered a rising and made its way to the palace.

Wondering at themselves and their deeds, oblivious of the path behind them, they advanced closer and closer to the throne, fingering already its gilt carving, peeping into the royal bedchamber and attempting to sit upon royal chairs. The King bowed and the Queen smiled, and many of the people wept with joy as they beheld the Twentieth at close range; the women stroked with cautious finger the velvet of the royal coat and the silk of the royal gown, while the men with good-natured severity amused the royal infant.

The King bowed and the pale Queen smiled, and from under the door of a neighboring apartment there crept in the black current of the blood of a nobleman, who had stabbed himself to death; he could not survive the spectacle of somebody’s dirty fingers touching the royal coat, and committed suicide. And as they dispersed they shouted:

“Long live the Twentieth.”

Here and there were some who frowned; but it was all so humorous that they too forgot their annoyance and gaily laughing as if at a carnival when some motley clown is crowned, they also shouted, “Long live the Twentieth.” And they laughed. But towards evening there was gloom in their faces and suspicion in their glances; how could they have faith in him who for a thousand years with diabolical cunning had been deceiving his good and confiding people! The palace is dark; its immense windows gleam insincerely and peer sulkily into the darkness: some scheme is being concocted there. They are conjuring the powers of darkness and calling on them for vengeance upon the people. There they loathingly cleanse the lips from traitorous kisses and bathe the royal infant who has been defiled by the touch of the people. Perhaps there is no one there. Perhaps in the immense darkened salons there is only the suicide nobleman and space⁠—they may have disappeared. One must shout, one must call for him, if a living being still be there. “Long live the Twentieth.”

A pale-grey, perplexing sky looks down upon pallid, upturned faces; the frightened clouds are scurrying over the heavens, and the immense windows gleam with a mysterious lifeless light. “Long live the Twentieth!”

The overwhelmed sentinel seems to sway in the surging crowd. He has lost his gun and is smiling; the lock upon the iron portals clatters spasmodically and feverishly; clinging to the lofty iron rods of the gate, like black and misshapen fruit are crouching bodies and outstretched hands, that look pale on top and dark below. A shaggy mass of clouds sweeps the sky and gazes down upon the scenes. Shouts. Someone has lighted a torch, and the palace windows blushed as if crimson with blood and drew nearer to the crowd. Something seemed to be creeping upon the walls and disappeared upon the roof. The lock rattled no longer. The glare of the torch revealed the railing crowded with people, and now it became again invisible. The people were moving onward.

“Long live the Twentieth!” A number of dim lights now seem to be flittering past the windows. Somebody’s ugly features press closely to the pane and disappear. It is growing lighter. The torches increase in number, multiply and move up and down, like some curious dance or procession. Now the torches crowd together and incline as if saluting; the king and queen appear on the balcony. There is a blaze of light behind them, but their faces are dark, and the crowd is not sure it is really they, in person.

“Give us Light! Twentieth! Give us Light! We can not see thee!” Suddenly several torches flash to the right and to the left of them, and from a smoky cavern two flushed and trembling countenances come into view. The people in the back are yelling: “It is not they! The king has fled!” But those nearest now shout with the joy of relieved anxiety: “Long live the Twentieth!” The crimson faces are now seen moving slowly up and down, now bright in the lurid glare, now vanishing in the shadow; they are bowing to the people. It is the Nineteenth, the Fourth, the Second who are bowing; bowing in the crimson mist are those mysterious creatures who had held so much enigmatic, almost divine power, and behind them are vanishing in the crimson mist of the past, murders, executions, majesty and dread. Now he must speak; the human voice is needed; when he is silent and bows with his flaming face he is terrible to look upon, like a devil conjured up from hell.

“Speak, Twentieth, speak!” A curious motion of the hand, calling for silence, a strange commanding gesture, as ancient as kingcraft itself, and a gentle unknown voice is heard dropping those ancient and curious words: “I am glad to see my good people.” Is that all? And is it not enough? He is glad! The Twentieth is glad! Be not angry with us Twentieth. We love thee, Twentieth, love us, too. If you will not love us we shall come again to see you in your study where you work, in your dining-room where you eat, in your bed chamber where you sleep, and we shall compel you to love us.

“Long live the Twentieth! Long live the king! Long live our master!”

Slaves!

Who said slaves? The torches are expiring. They are departing. The dim lights are moving back into the palace, the windows are dark again, but they flush with a crimson reflection. Someone is being sought in the crowd. The crowds are hurrying, casting frightened glances behind. Had he been here or had it been a mere fancy? They ought to have touched him, fingered his garments or his face; he ought to have been made to cry out with terror or pain. They disperse in silence; the shouts of individuals are drowned in the discordant tramp of many feet; they are filled with obscure memories, presentiments and terrors. And horrible visions hover all night long over the city.

III

He had already attempted to flee. He had bewitched some and lulled others to sleep and had almost gained his diabolical liberty, when a faithful son of the fatherland recognized him in the disguise of a shabby domestic. Not trusting to his memory he looked on a coin which bore his image⁠—and the bells rang out in alarm, the houses belched forth masses of pale and frightened people; it was he! Now he is in the tower, in the immense black tower with the massive walls and the small bastioned windows; and faithful sons of the people are watching him, impervious to bribery, enchantment and flattery. To drive away fear the guards drink and laugh and blow clouds of smoke right into his face, when he essays to take a walk in the prison with his devilish progeny. To prevent him from enchanting the passersby they had boarded up the lower portions of the windows and the tower gallery where he was wont to promenade, and only the wandering clouds in passing look into his face. But he is strong. He transforms the laughter of a freeman into servile tears; he sows seeds of disloyalty and treason from behind the massive walls and they penetrate into the hearts of the people like black flowers, staining the golden raiment of liberty into the likeness of a wild beast’s skin. Traitors and enemies abound on all hands. Descended from their thrones other powerful and mysterious lords gather at the frontier with hordes of savage and bewitched people, matricides ready to put to death freedom, their mother. In the houses, on the streets, in the mysterious wilderness of forests and distant villages, in the proud mansions of the popular assembly, there hisses the sound of treason and glides the shadow of treachery. Woe unto the people! They are betrayed by those who had been the first to raise the banner of revolt and the traitors’ wretched remains are already cast out of the dishonored sepulchres and their black blood drenches the earth. Woe unto the people! They are betrayed by those to whom they had given their hearts; betrayed by their own elect; whose faces are honest, whose tongues are uncompromisingly stern and whose pockets are full of somebody’s gold.

Now the city is to be searched. It was ordered that all should be in their dwellings at midday; and when at the appointed hour the bells were rung, their ominous sound rolled echoing over the deserted and silent streets. Since the city’s birth there had never reigned such stillness; not a soul near the fountains; the stores are closed; on the streets, from one end to the other, not a pedestrian, not a carriage to be seen. The alarmed and astonished cats wander in the shadow of the silent walls; they can not tell whether it be day or night; and so profound is the silence that it seems as if their velvety footfall were plainly audible. The measured tones of the bells pass over the streets like invisible brooms sweeping the city clean. Now the cats, too, frightened at something, have disappeared. Silence and desolation.

Suddenly on every street there appear simultaneously little bands of armed people. They converse loudly and freely and stamp their feet, and although they are not many they seem to cause more noisy commotion than the whole city when it is crowded with a hundred thousand pedestrians and vehicles. Each house seems to swallow them up in succession and to belch them forth again. And as they emerge another or two more are belched forth with them, pale with malice or red with wrath. And they walked with their hands in their pockets, for in those curious days no one feared death, not even the traitors; and they entered into the dark jaws of the prison houses. Ten thousand traitors were found that day by the faithful servants of the people; they found ten thousand traitors and cast them into prison. Now the prisons were pleasant and awful to look upon; so full they were from top to bottom with disloyalty and shameful treachery. One wondered that the walls could bear the load without crumbling into dust.

That night there was a general rejoicing in the city. The houses were emptied once more and the streets were filled; endless black throngs engaged in a stupefying dance, a combination of quick and unexpected gyrations. Dancing was in progress from one end of the city to the other. Around the lampposts like the foaming surf that beats against the rocks, knots of merrymakers had gathered, clasping hands, their faces aglow with laughter, and wide-eyed, whirling around, now vanishing from view and ever changing in expression. From the lamppost dangled the corpse of some executed traitor who had not succeeded in reaching the shelter of his prison. His extended legs seeking the ground, almost touched the heads of the dancers, and the corpse itself seemed to dance, yes, it seemed to be the very master of ceremonies and the ringleader of the merriment, directing the dance.

Then they walked over to the black tower and craning their necks, shouted: “Death to the Twentieth! Death!” Cheerful lights gleamed now in the tower windows; the faithful sons of the people were watching the tyrant. Calmed and assured that he could not escape, they shouted more in a jest than seriously: “Death to the Twentieth!” And they departed, making room for other shouters. But at night horrible dreams again hovered over the city, and like poison which one has swallowed and failed to spit out, the black towers and prisons reeking with traitors and treachery, gnawed at the city’s vitals.

Now they were putting the traitors to death. They had sharpened their sabres, axes and scythes; they had gathered blocks of wood and heavy stones and for forty-eight hours they worked in the prisons until they collapsed from fatigue. They slept anywhere near their bloody work, they ate and drank there. The earth refused to absorb the streams of sluggish blood; they had to cover it with heaps of straw, but that covering too was drenched and transformed into brownish refuse. Seven thousand traitors were put to death that day. Seven thousand traitors had bitten the dust in order to cleanse the city and furnish life to the newborn freedom. They marched again to see the Twentieth and held up to his view the chopped off heads and the torn out hearts of the traitors. And he saw them. Then confusion and consternation reigned in the popular assembly. They sought him who had given the order to slay and could not detect him. But someone must have given the order to slay. Was it you? Or you? Or you? But who had dared to give orders where the popular assembly alone had the right to command? Some are smiling⁠—they seem to know something.

“Murderers!”

“No! But we have compassion with our native land, while you express pity with traitors!”

Still peace is afar off, and treachery is growing apace and multiplying; insidiously it finds its way into the very hearts of the people. Oh! the sufferings, and Oh! the bloodshed⁠—and all in vain! Through the massive walls that mysterious sovereign still sows the seeds of treachery and enchantment. Alas for freedom! From the West comes the news of terrible dissensions, of battles, of a crazed portion of the people who had seceded and risen in arms against their mother, the Freedom. Threats are heard from the south, and from the east and the north other mysterious lords who had descended from their thrones are closing in upon the land with their savage hordes. No matter whence they come the clouds are imbued with the breath of foes and of traitors. No matter whence they blow from the north and the south, from the west and the east, the winds waft mutterings of threats and of wrath, and strike joyfully on the ear of him who is imprisoned in the tower, while they sound a funeral knell in the ears of citizens. Alas for the people! Alas for liberty! At night the moon is bright and radiant as if shining above ruins, but the sun even is lost in the mist and the black concourse of clouds, deformed, monstrous and ugly, which seem to strangle it. They attack it and strangle it and a mingled shagginess of crimson, they crash into the abyss of the west. Once for an instant the sun broke through the clouds⁠—and how sad, awesome and frightened was that ray of light. Hurriedly tender it seemed to caress the tops of the trees, the roofs of the houses, the spires of the churches.

But in the tower the one-eyed clockmaker, who could so conveniently use the magnifying glass, walking amid his wheels and gears, his levers and ropes, and bending his head to one side watches the swinging of the mighty pendulum. “ ’Twas ever thus⁠—’twill ever be. ’Twas ever thus⁠—’twill ever be!”

Once when he was very young the clock got out of order and stopped for the space of two days. And it was such a terrifying experience, as if all time had slipped into an abyss. But after the clock had been repaired, all was well again, and now time seems to flow between one’s fingers, to ooze drop by drop, to split into little pieces, falling an inch at a time. The immense brazen disc of the pendulum lights up faintly as it moves and seems to swing like a ball of gold if one looks at it with half-closed eyes. A pigeon is heard cooing softly among the rafters. “ ’Twas ever thus⁠—’twill ever be!” “ ’Twas ever thus⁠—’twill ever be!”

IV

The thousand-year-old monarchy was at last overthrown. There was no need of the plebiscite; every man in the popular assembly had risen to his feet, and from top to bottom it became filled with standing men. Even that sick deputy who had been brought in an armchair rose to his feet; supported by his friends he straightened his limbs, crushed with paralysis, and stood erect like a tall withered stump supported by two young and slender trees.

“The republic is accepted unanimously,” someone announced with a sonorous voice, vainly attempting to conceal its triumphant tone.

But they all remained standing. A minute passed, then another; already upon the public square, which was thronged with expectant people, there had burst forth a thunderous manifestation of joy, but in the hall there reigned a solemn stillness as in a cathedral, and stern, majestically serious people, grown rigid in the attitude of proud homage. Before whom are they standing? They no longer own a King, even God, that tyrant and king of heaven, had long since been overthrown from His celestial seat. They are paying homage to Liberty. The aged deputy whose head had been shaking for years with senile palsy now holds it up erect and proud. There, with an easy gesture of his hand, he has pushed aside his friends; he is standing alone; liberty has accomplished a miracle. These men who had long since forgotten the art of weeping, living amid tempests, riots and bloodshed, are weeping now. The cruel eyes of eagles which gazed calm and unmoved on the blood-reeking sun of the Revolution can not withstand the gentle radiance of Liberty, and they shed tears.

Silence reigns in the hall; but a tumultuous uproar is heard outside; growing in volume and intensity it loses its sharpness; it is uniform and mighty and brings to mind the roar of the limitless ocean. They are all freemen now. Free are the dying, free are those coming into the world, free are the living. The mysterious dominion of One which had held the millions in its clutches is overthrown, the black vaults of prisons have crumbled into dust⁠—and overhead shines the cloudless and radiant sky.

“Liberty”⁠—someone whispers softly and tenderly like the name of a sweetheart. “Liberty!” exclaims another, breathless with unutterable joy, his face aglow with intense eagerness and lofty inspiration. “Liberty!” is heard in the clanging of the iron. “Liberty!” sing the stringed instruments. “Liberty!” roars the many-voiced ocean. He is dead, the old deputy. His heart could not contain the infinite joy and it stopped, its last beat being⁠—Liberty! The most blessed of mortals; into the mysterious shadow of the grave he will carry away an endless vision of Newborn Freedom.

They had been awaiting frenzied excesses in the city, but none took place. The breath of liberty ennobled the people, and they grew gentle and tender and chaste in their demonstrations of joy. They only gazed at one another, they caressed one another with a cautious touch of the hand; it is so sweet to caress a free creature and to look into his eyes. And no one was hanged. There was found a madman who shouted in the crowd: “Long live the Twentieth!” twirled his mustache and prepared himself for the brief struggle and the lengthy agony in the clutches of a maddened throng. And some frowned, while others, the large majority, merely wonderingly and curiously regarding the hair-brained fellow, as a crowd of sightseers might gape at some curious simian from Brazil. And they let him go.

It was late at night when they remembered the Twentieth. A crowd of citizens who refused to part with the great day decided to roam around until daybreak. By chance they bethought themselves of the Twentieth and wended their way to the tower. That black structure merged into the darkness of the sky and at the moment when the citizens approached seemed to be in the act of swallowing a little star. Some stray bright little star came close to it, flashed for a moment and disappeared in the darkness. Very close to the ground, in a lower tier of the tower, two lighted windows shone out into the darkness. There the faithful custodians kept their unceasing vigil. The clock struck the hour of two.

“Does he or does he not know?” inquired one of the visitors vainly attempting to make out with his glance the contours of the pile, as if endeavoring to solve its secrets. A dark silhouette now detached itself from the wall, and a dull, weary voice responded:

“He is asleep, citizen.”

“Who are you, citizen? You startled me. You walk as softly as a cat!”

Other dark silhouettes now approached from various quarters and mutely confronted the newcomers.

“Why don’t you answer? If you are a specter, please vanish without delay; the assembly has abolished specters.”

But the stranger wearily replied: “We watch the tyrant.”

“Did the commune appoint you?”

“No. We appointed ourselves. There are thirty-six of us. There had been thirty-seven, but one died; we watch the tyrant. We have lived near this wall for two months or longer. We are very weary.”

“The nation thanks you. Do you know what happened today?”

“Yes, we heard something. We watch the tyrant.”

“Have you heard that we are a republic now? That we have liberty?”

“Yes, but we watch the tyrant and we are weary.”

“Let us embrace, brothers!”

Cold lips wearily touch the burning lips of the visitors.

“We are weary. He is so cunning and dangerous. Day and night we watch the doors and the windows. I watch that window; you could hardly distinguish it. So you say we have liberty? Very good. But we must go back to our posts. Be calm, citizens. He is asleep. We receive reports every half hour. He is sleeping now.”

The silhouettes moved, separated themselves and vanished as if they had gone right through the walls. The gloomy old tower seemed to have grown taller, and from one of the battlements there stretched over the city a dark and shapeless cloud. It seemed as if the tower had grown out of all proportion and was stretching its hand over the city. A light flashed from the dense blackness of the wall and suddenly vanished, like a signal. The cloud now covered the whole city and reflected with a yellowish gleam the lurid glare of many fires. A drizzling rain suddenly commenced to descend. All was silent and all was restless.

Was he really sleeping?

V

A few more days passed in the new and delicious sensations of freedom, and again new threads of distrust and fear appeared like dark veins running through white marble. The tyrant received the news of his overthrow with suspicious calmness. How can a man be calm when deprived of a kingdom, unless he be planning something terrible? And how can the people be calm, when in their midst there lives a mysterious one having the gift of pernicious enchantment? Overthrown, he continues to be terrible; imprisoned he demonstrates at will his diabolical power which grows with distance. Thus the earth, black at close range, appears like a shining star when seen from the depths of azure space. And in his immediate surroundings his sufferings move to tears. A woman was seen to kiss the hand of the queen. A guard was observed drying his tears. An orator was heard appealing for mercy. As if even now he were not happier than thousands of people who had never seen the light? Who could warrant that on the morrow the land would not return to its ancient madness, crawling in the dust before him, begging his pardon and rearing anew his throne which it cost so much labor and pain to overthrow!

Bristling with frenzy and terror the millions are listening to the speeches in the popular assembly. Curious speeches. Terrifying words. They speak of his inviolability; they say he is sacrosanct, that he may not be judged like others are judged, that he may not be punished like others are punished, that he may not be put to death, for he is the King. Consequently Kings still exist! And these words are spoken by those who have sworn to love the people and liberty; the words are uttered by men of tried honesty, by sworn foes of tyranny, by the sons of the people who came forth from the loins of those that were scarred by the merciless and sacrilegious rule of the Kings. Ominous blindness!

Already the majority is inclining in favor of the overthrown one; as if a dense yellow fog issuing forth from that tower had forced its way into the holy mansions of the people’s mind, blinding their bright eyes strangling their newly gained freedom; thus a bride adorned with white blossoms might meet death in the hour of her bridal triumph. Dull despair creeps into the heart, and many hands convulsively stroke the trusted blade; it is better to die with Brutus than to live with Octavianus.

Final remonstrances full of deadly indignation.

“Do you wish to have one man in the land and thirty-five million animals?”

Yes, they wish it. They stand silent with downcast eyes. They are weary of fighting, weary of exercising their will, and in their lassitude, in their yawning and stretching, in their colorless cold words which, however, have a magic effect, one almost fancies the contour of a throne. Scattered exclamations, dull speeches, and the blind silence of unanimous treachery. Liberty is perishing, the luckless bride adorned with white blossoms, who has met her doom in the hour of her bridal triumph.

But hark! The sound of marching. They are coming; like the sound of dozens of gigantic drums beating a wild tattoo. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! They come from the suburbs. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! They march in defense of liberty. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Woe unto traitors! Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Traitors, beware!

“The People ask permission to march past the assembly.”

But who could stop an avalanche? Who would dare tell an earthquake, “So far and no further shalt thou go!”

The doors are thrown open. There they come from the suburbs. Their faces are the color of the earth. Their breasts are bared. An endless kaleidoscope of motley rags that serve for raiment. A triumph of impulsive, uncontrolled movements. An ominous harmony of disorder. A marching chaos. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Eyes flashing fire! Prongs, scythes, tridents, fenceposts. Men, women and children. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!

“Long live the representatives of the people! Long live liberty! Death to traitors!”

The deputies smile, frown, bow amiably. They grow dizzy watching the motley procession that seems to have no end. It looks like a torrential stream rushing through a cavern. All faces begin to look alike. All shouts merge into one uniform and solid roar. The tramp of the feet resembles the patter of raindrops upon the roof, a sporific, will-subduing sound which dominates consciousness. A gigantic roof, gigantic raindrops.

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! One hour passes, then two, then three, and still they are filing past. The torches burn with a crimson glare and emit smoke. Both openings, the one through which the people enter and the one through which they file out are like yawning jaws; and it is as if some black ribbon, gleaming with copper and iron, stretched from one door and through the other. Fanciful pictures now present themselves to the weary eye. Now it is an endless belt, now a titanic, swollen and hairy worm. Those sitting above the doors imagine themselves standing on a bridge and feel like floating away. Now and then the clear and unusually vivid realization comes to one’s mind: it is the people. And pride, and consciousness of the power and the thirst for great freedom such as has never been known before. A free people, what happiness!

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! They have been marching for eight hours and still the end is not yet. From both sides, where the people enter and where they file out, rode the thunderous notes of the song of the revolution. The words can be hardly heard. Only the time, the cadences and the notes are plainly distinguished. Momentary stillness and threating shouts. “To arms, citizens! Gather into battalions! Let us go! Let us go!”

They go.

No need of a vote. Liberty is safe once more.

VI

Then came the fateful day of the royal judgment. The mysterious power, ancient as the world, was called upon to answer for its misdeeds to the very people it had so long held in bondage. It was called upon to answer to the world which it dishonored by the triumph of its absurdity. Stripped of its cap and bells, deprived of its gaudy throne, of its high-sounding titles and of all those queer symbols of dominion, naked it will stand before the people and will tell by whose right and authority it had exercised its rule over millions, vesting in the person of one being the power to do wrong with impunity, to rob men of their freedom, to inflict punishment and death. But the Twentieth has been judged already by the conscience of the people. No mercy will be shown him. Yet, ere he goes to his doom, let him unbosom himself, let him acquaint the people, not with his deeds, they are sufficiently well known to them, but with the thoughts, the motives and the feelings of a king. That mythical dragon who devours children and virgins, who has held the world in thrall, is now securely fettered and bound with heavy chains. He will be taken to the public square and soon the people will see his scaly trunk, his venomous fangs and the cruel jaws that exhale fierce flames.

Some plot was feared. All night long troops had marched through the tranquil streets, filling the squares and passages, fencing in the route of the royal procession with rows of gleaming bayonets, surrounding it with a wall of somber and sternly solemn faces. Above the black silhouettes of buildings and churches, that loomed sharp, square-shaped and strangely indistinct in the twilight of the early dawn, there appeared the first faint gleam of the yellow and cloudy sky, the cold sky of the city, looking as aged as the houses and, like them, covered with soot and rust. It resembled some painting hanging in a dark hall of an ancient baronial castle.

The city slept in anxious anticipation of the great and portentous day, while on the streets the citizen-soldiers moved quietly in well-formed ranks, striving to muffle the sounds of their heavy footsteps. The low-browed cannon, almost grazing the ground with their chins, rattled insolently over the roadways with the ruddy glare of a fuse on each piece of ordnance.

Orders were given in a subdued tone, almost in a whisper, as if the commanders feared to waken some light and suspicious sleeper. Whether they feared for the king and his safety, or whether they feared the king himself, no one knew. But everybody knew that there was need of preparation, need of summoning the entire strength of the people.

The morning would dawn, but slowly; massive yellow clouds, bushy and grimy as if they had been rubbed with a filthy cloth, hung over the church spires, and only as the king emerged from the tower the sun burst into radiance through a rift in the clouds. Happy augury for the people, ominous warning for the tyrant!

And thus was he taken from prison; through a narrow lane formed by two solid lines of troops there moved companies of armed soldiers⁠—one, two, ten, you could not have counted their number. Then came the guns, rattling, rattling, rattling. Then gripped in the vice-like embrace of rifles, sabers and bayonets came the carriage, scarcely able to proceed. And again fresh guns and companies of soldiers. And all through that journey of many miles silence preceded the carriage, and was behind it and all around it. At one point in the public square there were heard a few tentative shouts, “Death to the Twentieth!” But finding no support in the crowd, the shouts subsided. Thus in the chase of a wild boar only the inexperienced dogs are heard barking, but those who will maim and be maimed are silent, gathering wrath and strength.

In the assembly there reigns an excitedly subdued hubbub of conversation. They have been expecting for some hours the coming of the tyrant, who approaches with snail-like pace; the deputies walk about the corridors in agitation, every moment changing their positions, laughing without apparent cause and animatedly gossiping about any trivial thing. But many are sitting motionless, like statues of stone, and their expression is also stone-like. Their faces are young, but the furrows thereon are deep and old, as if hewn by an ax, and their hair is rough; their eyes either ominously hidden in the cavernous depths of the skull or intently drawn forward, wide and comprehensive, as if not shaded by eyebrows, like torches burning in the gloomy recesses of a prison. There is no terror on earth which these eyes could not gaze on without a tremor. There is no cruelty, no sorrow, no spectral horror before which this glance would flinch, hardened as they had been in the furnace of the revolution. Those who were the first to launch the great movement have long since died and their ashes have been scattered abroad; they are forgotten, forgotten are their ideas, aspirations and yearnings. The onetime thunder of their speeches is like the rattle in the hands of a babe; the great freedom of which they dreamt now seems like the crib of a child with a canopy to protect it from flies and the glare of daylight. But these have grown up amid the storms and live in the tempest; they are the darling children of tumultuous days, of blood-reeking heads borne aloft on lances like pumpkins, of massive and mighty hearts made to give forth blood; of titanic orations, where a word is sharper than the dagger and an idea more pitiless than gunpowder. Obedient only to the will of the people they have summoned the specter of imperious power, and now, cold and passionless, like surgeons dissecting a corpse, like judges, like executioners, they will analyze its ghostly bluish effulgence which so awes the ignorant and the superstitious, they will dissect its spectral members, they will discover the black venom of tyranny, and they will let it pass to its doom.

Now the hubbub outside grows faint, and stillness profound and black as the heavens at night ensues; now the rattle of approaching cannon. This, too, subsides. A slight commotion near the entrance. Everybody is seated; they must be sitting when the tyrant enters. They strive to look unconcerned. Heavy tramping of troops placed in various stations about the building and a subdued clanging of arms. The last of the cannon outside conclude their noisy peregrination. Like a ring of steel they surround the buildings, their jaws pointing outward, facing the whole world⁠—the west and the east, the north and the south. Something looking quite insignificant entered the hall. Seen from the more distant benches higher up it appeared to be a fat, undersized manikin with swift uncertain movements. Observed at close range it was seen to be a stout man of medium height, with a prominent nose that was crimson with the cold, baggy cheeks and dull little eyes, an expressive mixture of good nature, insignificance and stupidity. He turns his head, not knowing whether to bow or not, and then nods lightly; he stands in indecision, with feet spread apart, not knowing whether he may sit down or not. Not a word is heard, but there is a chair behind him, evidently intended for him, and he sits down, first unobtrusively, then more firmly, and finally assumes a majestic posture. He has evidently a severe cold, for he draws from his pocket a handkerchief and uses it with apparent enjoyment, emitting a loud and trumpet-like sound. Then he pulls himself together, pockets his handkerchief and grows majestically rigid. He is ready. Such is the Twentieth.

VII

They had been expecting a King, but there appeared before them a clown. They had been expecting a dragon, but there came a big-nosed bourgeois with a handkerchief and a bad cold. It was funny, and curious and a little uncanny. Had not someone substituted a pretender in his place? “It is I, the King,” says the Twentieth.

Yes, it is he, indeed. How funny he is! Think of him for a King! The people smiled, shrugged their shoulders and could hardly refrain from laughter. They exchanged mocking smiles and salutes and seemed to inquire in the language of signs: “Well, what do you think of Him?” The deputies were very serious and pale. Undoubtedly the feeling of responsibility oppressed them. But the people were merry in a quiet way. How had they managed to make their way into the assembly hall? How does water trickle through a hole? They had penetrated through some broken windows, they had almost slipped through the keyholes. Hundreds of ragged and fantastically attired but extremely courteous and affable strangers. Crowding a deputy they solicitously inquired: “Hope I am not in your way, citizen?” They were very polite. Like quaint birds, they clung in dark rows to the window sills, obstructing the light and seemed to be signalling something to the people in the square outside. It was apparently something funny.

But the deputies are serious, very serious and even pale. They fix their eager eyes like magnifying lenses upon the Twentieth, gazing upon him long and intently, and turn away frowning. Some have closed their eyes altogether. They loathe the sight of the tyrant. “Citizen deputy,” exclaims with delighted awe one of the courteous strangers; “see how the tyrant’s eyes are glowing.” Without raising his drooping eyelids the deputy replies, “Yes!”

“How well nourished he looks.”

“Yes.”

“But you are not very talkative, citizen!”

Silence again. There below the Twentieth is already mumbling his speech. He can not understand of what he could be accused. He had always loved the people and the people loved him; and he still loved the people in spite of all insults. If the people think a Republic would suit them better, let them have a republic. He has nothing against it.

“But why then did you summon other tyrants?”

“I did not summon them; they came of their own accord.”

This answer is false. Documents had been found in a secret drawer establishing the fact of the negotiations. But he insists, clumsily and stupidly, like any ordinary rascal caught cheating. He even looks offended. As a matter of fact he has always had the best interests of the people at heart. No, he has not been cruel; he always pardoned whomever he could pardon. No, he has not ruined the land by his extravagance, he only used for himself as much as an ordinary plain citizen might. He had never been a profligate or a wastrel. He is a lover of Greek and Latin classical literature and of cabinet making. All the furniture in his study is the work of his hands. So much is correct. To look at him, he certainly had the appearance of a plain citizen; there are multitudes of stout fellows like him with noses that emit trumpet-like sounds; they may be met aplenty on the riverside of a holiday, fishing. Insignificant funny men with big noses. But he had been a King! What could it mean? Then anybody could be a King!

A gorilla might become an absolute ruler over men! And a golden throne might be reared for it to sit on! And divine honor might be paid to it, and it might lay dawn the laws of life for the people. A hoary gorilla, a pitiful survival of the forest!

The brief autumn day is drawing to a close, and the people begin to express impatience. Why bother so long with the tyrant? What, is there some new treachery being hatched? In the twilight of an antechamber two deputies meet. They scrutinize one another and exchange a glance of mutual recognition. Then they walk together, for some reason avoiding contact with their bodies.

“But where is the tyrant?” suddenly exclaims one of them and grasps the shoulder of his companion, “Tell me, where is the tyrant?”

“I don’t know. I feel too ashamed to enter the hall.”

“Horrible thought! Is insignificance the secret of tyranny? Are nonentities our real tyrants?”

“I don’t know, but I am ashamed.”

The little antechamber was quiet, but from all sides, from the assembly hall and from the public square outside, there was heard a dull roaring. Each individual perhaps spoke in low tones, but altogether the result was an elemental turmoil like the roaring of the distant ocean. A ruddy glare seemed to be flitting over the walls, evidently men outside were lighting their torches. Then not afar off was heard the measured tramping of feet and the subdued rattle of arms. They were relieving the watches. Whom are they watching? What is the use?

“Drive him out of the country!” “No. The people will not permit it. He must be killed.” “But that would be another wrong.”

The ruddy spots seem now climbing up and down along the walls, and spectral shadows make their appearance, now creeping, now leaping; as if the bloody days of the past and of the present were passing in review in an endless procession through the visions of a dreamer. The turmoil outside grows more boisterous; one can almost discern individual shouts. “For the first time in my life, today a feeling of dread has seized my heart.”

“Likewise of despair, and of shame.”

“Yes, and of despair! Let me have your hand, brother. How cold it is. Here in the face of unknown perils and in the hour of a great humiliation, let us swear that we will not betray freedom. We shall perish. I felt it today. But perishing let us shout, ‘Liberty, liberty, brothers!’ Let us shout it so loud that a world of slaves shall quake with fear. Clasp my hand tighter, brother.”

It was still now; here and there crimson spots flared up along the walls, while the misty shadows moved with swiftness, but the abyss below roared and thundered with increasing fury, as if a dreadful and mighty hurricane had come sweeping onward from the north and the south, from the west and the east, and had stirred the multitude with its terror. Fragments of songs and howls and one word as if sketched in stupendous jagged black outlines in the chaos of sounds:

“Death! Death to the Tyrant!”

The two deputies were standing lost in a reverie. Time passed on, but still they stood there, unmoved in the maddened chase of shadow shapes and smoke, and it seemed as if they had been standing there for ages. Thousands of spectral years surrounded them with the mighty and majestic silence of eternity, while the shadows whirled on frenziedly, and the shouts rose and fell beating against the window like windswept breakers. At times the weird and mysterious rhythm of the surf could be discerned in the turmoil and the thunderous roar of the breaking waves. “Death! Death to the tyrant!” At last they stirred from the spot.

“Well let us go in there!” “Let us go in! Fool that I was! I had thought that this day would end the fight with tyranny.” “The fight is just commencing. Let us go in!”

They passed through dark corridors and dawn marble stairways, through chilly and silent halls that are as damp as cellars. Suddenly a gleam of light, a wave of heated air like the breath of a furnace, a hubbub of voices like a hundred caged parrots talking against time. Then another doorway and at their feet there opens an immense chasm, littered with heads, semi-dark and filled with smoke. Reddish tongues of candles stifling for want of fresh air. Someone is speaking somewhere. Thunderous applause. The speech is apparently ended. At the very bottom of the abyss, between two flickering lights is the small figure of the Twentieth. He is wiping the perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief, bends low over the table and reads something with an indistinct mumbling voice. He is reading his speech of defense. How hot he feels! Ho, Twentieth! Remember that you are king. Raise your voice ennoble the ax and the executioner! No! He mumbles on, tragically serious in his stupidity.

VIII

Many watched the execution of the king from the roofs, but even the roofs were not sufficient to accommodate the sightseers and many did not succeed after all in seeing how kings are executed. But the high and narrow houses, with the queer coiffure of mobile creatures instead of roofs seemed to have become endowed with life, and their opened windows resembled black, winking eyes. Behind the houses rose church spires and towers, some pointed and others blunt, and at first glance they looked the same as usual, but on closer observation they appeared to be dotted with dark transverse lines which seemed to be swaying to and fro; they, too, were crowded with people. Nothing could be seen from so great a height, but they looked on just the same. Seen from the roofs of houses the scaffold seemed as small as a child’s plaything, something like a toy barrow with broken handles. The few persons who stood apart from the sightseers and in the immediate neighborhood of the scaffold, the only few persons who stood by themselves (the rest of the people having been merged into a dense mass of black), those few persons standing by themselves oddly resembled tiny black ants walking erect. Everything seemed to be on a level, and yet they laboriously and slowly ascended invisible steps. And it seemed strange that right beside one, upon the neighboring roofs, there stood people with large heads, mouths and noses. The drums beat loudly. A little black coach drove up to the scaffold. For quite a little while nothing could be discerned. Then a little group separated itself from the mass and very slowly ascended some invisible steps. Then the group dispersed, leaving in the center a tiny looking individual. The drums beat again and one’s heart stood still. Suddenly the tattoo came to an end hoarsely and brokenly. All was still. The tiny lone figure raised its hand, dropped it and raised it again. It is evidently speaking, but not a word is heard. What is it saying? What is it saying? Suddenly the drums broke into a tattoo, scattering abroad their martial beats, and rending the air into myriads of particles which hindered one from seeing. Commotion on the scaffold. The little figure has vanished. He is being executed. The drums beat again and all of a sudden, hoarsely and brokenly, cease from their tumult. On the spot where the Twentieth had stood just a moment before there is a new little figure with extended hand. And in that hand there is seen something tiny, that is light on one side and dark on the other, like a pin head dyed in two colors. It is the head of the King. At last! The coffin, with the body and the head of the King, was rushed off somewhere, and the conveyance that bore it away drove off at a breakneck speed, crushing the people in its path. It was feared that the frenzied populace would not spare even the remains of the tyrant. But the people were terrible indeed. Imbued with the ancient slavish fear they could not bring themselves to believe that it had really taken place, that the inviolable sacrosanct and potent sovereign had placed his head under the ax of the executioner: desperately and blindly they besieged the scaffold; eyes very often play tricks on one and the ears deceive. They must touch the scaffold with their hands, they must breathe in the odor of royal blood, steep their arms in it up to the elbows. They fought, scrambled, fell and screamed. There something soft, like a bundle of rags, rolls under the feet of the crowd. It is the body of one crushed to death. Then another and another. Having fought their way to the heap of ruins which remained of the scaffold, with feverish hands they broke off fragments of it, scraping them off with their nails; they demolished the scaffold greedily, blindly grabbing heavy beams, and after a step or two fell under the burden. And the crowd closed in over the heads of the fallen while the beams rose to the surface, floated along as if borne on some current, and diving again it showed for a moment its jagged edge and then disappeared. Some found a little pool of blood that the thirsting ground had not yet drained and that had not yet been trampled under foot, and they dipped into it their handkerchiefs and their raiment. Many smeared the blood on their lips and imprinted some mysterious signs on their foreheads, anointing themselves with the blood of the King to the new reign of freedom. They were intoxicated with savage delight. Unaccompanied by song or speech they whirled in a breathless dance; ran about raising aloft their bloodstained rags, and scattered over the city, shouting, roaring and laughing incontinently and strangely. Some attempted to sing, but songs were too slow, too harmonious and rhythmical, and they again resumed their wild laughing and shouting. They started toward the national assembly intending to thank the deputies for ridding the land of the tyrant, but on the way they were deflected from their goal by the pursuit of a traitor who shouted: “The King is dead, long live the King! Long live the Twenty-first!” And then they dispersed⁠—after having hanged someone.

Many of those who secretly continued to be loyal to the King could not bear the thought of his execution and lost their minds; many others, though they were cowards, committed suicide. Until the very last moment they waited for something, hoped for something, and had faith in the efficacy of their prayers. But when the execution had taken place they were seized with despair. Some grimly and sullenly, others in sacrilegious frenzy pierced their hearts with daggers. And there were some who ran out into the street with a savage thirst for martyrdom, and facing the avalanche of the people shouted madly, “Long live the Twenty-first!” and they perished.

The day was drawing to a close and the night was breaking upon the city, the stern and truthful night which has no eyes for that which is visible. The city was yet bright with the glare of street lights, but the river under the bridge was as black as liquid soot, and only in the distance, where it curved, and where the last pale cold gleams of sunset were dying away, it shone dimly like the cold reflection of polished metal. Two men stood on the bridge, leaning against its masonry, and peered into the dark and mysterious depth of the river.

“Do you believe that freedom really came today?” asked one of the twain in a low tone of voice, for the city was yet bright with many lights, while the river below stretched away, wrapped in blackness.

“Look, a corpse is floating there,” exclaimed the other, and he spoke in a low tone of voice, for the corpse was very near and its broad blue face was turned upward.

“There are many of them floating in the river these days. They are floating down to the sea.”

“I have not much faith in their liberty. They are too happy over the death of the Insignificant One.”

From the city where the lights were yet burning the breeze wafted sounds of voices, of laughter and of songs. Merrymaking was still in progress.

“Dominion must be destroyed yet,” said the first.

“The slaves must be destroyed. There is no such thing as dominion; slavery alone exists. There goes another corpse. And still another. How many there are of them. Where do they come from? They appear so suddenly from under the bridge!”

“But the people love liberty.”

“No. They merely fear the whip. When they shall learn to love liberty they will become free.”

“Let us go hence. The sight of these corpses nauseates me.”

And as they turned to depart, while the lights were yet shining in the city and the river was as black as liquid soot, they beheld something massive and somber, that seemed begotten of darkness and light. From the east, where the river lost itself in the maze of gloom-enveloped meadows, and where the darkness was a stir like a thing of life, there rose something immense, shapeless and blind. It rose and stopped motionless, and though it had no eyes it looked, and though it had no hands, it extended them over the city, and though it was a dead thing, it lived and breathed. The sight was awe inspiring.

“That is the fog rising over the river,” said the first.

“No, that is a cloud,” said the second.

It was both a fog and a cloud.

“It seems to be looking.” It was.

“It seems to be listening.” It was.

“It is coming toward us.” No, it remained motionless. It remained motionless, immense, shapeless and blind; upon its weird excrescences shone with a ruddy glow the reflected gleaming of the city’s lights, and below, at its foot, the black river lost itself in the embrace of gloom enveloped meadows, and the darkness was a stir like a thing of life. Swaying sullenly upon the waves corpses floated into the darkness and lost themselves in the gloom, and new corpses took their places, swaying dumbly and sullenly and disappeared⁠—countless corpses, silent, thinking their own thoughts, black and cold as the water that was carrying them hence. And in that lofty tower from where early that morning the King had been taken to his doom, the one-eyed clockmaker was fast asleep right under the great pendulum. That day he had been very pleased with the stillness that reigned in his tower. He even had burst into song, that one-eyed clockmaker. Yes, he had been singing; and he walked about affectionately among his wheels and levers until dark. He felt the guy ropes, sat on the rungs of his ladders, swinging his feet and purring, and would not look at the pendulum, pretending that he was cross. But then he looked at it sideways and laughed out loudly, and the pendulum answered him with joyous peals. It kept on swinging, smiling all over its brazen face and roaring; “ ’Twas ever thus! ’Twill ever be! ’Twas ever thus! ’Twill ever be!”

“Come now! Come now!” urged the one-eyed clockmaker, splitting his sides with laughter. “ ’Twas ever thus! ’Twill ever be!” And when it had grown quite dark the one-eyed hermit sought rest beneath the swinging pendulum and was soon asleep. But the pendulum did not sleep, and kept on swinging all night long above his head, wafting strange dreams to the sleeper.

I

Fifteen days had passed since that memorable occurrence, and yet it filled his mind⁠—as though Time itself had lost its ascendancy over thought and things, or else had stopped like a broken clock. Wherever he might turn his fancy, in whatever strange and distant channels, still his hunted thoughts returned to that same incident, and ran, helpless, against it; as upon a great silent prison wall in a blind alley. And what strange paths these fancies took. He thought, for instance, of an Italian trip of long ago⁠—a journey full of sunshine, youth and song. He pictured one of those Italian beggars, and directly rose before his vision the mob of workmen, the volley of musketry, the smell of powder, and the blood! Or perhaps a perfume rose to his brain, and at once he remembered his handkerchief⁠—that had been perfumed too⁠—and with that he had signalled for the filing!

At first the sequence of his thought had been logical⁠—quite comprehensible; and though burdensome had caused him no uneasiness. But soon everything reminded him of that occasion, abruptly and with most painful untimeliness: like a blow from around the corner. He laughs, and suddenly he seems to hear general laughter on all sides, and sees with hideous clearness the face of one of the dead⁠—although at the time he had not really thought of laughing: nor had the others laughed!⁠ ⁠… Or else he hears the swallows twittering in the twilight; or sees a chair⁠—just a common oak chair; or reaches for the⁠—everything calls to his mind one and the same indelible scene⁠—the white waving handkerchief, the shots, the blood! As though he lived in a room with a thousand doors, and whichever one he tried to open, the same fixed picture met his gaze: the signal⁠—the smoke⁠—the blood!

The affair was simple enough of itself⁠—though sad, of course. The workmen in a suburban factory, after a three weeks’ strike, had gathered⁠—some thousand strong⁠—together with their women and children, their old and disabled, and had appeared before him with demands which he as Governor could not grant. And they had carried themselves impudently and defiantly; had screamed; insulted the officials⁠—and one woman, who seemed quite beside herself, had plucked at his sleeve till the seam gave way. Then when his staff had led him back on to the balcony (he still only wanted to speak with them and pacify them) the workmen had begun to throw stones, had broken a number of windows, and wounded the Chief of Police. Then his rage got the better of him and he gave the signal with his handkerchief!

The people were so turbulent that they had to be shot at a second time; and so there were many dead⁠—forty-seven, according to the count;⁠—among them nine women and three children, singularly enough all girls!⁠ ⁠… The number of the wounded was even greater.

Drawn by a strange, unconquerable passion of curiosity, and against the advice of his people, he had gone to see the dead where they were laid out in the engine-house shed of the Police Station No. 3. Naturally there was no urgent reason for his going, but he felt that in some unaccountable way they would be the better for it if he saw to them himself; as someone who has shot carelessly and at random feels moved to find where the bullet had lodged, and to handle it.

It was dark and cool in the long engine-house, and the bodies lay under a strip of grey canvas, in two precise rows, like a strange display of curious wares. They had probably been arranged for the Governor’s visit, and were laid in careful order, shoulder to shoulder, with faces up. The canvas covered only their heads and the upper part of their bodies; the legs were exposed as though to facilitate their counting⁠—these stiff, immovable legs, some in old worn boots, some with tattered little shoes, and others bare and dirty, the sunburned skin showing strangely enough through the grime. The women and children were laid by themselves; and here, too, one felt there had been an attempt to simplify the count.

And it was still, far too still for such a throng of people; and the living who entered were unable to dispel the silence. From behind a wooden partition came the sound of a groom at work. He evidently thought himself alone⁠—but for the dead⁠—and talked to his horses with careless joviality: “Whoa there, you devil! Stand still while I curry you!”

The Governor glanced at the rows of legs that lost themselves in the gloom, and said, in his smothered bass, almost a whisper: “How many are there?”

The Assistant Police Commissioner, a young, beardless fellow with a pimply face, stepped up from behind and, saluting, announced, in a loud voice: “Thirty-five men, nine women and three children, your Excellency!”

The Governor frowned involuntarily, and the Assistant Police Commissioner bowed himself into the background. He would gladly have called the Governor’s attention to the neat lane between the corpses that had been carefully strewn with sand, but the Governor had no eyes for this, though he was staring fixedly at the floor.

“Three children?”

“Three, your Excellency. Would your Excellency wish the canvas removed?”

The Governor was silent.

“There are all sorts of persons here, your Excellency,” continued the Commissioner, deferentially but briskly, while he took the Governor’s silence for consent, and commanded, in hasty whispers: “Ivanoff! quick, Isidorshuck, take the other end⁠—here, pull away now!”

With a soft, sliding rustle the dingy canvas came away and one after the other the white spots of faces dawned into view⁠—bearded and old, young and smooth⁠—all different, but united in the common likeness of death. One hardly saw the wounds and the blood, they were mostly hidden under their clothes; only in one face the eye appeared unnaturally dark and sunken, shedding strange black tears that looked in the dusk like tar. The majority had the same pale, blank stare; some had kept their identical twinkle, and one covered his face with his hand as though to shield it from the glare. But the Assistant Commissioner gazed with a pained expression at these corpses that so disturbed his sense of order.

The Governor felt that these pale faces had been among the mob that morning⁠—in the foremost ranks, he knew; and many of them he had seen personally as he parleyed with them. But now they were all beyond his recognition. This new community with death had lent them a most singular expression! They lay there lifeless and motionless on the floor; like plaster casts made flat on the back that they might rest more firmly. Yet this immovability seemed counterfeited⁠—one could hardly believe it real. They were dumb, and the silence seemed as artificial as their rigid pose; but something about them of anxious expectancy made it painfully impossible for the observers to speak. If a busy city had suddenly been turned to stone, and all its inhabitants petrified at one blow; if the sun had stood still, and the leaves had hushed their rustling, and all that walked or moved had stiffened⁠—they might have shown this same strange look of interrupted effort, of breathless expectancy and mysterious alertness for what was yet to come.

“May I ask if your Excellency wishes to order coffins or whether they shall be buried in a common trench?” asked the Assistant Commissioner, with loud naivete: the exigencies of the emergency impressed him with a certain deferential self-confidence⁠—and furthermore he was very young.

“What sort of a trench?” asked the Governor perfunctorily.

“You just dig a large ditch, your Excellency⁠—” The Governor turned abruptly and left the place. As he entered the carriage he heard behind him the heavy grating of the rusty hinges⁠—they were shutting in the dead.

Next morning he visited the wounded in the city hospital, still driven by that same tormenting curiosity: the longing to undo the inevitable, and to blot out the past. The dead at least stared at him, but these would not deign him a glance! And in the stubbornness with which they averted their eyes, he read the immutability of his accomplished act. It was finished! Something monstrous had been done, and it was idle and useless to strive to alter the fact.

And from that very moment, Time for him had stood still, and this certain something inexplicable and unspeakable had come over him. It was not remorse, for he felt himself in the right; nor was it pity, that gentle feeling that softly veils the heart and calls forth tears. He could think of these dead quite calmly; even of the little children. Their pain and their sorrows hardly moved him. But he could not rid his thoughts of them⁠—they were constantly before his mind in sharpest outline⁠—these puppets, these broken dolls! And therein lay the horrid mystery⁠—a something, like the tales of magic of one’s nursery days. According to others, four⁠—five⁠—seven⁠—days had elapsed since the catastrophe⁠—but for him in the meantime not one single hour had gone by. His thoughts played yet about that time⁠—those shots⁠—that signalling handkerchief!⁠—the realisation that something irrevocable was about to happen⁠—had happened!

He was convinced that he could far more easily be calm, and forget the things which no vain regrets could alter, if the people about him would be less pointed in their attentions. By their actions, looks and gestures; their respectful, sympathetic manner, and their voices as though soothing a fretful invalid, they firmly fastened in his brain the thought of that ineradicable occurrence.

The Chief of Police announced the next day, in soothing tones, that two or three more of the wounded had been dismissed, cured, from the hospital; each morning his wife, Maria Petrovna, pressed her lips to his forehead to see whether he had a fever⁠—as though he were a child! and those dead bodies⁠—unripe fruit, of which he had eaten too freely! What nonsense!

And eight days after the event the Right Reverend Bishop Micael himself called upon him, and at his first words clearly showed that he had the same notion as all the others, and had come to lighten the Governor’s conscience. He spoke of the workmen as sinners, and called him a peacemaker⁠—and all this without introducing a single one of his well-worn Bible texts⁠—for he knew the Governor was not particularly fond of clerical prating. The old man appeared to distressing disadvantage as he lied so aimlessly in the face of his God.

During the interview the Bishop turned his deaf ear toward his companion, and, purple with rage (he could feel himself how the blood mounted to his brow) the Governor pouted his lips and trumpeted into that great bloodless ear that was turned toward him from that soft, grey bush of hair: “Sinners they may be, your Eminence; nevertheless if I were in your place I should certainly say a Mass for their departed souls.”

The Bishop turned away his ear, smoothed down his waistcoat with a bony hand, and nodded his head as he answered, in his softest voice: “Each station has its own cross. Had I been in your Excellency’s place I should never have ordered them shot, nor burdened the Holy Office with Masses for their souls. But that is neither here nor there⁠—they were undoubtedly sinners!” With a parting benediction he swept to the door⁠—his gown rustling and swaying⁠—bowing to each object that he passed as though blessing it. In the vestibule he fussed a long time with his barge-like goloshes, turning first one ear and then the other to the impatient Governor, who was helping him, with unwilling politeness: “Don’t trouble, your Excellency! Oh, please don’t trouble yourself!” And these words of his sounded to the Governor as if he were a helpless invalid to whom the least exertion might be fatal.

That same day the Governor’s son, an officer in a St. Petersburg regiment, came home for his Sunday furlough, and though he was in gay good humour, and gave no special reason for his unusual visit, it was evident that the same incomprehensible anxiety for the Governor had induced him to come. He made light of the whole affair, and assured them that in St. Petersburg they were delighted with the pluck and energy of Peter Iljitch; and yet he strongly urged that they should ask for another Cossack regiment and double then precautionary measures. “What sort of precautionary measures?” asked the Governor, stern and amazed⁠—but there was no answer. These apprehensions seemed all the more absurd as perfect calm had reigned in the city from that day on. The workmen had resumed their labours: even the interment had passed off undisturbed, though the Chief of Police had felt some anxiety, and ordered out all the reserves. Yet nothing indicated the possibility of a repetition of the incident of August seventeenth.

Finally he received from St. Petersburg a flattering acknowledgment of his detailed report of the occurrence. One would have thought that this would lighten the load and sink his burden in the sea of the past! But the fact will not sink! As though deriving its power from Time and Death, it stands rigid in his remembrance⁠—the unburied corpse of a vanished event. Stubbornly, night after night, he seeks to bury it; the darkness passes, day breaks, and there again⁠—the beginning and end of all things, between him and the world stands that indelible picture: the signal with the white handkerchief, the crack of rifles, the blood!

II

The Governor’s audience has long been ended, and he is about to drive out to his villa, waiting on for his aide-de-camp Kosloff, who is shopping for her Excellency. He sits in his study, his papers before him, and yet he can not work⁠—he broods. Then, rising, he thrusts his hands deeper into the pockets of his red-striped trousers, throws back his great grey head, and paces the room with heavy, soldierly tread. He pauses at the window, spreads the strong, thick fingers of his hand, and says, in strident tones: “But what is it all about?” And he fancies that as long as he sat and thought he was an ordinary man like any other; simply Peter Iljitch⁠—but with the first sound of his own voice, that gesture⁠—he has suddenly become the Governor, the Major-General! An uneasy feeling creeps over him, his thoughts whirl and tangle; and with a curt official shrug of his left shoulder-strap he turns from the window and paces the floor again.

“This is the way the Gov-er-nors walk!” The rhythm jerks through his brain, keeping time with his heavy footfall until he seats himself again, carefully avoiding all movement that shall recall his official capacity.

The sound of a bell.

“Has he come yet?”

“If you please, no, your Excellency.”

And while the lackey speaks the title softly and respectfully, he suddenly recollects: “Ah yes! They broke the windows there that day, and I have not seen them yet.”⁠ ⁠…

“Call me when he comes. I shall be in the drawing-room.”

The high old-fashioned windows had eight small panes, which gave the room the gloomy look of an office: the appearance of a Court of Chancery, or of a jail. The three windows nearest the balcony had new panes, which still showed the marks of putty-daubed fingers; apparently it had never entered into the idle brains of any of the countless servants that all traces of that disturbance must be wiped away. It was the same old story⁠—if you ordered them they would do it; if not they’d never lift a finger of their own accord.⁠ ⁠…

“Let this be cleaned directly! I can’t stand this disorder!”

“Yes, your Excellency!”

He would have liked to step out onto the balcony, yet it seemed unwise to draw the attention of the passersby, so he stared through the glass at the Square, where the mob had surged that day, where the rifles had crashed⁠—and forty-seven restless people had been turned to dumb, still corpses!⁠—row on row⁠—shoulder to shoulder⁠—feet to feet⁠—like a parade seen from below.

Now all was still out there. Close by the window stands a poplar with ragged bark, already in autumn colouring, and behind it lies the Square, peaceful and sleepy in the sun. Hardly a stone stirring, and the cobblestones lying in even rows like beads, with here and there a bit of grass between, greener in the hollows and along the gutters. Empty and deserted the Square was⁠—but rather smiling; yet, perhaps because he saw it through the dingy panes, it appeared dismal and squalid, brooding in sullen apathy over its hopeless grey misery. And although it was broad daylight, yet all these things⁠—the poplar with its ragged bark, the vacant, even rows of cobblestones⁠—seemed craving for the night to come and wrap their useless being in its darkness.

“Has he not come yet?”

“No, your Excellency.”

“When he comes bring him here.”

The drawing-room had been furnished in the time of the previous Governor, or possibly earlier still, judging from the soiled and faded condition of its costly hangings. About the brassbound chimney hole were traced dark yellow stains, like lines about the drooling mouth of age. These were masked by hangings, and in winter when the rooms were lighted, one hardly noticed these defects; but now they crowded into view in all their shabby elegance, making a most painful impression. For instance, that landscape⁠—a moonlight scene in Italy: it hangs crooked, yet no one gives it a straightening touch, and it seems to have hung so throughout the rule of successive Governors. The furniture, too, is costly, but worn and moth-eaten: like an apartment in a luxurious villa whose owner has suddenly died of a stroke, and whose estate has long lain in litigation, cared for by quarrelling heirs.

And nothing in the room was the property of its occupants; not even the photographs. Either they were official belongings or had been forgotten by some predecessor. Instead of portraits of friends and relatives, there was an album with views of the city: the seminary, the district court; then four unknown officials, two seated and two standing behind them; a weather-beaten bishop, and finally a round hole that ended at the cover.

“Hideous!” said the Governor aloud, and threw the album aside, with a gesture of loathing. He had been standing to look at the pictures, and now he turned again with a shrug and started his customary pacing. “This-is-the-way-the-Gov-er-nors-walk,-the-Gov-er-nors-walk! the-Gov-er-nors-walk!”

—So trod the former Governor, and his predecessor, and his, and all the other unknown Governors. They rose from somewhere, paced these halls with firm, square steps; while over them hung the crooked Italian landscape⁠—held receptions, even gave balls⁠—and then vanished again somewhere. Perhaps they too had ordered the people shot⁠—at least something similar had occurred under his third predecessor.

A workman was crossing the deserted square, splashed with paint, and carrying his paint and brushes⁠—then all was empty again. Down from the ragged poplar fell a shrivelled leaf, floating aimlessly to the ground⁠—and instantly the thought whirled through his head: that signal with the white handkerchief⁠—the shots⁠—the blood!

Trivial detail occurred to him now; how he had prepared to give the signal. He had pulled his handkerchief from his pocket beforehand and held it tightly clutched in a ball in his right hand; then he unfolded it carefully and waved it hastily, not up and down, but forward and out, as though he were tossing something⁠—as though he were flinging bullets! Then it came to him that he had taken a stride⁠—had crossed an invisible threshold⁠—the iron door had clanged behind him with a loud grating of its iron hinges, and there was no return.

“Ah, you at last, Leo Andrejevitch. I’ve waited⁠—the Lord knows how long!”

“I’m sorry, Peter Iljitch, but you never can find anything in this beastly hole.”

“Now, let’s be off! Come! Yes, but listen!” The Governor stood still and continued, pursing his lips: “Why are all our public offices so dirty? Take, for instance, our government office; or⁠—I was in the police department the other day⁠—I tell you it’s a pothouse, a stable⁠—and decent men sit there in good, fresh uniform, with the dirt about in heaps!”

“But there’s no money!”

“Nonsense! Quibbles! And here”⁠—the Governor waved his hand to indicate the walls⁠—“look at that now⁠—disgusting!”

“Yes, but, Peter Iljitch, what’s to hinder your doing it over to suit yourself? How often have I said that very thing to Maria Petrovna, and her Excellency agrees with me thoroughly.”

The Governor strode to the door, muttering: “It’s not worth while!”

His aide cast a pitying glance at the broad back, at his stringy, muscular neck like a double column supporting the head, and, striving to keep anxiety out of his voice, he remarked: “By the way, I’ve just seen ‘the Pike’; he tells me that the last of the wounded was dismissed from the hospital yesterday. He was the worst of the lot, and seemed to have very little chance. But these peasants have the most astonishing vitality!” In private the Chief of Police was known as “the Pike” because of his pale, bulgy eyes, and his long, lank body, with its narrow, fin-like back.

The Governor made no answer. He was enjoying the autumn sunshine and the keen autumn air⁠—a mixture of languor and crispness, as though each could be enjoyed by itself; here freshness, and there a wave of heat:⁠—and the heavens were so lovely⁠—tender, distant, and such a wonderful, startling blue. How perfect it must be in the country now!

He had already seated himself in the carriage, and moved over to make room for the aide, when a man passed by with a peculiar stoop. As he pulled off his cap he shielded his face with his elbow, so that the Governor had only a glimpse of a shock of curly fair hair and a tanned young throat⁠—he noticed that he trod carefully and noiselessly, as though he had been barefooted, and that he bent over as if looking backward. “What a singularly unpleasant person!” thought he. Evidently the two men following the Governor thought so too. They were stepping into a carriage close at hand. With the rapid glance of professional keenness, they turned simultaneously to note the fellow, but finding nothing questionable about him, hurried on to precede the Governor.

They were in a smart rubber-tired trap⁠—the wheels leaped, the body swayed, and they sat leaning forward on account of the rapid motion, and had soon left the Governor far behind in order not to annoy him with their dust.

“Who are those two?” he asked his aide, looking at him suspiciously from the corner of his eye⁠—and the other answered carelessly: “Secret Police.”

“What’s that for?” asked the Governor abruptly.

“I don’t know,” said Leo Andrejevitch evasively; “that’s the Pike’s affair.”

At the corner stood the beardless young Police Commissioner, strutting and admiring his shiny lacquered boots⁠—the same one who had accompanied the Governor on his inspection of the bodies; and as they passed the police headquarters two mounted guards rode out from under the arch, their horses’ hoofs pounding behind in the dust. Their faces beamed with officious zeal, and they both gazed steadily at the Governor’s back. The aide pretended not to notice, but the Governor threw a lowering glance at the men, and then, with his white-gloved hands tightly clenched on his knees, he lost himself in gloomy thought.

The road to the villa circled the outskirts of the town, through a lane called Kanatnaja alley, where factory hands and their families lived, crowded by all sorts of miserable beings from the city⁠—some in wretched tumbledown huts, and some in two-story brick tenements of barrack-like uniformity. The Governor would gladly have bowed if he had seen anyone; but the street was empty, as though it were late at night⁠—not even the children about. Only one little lad appeared for a moment behind a fence, among the red leaves of a rowan-tree, but even he slid hastily from the trunk and hid in the gateway. Through the summer the alley had been crowded with chickens and lean, dirty pigs, but there were none left now⁠—apparently they had all been eaten in the three weeks’ famine.

Nothing even indirectly recalled the catastrophe, but in the empty silence of the street, so indifferent to the Governor’s passing, lay something heavy, sullen, brooding⁠—and a light cloud of incense seemed to hang in the transparent air.

“Listen!” cried the Governor suddenly, grasping his companion’s knee. “That man there⁠—”

“What man?”

The Governor did not answer. Firmly clutching his knee, he gazed at the aide with a face like a barred and shuttered house whose doors and windows have suddenly been thrown open. Then he knit his heavy grey brows, deliberately turned his ponderous back, and gazed intently out of the carriage. The horses of the guard pounded down the road, and the dismal, lonely lane, dark on one side, bright sunlight on the other, was also sunk in dreary brooding.⁠ ⁠…

Like a stampeded herd the cottages huddled together; with their riddled roofs, their broken benches, and their overhanging windows⁠—like greybeards’ chins thrust out. Then came a vacant lot, with a broken fence and an old well, sunk about the rim and boarded over; then a row of great lime-trees behind a high broken wall, and a stately old house that had drifted somehow to these wastes, but was now long since abandoned. Its shutters were closed, and on a sign could be read: “This House for Sale.” Then beyond came cottages again, and a row of brick houses⁠—large, bleak and hideous, with deep-set narrow windows. They were quite new⁠—you could still see the caked plaster lying about, and the holes where the scaffolding had been; but they were already squalid and neglected. They looked like prisons, and life in such a place must be fully as sad, as hopeless, and as narrow as a life in jail!

There is the gateway to the open fields, and the last little house⁠—no trace of vegetation about it, no fence. It stands there leaning forward, walls and roof both, as though someone had shoved it violently from behind⁠—and neither in the windows nor anywhere about a single person visible.

“After the fall rains you’ll have trouble, Peter Iljitch, getting the carriage through here. I should think you’d literally sink in the mud!”

III

Laughter and song and merry games⁠—for tomorrow Peter Iljitch’s son, the officer, returned to St. Petersburg, and friends had gathered to say goodbye. Uniforms and gay frocks were scattered about in the open glades and meadows, under the purple and gold of the autumn foliage, and in the sapphire clearness of the woodland ways. As the red wintry sunset faded and the stars moved by in the heavens, they set off fireworks⁠—rockets that burst with a loud report, star-mines and pinwheels. A stifling smoke crept under the great old trees that stood there, so earnestly watching; and when they started the Bengal lights, hurrying figures were changed to ghosts⁠—to fluttering, flitting shadows!

Commissioner “Pike,” who had pretty freely quenched his thirst at dinner, gazed indulgently at the gay throng, strutted comically about among the ladies, and enjoyed himself. And when presently he heard the Governor’s voice close beside him in the smoky darkness, he was taken with a wild desire to kiss him on the shoulder, to hug him carefully⁠—or any little thing of that kind⁠—as an expression of his devotion. Instead of this, however, he laid his hand on the left breast of his uniform, threw away a cigarette he had just lighted, and said: “Ah! your Excellency, what a charming fête!”⁠ ⁠…

“Listen, Illawion Wassiljevitch,” interrupted the Governor, with a suppressed growl. “Why do you always set these spies here? What does it mean?”

“Some rascal might plan an attack on your Excellency’s sacred person,” said the Pike, with deep emotion, and laying both hands on his heart. “And then, besides,⁠ ⁠… it is my duty!”

Popping of firecrackers, shrieks of terror, and loud laughter drowned his words. Then a sudden rain fell, extinguishing the red and green fires which had illuminated the smoky darkness, and made the Governor’s buttons and epaulets shine out.

“I know the reason, Illawion Wassiljevitch⁠—that is, I think I can guess it. But I think it can hardly be serious.”

“It is most exceedingly serious, your Excellency! The whole town is talking of it. Astonishing how busily they talk about it! I have already arrested three men⁠—but they were the wrong ones.”

A fresh outburst of firing and gay shouts interrupted him, and when the noise had subsided the Governor had gone.

After supper they all drove off, marshalled by the young Assistant Commissioner. Everything: the fireworks which he had seen from behind the trees, the carriages and the people, seemed to him extraordinarily lovely, and his own fresh voice astonished him with its beauty and its power. The Pike was horribly drunk, cracked jokes, laughed, and even sang the first few bars of the Marseillaise:

“Allons, enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!”⁠ ⁠…

At last they had all gone. “What are you worrying about so, father?” said the lieutenant, laying his hand on Peter Iljitch’s shoulder with patronising kindliness. The Governor was very much loved by his family, and the Governor’s lady even feared him a trifle; but they all felt that he had aged sadly in these last few weeks, and their fondness was not without a tinge of contempt.

“Nonsense! Nothing but nonsense!” answered Peter Iljitch hesitatingly. For some reasons he would gladly have unburdened himself to his son, but then again their views differed so radically that he had feared this explanation. Yet now this very difference of opinion might be of use. “The thing is this, you see,” he continued, with some embarrassment, “this trouble with the workmen makes me somewhat uneasy.”

Their eyes met square⁠—but the son’s face was blank with astonishment as he dropped his hand from his father’s shoulder, saying: “But I thought you had your ‘Honourable Mention’ from St. Petersburg!”

“Certainly⁠—and it pleased me very much. And yet⁠ ⁠… Aljosha!” He gazed into his son’s fine eyes with the clumsy tenderness of a stern old man. “They aren’t Turks after all, are they? They’re as much Russians as we⁠—their names are Ivan and Peter, like ours.⁠—And yet I treated them like Turks! ’Hm? How does the thing strike you now?”

“It strikes me that you are a Revolutionist!”

“But they wear the cross upon their breasts, Aljosha! And I”⁠—he raised his finger⁠—“I ordered them to fire at those crosses!”

“As far as I’ve seen you, father, you’ve never shown any particular religious scruples before. What have the crosses to do with it? That might be a telling point if you were addressing your regiment in the Square, or for some such occasion, but⁠—”

“To be sure! Of course!” agreed the Governor hastily; “the crosses are aside from the argument. The point I want to make is this⁠—that they are fellow-beings. Do you understand, Aljosha; fellow-countrymen! Yes, if I were some German now, called August Karlovitch Schlippe-Detmold!⁠ ⁠… but my name is Peter⁠—and Iljitch besides!”

The lieutenant’s voice was rather dry. “You have such distorted notions, father! What have the Germans to do with this affair? And then, for that matter, haven’t Germans shot down Germans, and Frenchmen the French⁠—and so on? Why shouldn’t Russians fire on Russians? As a representative of the Government, you certainly know that law and order must be supported at all costs; and whoever it may be who disturbs them⁠—the same rule applies. If I were the guilty one, it would be your duty to have me shot down like a Turk!”

“That’s true,” said the Governor, nodding thoughtfully, and beginning to pace the floor. “That’s quite true!” And then he stopped. “But they were driven by hunger, Aljosha. If you could have seen them!”

“There were the peasants in Sensivjejvo⁠—they rose because they were famished too⁠—but that didn’t keep you from giving them a good dose of the knout!”

“Flogging is a very different thing from⁠—That fool laid them all out in a row! Like game at the end of a hunt! And I looked at their poor thin legs, and thought: ‘These legs will never walk again!’ You cannot understand, Alexey! Of course, as a matter of State, an executioner is a necessity⁠—but to be the executioner!”

“What are you talking about, father?”

“I know⁠—I feel it⁠—they will kill me yet!⁠—It’s not that I fear death”⁠—the Governor raised his grey head and looked steadily at his son⁠—“but I know⁠ ⁠… they will surely kill me! I never understood before. I only thought: ‘What is it all about?’ ”⁠—he stretched his powerful fingers and then doubled them into a fist. “But now I understand: they mean to kill me! Don’t laugh; you are young yet. But I have felt death today⁠—here, in my head. Yes, in my head!”

“Father, I beg of you, send for the Cossacks! Demand a bodyguard! They’ll grant you anything! I beg of you, as your son, and I ask it in the name of Russia, to whom your life is precious!”

“And who is to kill me but this same Russia? And why should I have the Cossacks?⁠ ⁠… To defend me from Russia⁠—in the name of Russia! And after all, could Cossacks, spies or guards, save a man with death branded on his forehead? You’ve been drinking a good deal this evening, Alexey, but you are sober enough to understand this: I feel the hand of death! Even there in the storehouse, where they laid the bodies, I felt it; yet then I did not realise what it was. This I’ve just been telling you, about crosses and Russians, is nonsense, of course⁠—has nothing to do with the thing. But do you see this handkerchief?” Eagerly he drew a handkerchief from his pocket, unfolded it, and held it up for inspection like a conjurer: “Alexey Petrovitch, now look here!” He waved it hastily and a subtle perfume was wafted to the lieutenant, who sat there looking anxious. “There, you doubting scientist! you fin de siècle thinker! You believe in nothing⁠—but I believe in the old law: Blood for blood! You will see!”

“Father, send in your resignation, and travel.”

He seemed to have expected this advice, and was not at all surprised. “No⁠—not for the world,” he answered firmly; “you can see for yourself that would be tantamount to flight. Nonsense! Not for the world!”

“Forgive me, father, but you seem so unreasonable!” The lieutenant cocked his head and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know really what to think. Mother groans and you talk of death⁠—and what is it all about? I’m ashamed of you, father! I’ve always considered you a man of discernment and force, and now you’re like a child or a hysterical woman. Forgive me! But I cannot understand it at all!”

He himself was not in the least hysterical, nor in the slightest degree womanish⁠—this handsome young fellow, with his fresh, smooth-shaven face and the calm, finished manner of a man who not only respects himself but reveres himself! He always seemed to be the sole individual in a crowd; and you must be a most distinguished person (a general at the very least) to have him aware of you and to make him overcome that slight constraint and reserve that the average public inspired in him. He was a good swimmer and loved the sport, and when he went to the baths on the Neva in the summertime he noted his own perfect symmetry as coolly and complacently as though he were quite alone.⁠ ⁠… One day a Chinaman appeared at the baths, and everyone stared at him⁠—some with a sneaking curiosity and some quite openly and unabashed. He alone did not vouchsafe him a glance⁠—considering himself far more interesting and more important than any Chinaman.⁠ ⁠…

Everything in the world was clear and simple to him; everything could be reduced to a formula⁠—and he knew that with the Cossacks things would certainly go better than without the Cossacks.

His reproaches had a ring of righteous indignation, only tempered by politeness and the fear of wounding the old man’s vanity. All this that his father had told him was not entirely unexpected. He had always known him to be a dreamer. But it struck him as something coarse, barbarous, atavistic. “Crosses! Blood for blood! Ivan and Peter!” How absurd it all was!

“You’re a poor stick of a Governor, even if they have given you an ‘Honourable Mention,’ ” thought he slowly, as he followed his father’s retreating figure with his handsome eyes.⁠ ⁠…

“Well, what is it, father⁠—are you vexed with me?”

“No,” answered the Governor simply. “I am grateful for your sympathy, and you’ll do well to quiet your mother. As to myself I am perfectly convinced! I’ve explained my impressions to you now. This is my view of it, and yours is different. We shall see which is correct!⁠—But now, be off to bed. It’s time you went to sleep.”

“I’m not tired yet. Shan’t we take a turn in the garden?”

“That suits me.”

They went out into the darkness and disappeared from each other’s view⁠—only their voices and an occasional hasty touch disturbing their sense of a strange, all-embracing loneliness. The stars, on the other hand, were numberless, and sparkled in bright companionship, and when they reached the open, out from under the close-set trees, Alexey Petrovitch could distinguish at his side the tall, heavy silhouette of his father. The night, the air and the stars had called up a tenderer feeling for this dark shadowy presence, and he repeated his reassuring explanations.

“Yes, yes,” answered Peter Iljitch from time to time⁠—though it was not quite clear whether he agreed or not.

“But how dark it is!” said Alexey Petrovitch, and stood still. They had come to a shady walk where the darkness was complete. “You should have lanterns put here, father!”

“What for? Tell me.”

They both stood still, and now that the sound of their steps was hushed, the loneliness reigned unbroken⁠—unbounded!

“Well, what is it?” asked Alexey Petrovitch impatiently.

“Does this darkness mean anything to you?”

“Dreaming again!” thought the lieutenant, and observed, with jaunty gaiety: “It means that you are not to wander about here alone! Anywhere in these woods they might have laid an ambush.”

“An ambush! Yes, that’s what the darkness tells me too. Imagine! Behind each one of these trees sits a man⁠—an invisible man⁠—watching! So many men⁠—forty-seven⁠—as many as we killed that day! And they sit there and hear what I say⁠—and spy!”

The lieutenant had grown nervous. He searched the darkness round about and took a step forward. “How unnecessary to excite yourself so!” he exclaimed involuntarily.

“No⁠—but wait a moment!” The son started as he felt a light touch of the hand. “Picture to yourself that everywhere⁠—there in the town even, and wherever I go⁠—they are lying in wait. If I walk⁠—he walks too; and watches me! Or I get into the carriage, and a man passes and pulls off his cap⁠—he is spying on me!”

The darkness grew sinister, and the invisible speaker’s voice sounded strange and distant.

“That will do, father, let’s go!” said the lieutenant, striding hastily off without waiting for his father.

“You see now, my dear boy!” came in Peter Iljitch’s deep voice, with a startling ring of mockery. “You wouldn’t believe me when I told you! There he sits in your own head!”

The lights in the house seem so far and dim that the lieutenant feels a mad impulse to run. If he might only reach them!⁠ ⁠… He almost doubts his own courage, and at the same time develops a feeling of respect for his father, who strides so calmly along through the darkness.

But fear and respect both vanish as soon as he enters the well-lighted rooms; and nothing remains but the impression of rage against his father, who will not listen to the voice of Reason, and refuses the Cossack guard with the stubbornness of senility!

IV

Summer and winter, the Governor rose at seven, had his cold tub, drank his milk, and took his two-hour walk⁠—no matter what the weather. He had given up smoking early in life, hardly drank at all, and at fifty-six years, for all his white hair, he was as sound and fresh as a stripling. His teeth were even, powerful, and slightly yellowed with tartar, like those of an old horse. The eyes were a bit puffy, but full of fire still; and his great fleshy old nose bore the marks of his glasses. He never wore a pince-nez, but for reading or writing used a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles with powerful lenses.

In the country he busied himself very much with his garden. He cared very little for flowers, or the purely aesthetic side of horticulture, but had built fine conservatories and a forcing house, where he cultivated peaches. Since the day of the catastrophe he had only glanced into the hothouse one single time, and then had come hastily away⁠—there was something so pleasant, so peaceful, and consequently so grievous! in the warm, damp air.

The greater part of his days, when he was not busy in town, he spent in the vast park, pacing with firm, direct steps down the long avenues that traversed its fifteen dessiatines. He was not much given to reflection. Now and again lively and interesting thoughts came to him, never with any particular sequence, and wandered through his brain like an unshepherded flock. And sometimes for hours he strode along, lost in thought and oblivious to his surroundings; yet could not have told what matters he had been pondering. Occasionally he was made aware of a deep and mighty working of his soul; at times tormenting, at times exalting⁠—but to what it all tended he never understood. And only his changing moods, from grave to gay, from tender to severe, gave index in his character of this mysterious, secret expansion in the depths of his being. Since the catastrophe his moods (no matter what his clearer thoughts might be) were gloomy, wild, hopeless; and whenever he woke from his deep brooding he felt that he passed this interval through a long and horrible night.

In his youth he had once been caught by the fierce current of a river, and almost drowned; and for years he carried the impress on his soul of that strangling darkness, his faintness, the eager, greedy sucking depths. And what he now endured was that same feeling!

One sunny, windless morning, two days after his son’s departure, he was out again on the avenue, pacing in silent thought. The yellow leaves that had fallen in the night had already been swept away, and across the marks of the broom, the tracks of his large feet, with their high heels, and broad, square soles, showed clear⁠—deep pressed into the soil; as though to the weight of the man himself had been added the burden of his ponderous thought, pressing him to the earth! Now and again he paused, and over his head in the tangle of sunlit branches was heard the rhythmic hammer of a woodpecker. Once while he stood still a little squirrel ran across the path. He darted from tree to tree like a fluffy ball of red fur.

“They will certainly kill me with a revolver⁠—you can buy such good revolvers now,” he thought. “They don’t understand much about bombs here yet⁠—and then bombs are only for the man who runs; Aljosha, for instance!⁠—when he is made Governor they’ll kill him with a bomb!” thought Peter Iljitch, and his bearded lip curled with a slight ironical smile, though his eyes were fixed and gloomy. “I wouldn’t run⁠—no, bad as it is, I wouldn’t run!”

He halted and brushed a cobweb from his fatigue jacket. “A pity, though, that no one will ever know of my notion of honour and my pluck. They know all the rest, but that they can never know. They’ll shoot me down like any old scoundrel. Too bad! But there’s nothing for it⁠—I shan’t speak of it! Why try to rouse the Judge’s pity? It’s not honourable to work on his feelings⁠—his position is hard enough at best⁠—and now they come and whine for mercy! I am a man of honour, I tell you⁠—honourable!”⁠ ⁠…

It was the first time he had thought of a judge; and he wondered how he had happened to think of it. It came to him as if the question had long ago been settled. As though he had slept, and in his dreams someone had explained most convincingly all the necessary details about the judge, and when he awoke he had forgotten the particulars, but only remembered that there was a judge⁠—a law-abiding justice, panoplied with authority, and encompassed with threatening might! And now, after the first moment of astonishment, he met the thought of this unknown judge as though he were an old and valued friend.⁠ ⁠… “Aljosha could never understand that! According to him everything must be ‘for reasons of State.’ But what sort of statesmanship was that: shooting a hungry mob? Interests of State demand that the starving be fed⁠—and not shot at! He is young and inexperienced yet, and easily influenced.”.⁠ ⁠… But before he had quite finished this complacent thought, he suddenly realised that he himself, and not Aljosha, had ordered the firing!⁠ ⁠… The air suddenly grew close, and he heard (absurdly enough) a single mighty, awful thunder: “Too late!”⁠ ⁠… He was not sure whether it were simply a thought or a feeling, or if he had pronounced it. It rang on every side, and menaced him like lightning overhead. Then came a long time of bewilderment; hasty disbanding of thoughts, and painful shattering of ideas⁠—finally, a calm⁠—so complete that it seemed indifference!⁠ ⁠…

The windows of the forcing house twinkled in the sunshine among the trees, and the wild grapevine’s red leaves glowed like bloodstains against the white angles of its walls. Following his custom, the Governor turned down the narrow path between the empty hotbeds and stepped into the forcing-house. Only one workman was pottering about, old Jegor.

“Is the gardener not here?”

“No, your Excellency. He has gone to town for cuttings today; this is Friday.”

“Aha!⁠ ⁠… And is everything doing well?”

“Thanks be!”

The sunshine streamed through the open windows, driving out the close, heavy dampness. You felt how hot and strong the sun was, and yet how gentle⁠—how beneficent! The Governor sat down, the light sparkling on the metal of his uniform. He undid his jacket and, watching the old man attentively, said: “Well, how goes it, Brother Jegor?”

The old fellow answered this friendly but somewhat indefinite question with a polite smile. He stood up and rubbed his dirty hands together.

“Tell me, Jegor⁠—I hear they’re going to kill me⁠—on account of the workmen that time, you know!” Jegor kept on smiling politely, but no longer rubbed his hands⁠—he hid them behind his back and was speechless! “What do you think about it, my man⁠—will they kill me, or not? Can you read and write?⁠ ⁠… Then tell me what you think.⁠ ⁠… We two old fellows can talk it over frankly, can’t we?”

Jegor shook his head until a lock of soft grey fell over his eyes, stared at the Governor, and answered: “Who can tell? It may be so, Peter Iljitch!”

“And who is to kill me?”

“Why, the people, to be sure! ‘The Community,’ as they say in the village.”

“And what does the gardener think about it?”

“I don’t know, Peter Iljitch.⁠ ⁠… I haven’t heard.”

Both sighed deeply.

“It looks rather bad for us, doesn’t it, old fellow?⁠ ⁠… But sit down!”

Jagor did not accept the invitation, and was silent.

“And I thought I was doing the right thing!⁠ ⁠… the shooting, I mean. They were throwing stones, insulting me. They almost hit me!”

“They only do that when they’re in trouble. The other day again, on the marketplace, a drunken man⁠—an apprentice or some such thing⁠—who knows!⁠—began to cry and cry; and then he picked up a stone, and bang! he let it fly!⁠ ⁠… and only just because he was in trouble!”

“They will kill me, and then they’ll be sorry themselves,” said the Governor thoughtfully, trying to call to his mind the face of his son Alexey Petrovitch.

“Sorry they’ll surely be⁠—that’s certain.⁠ ⁠… Oh, how sorry they’ll be! Bitter tears they’ll shed!”

A ray of hope dawned.

“Then why do they want to kill me?⁠ ⁠… That’s nonsense, old man!”

The workman gazed wide-eyed into space, with veiled pupils and a rigid attitude. For an instant he seemed petrified; the soft folds of his worn cotton shirt, the fuzzy hair, the grimy hands, all seemed like an enchantment brought about by a skilful artist who had wrapped the hard stone in soft, downy raiment.

“Who can tell!” answered Jegor, without looking at him. “The people seem to wish it!⁠ ⁠… But don’t trouble about it any more, your Excellency. You know we have to have our foolish gossip.⁠ ⁠… And they’ll take a long time⁠—and talk; and then forget it themselves!”

The ray of hope vanished.

What Jegor had said was nothing new, nor especially clever; but his words had a singular ring of conviction, like those dreams that came to the Governor as he paced his long lonely avenues. The one phrase, “The people wish it,” was a clear expression of what Peter Iljitch had felt⁠—it was convincing, irrefutable! But perhaps this strange conviction lay not so much in the words of Jegor as in his set look⁠—his fuzzy hair, and his broad, earth-stained hands!⁠ ⁠… And the sun still shone!

“Well, goodbye, Jegor.⁠ ⁠… Have you any children?”

“Good health to you, Peter Iljitch!”

The Governor shrugged his shoulders, buttoned his coat, and pulled a rouble from his pocket. “Here, take that, old man! Buy yourself something with it.”

With a nod of thanks, Jegor held out his old flat hand, where the silver balanced as on a roof.

“What singular beings they are!” mused the Governor, as he strode down the walk in the flickering shade; his own figure checkered by sun and shadow as he went. “Very strange creatures!⁠ ⁠… They wear no wedding rings, and you can never tell whether they are married or not.⁠ ⁠… However⁠—No! They do wear rings, but they are silver⁠ ⁠… or tin maybe! How odd! Tin rings!⁠ ⁠… These fellows get married and cannot even afford gold wedding rings for three roubles⁠—What misery!⁠ ⁠… I didn’t notice! Those bodies in the storeroom probably had tin rings on too. Yes, now I recollect: tin rings with a very thin band!”

Lower and lower, in ever-narrowing circles, swung his fancy; like a hawk hovering over a field, and swooping down to pick up one small grain!⁠ ⁠… A woodpecker hammered, a shrivelled leaf fell and floated away, and he himself floated off in a painful, troubled daydream.⁠ ⁠… A workman⁠—his face is young and handsome, but in all the wrinkles black grime of toil has settled⁠—iron filings that have eaten into the skin, and worn the hair prematurely. His broad mouth is hideously wide open⁠ ⁠… he screams! He is calling something. His shirt is torn over his chest, and he tears it yet more open⁠—easily, noiselessly, like soft paper; baring his breast. His chest, and half his throat, are white; but above that line he is dark⁠—as though his figure were like all other men’s, but they had put another sort of head upon it.

“Why do you tear your shirt? It is horrible to see your naked body!” But the bare, white breast is thrust wildly toward him. “Here, take it! Here it is!⁠ ⁠… But give us justice!⁠ ⁠… We want justice!⁠ ⁠…”

“But where shall I find justice? How singular you are!”

A woman speaks.

“The children are all dead! The children are all dead! The children⁠ ⁠… the children⁠ ⁠… the children have all died!”

“That is why it is so lonely down your lane!”

“The children! The children! The children are all dead! The children!”

“But it is impossible that a child should die of hunger! A child⁠ ⁠… a little creature who cannot even reach the cupboard door itself! You do not love your children! If my child were hungry I should give it food!⁠ ⁠… But you even wear tin rings!”

“Ah! We wear iron rings! Our bodies are bound. Our souls are bound. We wear iron rings!”

On the back steps in the shed a maid was brushing Maria Petrovna’s skirt. The kitchen windows stood open: one could see the cook in his spotless jacket. It smelled of refuse⁠ ⁠… it was dirty. “What have I come to!” said the Governor, in amazement.⁠ ⁠… “Why, it’s the kitchen. What was I thinking of? Ah yes! I wanted to see the time! How soon will luncheon be ready? It’s early yet⁠ ⁠… ten o’clock.⁠ ⁠… But it seems to disturb them to have me here.⁠ ⁠… I must go!” And he turned into his accustomed path, and wandered up and down, thinking steadily.

And the manner of his thought was of one who fords a great and unknown river. Now the water reaches to his knees⁠ ⁠… he presses on! But finally sinks from sight; only to struggle up later, breathless and pale!⁠ ⁠… He thought of his son Alexey Petrovitch⁠—tried to think of his office and his affairs; but wherever he led his fancies they always harked back unexpectedly to the catastrophe, and burrowed there as in an inexhaustible mine. It seemed strange that nothing happening before that event had the power to hold his attention⁠ ⁠… the past all seemed so trivial, so superfluous!

It was in the second year of his governorship, some five years ago, that he had ordered the knout for the peasants of Sensiwjejewo. On that occasion also he had received an Honourable Mention from the Minister; and from that event dated the rapid and glittering career of Alexey Petrovitch, who was regarded with some attention as the son of an energetic and farsighted man. He dimly remembered (it was so long ago) that the peasants had taken some grain from the proprietors by force, and he had come, with a detachment of soldiers and police, to restore it to the owners of the estates. The affair was nothing terrible, nothing threatening in itself, but rather farcical!

The soldiers dragged away the sacks of grain, and the peasants lay down on them and were dragged too, amid the laughter and jeers of the force, to whom the whole thing was a huge lark! But the fellows began to shriek and fight; striking out and running amuck against the fences⁠—the walls⁠—the soldiers!⁠ ⁠… One of them, torn from his sack of grain, fumbled silently in the grass with his trembling hands, looking for a stone to throw. Not a stone could he find, but he kept on hunting till a policeman, at a signal from his chief, kicked him in the rear, so that he fell on all fours, and crawled away.

But they all, these peasants, seemed to be made of wood. They were so clumsy, almost creaking in their movements! To turn one of them forward where he belonged took two men. Then, faced about, he still was uncertain where to look; and when he was finally settled, he could not tear himself away again, so that it took two men to force him back.

“Here, uncle, off with your clothes! You’re going swimming!”

“What!” asked the peasant, dumbfounded. “How?”⁠—although the thing was so perfectly clear and simple. A rough hand loosened the single button, the clothes fell, and the lean, bare peasant back stood out, unabashed. They laid the lash on lightly, more as a threat than as a punishment, and the mood of the whole affair was simply comical. On the homeward march the soldiers raised a jolly chorus, and those about the carts where the peasants were bound winked at them genially.

It was autumn. Windswept clouds hung over the bare stubble fields, and they all marched off to the city⁠ ⁠… to the light! But the village behind them still lay as before; under its depressing sky, in the midst of its dark, sodden, loamy fields, with their short, spare stubble⁠ ⁠…

“The children are all dead! The children are all dead!⁠ ⁠… The children! The children!⁠ ⁠…”

The gong sounded for luncheon. Its clear, penetrating tones rang cheerily through the park. Abruptly the Governor faced about and glanced sharply at his watch. “Ten minutes to twelve!” He put the watch back and stood still. “Disgraceful!” he cried, in a rage, his mouth trembling with emotion. “Disgraceful! I’m almost afraid I’m a coward!”

After luncheon he went to his study to look through the mail from town. Grumbling, and woolgathering and blinking through his glasses, he sorted the envelopes, laying some aside and cutting others carefully, to skim through their contents. Presently he came upon a note in a narrow envelope of cheap, thin paper, pasted over with yellow stamps of one copek. He opened it as carefully as he had the others. When he laid the envelope to one side he unfolded the thin, ink-splotched sheet, and read:

“Butcher of our Children!”

Whiter and whiter grew his face, till it was almost as white as his hair. And his dilated pupils stared through the thick convex glasses at the words:

“Butcher of our Children!”

The letters were large, crooked and pointed, and terribly black⁠—they staggered uncertainly across the rough, coarse paper and cried:

“Butcher of our Children!”

V

Already the city knew that the Governor was to be killed. They had heard it at dawn of the day after the shooting. None spoke of it openly, but all felt it; as though while the living lay in their uneasy sleep, the dead were stretched out quietly in careful order⁠ ⁠… shoulder to shoulder, in the engine-room, a dark shape had floated over the city, shadowing it with its wings. And the people spoke of the assassination of the Governor as a foregone conclusion⁠—an irrevocable fact. Some accepted it at once; others, more conservative, not till later. Some took it carelessly for granted as a thing that concerned them but slightly; like an eclipse, only visible in another hemisphere, and hardly interesting the inhabitants of this one. Others, a small minority, rose and agitated the question whether the Governor deserved this fearful sentence⁠—whether the death of one single individual, no matter how dangerous, could have any effect while the general conditions of the living were unchanged. Opinions differed, but even the most heated arguments were impersonal, as though the question were not a possibility of the future, but already an accomplished fact which no discussion might alter.

Among the better educated the arguments took a broader theoretical stand, and the Governor’s personality was forgotten, as though he were already dead. The debate proved that the Governor had more friends than enemies, and many even of those who believed ethically in political assassination found excuses for him. Had a vote been taken in the city, probably an overwhelming majority, on various practical or theoretical grounds, would have cast then ballot against the death⁠—or as some called it, the “execution”!

But the women, generally so merciful and timid at the sight of blood, showed in this case a surprising grimness⁠—a pitiless spite. Nearly all demanded his death⁠—the most hideous death! Reasoning had no power over them; they held their opinions stubbornly, with a certain brute force. A woman might be convinced by evening that the assassination was unnecessary, but next morning she would awake firm in her original conviction; as though she had slept off the effects of the argument overnight!

Bewilderment and confusion reigned supreme. A disinterested listener, hearing their talk, could not have gathered whether the Governor should be killed or not, and might have asked, in amazement: “But where did you get the idea that he must die?⁠ ⁠… And who is to kill him?”⁠ ⁠… But there would be no answer. Soon, however, he would see, as all the others did, that the Governor must be killed⁠—that his death was imperative!⁠ ⁠… yet he would have known as little as all the rest from what source this knowledge came. Everyone⁠—friend or foe of the Governor⁠—partisan or prosecutor⁠—all gave themselves up to the one unswerving thought of his death. Ideas differed, and words differed, but the feeling was the same: a mighty, all-pervading conviction, strong and immutable as death itself!

Born in the dark, itself a part of the unfathomable darkness, it reigned triumphant and menacing⁠ ⁠… and all in vain men sought to illuminate it with the feeble light of then intelligence. As though the hoary withered law, “A death for a death,” had waked from its torpid sleep, opened its glazed eyes, gazed on the slaughtered children, the men and the women, and had stretched its remorseless arm over the head of their slayer. And the people, thinking and unthinking, inclined themselves to this law, and avoided the sinner. He was at the mercy of any death that might come. And from all sides⁠—from dark corners, from fields, woods and hollows⁠—they pressed about him: reeling, limping, dull and abject⁠—not even interested!

So it might have been in those far-distant times while still there were prophets among men; when thoughts and words were scarcer, and this same hoary Law, that punished death with death, was young. When the beasts made friends with man, and the lightning was his brother! In those strange days of old, the guilty must pay for death in kind. The bee stung him, the ox gored him, the overhanging stone awaited his coming to fall and crush his defenceless head; disease gnawed him, as the jackal gnaws the carrion; arrows turned in their flight, only to strike his black heart or his downcast eyes; and rivers changed their course only to wash the sands from beneath his feet⁠—even the majestic ocean dashed its tattered waves on high and threatened him with its roar⁠—till he fled to the desert. A thousand deaths⁠—thousand graves! The desert buried him under her soft sands; she wept and smiled, and over him her winds blew, whistling. And the sun itself⁠—that life-giver⁠—seared his dead brain with careless laugh, and softly beamed on the creatures that swarmed in the hollows of his miserable eyes. The heavy masses of the hills lay upon his breast, and in their eternal silences they buried the secret of his expiation!⁠ ⁠… But that was long ago, when this great Law was young⁠—a stripling that punished death with death⁠—and seldom in those days did his cold, keen eyes swerve in the performance of his duty!⁠ ⁠…

Within the town discussion soon died out, poisoned by its own unripeness. One must either accept the assassination as a sacred fact and meet all argument as the women did with the one incontrovertible phrase: “What right had he to murder children?” or else be reduced to helpless contradictions, to vacillation, to shifting grounds⁠—as a drunken group might gravely exchange their hats, yet get no farther on their homeward way!

Speculation wearied them finally, so they stopped talking; and nothing on the surface reminded one of that fatal day. But amid the silence and the calm grew a great cloud of grim suspense. All waited⁠—those who were indifferent to the catastrophe and its consequences, those who looked eagerly forward to the execution, and those who were uneasy about it⁠—all!⁠ ⁠… all waited for the inevitable, with the same vast, breathless suspense! Had the Governor died of a fever in these days, or from an accident, none would have taken it for mere chance, but behind the given reason would have found a primary cause⁠—invisible, unacknowledged.

Among the masses, as the foreboding grew, their thoughts turned often to the Kawatnaja lane. The lane itself was still and calm, as was the city; and the swarming spies peered vainly for any signs of new uprising or criminal attempts. Here, as elsewhere, they heard rumours of the assassination of the Governor, but could never discover their source. All spoke of it, but in such an uncertain, even foolish way, that one could find no key to their talk.

“Some mighty man⁠—oh, a very mighty man, who could never possibly fail!⁠—would undoubtedly kill the Governor one of these days!” That was all one could make of it.

The secret agent, Grigorjeff, overheard some such gossip one day as he sat in a low gin-shop pretending to be drunk. Two workmen, who had already been drinking rather freely, sat at the next table, their heads together. Clumsily clinking their glasses, they talked in suppressed murmurs. “They’ll kill him with a bomb!” said the first, evidently well informed. “What! with a bomb!” said the other, amazed.

“Certainly, with a bomb⁠—what else?” reiterated the other. He puffed at his cigarette, blew the smoke in his companion’s face, and added sternly: “It will blow him to a thousand little bits!”

“They said it would be on the ninth day.”

“No,” said the other, with a frown which expressed the highest degree of scornful negation. “Why the ninth day? That’s superstition⁠—that idea of the ninth day! They’ll simply kill him early in the morning⁠—that’s all!”

“When?”

Shielding his face with his outspread hand, he lurched suddenly forward and hissed into his companion’s ear: “Next Sunday week!”

Silently they stared into each other’s grim, bleary eyes, both swaying to and fro. Then the first lifted a threatening finger and said, with impressive secrecy:

“Do you understand?”

“They’ll never miss him⁠ ⁠… no! They’re not that kind.”

“No,” said the other, with lowering brows. “How could we miss? The pack is stacked.⁠ ⁠… We hold four aces.”

“A whole handful of trumps⁠—” added the other.⁠—“You understand, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course I understand!”

“Then, if you understand, we’ll drink to it. Aren’t you afraid of me now, Wanja?”

They whispered for some time, blinking and nodding, and upsetting the empty bottles in their eagerness.⁠ ⁠… That same night they were arrested, yet nothing suspicious was found upon them, and the preliminary examination showed that they did not know the slightest thing, and had only repeated vague rumours.

“But how did you happen to know the very day⁠ ⁠… that Sunday!” asked the angry officer who was conducting the examination.

“Can’t say,” said the man, somewhat cowed⁠—he had been three days without drinking or smoking⁠—“I was drunk!”

“I’d like to send you all to⁠—” fumed the lieutenant⁠—but he did not finish his remark.

Even the ones who were sober were no better. They spoke freely of the Governor in the workshops and on the streets, raged at him, and exulted at his approaching death⁠—yet never anything definite⁠—and soon they stopped talking and waited patiently. Now and again passing labourers exchanged comments.⁠—“He drove by again yesterday without any guard.”

“He’s walking into the trap himself!” And they went about their work. Bat next day a whisper ran through the shops:

“Yesterday he drove down the lane!”

“Let him drive!”

They counted each day of his life⁠ ⁠… their number seemed too great!⁠ ⁠… Twice the rumour of his death was started. It spread suddenly in the Kawatnaja lane, and immediately grew to certainty in the factories. It was impossible to say how it arose but, scattered in little groups, they told each other the details of the murder: the street, the hour, the number of the murderers⁠—the weapon! Some could have sworn they heard the explosion. And all stood there, pale, determined; outwardly neither glad nor sorry: till at last word came that it was a false alarm. Then they separated, just as calmly, and without disappointment⁠—as though it were not worth while to be excited over an affair that was postponed but for a few days at most⁠ ⁠… or perhaps a few hours⁠—or even minutes!

Both in the city and in the Kawatnaja lane the women were the harshest, most unrelenting judges. They produced no evidence, they gave no verdict⁠—they simply bided their time! And on then waiting, they laid the coals of their unshakable belief; the whole burden of their unhappy lives; and the hideousness of their depraved, hungry, smothered thoughts. They had in their daily lives one special adversary that the men did not know⁠ ⁠… the oven!⁠—the ever-hungry, open-mouthed oven; more awful than the glowing fires of hell! From morning till night, throughout their days, and every day, it held them in its sway; eating their soul, casting out from their brains all thought, save that which concerned itself.

The men knew nothing of this. When a woman waked at dawn and saw the stove⁠—the oven door half open⁠—it worked on her fancy like a ghost; gave her a sickening sense of disgust and fear, and dull, brutish terror!

Robbed of her thoughts, she hardly knew what had robbed her; and in her confusion humbly offered up her soul again each day before this altar; black, deadly misery wrapping her as in a veil. And thus the women in the Kawatnaja lane became so fierce and hard! They beat their children⁠—beat them nearly to death!⁠—quarrelled amongst themselves, and with their husbands, and their mouths streamed with abuse, complaints and wantonness.

In those three terrible weeks of famine, when for days no fires were made⁠—then at last, the women rested⁠ ⁠… that strange, calm rest of the dying whose pains have ceased some moments before the end! Their thoughts, freed for an instant from those iron bands, fastened with all their passion and power to the vision of a new life⁠ ⁠… as though this strike were not about the monthly wages of the men, but about a full and glad release of their eternal bonds. And in those heavy days when they buried their little children⁠ ⁠… dead from exhaustion!⁠ ⁠… and numb with pain, weariness and hunger⁠—bewailed them with bloody tears⁠—the women grew kind and gentle as never before! They were convinced that such horrors could not have been sent without a purpose⁠—that some vast reward must follow their sufferings.

So when on the 17th of August the Governor stepped out before them, into the Square shimmering in the sunlight, they took him for the dear Lord Himself⁠—with his grey beard.⁠ ⁠… And he said:

“You must go back to your work! I cannot talk to you till you have gone back to your work.”

Then: “I will see what I can do for you. Get to work and I shall write to Petersburg!”

Then: “Your employers are not robbers, but honourable men, and I forbid you to speak so of them. And if you are not back at your work by tomorrow, I shall lock up the shops and send you all to the workhouse!”

Then: “It is your own fault that the children died! Take up your work again!”

Then: “If you act like this, and do not disperse, I’ll have you driven off!”⁠ ⁠…

Then followed a chaos of howls; babies crying; the whine of bullets; pushing; and a wild flight! They do not know themselves where they are fleeing to⁠—they fall! Up again and on⁠—children and home are lost!⁠ ⁠… Then suddenly again, in the twinkling of an eye, there sits the cursed oven!⁠—stupid, insatiable, with its everlasting open mouth!⁠ ⁠… And the same old round begins again from which they thought to have torn themselves forever; and to which they have returned⁠ ⁠… forever!

Perhaps the idea of the Governor’s assassination emanated from the women’s brains. The well-worn words in which man had been wont to clothe his hatred for man no longer sufficed them. Loathing! Contempt! Rage!⁠—it transcended all these⁠ ⁠… it was a feeling of calm, unqualified condemnation⁠ ⁠… If the axe in the headsman’s hands could feel, it might have this emotion⁠—that cool, sharp, shining, steady blade! The women waited quietly; without wavering and without doubts.

And while they wait they take their fill of the good, fresh air⁠—the same air that the Governor breathes!⁠ ⁠… They are like children. If a door chances to slam, or someone runs clattering down the lane, they rush out⁠—bareheaded and excited.⁠ ⁠… “Is he dead yet?”

“No⁠—it was only Ssenjka running to the shop for vodka.”

And so it goes till another knock comes, or a sudden rush of feet, to break the deadly silence of the street.

When the Governor drives by they peer at him eagerly from behind the curtains; and when he has passed, go back to their ovens again. It did not surprise them that the Governor, who had always been followed by guards, suddenly appeared without an escort⁠ ⁠… the headsman’s axe, if it could feel, would not be astonished at the sight of a bare throat! It was quite in the order of things that the throat should be bare.

They sat and spun their gruesome threads⁠—these grey, dismal women with their grey, dismal lives⁠—and it was they who awakened that hoary old Law that punished death with death.

Their sorrow for their dead was suppressed and torpid; it was only a part of their great general pain, and they gulped it down as the great, briny ocean would swallow one small briny tear. But on Friday of the third week after the deluge of blood, Nastassja Saasnova, whose little girl (Tanja, only seven) had been killed, went suddenly mad! For three weeks she had worked over her oven like all the rest; had quarrelled with her neighbours, had beaten her other children⁠—and all at once, without any warning, she went insane.

It began in the morning. Her hand trembled, and she broke a cup; then it all came over her with a sickening shock, and she forgot what she was about, ran from one thing to another, and repeated foolishly. “О God, what am I doing?”⁠ ⁠… Then finally she was quite silent! And dumb, with stealthy tread, she slid from corner to corner, taking things up and putting them down⁠—moving them from place to place⁠—and even, in the beginning of her madness, hardly able to tear herself away from the stove. The children were in the garden flying their kites, and when little Petjka ran in for a piece of bread he found his mother stealthily hiding all sorts of things in the oven⁠—a pair of shoes, an old coat, and his cap! At first the boy laughed, but when he caught sight of his mother’s face he ran shrieking into the street. “A⁠—a⁠—ai!” he screamed as he ran, and set the lane in wild alarm.

The women gathered and began to whimper over her like frightened dogs. But she only widened her circles, breaking through their detaining arms; gasped for air and mumbled to herself. Piece by piece she jerked off her rags till, stripped to the waist, her lean and haggard body, with its withered, dangling breasts, showed yellow against the wall. Then with a long and hideous wail she repeated, over and over: “I can’t! Oh, my dear, I can’t⁠—I can’t⁠—I can’t⁠—I can’t!” and ran out into the street, the others following.

Then the whole lane was transformed for one instant into a single shrill howl; it was impossible to tell who was crazy and who was not. The panic subsided when the men ran out from the shops, bound the maniac hand and foot, and poured a bucket of water over her. She lay there in a puddle by the roadside, her naked bosom pressed to the earth, her fists and the blue, mottled arms stretched stiffly forward.

She had turned her face to the side, and her eyes were wild and glaring; her wet grey hair was pressed close to her head, making it seem pitifully small; her whole body was shaken with convulsive jerks. Out from the factory ran her husband, in a fright. He had not washed his sooty face, his shirt was shiny with oil and grime, and a burned finger on his left hand was tied up with a greasy rag.

“Nastja!” he called, bending over her, stern and harsh. “What do you mean? What is the matter with you?” She turned her dumb glassy stare at him and shuddered. He saw the purple bloodshot arms they had so pitilessly bound; loosened the ropes and smoothed her naked yellow shoulder.⁠ ⁠… Then came the police!⁠ ⁠…

When the crowd dispersed two men among them neither went back to the factory nor stayed in the lane: but they went their way slowly to the city. They walked along keeping step; silent and pondering. At the outlet of the Kawatnaja lane they parted.

“What a scene!” said one. “Are you going my way?”

“No!” said the other curtly, and strode along. He had a young tanned throat, and under his cap a shock of curly yellow hair.

VI

Sooner or later the news of the Governor’s assassination had crept into the palace, but here they took it with an extraordinary indifference. As the close presence of the strong man in his full powers hindered their knowledge of the fact that this death meant his death!⁠ ⁠… they regarded it only as a temporary hallucination. Toward the middle of September, the household returned to town, at the urgent request of The Pike who had convinced Maria Petrovna that the country was not safe. And there life took on its accustomed aspect⁠ ⁠… the routine of many years.

Kosloff, the aide, who loathed the dirt and the banal decorations of the Governor’s mansion, had personally supervised its refurnishing. He bought fresh hangings for the walls and reception-rooms, had the ceilings retinted, and ordered new furniture⁠ ⁠… green oak in the style of the Decadence! He quite took upon himself the supervision of the house, to the delight of all; from the servants who were infused with his energy, to Maria Petrovna, who hated all domestic cares, in spite of its roominess the palace was most inconveniently arranged. The bathrooms were next to the reception-rooms, and the lackeys had to carry their dishes down a long cold corridor past the windows of the dining-hall, where one could see them quarrelling and nudging each other as they went. All this Kosloff wished to change, but he had to postpone his plans till summer.

“He will be pleased,” he said to himself, meaning the Governor⁠—but strangely enough this image did not call forth in his mind Peter Iljitch, but some other! Yet in his eager bustle of reform he was not at all conscious of this thought.

As usual Peter Iljitch was the centre of his family, and the expressions, “His Excellency ordered it,” “His Excellency wishes⁠ ⁠…” “His Excellency would be angry⁠ ⁠…” were now as ever the household words; and yet, had they set up a puppet in his place, dressed in the Governor’s uniform, and let it speak a few words, it would have made no difference⁠—so much of the office was but empty form!

If he fell into a rage and shouted at a man, and that man trembled, it looked as though the rage and the trembling both were simulated, and that nothing of the sort had really taken place. Even had he committed a murder in these days, that very death would have seemed counterfeited. As far as concerned himself, he still lived; but to the others he had already died, and they handled the dead carelessly, and felt the cold and the gloom that emanated from him without quite understanding what it meant.

Thought can kill in time! Drawing its strength from the Eternal Sources, it is mightier than engines, weapons, or powder! It robs men of their will, and makes even the instinct of self-preservation blind. It clears a free space for its deadly stroke; as the forest underbrush is cleared about the tree that must be felled! So this thought was killing the Governor!⁠ ⁠… As the child, when the time of its fruition is complete, struggles from its mother’s womb, this imperious death-dealing thought⁠—till now giving evidence of its being only by the muffled beating of its heart⁠—strove irresistibly toward the light, and began to lead an individual life. Imperiously it called up those from the dark who should do the deed, and hailed them as saviour!

Unconsciously the people held themselves aloof from the one dedicated to death, and robbed him of that invisible but mighty shield that the life of the mass forms for the life of the individual.

After the first anonymous letter calling the Governor “Butcher⁠ ⁠…” a few days passed without any such missives. Then, as if with silent accord, they began literally to shower upon him, as though they had poured from a slit in the postbag; and each morning the stack of envelopes on his desk grew higher. In different quarters of the town, out of different postboxes, these letters were segregated from the other mail by different people; gathered into a heap, and brought to their common destination⁠—this one man! Formerly the Governor had received anonymous letters, sometimes with abuse and veiled threats, mostly denunciations and complaints, but he had never read them. Now, however, he felt himself impelled to read them; as he was forced, too, to think constantly of his own death.⁠ ⁠… And reading and reflection both required solitude!⁠ ⁠…

Seldom through the day, but oftener towards evening, he sat at his disordered desk with a glass of tea untasted by his side, shrugged his broad shoulders, put on his strong, gold-rimmed spectacles, examining the envelopes of the letters as he opened them. He had learned to know them at a glance. For, in spite of differences in writing, paper, and postmarks, they had something in common⁠—like the dead in the engine-house!⁠ ⁠… and not only he, but the lodge-keeper, who took in Peter Iljitch’s private correspondence, recognised them unerringly.

The Governor read each letter attentively⁠—earnestly⁠—from beginning to end; and if any words were illegible, he puzzled over them long, as to their meaning. Uninteresting ones, or those that contained only filthy abuse, he destroyed; also those which gave him friendly warning of his coming assassination. All others he numbered and filed, for some reason unknown to himself. In general their contents were wearisomely monotonous. Friends warned, foes threatened⁠—and the matter dwindled into a series of inconclusive “Ayes” and “Noes.”

From constant repetition he was quite used to the words “Murderer” on the one hand⁠ ⁠… and “Steadfast Defender of Order” on the other, and to a certain extent had accustomed himself to that other thought⁠ ⁠… that friend and foe alike believed in the inevitable approach of his death!⁠ ⁠… A cold shudder ran over him. He would gladly have warmed himself, but there was nothing to warm him.⁠ ⁠… The tea was cold!⁠ ⁠… they always brought him cold tea lately, for some reason!⁠ ⁠… and even the high tiled stove was cold!⁠ ⁠… Long ago⁠—soon after he had come here⁠—he had intended to build a fireplace, but he had put it off, and the old Dutch oven gave very little heat, no matter how much coal you burned!⁠ ⁠… In vain he hugged the lukewarm tiles, then paced the floor up and down, saying, in his deepest regimental tones: “I’ve grown to be a perfect hothouse plant!”⁠ ⁠… Then he sat down to his letters again, looking for something important or decisive.

“Your Excellency!⁠—You are a General, but Generals are mortal too. Some Generals die a natural death, and some by violence. You, your Excellency, will die a violent death!

“I have the honour to subscribe myself, your Excellency’s most obedient servant.⁠ ⁠…”

The Governor smiled⁠—at that time he could still smile⁠—and was about to tear the carefully written page when he bethought himself, made a marginal note: “No. 43, Sept. 22, 190‒,” and filed it.

“My Lord Governor! (or to be more correct, My Lord Turkish Pasha!)⁠—You are a thief and a hired assassin!⁠ ⁠…

“I’d swear to God you turned a pretty penny on that transaction when you murdered the working men.⁠ ⁠…”

The Governor turned purple, crumpled the note in his fist, pulled off his spectacles and roared, with the roll of a big bass drum:

“R-r-r-r-apscallion!”

Then he dug his hands into his pockets, stuck out his elbows and began to pace the floor in a feverish rage⁠ ⁠… keeping time with the rhythm of: “This-is-the-way-the-Gov-ern-ors walk!”

When he had quieted himself he smoothed out the letter, read it to the end, numbered it with an unsteady hand, and filed it carefully. “He must certainly see that,” he said, thinking of his son.

That same evening Fate sent him another letter. It was signed “A Labourer.” Apart from the signature, however, nothing in the letter denoted the brawny craftsman⁠—miserable and uneducated⁠—which was the Governor’s conception of “labourer.”

“Here in the works, and in town, they say that you are to be killed soon. I don’t know precisely who will do it, but I think it will not be the agents of any organisation; but rather a volunteer from among the citizens, who are roused by your brutal proceedings against the workmen on August 17th. I frankly say that I and some of my party are against this resolution, not because we pity you⁠—had you yourself any pity on the women and the children that day?⁠—and I think that no one in the place has any pity for you!⁠ ⁠… but simply because I am opposed in principle to any violent death. I am against War, Capital Punishment, Political Execution⁠ ⁠… and against murder in general!

“In the battle for our ideals⁠—Liberty, Fraternity and Equality⁠—we should make use only of such weapons as do not contradict these ideals. Death is a weapon of that evil, old-world order whose device is Slavery, Privilege and Enmity. Good can never come from evil, and in the battle where force is the weapon, the victor can never be ‘the Right,’ but ‘Might’; that is, the one is more pitiless, more inhuman⁠ ⁠… no respecter of persons, and not above using any weapons⁠—in one word, a Jesuit!

“If a scrupulous man were forced to shoot, he would certainly either shoot in the air, or else commit some folly that would get him into trouble; because his soul would revolt at the work of his own hands. I hold that many of the well-known unsuccessful political assassinations have been wrecked on this point, because the victims have been rogues capable of taking every advantage, while the instruments have been men of honour, who have perished for the cause. You may be sure, my Lord Governor, that if all the people who attempt the lives of your kind were rascals, they would surely find such loopholes and methods as would not enter into an honest man’s head, and you would all long since have been dispatched.

“From my point of view the Revolution can merely be a propaganda of ideas⁠—in the sense in which the Christian Martyrs were revolutionists. For even if the labourers did win a battle, the Rascals would only pretend to be beaten to gain time for new trickery, and to get back at their foe. We must conquer with our heads, not with our fists; for as regards the head, the Rascals are rather weak! For this reason they even hide books from the poor man, condemning him to darkness of ignorance because they fear for their existence. Do you know why they won’t allow the workmen the eight-hour labouring day? Do you think the gentlemen did not know themselves that in eight hours of intelligent work the production would be no less than in eleven now? But the thing is this⁠—that with the eight-hour law, the men would have time to learn as much as their masters, and would take the work out of their hands. These people only think they are wise, because they have made all the others stupid⁠—against a really clever man they would not be worth a sou!

“I have gone so deeply into the discussion of these questions, in order that you should not misunderstand my first words against your assassination, and consider me a traitor to the common cause of all other honourable men. I must furthermore add that I and my mates who share my convictions were not in the Square on the 17th, because we knew very well what the end would be, and did not care to stand there like the fools who believed that Justice was to be had from one of your kind!

“Now, naturally the others agree with us and say: ‘If we go there again we won’t ask, we’ll strike!’ According to my mind that’s equally foolish⁠ ⁠… because, as I say: why go there at all? You yourself will come to us soon enough with friendly words and bows⁠—and then we’ll show you!⁠ ⁠…

“Honoured Sir, Forgive my boldness, that I should have come to you with my workingman’s talk⁠—for I have learned by myself all I know out of books⁠—but it seems strange to me that an educated man who is not such a rascal as all the rest, could act so to the miserable working men who trusted him⁠ ⁠… that he could order them shot!⁠ ⁠… Maybe you will have a guard of Cossacks, a detachment of the Secret Service, or take a trip somewhere⁠—and so save your life; and then my words may be of some use, and point out to you the right way to serve the true interests of the nation.

“They say here in the works that you were bought by Capital!⁠ ⁠… but I don’t believe that, for our employers aren’t so stupid as to throw away their money⁠ ⁠… and besides that, I know you can’t be bribed⁠ ⁠… and are no thief either, like the others in the service who need the money for their chorus-girls and champagne and truffles. I might even say that in the main you are a man of honour.⁠ ⁠…”

The Governor laid the letter carefully upon the table, triumphantly took his moist spectacles from off his nose, polished them ceremoniously with the corner of his handkerchief, and said, with stately deference:

“I thank you, young man.”

Slowly he walked down the room and turned to the cold tile stove, saying impressively: “You may take my life, it belongs to you.⁠ ⁠… But my honour⁠—”

He did not end the phrase, but held his head high, and stalked back to the writing-table, a trifle absurd in his ponderous dignity.⁠ ⁠…

“I might even say that in the main you are a man of honour⁠ ⁠… in the main a man of honour⁠ ⁠… in the main a man of honour⁠—who wouldn’t hurt a chicken without cause, but how could you, an honourable man, be responsible for such an order? That is the question, honoured sir! The people are not chickens! The people are sacred! And if you could understand the masses and their sufferings, you would go out into that same Square, bow yourself humbly to the earth and beg for forgiveness.

“Think, from generation to generation⁠—from kindred to kindred, since that time of the first slaves, who, at the bidding of their tyrannical princes built the Pyramids, we have led this existence! As there are among you hereditary nobles⁠—that is, oppressors⁠—so among us there are hereditary labourers, hereditary slaves. And consider further, that in all these ages we have been only beaten and oppressed, and as far back into the past as I can trace my ancestry I see nothing but tears, despair, ill-treatment. And all this is stamped upon the soul⁠—and all this has been kept as the sole heritage, from father to son, from mother to daughter. Attempt to look into the soul of a simple peasant or labourer⁠—a shuddering horror! While we are yet unborn we have suffered a thousand wrongs. When we finally crawl forth into life we stumble into a sort of cavern, where we are nourished on wrongs and clothe ourselves in our wrongs!

“They tell me that somewhere, five years ago, you ordered the knout for the peasants⁠—do you realise what you did then? You thought you had only flayed their backs. No, you stripped their souls, enslaved for ages. You flogged the dead, and the yet unborn! And though you may be a General and an Excellency⁠—yet I make bold to say you are not fit to lay your lips in adoration on one of those sacred peasant backs, much less to lay the lash!

“And when the workmen came to you, who was it, do you think, who came?⁠ ⁠… Those were the slaves who built the Pyramids⁠—they rose and came with their thousands of years of chafings and groans, to ask for kindness, for help, for counsel! Came to you, as to an enlightened and humane man of the twentieth century. And how did you treat them? Ah! You!⁠ ⁠… Your forefather perhaps was an overseer over these same slaves and beat them with stripes, and then handed down to you this foolish hatred for the working classes!

“Honoured Sir! The masses are awakening. At present they are only turning in their sleep, and already the pillars in your house are tottering; but wait till they are quite awake. These words of mine are new to you⁠—think them over!⁠ ⁠… Furthermore, I ask your pardon that I have troubled you so long, and in the name of the ‘Brotherhood,’ I hope they may not kill you.”⁠—

“They will kill me, though,” thought the Governor, as he folded up the letter. For an instant the picture of old Jegor, with his steel-grey hair, rose in his mind, only to vanish in the boundless darkness of its void.

No vestige of thought was left in him, nothing either of contradiction or of assent. He stood by the burnt-out stove⁠—on the table the lamp glowed under its green silk shade⁠—in another room his daughter was playing the piano; someone seemed to be teasing her Excellency’s pug, for he began to bark viciously⁠—and still the lamp burned.⁠ ⁠…

The lamp burned!

VII

In the next few days no letters came. The sendings stopped abruptly, as by preconcerted action, and the silence that followed held something sinister and unusual. The sudden cessation gave the feeling that the end was not yet come, that somewhere in the void something was taking its course; that a new phase had entered into the Thought, and was shaping things in secret. And time sped by, with a swoop of its mighty pinions⁠—each upward swing a day, each downward sweep a night!

Twice the Pike had interviewed her Excellency at a most unusual hour. He scolded the man in the anteroom who helped him off with his coat, rowing him in energetic whispers as though he were one of his own policemen, or a cabby. And when the coat was off and he was drawing on his fresh white gloves, he bent his sleek head condescendingly to the fellow’s side-whiskers, gnashed his musty-tobacco-stained teeth, and held his half-gloved hand, with fingers dangling limp, close over his nose. (He always did this at the slightest contact with a lackey.)⁠ ⁠… Then, assuming the manner of a man of the world, he mounted the stairs.

Formerly he would never have dared to scold the Governor’s servants, but now things were come to such a pass that he not only did, but must. Last night a highly suspicious character had been arrested by one of the secret agents, close to the entrance of the palace! At a distance he had followed the Governor on his accustomed morning stroll; then had hung about the palace all day, peering in at the basement windows, hiding behind the trees, and conducting himself in a most suspicious manner. On his arrest they found neither weapons, papers, nor any other treasonable articles about him; and they recognised him as the suburbanite Ipatikoff⁠—furrier by trade. His statements were vague and shifty. He asserted that he had only passed the house once, and seemed to be hiding something. On searching his quarters they found but a few rotten skins, a boy’s fur coat unfinished, and other appurtenances of his trade. Household goods there were none⁠—no weapons, no papers. The case seemed in the highest degree mysterious. None of the Governor’s household⁠—the lodge-keeper nor anyone else⁠—had observed him, though he had passed the main entrance at least a dozen times.

In the night a spy tried the door to test the matter and, finding it unlocked, walked into the porter’s lodge, scratched his name on the wall as a proof of his presence, and then walked out again unnoticed. The gatekeeper pleaded forgetfulness as his excuse for not locking up.⁠ ⁠… “But at such a time, when such an attempt was to be expected, that sort of carelessness was unpardonable!”

“I’m in an awful fix, your Excellency,” complained the Pike to the Governor’s lady, laying his white-gloved hand on his scented breast. “His Excellency won’t listen to the idea of a bodyguard! The Secret Service men are dog-tired (excuse the expression) with their everlasting trotting after him⁠ ⁠… and to tell you the truth, it’s all nonsense anyway, because the first scoundrel that comes along could catch him around the corner, or hit his Excellency with a stone over the wall.⁠ ⁠… If anything should happen⁠—which God forbid!⁠—people will say: ‘The Chief of Police is to blame! The Chief of Police did not watch out!’ What can I do against his Excellency’s damned stubbornness? Excuse the expression, your Excellency, but fancy the position I’m in! It really is too⁠—I’ll bid you good day, your Excellency!”

It developed that the Pike had prepared a programme. The Governor was to get a few months’ furlough and travel for his health⁠—any one of the foreign baths would do. Things were quiet in the city now, and he was in high favour at St. Petersburg⁠—there would be no trouble on that score!

“Otherwise I can guarantee nothing, your Excellency!” continued the Chief, with feeling.⁠ ⁠… “Human powers have their limits, your Excellency, and I tell you frankly I cannot answer for anything!⁠ ⁠… After two or three months it will all happily be forgotten, and then⁠—Welcome home, your Excellency. It will be just the season of the Italian Opera. We’ll give a gala performance⁠—and then his Excellency can take his walks abroad to his heart’s content.”

“What nonsense about the opera!” said the Governor’s lady, yet she approved of the proposition, as she herself was most uneasy.

On his way out the Chief of Police stopped at the lodge to bully the porter again.

“I’ll teach you! I’ll make your chin-whiskers stand up, you fat-faced fool! He grows chin-whiskers like a Lord Chancellor⁠—the son of a gun!⁠ ⁠… and thinks he doesn’t have to lock the door! I’ll make you dance. You⁠—”

That evening Maria Petrovna begged her husband to take her abroad with the children.

“Oh, please, Pievna, won’t you?” she said in her tired voice, her eyes drooping under their long dark lashes. Her face was thickly powdered, and her yellow, flabby cheeks dangled like a pointer’s as she shook her head. “You know I’ve not been at all well lately, and really I must go to Carlsbad.”

“Can’t you and the children go without me?”

“Ah, but no, Pievna! What makes you talk like that? I’d be so worried if you were not there. Please.”

She did not say what would worry her⁠—her object was clear without that. To her great surprise, Peter Iljitch readily agreed to the plan⁠—though under ordinary circumstances her mere mention of a wish called forth his opposition.⁠ ⁠… At least that used to be their way!

“They certainly can’t lay that to cowardice,” thought the Governor. “It isn’t any plan of mine⁠—and maybe she really does need a cure. She looks as yellow as a lemon.⁠ ⁠… Besides, there’s always plenty of time for them to kill me⁠ ⁠… and if they don’t attempt anything it will prove that I am right, and they are wrong!⁠ ⁠… Then I’ll resign⁠—and then I shall build the finest kind of a conservatory.⁠ ⁠…”

Even while these thoughts were passing he was convinced that he would neither have the trip nor the conservatory! That was why he had given such prompt assent. And after he had consented, he forgot the circumstances immediately as though they did not concern him in the least. He hesitated for a long time about the arrangements for his furlough, set the date, changed it, and then forgot the thing completely till two days after the time he had appointed. Then again he named a day⁠ ⁠… but again he forgot it deliberately. Moreover, his wife, whose mind was completely set at rest at the mere idea of their departure, did not urge him to hurry⁠—she had her fall wardrobe to finish, and tailors and dressmakers took all her time⁠ ⁠… besides, Cissy was not nearly ready.

In the lonely silence surrounding the Governor since the sudden stopping of the letters, he felt something incomplete⁠—like the echo of a soft voice in the distance⁠—as if he sat in an empty room, with someone speaking behind the wall, the vibrations of whose voice could be felt but not heard. And when another letter came⁠—a final belated letter⁠—he went forward to take it as though he had long been expecting it, and was much surprised to see that it was in a slender, delicately tinted envelope with a forget-me-not stamped on the back. But it did not come in the morning like all the other letters which had been posted the night before, but with the evening mail⁠—showing that it had been written the same day. The notepaper was of the same pale shade, and was also stamped with the blue forget-me-not. The writing was painstaking and distinct; the lines slanted heavily, as though the writer were not quite sure of her syllables and, rather than divide the words, ran them down the page in a small, cramped hand. At times she began to write downhill long before the end of the line, in tiny little letters, in the evident fear that she would not have room for the rest of the sentence. And the words all seemed to be coasting down the snowy page⁠—the smallest one in front, on their little sleds.

The letter was signed “A School Girl.”

“Last night I dreamed about your funeral, and I am going to write you about it⁠—even if it isn’t right, and if it does harm the poor workmen, and the little girls that you killed! But you’re a poor old man yourself, and so I’m writing you this letter.

“I dreamed that you were not buried in a black coffin, as all older people are, but in a white one, like the ones for little girls⁠—and it was policemen that went down Moscow Street carrying your coffin⁠—and they didn’t carry it with their hands, but on their heads. And a great crowd of policemen walked behind. But none of your friends were there; and none of the people in the city. And all the doors and windows were barred when you were carried by⁠—as they are at night!

“I was so frightened that I waked up, and began to think about it⁠—and that is what I am going to write you about.⁠ ⁠… I thought maybe there is no one at all who will cry for you when you are dead. The people in your house are all hard and selfish, and only care about themselves; and perhaps when you die they’ll be glad, because they think then they can be Governor! I do not know your wife, but I don’t believe there can be very many gentle and kind ladies in those circles of pleasure and pride.

“No respectable people would ever go to your funeral, of course, for they are all angry at the way you treated the workmen⁠ ⁠… and one man even said they wanted to put you out of the club, but they were afraid of the Government!⁠ ⁠… Masses won’t do any good, because you know yourself our Bishop would just as soon say a Mass for a dead dog if he got money enough for it.⁠ ⁠… And when I think that you probably know all this without my telling you, then I feel very sorry for you⁠—as if you were really a friend of mine. I’ve only seen you twice: once on Moscowa Street⁠—but that was long ago⁠—and the second time at our school exhibition, when you drove up with the Bishop⁠ ⁠… but, of course, you wouldn’t remember me then⁠ ⁠… and I promise you faithfully that I’ll pray for you, and that I’ll cry over you as though I really had been your daughter, because I am very, very sorry for you.

He loved that little schoolgirl.

Late that night, just before going to bed, he stepped out on to the balcony⁠—that same balcony from which he had given the signal with his white handkerchief!⁠ ⁠… The cold fall rains had already set in, and the night was black and dismal. In this heavy autumnal darkness one felt how far away the sun was, how long it had been gone, and how late the dawn would be. Far to the left in the driveway burned two bright lanterns with reflectors, and their white light penetrated the darkness, yet did not banish it.⁠ ⁠… There it still lay⁠—quiet, close, ponderous.

The city doubtless slept already, for not a lighted window was to be seen, and no wheels sounded in the dim-lit streets. Under one of the lanterns something gleams vaguely⁠—probably a puddle.⁠ ⁠…

School had closed for the day, and she no doubt has long since done her lessons, and now sleeps quietly somewhere in this black, silent space⁠—from whence they send their letters with their threats⁠—from whence his death is about to come.⁠ ⁠… But there, too, lives this little child, who sleeps just now, but who will weep for him when his time comes.

How quiet it is, how dark⁠—how silent.

VIII

Two weeks before the Governor’s death, a linen-covered package was handed in to the Government House⁠—its value declared at three roubles. It proved to be an infernal machine⁠—a bomb intended to explode on being opened. But it was badly made by the unskilled hands of one who had only read of such things⁠—so it missed fire. Yet in the very homemade simplicity of the outfit there was something sinister and terrifying, as if blind Death had stretched forth his hand and was fumbling clumsily about in the dark.

The police sounded the alarm, and Maria Petrovna insisted upon her husband’s wiring to St. Petersburg that very day, to ask for sick leave. She herself drove first to the tailor’s, and then wrote her son a long letter full of horrors⁠—all in French.⁠ ⁠…

A strange and radical change had come over the Governor. In place of the man they used to know appeared an entirely new figure. No one knew precisely when the change came about, and in the main he seemed the same; but upon his face had dawned such an expression of righteousness it seemed a new countenance. He smiled where formerly he would have been grave, and frowned where he had been wont to smile; he was bored and indifferent where he used to be attentive and animated. He was horribly candid in the expression of his feelings. When he chose, he was silent; left the room when he felt inclined, and turned his back when people bored him.

Those who had counted for years on his liking and friendship, who knew all his thoughts and moods, felt themselves suddenly neglected⁠—quite shoved aside⁠—and could no longer understand his feelings and fancies. All the bows and smiles and cordial greetings had suddenly disappeared⁠—the little ceremonious form of politeness: “If you will be so good, my dear fellow!”⁠—“I am vastly obliged to you, my dear sir!”⁠—which had seemed like second nature to him, he dropped completely; and people were taken aback at the remarkable, even alarming originality of his new manner. So animals, accustomed to looking on a man’s apparel as the person himself, might be taken aback at the sight of a naked figure.

He had simply ceased to be polite⁠—and directly the bond was broken which had held him throughout many years to his wife, his children, his associates⁠—as though it had only been made of smiles and compliments, and had vanished together with the ceremonious kissing of the hand. He did not judge them, he did not hate them; found nothing new or repulsive in them⁠—they simply fell out of his soul; as decayed teeth crumble in the mouth⁠ ⁠… as the hair falls out⁠ ⁠… as a dead skin is sloughed off⁠—painlessly, quietly, without an effort. When the veil of custom and politeness fell from him, he stood there forsaken and aloof; yet he did not even feel it⁠—as though loneliness had been his natural state throughout his long, eventful life.

He forgot his morning greetings, he forgot to say good night; and when his wife held out her hand, or his daughter Cissy lifted her smooth forehead to his lips, he was not quite sure what to do with the hand or the forehead. When guests came to luncheon⁠—the Vice-Governor and his wife, or Kosloff⁠—he did not rise, or bow, or smile, but went hastily on with his meal⁠—and when he had finished he did not ask to be excused, but simply rose and left the room.

“Where are you going, Pievna? Please stay with us, we are so lonely. They’ll bring the coffee soon.” He answered calmly: “No! I’d rather go to my study. I don’t want any coffee,” and the rudeness of the answer was lost in its candour and simplicity.

He cared nothing about Cissy’s new clothes, did not greet the guests of the house, let her Excellency invent excuses for his absence, had nothing to do with society, and refused to accept statements without an explanation of motives. Twice a week he received petitioners, and listened to each attentively, with an interest that seemed even a trifle rude, as he inspected the petitioner from head to foot. “Are you convinced that it will be better so?” he asked, after he had listened patiently; and when the astonished man had given an affirmative answer he promised immediately to grant his request. In these days he never considered the possibility of overstepping the limits of his powers, or else he had an exaggerated impression of them; at all events, he often decided matters which were quite out of his province. The new Governor, in consequence, had many difficulties with the entanglements that resulted⁠—all the more so as some of the questions were of the most complex and illegal character.

In order to dispel her husband’s gloom, Maria Petrovna often came to his study, felt of his forehead to see if he were feverish, and began to talk about their trip. But he held her off with blunt directness. “Yes, very well, run along now! I would rather be alone. You have your own room, and I don’t bother you there.”

“Ah, how you have changed, Pievna!”

“Nonsense! Nonsense!” he said, in his gruffest tones, leaning his back up against the cold stove. “Do go and make that pug of yours shut up. You can’t hear a thing in the whole house for his barking!”

Of all his former habits, card-playing was the only one which he still enjoyed. Twice a week he had his whist, and he played for small stakes with keen and evident pleasure. He was a thoughtful, clever player, and if his partner revoked he called him down in proper shape. “What are you thinking of, my dear sir! I led diamonds!” flashed out his cool, clear voice⁠—hard and cutting as the diamond itself⁠ ⁠… and Maria Petrovna, in the next room, hearing her husband’s voice, would smile her tired smile and shake her head sadly. Her yellow cheeks hung flabby as a pointer’s; the powder stood out on her face, and her heavy, bulging, brownish lids rose and fell like iron shutters in a shop window. At this moment it seemed to her, as it did to all the others, utterly impossible that a person who could play cards like that could be assassinated.

Through the two long weeks before his death, he simply waited. Doubtless he had other feelings beside⁠—thoughts of the daily routine, his surroundings, his past; the stale, old thoughts of a man whose body and mind are long since fossilised. Probably he thought of the workmen and that sad, awful day⁠—but all these reflections were vague and superficial, and vanished as they came⁠—like the light wind’s ripple on the river⁠—and again as before, the still, dark waters of his fathomless soul stood calm in silent waiting. It was as though politeness and habit only had united him to his mental processes, and when ceremony and custom vanished his ideas fled too. He was as isolated in his brain as he was in his family.

As usual he rose at seven, had his cold shower, drank his milk, and at eight o’clock took his accustomed stroll. Each time he crossed the threshold of his palace he felt that he should never return⁠—that the two hours’ walk would prolong itself into an eternal wandering through the unknown.⁠ ⁠… With his red-lined General’s cloak; tall, broad-shouldered, his grey head high with soldierly bearing; he marched through the city for two long hours like a stately ghost⁠—past wooden houses dark with mould, past countless gates and empty squares, past shops whose clerks, shivering in the brisk morning air, bowed slavishly. Whether the pale October sun shone out, or the fine cold rain trickled down, unfailingly he rose and followed his orbit⁠—a sad, majestic wanderer of the town, seeking death at the head of his column. Forward he marched through mire and puddle, the scarlet lining of his overcoat reflected in the mud; forward through the streets, not noticing policemen’s salutes nor horses⁠—and a bird’s-eye view of his daily Road of Suspense would have shown an extraordinary tracery of short, straight lines, crossing and recrossing in a hopeless tangle. He seldom glanced to right or left, and never looked behind; yet scarcely even saw what was before him, so sunk was he in the depths of his dark forebodings. He rarely acknowledged greetings, and many a startled eye encountered his passing glance⁠—direct, unseeing, and yet so penetrating.

Long after he was dead and buried, and the new Governor, a smiling young man surrounded by Cossack guards, drove rapidly through the city in his equipage of state, many recalled these last two long weeks of his pilgrimage⁠—the grey-haired ghost in the General’s uniform marching through the mire with upright carriage, the scarlet lining of his cloak glancing in the puddles; and followed by the hoary old law: “A life for a life!”

The crush and the jostling curiosity of the main streets wearied him, and he preferred to lose himself in the silent, squalid alleys, with their tiny three-room cottages, their broken fences, and slippery wooden sidewalks. Throughout these days he had but one desire⁠—to go the length and breadth of Kawatnaja lane. But he could not bring himself to gratify this wish: it seemed too horrible, too painful, more painful than death itself. And a thrill of wonder came over him as he thought of that earlier September he had driven down the lane quite fearlessly, and had even wished that he might meet some one of the people, to speak to them in passing.

But one spot he never neglected. This was the street that led to the seminary, where each morning, just at nine, it swarmed with little schoolgirls. Forgetting his usual haste, he strode along here like some good-natured, whimsical old General, out for his morning walk. He nodded to them as they came: the big girls first, stately, tall and dignified; then the little ones, with their short brown skirts and their huge knapsacks; and they shyly answered his greeting. His nearsighted eyes could not distinguish their faces. Large and small, in groups they came, and they seemed to him like a cluster of rosy petals. As the last one passed he smiled his quiet, ironical smile, a sly twinkle in his eye meanwhile, and then at the next corner he was transformed again into the silent, stately ghost, seeking death at the head of his column.

At first two spies, at their chief’s secret command, trailed him at a distance; but he did not observe them, as he never looked back. For some days they conscientiously followed his devious paths, but soon tired of it⁠—it seemed so foolish to run after a man who was hanging about the most dangerous spots in such an idiotic way. So they stopped now and again at some friendly shop to gossip with a policeman, dropped in at an alehouse, and often lost sight of their charge for hours at a time.

“It’s all the same⁠—there’s nothing to do anyway!” said one of them apologetically. He had the smug, shaven face of a priest, and seemed a prosy old fool. He was gulping down a hot pâté, and although he had not quite swallowed the first he was already reaching for the second. “When a man’s in his dotage and runs into the trap himself, what are you going to do with him⁠ ⁠… will you kindly tell me?”

“Oh, it’s only for form’s sake,” said the barkeeper.

“And how about the Pike?” asked the second spy, a gloomy man who had seen better days, but was given to drink, and had been caught cheating at cards. Growling like a dog over his bone, he devoured everything in sight, drinking vodka steadily meanwhile; and though he was never drunk, yet he never stopped drinking.

“What about the Pike? He knows well enough that we aren’t angels from heaven!”

“He acts like a horse in a fire⁠ ⁠… take him out of his stall and he rears and plunges. He’d sooner burn up than leave the stable,” said the barkeeper.

“No, he knows we aren’t angels,” repeated the first, with a sigh. And in fact they had very little in common with angels⁠—these two poor devils⁠—and it was quite beyond their feeble power to arrest the course of events!

… Home again over the familiar threshold, even then the Governor felt no thrill of relief, nor any surety of one more day of life. He took things as they came, and forgot the sense of his past wanderings in the awakening dread of what the day would yet bring forth. And the empty, idle days passed by with frightful haste⁠—yet time stood still; as if the mechanism that turned up each new day had been jarred and, instead of the following one, the same old day came round again. Even the calendar on his desk that he used to turn⁠—usually at night, as though he were calling up the advancing day⁠—even this stood pointing to that long-past date, and when occasionally he looked at that back number, his breast heaved, he knew not why, and a feeling of sickness came to him as he turned his eyes away.

“Nonsense!” he exclaimed angrily. Nowadays when he was alone he often broke into short ejaculations, indefinite and disconnected. He was especially apt to say “Nonsense!” or “Disgusting!”

He did not fear death in the least, and viewed it quite impersonally. They would shoot at him; he would fall.⁠ ⁠… And then would come the funeral with the bands, and his Orders carried behind the coffin, etc. He’d go bravely forward to meet it. He did not even think of a life beyond the grave; for him it all ended here. And he ate with his usual appetite and slept soundlessly and dreamlessly.

Yet once in the night⁠—and it was three days before his end⁠—he must have had a heavy dream; for he awoke with the sound of his own hoarse, muffled groans. And as he recognised this strange, dull voice of his, and his eyes encountered the darkness, he felt the shudder and weakness of death. He huddled the clothes up over his head, drew up his bony knees, knotted himself into a bundle in the bed and, reviewing his whole past life, from infancy to age, he began to sob bitterly and softly; and whispered to the damp, white, silent pillow: “Have pity on me! Help me someone, whoever it is! Have mercy! О⁠—о⁠—о!”

But no one was there to pity him; and soon he was conscious through his tears of his great shaken frame in its strange, cramped attitude, and his rough, hoarse voice, and he mastered himself and lay still. And long he lay there silent, in the same tense pose, staring up wide-eyed into the dark.⁠ ⁠… And in the morning he started out again in his military cloak. For two days more its scarlet lining was reflected in the puddles by the wayside, and the tall, stately ghost stalked through the streets, seeking his grave at the head of his column.

The affair came about very simply and quickly⁠—like a picture in a biograph.

At the crossing of two streets was a dingy hay-market, open on Fridays; and here a hesitating voice arrested the Governor.

“Your Excellency!”

“Yes?”

He stood still and faced about.

From behind a lonely hedge across the street two men came hastily striding through the mud: one in high boots, the other in gaiters without overshoes, his trousers rolled up. These wet feet must make him very cold, for his face is greenish pale, and his thick blond hair stands out very stiffly from his head.⁠ ⁠… In his left hand he holds a folded paper, and the right is thrust deep into his pocket.

And directly all is clear; the victim knew that death had come, and they knew that he had seen it.

“If you please,” said the man, and a convulsive tremor passed over his face.

“A petition?⁠ ⁠… What is it about?” the Governor asked superfluously too, but strangely impelled to play the scene out. Yet he did not reach for the petition. The fellow still held out his left hand with the bit of paper that would have deceived no one, and without handing it to the Governor he fumbled with his right hand for the revolver; knitting his brows in his endeavour to free it from the lining of his pocket.

The Governor cast one quick glance about. The squalid marketplace, the mud littered with straw, the lonely hedge⁠—Ah! But it was too late. He gave one short, deep, gasping sigh, and straightened up⁠ ⁠… without terror, and quite without defiance. Yet still there lay somewhere⁠—perhaps in the deep-set wrinkles about his heavy nose⁠—a quiet, almost imperceptible pleading for mercy⁠—just a trace of remorse. But he himself was unconscious of this, and neither of the men observed it.

His death came in three quick shots, sounding together in rapid succession like a single loud report. Three minutes later a policeman hurried up, followed by the Secret Service men, and then the people, as though they had all been hanging about the neighbourhood, behind the corner, awaiting the end.

… And the corpse was covered over.⁠ ⁠…

Some ten minutes later the ambulance drove slowly through the streets with its red cross⁠—and throughout the city questions and answers flew like stones:

“Is he dead?” “On the spot!” “Who was it⁠—did they arrest him?” “No; they got away. No one knows who it was. There were three men.”

And all day long they spoke only of the assassination, some with censure, some with joyful approbation. But through all their talk, whatever its character, one felt the shiver of a mighty terror. Something powerful and annihilating swept like a cyclone over their daily lives; and from behind their dreary counters, their samovars, their beds and wheaten cakes, peered forth through the dimness of the commonplace the threatening figures of that hoary old Law of Revenge.

… And the little schoolgirl wept!⁠ ⁠…

I

When Lazarus emerged from the grave wherein for the space of three days and three nights he had dwelt under the mysterious dominion of death, and returned living to his abode, the ominous peculiarities which later made his very name a thing of dread remained for a long time unnoticed.

Rejoicing in his return to life, his friends and neighbors overwhelmed him with caresses and they satisfied their eager interest by ministering to him and caring for his food, his drink and his raiment. They clothed him in rich attire, bright with the hues of hope and merriment, and when he sat among them once more, arrayed like the bridegroom in his wedding garments, and ate and drank once more, they wept for joy and summoned the neighbors to view him, who had so miraculously risen from the dead. The neighbors came and rejoiced; strangers too came from distant cities and villages and in accents of tumultuous praise voiced their homage to the miracle⁠—the house of Mary and Martha hummed like a beehive.

All that seemed novel in the features of Lazarus and in his demeanor they explained as natural traces of his serious illness and the shock through which he had passed. It was manifest that the destructive effect of Death upon the corpse had been merely arrested by the miraculous power, but not altogether undone. And what the hand of Death had already accomplished upon the face and the body of Lazarus was like an artist’s unfinished sketch covered by a thin film. A deep earthy bluish pallor rested on the temples of Lazarus, below his eyes and on his hollow cheeks; his lanky fingers were of the same earthy blue and his nails, which had grown long during his sojourn in the grave had turned livid. Here and there, on the lips and elsewhere, his skin, swollen in the grave, had cracked open and was covered by a fine reddish film that glistened like transparent slime. And he had grown very fat. His body, inflated in the grave, retained that ominous obesity beneath which one scents the putrid sap of dissolution. But the cadaverous and fetid odor which had permeated the burial robes of Lazarus, and seemingly his very body, soon disappeared completely; in the course of weeks even the bluish tint of his hands and of his countenance faded, and time also smoothed out the reddish blisters though they never vanished altogether. Such was the appearance of Lazarus as he faced the world in this his second life. To those who had seen him buried it seemed perfectly natural.

The manner of Lazarus also had undergone a change, but this circumstance surprised no one and failed to attract due attention. Until his death Lazarus had always been care free and merry. He had loved laughter and harmless jests. It was this agreeable and merry disposition, free from malice and gloom, that had made him so well beloved by the Teacher. But now he was grave and silent. He neither jested himself nor responded with an approving smile to the jests of others: and the words which he uttered on rare occasions were the simplest, most commonplace and indispensable words, as bare of a profounder meaning as the sounds with which animals express pain or pleasure, thirst and hunger. Such words a man may speak all his life and none would ever learn what grieved or pleased him in the depths of his soul.

Thus he sat with the face of a corpse over which for the space of three days the hand of death had held sway in the gloom of the grave⁠—arrayed in solemn wedding garments that glistened with ruddy gold and bloodred crimson; dull and silent, ominously transformed and uncanny, but still undiscovered in his new character, he sat at the festive board among his banqueting friends and neighbors. Now tenderly, now tempestuously the waves of rejoicing surged around him; fervently affectionate glances feasted upon his face that was still numb, with the chill of the grave; the warm hand of a friend caressed his blue tipped leaden fingers. The music played. They had summoned musicians to play merry tunes: the cymbal, the pipe, the lute and the timbrel. And it sounded like the humming of bees, like the chirping of crickets, like the singing of birds, this rejoicing in the house of Mary and Martha.

II

A reckless one lifted the veil. A reckless one, with one breath of a fleeting word, destroyed the sweet dreams and revealed the truth in its hideous nakedness. The thought was not yet clear in the questioner’s head when his lips, parting in a smile inquired:

“Why don’t you tell us, Lazarus, what was There?”

And they all paused, amazed at the query, as though they had just realized that Lazarus had been dead three days, and they glanced up curiously awaiting the answer. But Lazarus was silent.

“Will you not tell us?” questioned the curious one “Was is so dreadful There?”

And again the thought failed to keep pace with the words: if it had kept abreast with them the question would not have been put, for it gripped in the next instant the questioner’s own heart with fear unutterable. And they were all perturbed, they waited eagerly for the reply of Lazarus; but he was dumb, looking cold and stern and downcast. And then they noted anew, as though for the first time, the dreadful bluish pallor of his countenance and his hideous obesity; his livid hand still reposed on the table as though forgotten there. All eyes were fixed on that hand in a strange fascination as though expecting that it might give the craved reply. The musicians had still been playing, but lo! now the silence reached them too, like a rivulet which reaches and quenches the scattered coals, and smothered were the sounds of merriment. The pipes were mute; the high-sounding cymbal and the melodious timbrel were silent; with the sound of a breaking chord, as though song itself were dying, tremulously, brokenly groaned the lute; and all was still.

“Thou wilt not?” repeated the questioner unable to repress his prating tongue. Silence reigned and the bluish hand reposed on the table and did not stir. Then it moved a little, and all heaved a sigh of relief and lifted their eyes: Lazarus, the risen, was gazing straight into their faces with a glance that took in all⁠—stolid and gruesome.

This was on the third day after he had emerged from his grave. Since then many had tested the pernicious power of his gaze, but neither those whom it wrecked forever, nor those who in the primal sources of life that are as mysterious as death itself found force to resist, could ever explain the nature of that dreadful, that invisible something which reposed in the depths of his black pupils. Lazarus looked into the world calmly and frankly without seeking to hide anything, without any thought of revealing anything; his gaze was as cold as the glance of one infinitely indifferent to all things living. Many thoughtless people jostled him in the street failing to recognize him, and only later learned the identity of that quiet corpulent man the edge of whose gaudy and festive apparel had brushed against them. The sun shone as brightly as ever, the fountains murmured their song, and the native sky remained as cloudless and azure as before, but those who had fallen under the sway of that mysterious glance neither felt the glow of the sun, nor heard the fountain nor recognized the sky. Some of these wept bitterly, others tore their hair in despair and madly called to their friends for help, but mostly it happened that they began to die, languidly, without a struggle, drooping for many weary years, pining away under the eyes of their friends, fading, withering, listless like a tree drying up silently on rocky ground. And the first, who cried and stormed, came sometimes back to life, but the others⁠—never.

“Then thou wilt not tell us, Lazarus, what thou hast seen There?” for the third time repeated the insistent inquirer. But now his voice was dull and weary, and deathly grey languor looked from his eyes. And the same deathly dull languor hid the faces of the others like a veil of dust: they exchanged glances of dreary wonderment as though at a loss to grasp why they had met around the richly laden table. The conversation lagged. The guests began to feel vaguely that it was time to go home, but they were too weak to overcome the viscous and paralyzing listlessness that had robbed their muscles of strength, and they kept their seats, each for himself, isolated like dimly flickering lights scattered about the field in the darkness of night.

But the musicians were paid to play, and once more they took up their instruments and the air was filled with the sounds of music: but the notes, both merry and mournful, sounded mechanical and forced. The same familiar melody was unrolled before the ears of the guests, but the latter listened in wonderment: they could not understand why people found it necessary or amusing to have others pull at tightly drawn strings or whistle with inflated cheeks through thin reeds to produce the oddly discordant noises.

“How badly they play!” someone said.

The musicians felt hurt and departed. One after another the guests left too, for the night had already fallen. And when the calm of night surrounded them, and they had begun to breathe at ease there rose before each one of them the image of Lazarus: the blue cadaverous face, the wedding garments, gaudy and sumptuous, and the frigid stare in the depths of which had congealed the Horrible. As though, turned to stone they stood in different corners, and darkness enveloped them; and in that darkness more and more vividly burned the dreadful vision of him who for three days and for three nights had been under the mysterious spell of Death. Three days he had been dead; three times the sun rose and set, and he was dead; the children played, the brooks coursed babbling over the stones, the biting dust swept over the highway⁠—but he was dead. And now he was again among the living⁠—touching them, looking at them⁠—looking at them! and from the black orbs of his pupils, as through a dark glass, there gazed upon the people the inscrutable Beyond.

III

No one took care of Lazarus; he had retained no neighbors or friends, and the great desert which enchained the Holy City had encroached to the very threshold of his dwelling. And it entered his house, made itself broad on his couch, like a spouse, and quenched the fire in his hearth. One after the other his sisters, Mary and Martha, forsook him; for a long time Martha had loathed to leave him, not knowing who would feed him and comfort him; she wept and prayed.

But one night when the wind swept over the desert and whistled through the tops of the cypress trees bending them over the roof of his hut, she quietly dressed and quietly went out into the darkness. Lazarus might have heard the slamming door, he might have heard it banging against the doorposts as it failed to shut tightly. But he did not rise, he did not step out, he did not investigate. And all through the night until the morn the cypress trees rustled overhead, and the door piteously knocked against the posts letting in the cold, the greedy, the insistent desert.

He was shunned as a leper, and as a leper they almost forced him to wear a bell around his neck in order to warn the people of his approach, but someone, with blanching cheek, suggested how dreadful it would be to hear the bell of Lazarus in the dead of night outside the windows⁠—and with blanching cheeks the people agreed with him.

And as he did nothing for himself, he would probably have starved had not his neighbors, impelled by a strange fear, saved some food for him. Children carried it to him. They did not fear him, neither did they mock him, as, with innocent cruelty, they often laugh at unfortunate beings. They were indifferent to him, and Lazarus evinced the same indifference toward them. Given over to the ravages of time and the encroachments of the desert, his house was falling to wreck and ruin, and his flock of goats, bleating and hungry, had a long time since scattered among his neighbors. His wedding garments too had grown old. Just as he had donned them on that happy day when the musicians played he had worn them ever since, without change, as though unable to see the difference between the new and the old, the torn and the whole. The bright colors had faded and paled; the wicked dogs of the city and the sharp thorns of the desert had rent the delicate fabric into shreds.

In the day time when the merciless sun consumed all that was living, and the very scorpions sought refuge under the stones writhing with a frenzied desire to sting he sat unmoved beneath the burning rays, holding aloft his blue streaked face and shaggy wild beard.

While yet the people stopped to talk to him, someone once inquired:

“Poor Lazarus, it evidently pleases thee to sit and look upon the sun?” and he replied:

“Yes. It pleases me.”

So severe must have been the cold of those three days in the grave, so dense its gloom, that there was not any heat nor any light upon earth strong enough to warm Lazarus, bright enough to illumine the darkness of his eyes⁠—thus thought the curious as they departed sighing.

And when the sun’s luridly crimson disc descended to earth Lazarus retired into the desert and walked straight towards the sun as though striving to catch up with it. Always he walked straight towards the sun, and those who tried to follow him in order to learn what he did at night in the desert had indelibly impressed on their memory the black silhouette of a tall and corpulent man against the crimson background of the mighty orb. The night with its terrors drove them back, and they never learned what Lazarus was doing in the desert, but the image of the black shadow on a crimson background burned itself on their brain and refused to leave them. Like an animal frenziedly rubbing its eyes to remove a cinder they stupidly rubbed their eyes, but the impression left by Lazarus was not to be blotted out, and death alone granted oblivion.

But there were people afar off who had never seen Lazarus, having merely heard rumors of him. These with a daring curiosity that is stronger than fear and feeds on fear, with a secret sneer in their hearts, ventured to approach him as he basked in the sun, and engaged in conversation with him. By this time the appearance of Lazarus had somewhat changed for the better, and he no longer looked so terrifying. And in the first moment they snapped their fingers and thought disapprovingly of the folly of the inhabitants of the Holy City. And when their short conversation was over, they wended their way home, but their appearance was such that the inhabitants of the Holy City at once recognized them saying:

“There goes another madman upon whom Lazarus has cast his glance,” and they paused raising their hands with compassion.

Brave warriors came rattling their arms, men who knew no fear; with laughter and songs came happy hearted youths; careworn traders, jingling their coins, ran in for a moment; and the haughty temple attendants left their staffs at the door of Lazarus⁠—but none returned the same as he had come. The same horrible pall sank upon their souls and imparted a novel appearance to the old familiar world.

Those who still felt like talking thus described their impressions.

“All objects visible to the eye and sensible to the touch became empty, light and diaphanous like unto luminous shadows flitting through the gloom.”

“A great darkness enveloped the universe; and was not dispelled by the sun, the moon or the stars, but enshrouded the earth with a boundless black pall, embracing it like a mother.”

“It penetrated all objects, even iron and stone, and the particles thereof lost their union and became lonely; it penetrated even into the hearts of the particles unto the severing of the very atoms.”

“For the great void that surrounds the universe was not filled by things visible, by sun, moon or stars, but shoreless it stretched penetrating all things, severing all things, body from body, particle from particle.”

“In emptiness the trees spread out their roots and the very trees seemed empty.”

“In emptiness tottering to a phantom ruin, and empty themselves, rose ghostly temples, palaces and houses.”

“And in that waste Man moved restlessly, and he too was empty and light like unto a shadow.”

“For there was no more time, and the beginning of all things and the end thereof met face to face.”

“The sound of the builders’ hammers was still heard as they reared the edifice, but its downfall could be seen already, and behold, emptiness soon yawned over the ruins.”

“Hardly a man was born, before funeral tapers gleamed at his bier; these barely flickered an instant, and emptiness reigned in the place of the Man, the funeral tapers and the bier.”

“In the embrace of Gloom and Waste; Man trembled hopelessly with the dread of the Infinite.”

Thus spoke those who had still a desire to speak. But those who would not speak and died in silence could have probably told much more.

IV

At that time there lived in Rome a celebrated sculptor. Out of clay, marble and bronze he fashioned the forms of gods and of men, and such was the beauty of his work that men proclaimed it immortal. But the sculptor himself was dissatisfied with it and claimed that there was something else to strive for, a beauty that was truly supreme, such as he had never yet been able to fix in marble or bronze. “I have not yet garnered the splendor of the moon,” he was wont to say. “I have not yet caught the radiance of the sun. My marble lacks soul, my beautiful bronze lacks life.” At night, beneath the moonlit sky, he roamed about the highways, crossing the black shadows of cypress trees, his white tunic gleaming in the light of the moon, and friends who chanced to meet him hailed him in jest:

“Art thou gathering moonlight, Aurelius? And where be thy baskets?”

And joining in their laughter he made reply, pointing to his eyes:

“Behold the baskets wherein I gathered the light of the moon and the radiance of the sun.”

And he spoke the truth, for the light of the moon gleamed in his eyes, the radiance of the sun glowed in them. But he could not convert them into marble, and this was the radiant sorrow of his life.

He came from an ancient patrician family, had a loving wife and dutiful children, and lacked nothing.

When a dim rumor concerning Lazarus reached his ear, he consulted his wife and friends and undertook the long journey to Judea in order to see him who had so miraculously risen from the dead. The monotony of life weighed heavily upon him in those days and he hoped that the journey would awaken his interest in the world. What he had heard concerning the risen one did not deter him, for he had pondered much upon death, though he had no longing for it. Neither had he patience with those who would confuse death with life. “On this side life and its beauty,” he reasoned, “and on the other, death with its mystery. Nothing better could one imagine than to live and enjoy life and the glory of living.” And he even entertained a somewhat vain and glorious notion of convincing Lazarus that this was the true view and of bringing him back to life, even as his body had been brought back to life.

This seemed an easy task for him, for the rumors concerning the risen one, fearsome and strange as they were, failed to convey the whole truth and only vaguely hinted at something dreadful.

Lazarus was rising from his rock for his journey into the desert in the path of the setting sun, when the rich Roman, accompanied by an armed slave, approached him, and in a sonorous voice called to him:

“Lazarus!”

Lazarus beheld a haughty and handsome man, resplendent with fame, clad in white apparel bearing precious gems that sparkled in the sunshine. The radiance of the sun lent to the head and the features a semblance of dull bronze. After his scrutiny Lazarus obediently resumed his seat, and listlessly looked to the ground.

“Truly thou art not fair to look upon, poor Lazarus,” calmly observed the Roman, toying with his golden chain. “Thou art even terrifying in appearance, poor fellow; and Death was no sluggard the day thou so carelessly didst fall into its clutches. But thou art as fat as a wine barrel, and the great Caesar says that fat people are harmless. I cannot see why people are so afraid of thee. Thou wilt permit me to stay overnight? It is already late and I have no abode.”

Nobody had ever sought permission to pass a night with Lazarus.

“I have no couch to offer thee,” said he.

“I am somewhat of a soldier and can sleep sitting,” replied the Roman. “We shall light a fire.”

“I have no fire.”

“In the darkness then like two comrades shall we hold our converse. I suppose thou hast some wine here?”

“I have no wine.”

The Roman laughed. “Now I comprehend why thou art so morose and why thou takest no delight in thy second life. Thou hast no wine. Very well. We shall do without. Thou knowest there are words that turn one’s head even as Falernian wine.”

With a motion of his hand he dismissed the slave and they were left alone. And again the sculptor spoke, but it seemed that with the sinking sun the glow of life had departed from his words, for they lost color and substance. They reeled and slipped and stumbled, as though unsteady of foot of drunken with the wine of anguish and dismay. Yawning chasms appeared between them like distant hints of a vast void and utter darkness.

“I am thy guest now and thou wilt not offend me, Lazarus,” he said. “Hospitality is a duty even for those who have been dead three days. For they say that thou didst pass three days in the grave. It must have been very chilly there, and it is thence comes thy bad habit of doing without wine and fire. But I love the fire. It grows dark here so early. The line of thy brow and forehead is quite noteworthy, even as the skyline of palaces ruined by an earthquake and buried beneath ashes. But why is thy apparel so odd and unattractive? I have seen the bridegrooms in thy country arrayed like this, such absurd attire, such repulsive garments! But art thou then a bridegroom?”

The sun had already vanished and gigantic black shadows came hurrying from the east, as though the bare feet of giants came rustling over the sands, and the chill breath of swiftly fleeing wind blew up behind them.

“In the darkness thou seemest even bigger oh Lazarus, as though thou hast grown stouter in these last few minutes. Dost thou perchance feed on darkness? But I should like some fire, just a little blaze the tiniest flame would do.⁠ ⁠… And I am a trifle cold.⁠ ⁠… You have here such barbarously chilly nights If it were not pitch dark I should say that thou art looking at me, Lazarus. Yes, methinks thou art looking at me. I feel it. Now thou art smiling!”

The night had set in and a dense blackness filled the air.

“How good will it be when the sun rises again on the morrow.⁠ ⁠… Thou knowest I am a great sculptor. My friends call me so. I create, yes I create things, but daylight is needed for that. I impart life unto the cold lifeless marble. In the fire I melt the ringing bronze, in a vivid and glowing fire.⁠ ⁠… Why touchest thou me with thy hand?”

“Come,” said Lazarus, “thou art my guest.” And they entered the house. And the shadows of a long night descended upon the earth.

The slave who had grown tired waiting for his master called for him when the sun had already risen high overhead. And he saw under its rays Lazarus and his master huddled closely together. They were gazing upward in silence.

The slave wept aloud and called to his master: “Master, what troubleth thee? Master!”

The same day Aurelius left for Rome. The whole way he was pensive and silent, scrutinizing everything, the people, the ship and the sea, as though struggling to commit something to memory. A fierce tempest overtook them, and all the while Aurelius remained on the deck gazing eagerly on the rising and sinking waves.

At home the change that had taken place in him caused consternation, but he calmed the apprehensions of his household and observed significantly: “I have found it.”

In the same raiment that he had worn during the journey without change he went to work, and the marble obediently responded to the resounding blows of his hammer. He worked long and eagerly, refusing to admit anyone; at last one morning he announced that his work was ready, and summoned all his friends, the severe critics and experts in art. He attired himself into sumptuous and festive garments that sparkled with gold and shone with the purple of Bysson.

“Behold what I have created,” he said musingly.

His friends gazed on the work and the shadow of a deep sorrow clouded their faces. The group was simply hideous to look upon: it possessed none of the forms familiar to the eye, though it was not devoid of a dim suggestion of some novel and fanciful image. Upon a twisted thin little twig, or rather upon the misshapen likeness of one, crouched an unsightly, distorted mass of crude fragments that seemed to be weakly striving to flee in all directions. And casually, under a crude ridge they observed a wondrously wrought butterfly, with diaphanous wings that was all aquiver with the futile longing to soar skyward.

“Why this wondrously wrought butterfly, Aurelius?” someone dubiously inquired.

“I don’t know,” replied the sculptor.

But the truth has to be told, and one of his friends (the one who loved him best) interposed: “My poor friend, this is a monstrosity. It must be destroyed. Give me the hammer.”

And with two blows of the hammer he destroyed the hideous heap, sparing only the wondrous butterfly.

From that time on Aurelius created nothing. He gazed with profound indifference upon marble and bronze and upon his former godlike creations wherein beauty immortal dwelt. In the hope of inspiring him once more with his old zeal for work and of reviving his moribund soul, his friends led him to view the beautiful work of others, but he maintained the same lack of interest, and no warming smile ever parted again his tightly drawn lips. Only when they ventured to hold lengthy speeches on love and beauty he wearily and listlessly replied:

“But all this is a lie.”

And in the daytime when the sun was shining he strolled into his luxurious garden, and seeking out some spot undimmed by the shade he yielded up his uncovered head and lacklustre eyes to radiance and warmth. Red and white butterflies flitted about the garden, from the contorted lips of a blissfully drunken Satyr the water splashed coursing down into the marble cistern, but he sat unmoved like a faint shadow of him who in a distant land sat as immobile at the very gates of the desert beneath the arid rays of the midday sun.

V

And now Augustus himself, the great, the divine, summoned Lazarus to appear before him.

They attired him in sumptuous wedding garment, for time and usage seemed to have prescribed these as befitting him as though he had remained until his death the betrothed of some unknown bride. It was as though an old, decaying and decrepit coffin were regilded and adorned with fresh gaudy tinsel. And he was conducted by a sumptuously garbed and gay cortege, as though in truth it were a bridal procession, and the heralds loudly sounded their trumpets clearing the way for the messengers of the emperor. But the path of Lazarus was deserted. His native land had learned to execrate the odious name of the miraculously risen one, and the mere news of his dread approach was sufficient to scatter the people. The blasts of the brass horns fell on the solitude and only the desert air responded with a melancholy echo.

Then they took him across the sea. And it was the most gorgeous and the saddest ship that was ever mirrored against the azure waves of the Mediterranean. There were many people aboard, but the vessel was as mute and silent as the grave and the very waves seemed to sob hopelessly as they laved the beautifully curved and lofty prow. Lazarus sat alone, holding his bared head to the sun, listening in silence to the murmur of the waters, and afar off the sailors and the messengers lounged around feebly and listlessly huddled together like a cluster of despondent shadows. If a clap of thunder had rent the air, if a sudden gale had torn the gaudy sails, the ship would have doubtlessly perished for there was none on board with strength or zeal enough to struggle for life. With a last weak effort some stepped to the rail and eagerly gazed into the blue and transparent abyss waiting perhaps for a mermaid’s pink shoulder to flash from the deep or for some drunken and joy maddened centaur to gallop by splashing the foam of the sea with his hoofs.

With stolid indifference Lazarus set foot on the streets of the Eternal City, as though all its wealth, the majesty of its structures that seemed to have been reared by giants, the splendor, the beauty, the music of its elegance were simply the echo of the desert wind, the reflex of Palestine’s arid sands. Chariots sped by, crowds of handsome, sturdy, haughty men passed on, the builders of the Eternal City, the proud participants of her bustling life; the air filled with the notes of songs, the murmur of fountains, the pearly cadences of women’s laughter! drunkards held pompous speeches and the sober listened smilingly; and the horseshoes clattered and clatterer upon the pavements. Caught all around by the whirlpool of noisy merriment there moved through the city like a blot of icy silence one fat and clumsy creature sowing in his path annoyance, wrath and a vaguely cankering grief. Who dare be sad in Rome? The citizens were indignant and frowned, and two days later the whole ready tongued Rome knew of the miraculously resurrected one and timidly avoided him.

But there were in Rome many brave people eager to test their prowess, and to their thoughtless challenge Lazarus readily responded. Busy with the affairs of state the Emperor delayed receiving him and the miraculously risen one for seven days in succession paid visits to those who would see him.

A merry winebibber met Lazarus and hailed him with carefree laughter on his ruddy lips.

“Drink, Lazarus, drink!” he shouted. “How Augustus would laugh to see thee drunk!”

And drunken women laughed at the sally, while they showered rose leaves on the blue-streaked hands of Lazarus. But the winebibber looked into his eyes⁠—and his joy was forever ended. He remained drunken for life: he drank no more, yet he remained drunken but in the place of joyous reveries which the wine yields, horrible dreams haunted his ill-fated soul. Horrible dreams became the sole nourishment of his stricken spirit. Horrible dreams held him day and night in the spell of their hideous fancies, and death itself was less terrible than appeared his ferocious precursors.

Lazarus called on a youth and a maiden, lovers and fair to look on in their love. Proudly and firmly grasping the woman he loved the youth remarked with gentle compassion:

“Look on us, Lazarus, and rejoice with us. Is there aught stronger than love?”

And Lazarus looked. And they ceased not from loving all their life long, but their love became gloomy and somber, like the cypress trees that grow above tombs, feeding their roots on the dissolution within the grave and seeking vainly in the evening hour to reach heaven with their dusky and pointed tops. Thrown by the unfathomable force of life into each other’s arms they mingled their kisses with tears, their joy with pain, and realized their twofold bondage: the humble slaves of inexorable life and the helpless bondsmen of ominous and mute Nothingness. Ever united, ever parted, they flashed upwards like sparks and like sparks faded in shoreless gloom.

Then came Lazarus to a haughty sage and the sage told him:

“I know all the terrors that thou canst relate to me, Lazarus. Wherewith wilt thou terrify me?”

But it was not long before the sage realized that the knowledge of the horrible is not the horrible, and that the vision of death is not death itself. And he realized that wisdom and folly are the equals in the sight of the Infinite, for the Infinite knows them not. And the boundaries between knowledge and ignorance, between truth and falsehood, between height and depth vanished, and his formless thoughts were suspended in emptiness. Then he seized his grey head in his hands and cried out in agony:

“I cannot think! I cannot think!”

Thus succumbed to the stolid gaze of the miraculously risen one all things that served to affirm life, its meaning and its joys. And it was said that it would be dangerous to allow him to face the Emperor, that it would be safer to put him to death and burying him secretly to spread the rumor that he had disappeared without leaving a trace. Swords were already sharpened and some youths devoted to the welfare of the nation volunteered to be his slayers, when suddenly Augustus demanded to have Lazarus brought before him on the morrow and upset their cruel plans.

Though it was impossible to remove Lazarus, it was thought best to soften somewhat the dreary impression produced by his appearance. For this reason skilled artists were summoned, also hair arrangers and masters of makeup and they labored all night over the head of Lazarus. They trimmed his beard, curled it and made it appear neat and attractive. The livid coloring of his face and hands was removed by means of paint: his hands were bleached and his cheeks touched up with red. The repulsive wrinkles of suffering that furrowed his senile features were patched up, painted and smoothed over, and lines of goodnatured laughter and pleasant cheerful good humor were skillfully drawn in their place.

Lazarus submitted stolidly to all they did with him and soon was transformed into a naturally corpulent handsome old man, who looked like a harmless grandfather with numerous descendants. One could almost see the trace of a smile on his lips with which he might have related to them laughable stories, one almost detected in the corner of his eyes the calm tenderness of old age⁠—such was his quiet and reassuring appearance. But they had not dared to take off his wedding attire, nor could they change his eyes⁠—dark and dreadful glasses through which there peered upon the world the unfathomable Beyond.

VI

The magnificence of the Imperial palace failed to impress Lazarus. There might have been no difference between his ramshackle but at the threshold of the desert and the splendid and massive palace of stone, so stolidly indifferent was his unobserving glance. Under his feet the solid marble slabs seemed to turn to the sinking sand of the desert, and the throngs of gaily attired and haughty Romans might have been thin air. They avoided looking into his face as he passed, fearing to succumb to the baneful spell of his eyes; but when they judged from the sound of his footsteps that he had passed on, they paused and raising their heads with a little fearsome curiosity watched the departing figure of the tall, corpulent, slightly stooping old man who was slowly wending his way into the heart of the Imperial palace. If Death itself had passed by they would not have glanced after it with greater awe. For until then Death had been known unto the dead only and life unto the living and there had been no bridge between the twain. But this strange being knew Death, and awful, ominous, accursed was his knowledge. “He will be the death of our great and divine Augustus,” mused some of them anxiously and muttered curses in his wake as he slowly and stolidly made his way more and more deeply into the palace.

Caesar had already learned the story of Lazarus and nerved himself to meet him. He was a man of daring and courage and thoroughly conscious of his own invincible power. In this fateful encounter with the risen one he chose not to lean upon the feeble aid of men. Face to face, man to man he met Lazarus.

“Do not lift up thine eyes to me, Lazarus,” he commanded him as the stranger entered. “I have heard that thy head is like Medusa’s turning to stone him who ventures to look upon thee. But I desire to talk with thee and to examine thee before I am turned to stone,” he added with an Imperial attempt at a jest that was not unmixed with a little awe.

Approaching him he examined attentively the face and the queer apparel of Lazarus, and though he prided himself on his sharp and observant eye he was deceived by the skill of the artists.

“Well, thou art not so terrible, worthy patriarch. But it is all the worse for people if the terrible assumes such a dignified and agreeable guise. Now let us converse.”

Augustus sat down and with a glance that was as searching as his words he commenced to question him.

“Why didst thou not salute me as thou earnest in?”

Lazarus replied:

“I did not know that it was necessary.”

“Art thou a Christian?”

“No.”

Augustus nodded approvingly.

“Good. I dislike these Christians. They shake the tree of life before it yields its full fruitage and scatter to the wind its blossoming fragrance. But what art thou?”

With an effort Lazarus replied:

“Once I was dead.”

“So I have heard. But what art thou now?”

Lazarus hesitated and again replied listlessly, stolidly:

“Once I was dead.”

“Listen to me, thou enigma,” resumed the Emperor, in measured and severe words voicing the thoughts which had been in his mind before. “My empire is the empire of the living, my people is a living people and not dead. Thou art out of place here. I do not know thee, I do not know what thou hast seen There. But whether thou liest⁠—I abhor thy lying, and if thou be telling the truth I abhor thy truth. In my bosom I feel the throbbing of life. I feel vigor in my hands, and my proud thoughts soar like eagles through space. And there, behind me, under the protection of my dominion, in the shadow of laws created by me, people live and labor and rejoice. Hearest thou this wondrous harmony of life? Hearest thou this warlike challenge which men fling into the face of the future summoning it to a combat?”

Augustus reverently raised his hands and solemnly exclaimed:

“Blessed be Thou Great and Divine Life!”

But Lazarus was silent and with added severity the Emperor continued:

“Thou art out of place here. Thou art a pitiful remnant, a half-eaten scrap from the table of Death, thou breathest into people melancholy and hatred of life. Thou art like the locust that eateth the full ear of grain knitting the slime of despair and despondency. Thy truth is like unto the rusty sword in the hands of a murderous night prowler, and I shall put thee to death like an assassin. But ere I do this I will gaze into thine eyes. Perhaps only the cowards fear them, perhaps they will wake the thirst of conflict and longing for victory in the brave. If that be so thou meritest a reward, not death. Look then upon me, Lazarus.”

And at first Augustus fancied as though a friend were looking upon him, so gentle, so caressing, so tenderly soothing was the gaze of Lazarus. It boded no terrors but calm and repose, it was the gaze of a tender lover, of a compassionate sister: through his eyes Infinity gazed even as a mother. But the embrace grew stronger and stronger until his breath was stopped by lips that seemed to crave for kisses. And in the next instant he felt the iron fingers plowing through the tender tissues of his flesh, and cruel claws sank slowly into his heart.

“I am in pain,” moaned Divus Augustus with blanching cheek. “Yet, look on me still, Lazarus, look on.”

As though through slowly opening gates that had been shut for aeons the horror of the Infinite poured coldly and calmly out of the growing breach. Fathomless waste and fathomless darkness entered like twin shadows quenching the light of the sun, removing the ground underfoot, obliterating all overhead. And pain left the benumbed heart of Augustus.

“Look, look still, Lazarus,” commanded he reeling.

Time ceased and the beginning of things faced the end thereof in an ominous meeting. The throne of Augustus, so recently reared, was overthrown; a barren waste reigned in the place of Augustus and of his throne. Rome herself had gone to a silent doom, and a new city rose in her place, only in her turn to be swallowed up by nothingness. Like phantom giants cities and states and empires swiftly fell and vanished into emptiness, swallowed up in the insatiable maw of the Infinite.

“Stop,” commanded Caesar, and already a note of indifference sounded in his voice. His arms hung limply from his shoulders, and his eagle eyes now flashed, now grew dim in a futile struggle against the darkness that threatened to overwhelm him.

“Thou hast slain me, Lazarus,” he stammered listlessly.

And these words of hopelessness saved him. He remembered his people whose shield he was called to be, and his moribund heart was pierced with a sharp and redeeming pang. He thought of them bitterly as he pictured them doomed to ruin. He thought of his people with anguish in his soul as he saw them like luminous shadows flitting through the gloom of the Infinite. Tenderly he thought of them as of brittle vessels throbbing with life blood and endowed with hearts that know both sorrow and joy.

Thus reasoning and feeling, with the balance now favoring life, now inclined towards death, he slowly fought his way back to life, to find in its sufferings and joys a shield against the emptiness and the terror of the Infinite.

“No, thou hast not slain me, Lazarus,” he exclaimed, with firmness, “but I shall slay thee, Go!”

That night Divus Augustus partook of food and drink with a keen delight. But there were moments when the uplifted arm paused in midair and a shadow dimmed the lustre of his shining aquiline eyes⁠—it was like a wave of icy horror beating against his feet. Downed, but not utterly destroyed, coldly awaiting the appointed hour, the spirit of Fear cast its shadow into the Emperor’s life, standing guard at the head of his bed as he slumbered at night and meekly yielding the sunny days to the joys and the sorrows of life.

Next day, by the Emperor’s command, they burned out the eyes of Lazarus with hot irons and sent him back to his native land. Divus Augustus dared not put him to death.

Lazarus returned to the desert, and the desert received him with the breath of the hissing wind and the arid welcome of the consuming sun. Once again he sat on the rock, raising aloft his shaggy neglected beard. In the place of the two burned-out eyes twin black sockets peered dull and gruesome at the sky. In the distance surged the restless roar of the Holy City, but near him all was deserted and dumb. No one came near the place where the miraculously risen one was passing the end of his days, and his neighbors had long since forsaken their abodes. His accursed knowledge, banished by the searing irons into the depths of his head, lay there concealed as though in ambush; as though from ambush it assailed the beholder with a myriad invisible eyes, and no one dared now look at Lazarus.

And in the evening, when the sun, ruddy and swollen, was sinking in the west, sightless Lazarus slowly groped after it. He stumbled over stones and fell, fat and weak as he was, then he rose heavily and walked on. And against the crimson canvas of the sunset his dark form and outstretched arms gave him a monstrous resemblance to the cross.

And it happened one day that he went and never returned. Thus apparently ended the second life of Lazarus, who had been three days under the dominion of Death and miraculously rose from the dead.

I

Jesus Christ had been frequently warned that Judas of Kerioth was a man of ill repute, a man against whom one should be on guard. Some of the disciples of Jesus who had been to Judea knew him well personally, others had heard a great deal of him, and there was none to say a good word concerning him. And if the good condemned him saying that Judas was covetous, treacherous, given to hypocrisy and falsehood, evil men also, when questioned about him, denounced him in the most opprobrious terms. “He always sows dissensions among us” they would say spitting contemptuously at the mere mention of his name; “he has thoughts of his own, and creeps into a house softly like a scorpion, but goes out with noise.” Even thieves have friends, robbers have comrades, and liars have wives to whom they speak the truth, but Judas mocks alike the thieves and the honest, though he is a skillful thief himself, and in appearance he is the most ill-favored among the inhabitants of Judea. “No, he is not of us this Judas of Kerioth,” the evil would say to the surprise of those good people who saw but little difference between them and other vicious men in Judea.

It was rumored also that Judas had years back forsaken his wife, and that the poor woman, hungry and wretched, was vainly striving to eke out her sustenance from the three rocks that formed the patrimony of Judas, while he wandered aimlessly for many years among the nations, reaching in his travels the sea, and even another sea that was further still, lying, cutting apish grimaces and keenly searching for something with his thievish eye, only to depart suddenly, leaving in his wake unpleasantness and dissension⁠—curious, cunning and wicked like a one-eyed demon. He had no children, and this again showed that Judas was an evil man, and that God desired no progeny from him.

None of the disciples had noticed the occasion on which this red-haired and repulsive Judean first came near the Christ. But he had been going their way for some time already, unabashed, mingling in their conversations, rendering them small services, bowing, smiling, ingratiating himself. There were moments when he seemed to fit into the general scheme, deceiving the wearied scrutiny, but often he obtruded himself on the eye and the ear, offending both as something incredibly repulsive, false and loathsome. Then they would drive him away with stern rebuke, and for a time he would be lost somewhere on the road, merely to reappear unobserved, servile, flattering and cunning like a one-eyed demon. And there was no doubt to some of His disciples that in his desire to come near Jesus there was hidden some mysterious object, some evil and calculating design.

But Jesus did not heed their counsel; their voice of warning did not touch His ear. With that spirit of radiant contradiction which irrepressibly drew Him to the rejected and the unloved, He resolutely received Judas and included him even in the circle of His chosen ones. The disciples were agitated and murmured among themselves, but He sat still, His face turned to the setting sun, and listened pensively⁠—perhaps to them and perhaps to something entirely different. For ten days not a breath of wind had stirred the atmosphere, and the same diaphanous air, stationary, immobile, keen of scent and perception hung over the earth. And it seemed as though it had preserved in its diaphanous depth all that had been shouted and sung during these days by man, beast or bird⁠—the tears, the sobs and the merry songs, the prayers and the curses; and these glassy transfixed sounds seemed to burden and satiate it with invisible life. And once more the sun was setting. Its flaming orb was heavily rolling down the firmament, setting it ablaze with its dying radiance, and all on earth that was turned toward it: the swarthy face of Jesus, the walls of houses and the foliage of trees reflected obediently that distant and weirdly pensive light. The white wall was no longer white now, nor did the crimson city on the crimson hill appear white to the eye.

And now came Judas.

He came humbly bowing, bending his back, cautiously and anxiously stretching out his misshapen large head, and looking just like those who knew had pictured him. He was gaunt, well built, in stature almost as tall as Jesus, who was slightly bent from the habit of thinking while He walked. And he seemed to be sufficiently vigorous, though for some reason he pretended to be ailing and frail, and his voice was changeable: now manly and strong, now shrill like the voice of an old woman scolding her husband, thin and grating on the ear. And often the listener wished to draw the words of Judas out of his ears like some vile insect. His stubbly red hair failed to conceal the strange and unusual form of his skull: it seemed cleft from the back by a double blow of the sword and patched together. It was plainly divided into four parts, and its appearance inspired mistrust and even awe. Such a skull does not bode peace and concord; such a skull leaves in its wake the noise of bloody and cruel conflicts. The face of Judas, too, was double: one side, with its black, keen, observing eye was living, mobile, ready to gather into a multitude of irregular wrinkles. The other side was free from wrinkles, deathly smooth, flat and rigid; and though in size it was equal to the other, it seemed immense because of the wide-open, sightless eye. Covered with an opaque film it never closed night or day, facing alike the light and the darkness; but its vigilant and cunning mate was so close that one was loth to credit its entire blindness. When in fear or excitement Judas happened to close his seeing eye and shake his head, it rolled with the motion of the head and gazed silently and intently. Even altogether unobserving persons realized when they looked on the Iscariot that such a man could bring no good; but Jesus took him up and even seated him at His side, at His very side!

John, the beloved disciple, moved away loathingly, while the others, loving their Teacher, looked on the ground with disapproval. But Judas sat down, and, moving his head to the left and to the right, immediately commenced to complain with a thin voice of various ailments, how his breast pained at night, how he was apt to lose breath when walking uphill or grow dizzy at the edge of the precipice, hardly restraining a stupid desire to cast himself into the abyss. And many other things he invented impiously, evidently failing to grasp that sickness comes to man not by chance but is born from a failure to shape his acts in accord with the commands of the Eternal. He rubbed his chest with his palm and coughed hypocritically, this Judas of Kerioth, amid general silence and downcast glances.

John, avoiding the Teacher’s glance, whispered to Simon Peter:⁠—“Art thou not tired of this falsehood? I cannot bear it longer and I shall go hence.”

Peter looked at Jesus, and meeting His glance, swiftly rose to his feet. “Wait!” he said to his friend.

Once more he glanced at Jesus and then, impetuously, like a rock dislodged from the mountain side, he gained the side of Judas Iscariot and loudly greeted him with a wide and unmistakable cordiality:⁠—“Now you are with us, Judas!” Then he amiably slapped the newcomer’s curved back, and not seeing the Teacher, though feeling His glance, he added with that loud voice of his which dispelled all objections as water displaces air:

“Your bad looks do not matter. We get uglier creatures into our nets and they turn out the best to eat. And it is not for us, fishers for the Lord, to throw away our haul because the fish is ugly and one-eyed. I saw once in Tyre an octopus caught by the fishermen there and was scared enough to run. They laughed at me, who am a fisherman from Tiberias, and gave me a taste of it. And I asked for another helping, it was so fine. Dost Thou remember, Teacher, I told Thee of it and Thou didst laugh? And thou, too, Judas, resemblest an octopus, at least one half of thee does.”

And he laughed loudly, pleased with his jest. When Peter spoke, his words sounded firm and solid as though he were nailing them down with a hammer. When Peter moved or did anything he made a noise that was heard afar off and evoked a response from the dullest objects: the stone floor groaned under his feet, the doors trembled and banged, and the very air was thrilled. In the mountain fastnesses his voice woke an angry echo, and in the morning, while they fished, it rolled sonorously over the somnolently glistening waters and beguiled the first timid rays of the sun into a responsive smile. And perhaps that was why they loved Peter so: while upon the faces of others there rested yet the shadows of the night, his massive head and bare bosom and freely swinging arms glowed already in the radiance of the rising sun.

The words of Peter, approved by the Teacher, dispelled the embarrassment of the disciples. But some of them, who had been to the seashore and had seen the octopus, were disquieted by the simile which Peter had so frivolously applied to the new disciple. They remembered the monster’s immense eyes, the multitude of its greedy tentacles, its pretended calm at the very moment it was ready to embrace and to crush the victim and to suck out its life, without a single wink of its great big eyes.

What was that? Jesus was silent, Jesus smiled; He was watching them with a kindly smile while Peter spoke of the octopus⁠—and one after the other the confused disciples approached Judas, addressing him cordially, but they walked away quickly and in embarrassment.

And only John, the Son of Zebedee, remained obstinately silent; and Thomas too was ruminating over the incident and apparently could not make up his mind to say anything. He intently watched Christ and Judas who were seated together, and this strange proximity of divine beauty and monstrous hideousness, of the Man with the gentle glance and the Octopus with the immense, immobile lacklustre, greedy eyes⁠—oppressed his mind like an unfathomable mystery. He strained and wrinkled his straight and smooth forehead, half closing his eyes in an effort to see better, but his exertion had only the effect of making it appear that Judas had really eight restlessly shuffling tentacles. But that was an error. Thomas realized this and gazed again with obstinate effort.

But Judas little by little grew bolder: he stretched out his arms, which he had held cramped at the elbows, relaxed the muscles that had kept his jaws in a state of rigidity and cautiously proceeded to exhibit his redhaired skull. It was in the plain view of all, but it seemed to Judas that it had been deeply and impenetrably hidden from sight by some invisible, opaque and cunningly devised film. And as one emerging from the grave, he first felt the rays of light touching his strangely shaped skull and then his sight met the eyes of the onlookers. He paused and suddenly revealed his entire face. But nothing happened. Peter had gone somewhere on an errand. Jesus sat musing and leaned His head upon His arm, softly swinging His sunburnt foot. The disciples were conversing quietly and only Thomas was attentively and seriously scrutinizing him like a conscientious tailor taking his customer’s measure. Judas smiled, but Thomas did not respond, though he apparently took the smile into account, like everything else, and continued his scrutiny. But a disquieting sensation annoyed the left side of Judas’ face and he turned around: from a dark corner John was looking upon him with his cold and beautiful eyes, handsome, pure, without a spot on his snowwhite conscience. Walking apparently like other people, but with the inward feeling of slinking away like a chastised dog, Judas approached him and said:

“Why art thou silent, John? Thy words are like golden fruit in transparent silver vessels. Give some of it unto Judas who is so poor.”

John gazed at the immobile and wide-open eye and did not utter a word. And he saw Judas creep away, linger an instant irresolutely and disappear in the darkness of the open doorway.

It was the time of the full moon and many took the opportunity for a walk. Jesus, too, went forth with the others, and Judas watched the departing figures from the low roof on which he had spread his bed. In the moonlight each figure had on airy and deliberate aspect and seemed to float, with its black shadow in the rear. Suddenly the man would vanish in the gloom and then his voice would be heard. But when the people emerged again into the moonlight, they seemed silent like the white walls, like the black shadows, like that transparently hazy and moonlit night.

Most people were sleeping already when Judas heard the gentle voice of the homecoming Christ. And all had grown still in the house and about him. The cock crew; somewhere an ass, disturbed in his slumber, brayed in a loud and injured tone, and ungraciously stopped again after a few protests. But Judas slept not; he was listening intently from his hiding place. The moon illumined one half of his face and its radiance cast a queer reflection in the large and open eye, as if mirroring itself on a lake of ice.

Suddenly, as if remembering something, he coughed several times in quick succession, and rubbed with his palm his hairy and vigorous breast: someone might be awake and listening to the thoughts of Judas.

II

Little by little the disciples became accustomed to Judas and ceased to notice his ugliness. Jesus turned over to him the treasure chest, and with it the household cares: his task was now to purchase the necessary food and raiment, to distribute alms, and to prepare a lodging place during their wanderings. All this he accomplished skillfully and in a very short time he succeeded in gaining the goodwill of some of the disciples who observed the pains he was taking. Judas, indeed, lied incessantly, but they had become used to this also, for they failed to find any evil deed in the wake of his lying, and it added a peculiar piquancy to his tales making life appear like some absurd, and at times terrible legend.

From Judas’ tales it seemed as though he knew all men, and each man whom he knew had at one time or another in his life committed an evil deed, perhaps a crime. Good people in his opinion were those who knew well how to hide their actions and thoughts; but if one were to embrace them, to set them at ease with caresses and, to closely question them, he felt sure evil and falsehood would ooze from them like poison from a suppurating wound. He readily agreed that he too was wont to lie now and then, but affirmed with an oath that others lied even more, and that if there was one person in the world foully imposed upon and ill-used that person was Judas. Many people had deceived him, and more than once and in divers ways. Thus a certain steward who had charge of a nobleman’s treasure had confessed to Judas that for ten years he had coveted the possession of the treasure entrusted to him, but feared his master and his conscience. And Judas believed him, but lo! suddenly he stole the treasure and deceived Judas. And again Judas believed him, but he as unexpectedly returned the stolen goods to his master⁠—and again deceived Judas. And everybody was deceiving him⁠—even the animals. If he petted a dog, it would snap at his fingers; if he beat it with a rod it licked his hand and looked into his eyes with a filial expression. He killed such a dog once, buried the animal deep in the ground and lay a heavy stone on the burial spot, but who knows? perhaps because he had killed it, it became endowed with a more abundant life and was no longer resting in its grave but merrily running about with other dogs.

Everyone laughed at Judas’ tales, and he himself smiled pleasantly, winking his live and mocking eye, and smilingly confessed again that he had lied a little: that he had never killed such a dog, but promised to find it and surely kill it, for he hated to be deceived. And they laughed still more at such words.

But sometimes in his tales he exceeded the limits of probability and verisimilitude and ascribed to people tendencies such as are foreign even to beasts and accused them of simply incredible crimes. And as he mentioned in such connection names of the most respected people, some were indignant at the slander, while others jestingly inquired:

“But thy father and mother, Judas, were they not good people?”

Judas winked his eye, smiled and shrugged his shoulders. And as he shook his head his congealed wide open eye shook in its orbit and gazed dumbly:

“And who was my father? Perhaps the man who chastised me when I was a child, perhaps the devil, or a goat or a rooster. Can Judas know with whom his mother shared her couch? Judas has many fathers. Of whom speak you?”

But at this the ire of all was aroused, for they greatly honored their parents, and Matthew, thoroughly versed in the Scriptures, sternly repeated the words of Solomon:

“He who speaks ill of his father and his mother, his lamp will be extinguished in utter darkness.”

And John of Zebedee inquired contemptuously: “And how about us? What evil wilt thou say about us, Judas of Kerioth?”

But he, with pretended fear, threw up his hands, cringing and whining like a beggar vainly praying alms from a passerby:

“Ah! Wouldst thou tempt poor Judas? Mock poor Judas, deceive poor guileless Judas?”

While one side of his face was distorted in apish grimaces, the other seemed serious and stern and the never-closed eye peered mutely and vaguely into space. Above all others, and most loudly, Simon Peter was wont to laugh at his jests. But once it happened that with a sudden frown he paused and hastily took Judas aside, almost dragging him by his sleeve:

“And Jesus? What thinkest thou of Jesus?” he inquired in a loud whisper bending over him. “But no jesting now, I pray thee.”

Judas looked up with hatred:

“And what thinkest thou?”

“I think that He is the Son of the living God.”

“Then why askest thou? What could Judas say whose father is a goat?”

“But dost thou love Him? It seems that thou lovest no one.”

And with the same odd malice-reeking manner the Iscariot snapped out:

“I do.”

After this conversation Peter for a day or two loudly referred to Judas as his friend the octopus, while the other clumsily and wrathfully sought to escape from him into some obscure nook where he would sit and sulk, while his white never-closed eye gleamed ominously in the dark.

Thomas alone regarded Judas’ tales with seriousness. He was incapable of understanding jests, pretensions and lies, plays of words and of thoughts, and in everything sought the substantial and positive. All stories of Judas concerning evil people and their deeds he interrupted with brief businesslike questions:

“Can you prove it? Who heard this? And who else was present? What was his name?”

Judas shrilly protested that he himself had heard and seen it all, but the obstinate Thomas persisted in questioning him calmly and methodically until Judas confessed that he had lied or until he invented a more plausible falsehood over which Thomas would pore for some time. Then discovering the deception he immediately returned and quietly exposed the liar. Judas on the whole aroused in him an intense curiosity, which brought about a queer sort of a friendship between them, noisy, full of laughter and vituperation on the one hand, and characterized by calm and insistent inquisitiveness on the other. At times Judas felt an irresistible contempt for his unimaginative friend and piercing him with a poignant glance he would inquire with irritation and almost pleadingly:

“What else dost thou want? I have told thee all, all.”

“I want thee to explain to me how a goat could be thy father,” insisted Thomas phlegmatically and waited for an answer. Once after listening to such a query Judas relapsed into silence and scanned the inquirer from head to foot in amazement. He saw a man of erect and lanky stature, of grey countenance, transparently clear straightforward eyes, two massive folds starting at the nose and losing themselves in the evenly trimmed rough beard, and observed with conviction:

“How stupid thou art Thomas! What seest thou in thy dreams? A tree, a wall, an ass?”

And Thomas blushed in confusion, finding no answer. But just as Judas’ living and unsteady eye was about to close in sleep, he suddenly exclaimed (they both now slept on the roof):

“Thou art wrong, Judas. I do see evil dreams sometimes. How sayest thou, is a man responsible for his dreams?”

“And who else sees them but the man himself?”

Thomas softly sighed and lapsed into musing. Judas smiled contemptuously, tightly shutting his thievish eyes and calmly yielded himself up to his rebellious dreams, monstrous visions, and mad imaginings which rent to pieces his illshaped skull.

When in the wanderings of Jesus through Judea the pilgrims approached a village, the Iscariot was in the habit of relating evil things concerning the inhabitants thereof and predicting calamities. But it generally happened that the people whom he denounced met Christ and His friends joyously, surrounded them with attentions, and the treasure chest of Judas grew so heavy that he could hardly carry it.

And when he was twitted with his mistake he shrugged his shoulders in resignation and said:

“Yes, yes. Judas thought they were wicked and they are good. They believed quickly and gave us money. And again they deceived Judas, poor trusting Judas of Kerioth.”

But once having departed from a village where they had been cordially received Thomas and Judas had a violent dispute, and in order to settle it they chanced to turn back. A day later they caught up with Jesus and the disciples. Thomas looked confused and saddened, but Judas bore himself triumphantly, as if waiting for the others to come and congratulate him. Coming near the Teacher, Thomas announced:

“Judas was right, Lord. Those were stupid and wicked people. Thy seed fell upon rocky ground.”

And then he related what had happened. Soon after Jesus and His disciples had gone an old woman discovered the loss of a kid and accused the strangers of the theft. The villagers argued with her, but she obstinately insisted that nobody else could have stolen it but Jesus. Many believed her and talked of pursuing the strangers. But soon the kid was found (it had become entangled in the bushes). The villagers, however, decided that Jesus was after all a deceiver and perhaps a thief.

“Indeed?” said Peter, distending his nostrils. “Lord, say the word and I shall return to those fools.”

But Jesus, who had kept silence all this time, glanced at him sternly, and Peter stopped and hid himself behind the backs of others. And no one else spoke of the incident, as if nothing had happened, as if he, Judas, had proved to be in the wrong. Vainly he strove to show himself from every point of view, laboring to impart to his twofold predatory, birdlike beaked face an appearance of modesty. No one looked on him, except to cast a casual, very unfriendly and even contemptuous glance.

And from that day the attitude of Jesus towards him strangely changed. Until then it had somehow seemed as though Judas never spoke directly to Jesus, and as though Jesus never addressed him directly, but still the Teacher had frequently looked at him with a kindly glance, smiling at some of his conceits, and if he missed him for any length of time he was wont to inquire: “And where is Judas?” But now he looked on Judas without noticing him, though as heretofore His glance sought him out, and even more persistently than formerly, whenever He began to speak to His disciples or to the people⁠—but He either turned His back to Judas as He sat down or cast His words at him over His shoulder or else appeared not to notice him at all. And whatever He said, though it may have been one thing today or another the next, though it were the same thing that Judas himself had in his mind, it seemed as though He always spoke against Judas. And unto all He was a tender and beautiful flower, the fragrant Rose of Lebanon, but for Judas He had only sharp thorns⁠—as though Judas had no heart, as though he had no eyes or nostrils, as though he were not better able than all others to appreciate the beauty of tender and thornless rose leaves.

“Thomas, lovest thou the yellow Rose of Lebanon that has a swarthy face and eyes like a hind?” he once asked of his friend and Thomas indifferently replied:

“The Rose? Yes, its odor is agreeable to me, but I have never heard that roses had swarthy faces or eyes like hinds!”

“How? Dost thou not even know that the many-armed cactus which yesterday rent thy garment has only one red flower and only one eye?”

But Thomas was ignorant of this also, though the day before a cactus had actually gripped a portion of his garment and rent it into shreds. He knew nothing this Thomas, though he inquired about everything and gazed so straightforwardly with his clear and transparent eyes through which one could see as through a Phoenician glass the wall behind him and the plodding ass hitched to it.

Before long another incident occurred when Judas again proved to have been correct. In a certain Judean village which he had severely criticised and sought to have left out of the itinerary, Christ was received with much hostility and after He had preached and denounced the hypocrites, the populace was aroused to a wild remonstrance and thought of stoning Him and His disciples.

The opponents were numerous and they would have surely succeeded in carrying out their design if it had not been for Judas of Kerioth. Seized with a mad fear for Jesus, as though perceiving already the drops of crimson on His white robe, Judas blindly and frenziedly cast himself against the mob, menacing, screaming, pleading, and lying, and thus gave Jesus and His disciples an opportunity to escape. Amazingly agile, as though scurrying on dozens of feet, ludicrous and terrible in his frenzied pleading, he rushed madly before the crowd and fascinated it with some strange spell. He screamed that the Nazarene was not at all possessed of the devil, that He was a mere deceiver, a thief, a lover of money, like all of His disciples, like he, Judas, himself⁠—he shook the money chest in their faces, distorted his features and pleaded with them casting himself to the ground. And gradually the wrath of the mob turned into laughter and disgust and the arms that had held the stones sank to their sides.

“Unworthy, unworthy they are to die of an honest man’s hand,” exclaimed some, while others musingly gazed after the speedily vanished Judas.

And again Judas expected congratulations, praises, and thanks, and made a show of his rent garments and falsely claimed that he had been beaten, but again he was inconceivably deceived. Filled with wrath Jesus walked ahead taking large steps and silent, and even John and Peter dared not approach him, while the others coming across Judas, with his rent garments, his face aglow with excitement and triumph though still a little pale with recent fright, drove him away with curt and angry remarks. As if he had not saved them, as if he had not saved their teacher whom they loved so much.

“Dost thou wish to see a pack of fools?” he remarked to Thomas who musingly plodded by his side. “Look how they walk along the roadway, like a herd of sheep, raising the dust. And thou, clever Thomas, art dragging along behind; and I, noble and beautiful Judas, am also trudging in the rear like a filthy slave not fit to walk by the side of his master.”

“Why callest thou thyself beautiful?” inquired the surprised Thomas.

“Because I am handsome,” replied Judas with conviction and began to relate to him, with many additions, how he had deceived the enemies of Jesus and laughed at them and their stones.

“But thou didst lie!” remarked Thomas.

“Of course I lied,” agreed the Iscariot in a matter-of-fact tone. “I gave them what they asked and they returned to me what I needed. And what is a lie, my clever Thomas? Would not the death of Jesus have been the greater lie?”

“Thou didst wrong. Now I know that thy father was the devil. He taught thee this, Judas.”

The Iscariots cheek blanched and seemed to overshadow Thomas, as though a white cloud had descended and hidden the roadway and Jesus. With a lithe movement Judas suddenly seized Thomas and pressed him to himself with a grip so tight that he could not move and whispered into his ear:

“Good. The devil taught me? Good, Thomas, good. And I saved Jesus, didn’t I? Then the devil loves Jesus, then the devil needs Jesus and Truth? Good, good Thomas. But my father was not the devil, he was a goat. Mayhap the goat needs Jesus? Hey? And you, do you not want Him? Do you not want the Truth?”

Angered and slightly frightened Thomas with an effort released himself from Judas’ slimy embrace and walked ahead swiftly, but soon slowed down in order to ponder over what had just happened.

But Judas plodded on quietly in the rear, falling back little by little. The wanderers had merged into one motley group in the distance and it was impossible to tell accurately which of the little figures was Jesus. Now even the tiny figure of Thomas changed into a grey dot, and suddenly they were all lost to sight behind a turn in the road; glancing around Judas turned aside from the roadway and with mighty leaps descended into the depths of a rocky ravine. His robe inflated from his swift and impetuous flight and his arms stretched upward as though he soared on wings. There on a steep decline he slipped and rapidly rolled down in a grey heap, his flesh torn by the shaggy rock, and leaped again to his feet angrily shaking his fist at the mountain.

“You too, curse you!”

And suddenly forsaking his swiftness of movement for a sullen and concentrated deliberateness he chose a spot near a large rock and slowly seated himself. He turned around as if in search of a comfortable position, pressed the palms of his hands close together against the grey rock and heavily leaned his head upon them. Thus he sat for an hour or two without stirring, deceiving the birds, motionless and grey like the rock itself. Before him, behind him and around him rose the steep sides of the ravine cutting with their sharp outline into the azure sky; and everywhere rose immense stones, rooted into the ground, as if there had passed over the place a shower of rocks and its heavy drops had grown transfixed in neverending thought. The wild and deserted ravine resembled an overturned decapitated skull and each rock therein seemed a congealed thought, and there were many of them, and they all were brooding heavy, limitless, stubborn thoughts.

There a deceived scorpion hobbled amicably past Judas on his rickety legs; Judas glanced at him without lifting his head from the stone, and again his eyes stopped rigidly fixed on some object, both motionless, both covered with an odd and whitish film, both seemingly blind and dreadfully seeing. Then from the ground, from the rocks, from the crevices began to rise the calm gloom of night; it enshrouded the motionless Judas and swiftly crept upwards to the luminously pallid sky. The night was advancing with its thoughts and dreams.

That night Judas failed to return to the lodging, and the disciples torn from their thoughts by cares for food and drink murmured at his negligence.

III

Once about noon time, Jesus and his disciples were ascending a rocky and mountainous path barren of shade, and as they had been over five hours on the road Jesus commenced to complain of weariness. The disciples stopped and Peter with his friend John spread their mantles and those of other disciples on the ground and fastened them overhead on two protruding rocks and thus prepared a sort of a tent for Jesus. And he reclined in that tent, resting from the heat of the sun, while they sought to divert Him with merry talk and jests. But seeing that speech wearied Him they withdrew a short distance and engaged in various occupations, being themselves but little sensitive to heat and fatigue. Some searched the mountainside for edible roots among the rocks, and brought them to Jesus, others ascended higher and higher. John had found a pretty blue lizard among the stones and bore it tenderly to Jesus, with a gentle smile; the lizard gazed with its protruding mysterious eyes into His eyes and then swiftly glided with its cold little body over His warm hand and rapidly bore away somewhere its tender and trembling tail.

Peter, caring little for such diversions, amused himself in company with Philip by detaching large stones from the mountainside and rolling them down in a contest of strength. Attracted by their loud laughter, little by little the others gathered around them and took part in the game. Straining every muscle each tore from the glen a hoary moss-covered stone, lifted it high overhead with both arms and dropped it down the incline. It struck heavily with a short, blunt contact and seemed to stop for an instant, as if in thought, then irresolutely it took the first leap, and each time it touched the earth it gathered from it speed and strength, grew light, ferocious, all-crushing. Then it leaped no longer, but flew with flashing teeth, and the air with a whizzing noise made way for the compact rotund missile. Now it reached the edge of the ravine; with a smooth final movement the stone flew up a little distance into the air, and rolled below, clumsy, heavy and circular, towards the bottom of the invisible abyss.

“Now then one more!” cried Peter. His white teeth glistened through his black beard and mustache, his powerful breast and arms were bared and the old angry stones, dully wondering at the strength that cast them, one after the other submissively passed into the abyss. Even frail John threw little pebbles, and Jesus smiling gently watched their game. “Well, Judas, why dost thou not take part in the game, it is apparently so diverting?” asked Thomas having found his queer friend motionless behind a large grey rock.

“My breast pains and they have not called me.”

“Is there any need to call thee? Well, I call thee. Come. Look how large are the stones that Peter is casting down.”

Judas glanced sideways at him and for the first time Thomas dimly realized that Judas of Kerioth had two faces. But hardly had he grasped the idea when Judas remarked in his wonted tone, ingratiating and at the same time sneering:

“Is there anyone stronger than Peter? When he shouts all the asses in Jerusalem think their Messias has come and respond. Hast thou ever heard their braying?”

Smiling amicably and bashfully covering his breast that was covered with curly red hair Judas entered the circle of the players. And as they all felt merry they received him with glad shouts and hilarious jests and even John indulgently smiled when Judas, groaning and simulating great strain detached an immense stone. But now he easily raised it and cast it down. His blind wide-open eye shifted and fixed itself rigidly on Peter, while the other, cunning and happy twinkled with suppressed merriment.

“Well, you throw another one,” broke in Peter in an offended tone.

And then one after another they raised and dropped gigantic stones, and in surprise the disciples watched them. Peter would throw a large stone, but Judas a still larger one. Peter, with a frown, wrathfully turned a fragment of the rock and reeling raised it and dropped it into the depths. Judas, still smiling, searched with a glance for a still larger fragment, caressingly dug into it with his lean long fingers, clung to it, swayed with it and with blanching cheek sent it down into the abyss. Having dropped his stone, Peter fell back and thus watched its flight, while Judas bent forward, leaned over the abyss and spread out his long and creepy arms as though he meant to fly after the stone. Finally both of them, first Peter and then Judas, seized a grey stone and were unable to raise it, neither one nor the other. Flushed with his effort Peter resolutely approached Jesus and loudly exclaimed:

“Lord, I do not want Judas to be stronger than I. Help me to raise that stone and cast it down.”

And Jesus softly made some reply. Peter dissatisfied shrugged his broad shoulders, but dared no rejoinder and returned with the following words:

“He said: ‘And who shall help the Iscariot?’ ”

But glancing at Judas, who with bated breath and tightly clenched teeth still clung to the stubborn stone, Peter burst out in a laugh:

“Look at the sick man! Look at our poor ailing Judas.”

And Judas himself laughed, being so unexpectedly exposed in a lie, and the others laughed also; even Thomas suffered a smile to slip past his straight, shaggy mustache.

With merry and friendly speech they started again on their way, and Peter, having made full peace with the victor, now and again nudged his ribs with his fists and laughed loudly.

“The sick man!”

Everyone praised Judas, everyone acknowledged him victor, everyone conversed with him cordially, but Jesus⁠—Jesus even this time failed to praise Judas. Silently He walked on ahead, gnawing at a blade of grass, and little by little the disciples ceased their laughter and joined Jesus. Soon it happened that they walked all in one group ahead, but Judas, the victor Judas, the strong Judas, trudged along in the rear swallowing dust.

They paused, and Jesus laying one hand on Peter’s shoulder pointed with the other into the distance, where already in the mist had appeared Jerusalem; and the big broad back of Peter carefully couched His fine sunburnt hand.

For the night’s lodging they stopped in Bethany, in the house of Lazarus. And when they all gathered to converse, Judas thought it a good time to recall his victory over Peter. The disciples, however, had little to say and were unusually silent. The images of the journey just completed, the sun, the rocks, the grass, Christ reposing in the tent, floated softly through their minds, exhaling a gentle pensiveness, generating dimly sweet dreams of some eternal motion under the sun. The wearied body rested sweetly, musing of something mysteriously beautiful and great⁠—and not one remembered Judas.

Judas went out. Then he returned. Jesus was speaking and his disciples listened in silence. Motionless as a statue, Mary sat at His feet and with head thrown back gazed into His face. John had come close to the Teacher and strove to touch the hem of His garment with his hand, but so as not to disturb him. And having touched it he sat breathlessly still. And Peter breathed hard and loud, echoing the words of Jesus with his breath.

The Iscariot stopped at the threshold and contemptuously passed his glance over those assembled, concentrating its flames upon Jesus. And as he gazed, all around him grew dim and was lost in gloom and silence; Jesus only, with uplifted hand, was radiant. But now He too seemed to rise in the air, seemed to melt and His substance seemed to change into luminous mist such as hangs over the lake when the moon goes down; and His soft-spoken words sounded somewhere afar off and gentle. And gazing deeper into this wavering vision, drinking in with his ears the tender melody of those distant and spectral words, Judas gripped his whole soul with claws of iron and silently in its unfathomable gloom commenced to rear something stupendous. Slowly in the dense darkness, he raised immense mountainous masses, piling them up one upon another, and raised others and piled them up again; and something was growing in the darkness, expanding voicelessly, spreading its outlines. Now he felt his head transformed into a vast dome, and in its impenetrable gloom there grew and grew something stupendous, and someone wrought therein, raising mountainlike masses, piling them up one upon another and raising up new ones⁠ ⁠… And gently there sounded somewhere distant and spectral words.

Thus he stood, blocking the doorway, towering tall and dark, while Jesus spoke, and Peter’s loud breathing same in unison with His words. But suddenly Jesus ceased⁠—with an abruptly incomplete sound, and Peter, like one awakened out of a trance, triumphantly exclaimed:

“Lord, Thou knowest the words of Eternal Life!”

But Jesus was gazing somewhere in silence. And when they followed his glance they saw Judas in the doorway rigid, open-mouthed and with staring eyes. And not knowing what it was about, they laughed. But Matthew, learned in the Scriptures, touched Judas’ shoulder and remarked in Solomon’s words:

“He who has a gentle look will be shown mercy, but he who is met in the gate will oppress others.”

Judas shuddered and even uttered a faint hoarse cry of fear, and all of his body⁠—eyes, arms and legs seemed to flee in different directions. So a beast might look when suddenly facing the eyes of man. Jesus walked straight against Judas, seemingly bearing some word on His lips, and he walked past Judas through the door which was now open and free.

Long after midnight Thomas, becoming worried, approached Judas’ sleeping place and bending over him inquired:

“Thou weepest, Judas?”

“No, go away, Thomas.”

“Then why groanest thou and gnashest thy teeth? Art thou ill?”

Judas was silent for a space of time, and then from his lips poured forth one after another heavy words, throbbing with yearning and wrath.

“Why does He not love me? Why does He love them? Am I not more beautiful, am I not better, am I not stronger than they? Did I not save His life while the others were running away cringing like cowardly curs?”

“My poor friend, thou art not entirely in the right. Thou are not at all beautiful and thy tongue is as disagreeable as thy face. Thou art forever lying and speaking ill of others. How dost thou expect that Jesus should love thee?”

But Judas heard him not and continued: “Why is He with those who do not love Him, instead of with Judas? John brought Him a lizard, I would have brought Him a venomous snake. Peter cast stones, I would have turned the mountain around for Him. But what is a snake? Draw its tooth and it will cling about thy neck like a necklace. What is a mountain which one can dig with his hands and trample under foot? I would have given Him Judas, daring, beautiful Judas. But now He will perish and Judas will perish with Him.”

“Thou sayest strange things, Judas.”

“The withered fig tree which is to be hewn down! Why, that is I, He said it of me! Why does He not hew? He dare not, Thomas. I know Him. He fears Judas! He hides before the daring, the beautiful Judas! He loves the fools, the traitors, the liars! Thou art a liar, Thomas, hast thou heard me?”

Thomas was greatly surprised, and thought of protesting, but he decided that Judas was merely brawling, and contented himself by shaking his head. But Judas’ agony increased: he moaned, gnashed his teeth, and one could hear his huge body shifting restlessly under the blanket.

“What is it that pains Judas so? Who has set fire to his body? He gives his son unto the dogs, he yields his daughter into the hands of robbers for defilement. But is not the heart of Judas tender? Go away, Thomas, go away, thou fool. Leave Judas alone, strong, daring, beautiful Judas.”

IV

Judas purloined a few pieces of silver and the theft was discovered by Thomas who had chanced to note the exact sum of money given him. It was thought likely that he had stolen on previous occasions, and the indignation of the disciples knew no bounds. Bristling with wrath Peter seized Judas by the neck and half dragged him to Jesus. The pale and frightened culprit offered no resistance.

“Teacher, look. Our jester! Just look at him, the thief. Thou trustest him, but he steals our money. The rogue! If thou wilt but say the word, I shall.⁠ ⁠…”

But Jesus was silent. Peter looked up curiously scanning the Teacher’s expression, and with flushed face relaxed his hold on Judas. The latter smoothed his garments with a sheepish mien and assumed the downcast appearance of a penitent sinner.

“What do you think of that!” growled Peter, and walked out of the room banging the door. Everybody was annoyed, and the disciples declared that on no account would they remain together with Judas. John, however, with a sudden inspiration quietly slipped into the room whence through the open doorway was now heard the gentle and apparently cordial voice of Jesus.

When John returned, his face was pale and his eyes were red with recent tears.

“The Teacher says⁠ ⁠… The Teacher says that Judas may take all the money he likes.”

Peter laughed angrily. Swiftly and reproachfully John glanced at the impetuous disciple, and suddenly, all aglow, his tears mingling with his wrath, his joy mingling with his tears, he exclaimed with a ringing voice:

“And none shall keep count of the money which Judas receives. He is our brother and all the money is his as well as ours, and if he needs much let him take much, telling no one nor taking counsel with any. Judas is our brother and you have deeply offended against him,” thus sayeth our Teacher. “Shame on us, brethren!”

In the doorway stood Judas, pale and with a sickly smile. John with a quick movement approached him and kissed him thrice on the cheek. And after him, exchanging glances and awkwardly, came the others, James, Philip, and the rest. After each kiss Judas wiped his mouth, though he received the kiss with a resounding smack as if the sound afforded him much pleasure. The last to kiss him was Peter.

“We are all fools, Judas. We are all blind. One alone is seeing, One alone is wise. May I kiss thee?”

“Why not? Kiss,” assented Judas.

Peter cordially kissed him and whispered into his ear:

“And I almost choked thee. The others were gentler, but I seized thee by the throat. Did it pain thee?”

“A little.”

“I shall go to Him and tell Him. I was even angry with Him,” gloomily remarked Peter striving to open the door without noise.

“And how about thee, Thomas?” sternly inquired John who was watching the actions of the disciples.

“I don’t know yet. I must think.”

And Thomas thought long, almost the whole day.

The disciples had gone about their business, and somewhere behind the wall Peter shouted loudly and merrily, but Thomas was still thinking. Pie would have finished sooner, but Judas, whose mocking glance persistently pursued his movement, disturbed him. Now and then the Iscariot inquired with a mock curiosity:

“Well, how is it Thomas? How art thou progressing?”

Then Judas brought his treasure chest and loudly jingling his coins he commenced to count them, pretending to ignore the presence of Thomas.

“Twenty one, twenty two, twenty three. Look, Thomas, another false coin. What great rogues people are, they even offer false money unto God. Twenty four. And then they will say Judas had stolen it. Twenty five. Twenty six.⁠ ⁠…”

Thomas resolutely advanced to him, (it was already towards evening) and said:

“He was right, Judas. Let me kiss thee.”

“Indeed? Twenty nine. Thirty. But it is all in vain. I shall steal again. Thirty one.⁠ ⁠…”

“How canst thou steal if there is no more thine or anybody else’s? Thou wilt take what thou needest, brother.”

“And didst thou require all this time merely to repeat His words? Thou doest not value time, Thomas?”

“I fear thou mockest me, brother.”

“And think, dost thou act correctly in repeating His words? It was He who had spoken, and they were His words, not thine. It was He who had kissed me, but you defiled my mouth. I can still feel your moist lips creeping over my face. How disgusting that was, Thomas! Thirty eight. Thirty nine. Forty pieces of silver. Dost thou want to count it over?”

“But He is our Teacher. How should we not repeat His words?”

“Has Judas no longer a neck to drag him by? Is he now naked so that ye cannot seize him? The Teacher will leave the house, Judas may accidentally steal three coins, and will ye not again seize him by the neck?”

“We know now, Judas. We understand.”

“But have not all disciples a poor memory? And do not the disciples deceive their teachers? The Teacher lifts the rod, the disciples cry: ‘We know the lesson!’ The teacher lies down to sleep and the disciples inquire: ‘Is not this what our teacher taught us?’ And here this morning thou didst call me thief, but now callest thou me brother. What wilt thou call me on the morrow?”

Judas laughed, and picking up with one arm the heavy and jingling money chest he continued:

“When the wind blows strongly it raises the dust and the stupid people see the dust and say: ‘Behold, the wind bloweth.’ But it is only dust, my good Thomas, the refuse of asses, trodden under foot. There it strikes a wall and is now humbly lying at its foot, but the wind is flying further, the wind is flying further, my good Thomas.”

Judas pointed in illustration over the wall and laughed again:

“I am glad that thou art merry, Judas,” replied Thomas. “Pity it is that in thy merriment there is so much malice.”

“How should not a man be merry who has been kissed so much and who is so useful? If I had not stolen three pieces of silver, how should John have known the exaltation of joy? Is it not pleasurable to be a hook whereupon John hangs his mouldy virtue to dry and thou thy moth-eaten wisdom?”

“I think it is best for me to go.”

“But I am merely joking. I am jesting, Thomas. I merely wished to know if thou didst really long to kiss the old and repulsive Judas who had stolen three pieces of silver and given the money to a sinful woman.”

“A sinful woman?” echoed Thomas in surprise. “And didst thou tell our Teacher this also?”

“There, doubting again, Thomas! Yes, to a sinful woman. But if thou only knew what a miserable woman she was. She must have gone without food two days.”

“Knowest that this circumstance for a certainty?” inquired Thomas in confusion.

“Of course. I had been with her two days myself and saw that she had eaten nothing, for she merely drank wine, red wine. And she reeled with exhaustion and I fell with her.”

Thomas leaped to his feet and walking a short distance away, turned and remarked to Judas.

“Apparently Satan has entered thy body.”

And as he departed he heard the heavy money chest jingle mournfully through the gloom in the hands of Judas⁠ ⁠… And it seemed as though Judas were laughing.

But the very next day Thomas had to admit that he had been mistaken in Judas: so gentle, simple and at the same time serious had become the Iscariot. He cut no more grimaces, refrained from malicious jesting, no longer cringed before people or insulted them, but attended to his household tasks quietly and unobtrusively. He was as agile as ever: as though he had not two legs like the rest of the people, but dozens of them. Now, however, he scurried about noiselessly, without squealing and screaming or the hyena laugh that had characterized his previous activity. And when Jesus now commenced to speak he sat down in a corner with folded hands and his large eyes assumed such a gentle expression that everybody noticed it. And he ceased to speak evil of people, keeping silence in preference, so that even the stern Matthew found it proper to praise him, which he did in the words of Solomon: “The fool speaketh scornfully of his neighbor, but the wise man is silent,” and he raised his finger as if recalling the former proneness of Judas to speak evil. And the others also noted this change in Judas and rejoiced over it. Only Jesus still viewed him with the same look of estrangement although He in no manner expressed His disfavor. And John himself, towards whom, as the beloved disciple of Jesus and his protector, Judas now manifested a most deferential demeanor, even John’s attitude towards him was softened and he occasionally held converse with him.

“How thinkest thou, Judas,” said he once condescendingly, “which of us twain, Peter or I, will be nearest to Christ in His heavenly kingdom?”

Judas thought for a moment and replied:

“I think thou wilt.”

“And Peter thinks he will,” smiled John.

“No. Peter’s shouting would scatter the angels. Hearest thou him? Of course, he will dispute with thee and will strive to come first and occupy the place, for he claims that he too loves Jesus. But he is growing old, while thou art young. He is slow, while thou art fleetfooted and thou wilt be the first to enter with Christ. Am I not right?”

“Yes. I shall never leave Jesus’ side,” assented John.

That same day Simon Peter addressed the very same question to Judas. But fearing that his loud voice would be heard by others he led Judas to the furthest corner of the house.

“Well how thinkest thou?” he inquired anxiously. “Thou art wise. Even the Teacher praises thy wisdom. Thou wilt tell me the truth.”

“Thou, of course,” the Iscariot replied without hesitation. And Peter indignantly exclaimed:

“I told him so.”

“But, of course, even there he will try to dispute the first place with thee.”

“Of course he will.”

“But what can he do if he find the place already occupied by thee? Thou wilt not leave Him alone. Did he not call thee a Rock?”

Peter laid his hand on Judas’ shoulder and fervently exclaimed:

“I tell thee, Judas, thou art the wisest among us. Pity thou art so malevolent and sneering. The Teacher does not like it. And thou couldst be a beloved disciple no less than John. But even unto thee I shall not yield my place by the side of Jesus, neither here on earth nor over there. Hearest thou me?” And he raised his hand with a threatening gesture.

Thus Judas sought to please both, the while he was harboring thoughts of his own. And remaining the same modest, quiet and unobtrusive Judas, he strove to say something agreeable to all.

Thus he said to Thomas: “The fool believeth every word, but the man of wisdom takes heed of his ways.” But to Matthew who loved to eat and drink and was ashamed of this weakness he cited the words of Solomon.

“The righteous shall eat his fill, but the seed of the lawless is in want.”

But such pleasant words he spoke rarely, which lent to them a special value. Now he remained silent for long periods and listened attentively to others, though he kept thinking thoughts of his own. Judas in his musing mood had a disagreeable and ludicrous, and at the same time a disconcerting appearance. While his cunning live eye was mobile he appeared to be genuine and gentle, but when both of his eyes assumed that fixed and rigid look, and the skin on his forehead gathered into queer wrinkles and folds, one received the disquieting impression that within that skull there swarmed very peculiar thoughts, utterly strange, quite peculiar thoughts that had no language of their own and they enveloped the cogitating Iscariot with a shroud of mystery so disturbing that the beholder longed to have him break the silence quickly, to stir a little or even to lie. For even a lie uttered by a human tongue seemed truth and light in the face of this hopelessly mute and unresponsive silence.

“Lost in thought again, Judas?” rang out the sonorous voice of Peter, suddenly breaking through the dull silence of the Iscariot’s musing. “What art thou thinking of?”

“Of many things,” replied the Iscariot with a quiet smile. And observing the unpleasant effect of his silence upon the others, he began more and more frequently to separate himself from the disciples, taking lonely walks or spending hours alone on the flat roof of the house. More than once Thomas collided on the roof with a grey bundle out of which suddenly disentangled themselves the ungainly limbs of Judas and was startled by the well known mocking accents of the Iscariot’s voice.

Only once again the man of Kerioth oddly and abruptly recalled to the memory of the disciples the Judas of former days, and this occurred during the dispute concerning the first place in the Kingdom of heaven. In the presence of the Teacher, Peter and John hotly and with mutual recriminations defended their claims to the place nearest to Jesus. They enumerated their merits, compared the degree of their love of Jesus, shouted angrily and even abused one another incontinently⁠—Peter, all flushed with wrath and thundering, John pale and still, with trembling hands and stinging words. Their dispute was fast becoming unseemly and the Teacher was commencing to frown, when Peter chanced to look up at Judas and laughed out exultingly. John also glanced at Judas and smiled contentedly. Each remembered what the wise Iscariot had told him. With the foretaste of certain triumph they both summoned Judas to be their judge, and Peter cried out: “Hey, thou wise Judas. Tell us who will be first and nearest to Jesus, he or I?”

But Judas was silent. He breathed heavily and fixed his gaze longingly, questioningly, on the deep and calm eyes of Jesus.

“Yes,” condescendingly agreed John, “tell him who will be the first and nearest to Jesus.”

With his glance still fixed on Christ, Judas rose slowly to his feet and replied calmly and gravely:

“I.”

Jesus slowly dropped his eyes, while the Iscariot, beating his breast with a bony finger sternly and solemnly repeated:

“I! I shall be near Jesus.”

And with these words he went out leaving the disciples dumbfounded by this insolent outbreak. Only Peter, as if suddenly recollecting something, whispered to Thomas in an unexpectedly quiet tone:

“This is then what he is thinking about. Didst thou hear him?”

V

It was just about this time that Judas Iscariot took his first decisive step towards betrayal: he paid a secret visit to the high priest Annas. He was received very sternly, but this did not disconcert him and he demanded a prolonged private interview. Left alone with the stern ascetic old man who eyed him contemptuously from under his bushy eyebrows, he told him that he, Judas, was a pious man who had become a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth with the sole aim of exposing the deceiver and of betraying him into the hands of the law.

“And who is He, this Nazarene?” slightingly inquired Annas, as if he had heard the name of Jesus for the first time.

Judas for his part pretended to take this strange ignorance of the high priest at its face value and reported to him at length concerning the sermons of Jesus, His wonders, His hatred of the Pharisees and the Temple, the violations of the Law by Him, and His desire to snatch the power from the hands of the ecclesiastics and to establish His own kingdom. And so skillfully did he mingle truth with falsehood that Annas glanced at him more attentively, while he indolently observed:

“Are there so few deceivers and madmen in Judea?”

“No. But He is a dangerous man,” hotly replied Judas. “He violates the Law. And it is better for one man to perish than for the whole people.”

Annas nodded approvingly.

“But He has, methinks, many disciples.”

“Yes, many.”

“And they probably love Him devotedly?”

“They say that they love Him; that they love Him more than themselves.”

“But if we should want to seize Him, would they not take His part? Will there be no uprising?”

Judas laughed long and bitterly.

“They? They are cowardly curs who run as soon as a man stoops to pick up a stone. They!”

“Are they so bad?” coldly inquired Annas.

“And do the bad flee from the good? Do not rather! the good flee before the bad? Ha! They are good and therefore they will run. They are good and therefore they will hide themselves. They are good and therefore they will only appear when Jesus is ready for burial. And they will bury Him themselves, do thou but put Him to death.”

“But do they not love Him? Thou saidst so.”

“Their Teacher they love always, but more in death than living. As long as the Teacher lives He is apt to examine the pupils, and woe then unto the latter. But when the Teacher is dead, they become teachers in their turn, and woe then unto others! Ha!”

Annas looked searchingly at the traitor, and his shriveled lips wrinkled slightly: it was a sign that Annas was smiling.

“They have injured thee. I see it.”

“Can anything remain a secret to thy insight, O wise Annas? Thou hast penetrated the very heart of Judas. Yes, they injured poor Judas. They said that I had stolen three pieces of silver, as if Judas were not the most honest man in Israel.”

And for a long time they spoke of Jesus, of His disciples, and of His pernicious influence on the people of Israel. But the cautious and cunning high priest Annas did not give his final answer on this occasion. He had been watching Jesus for a long time and had long since sealed the fate of the prophet of Galilee in the secret councils of his relatives and friends, the chiefs and the Sadducees. But he distrusted Judas who had been reported to him as an evil and double-dealing man. He did not attach much faith to his frivolous remarks on the cowardice of the disciples and the people. Annas had entire confidence in his own might, but he feared bloodshed, he feared to stir up a tumultuous uprising into which the stiff-necked and volatile people of Jerusalem could be so easily harangued; he feared finally the sternly repressive interference of Roman authorities. Fanned by resistance, fructified by the crimson blood of the people which endows with life all whereon it falls, the heresy might spread all the more rapidly and engulf Annas himself, his rule and his friends. And when the Iscariot sought admission for the second time, Annas was perturbed and refused to receive him. But a third and a fourth time the Iscariot called, insistent as the wind that knocks day and night against the closed door and breathes through the fissures.

“I see that wise Annas has some apprehensions,” said Judas when finally admitted to the High Priest.

“I am strong enough to fear nothing,” haughtily replied Annas, and the Iscariot made a servile obeisance. “What wouldst thou?”

“I want to betray unto you the Nazarene.”

“We do not want Him.”

Judas bowed low and lingered humbly, fixing his eye upon the high priest.

“Go.”

“But I must come again. Is it not so, venerable Annas?”

“Thou wilt not be admitted. Go.”

But again and again Judas of Kerioth knocked at the high priest’s portal and was once more admitted into the presence of the aged Annas. Shriveled and angry, oppressed with thought, he regarded the betrayer in silence and seemed to be counting the hairs on his illshaped head. Judas also was silent, as if, for his part, counting the hairs in the silvery thin beard of the high priest.

“Well, thou art here again?” haughtily ejaculated the irritated high priest, as though spuing the words on his visitor’s head.

“I want to betray unto you the Nazarene.”

They both lapsed into silence, scanning intently one another’s features, the Iscariot gazing calmly, but a feeling of subdued malevolence, dry and cold like the morning frost in the winter time, was beginning to gnaw at the heart of Annas.

“And what askest thou for thy Jesus?”

“And what will ye give?”

With a feeling of quiet elation Annas insultingly retorted:

“You are a band of rascals, all of you. Thirty pieces of silver, that is all we will give for Him.”

And his heart was filled with delighted gratification as he observed how Judas’ whole body was set agog by this announcement. The Iscariot turned and scurried about, agile and swift, as if he had not two but a dozen legs.

“For Jesus? Thirty pieces of silver?” cried Judas in a tone of wild amazement that rejoiced the heart of Annas. “For Jesus of Nazareth? You would buy Jesus for thirty pieces of silver? And you think that Jesus can be sold unto you for thirty pieces of silver?”

Judas swiftly turned to the wall and laughed into its smooth and whited face, waving wildly arms.

“Hearest thou? Thirty pieces of silver! For Jesus!”

With quiet enjoyment Annas indifferently replied: “If thou wilt not have it, go. We shall find some man who will sell more cheaply.”

And like sellers of old raiment who shout and swear and scold, fighting over the price of some worthless garment, they commenced their monstrous and frenzied haggling.

Thrilled with a strange ecstasy Judas ran about twisting his limbs and shouting, and enumerating on the fingers of his hand the merits of Him whom he was betraying.

“And that He is good and heals the sick, is that nothing? Is that worth nothing in your estimation? Hey? No? Tell me like an honest man?”

“If thou,” interposed the high priest whose cold disfavor was rapidly fanned into violent wrath by the taunting words of Judas⁠—but the later interrupted him unabashed.

“And that He is youthful and beautiful like the narcissus of Sharon, like the lily of the valley? Hey? Is that nothing? Perhaps you will say that He is aged and worthless?”

“If thou,” still strove to cry Annas, but his senile voice was drowned in the storm of Judas’ protests.

“Thirty pieces of silver! That makes hardly an obolus for a drop of blood. Less than half an obolus for a tear. Quarter an obolus for a groan. And the cries of pain! and convulsions! What is the stopping of His heart? And the closing of His eyes? Is that all for naught?” screamed the Iscariot towering over the high priest, encircling him with the frenzied whirlwind of his gestures and words.

“For all! For all!” replied the breathless high priest.

“And how much will you earn on the deal? Hey? Would you rob poor Judas? Tear the piece of bread out of his children’s mouths? I shall go out into the market place and shout: ‘Annas has robbed poor Judas. Help!’ ”

Wearied and dizzy, Annas in futile frenzy stamped the floor with his soft slipper and waved him away: “Begone! Begone!”

But Judas suddenly made a humble obeisance and spread out his arms: “And if so, why art thou angry with poor Judas who is seeking the good of his children? Thou too hast children, fine, handsome young men.”

“We shall get another⁠ ⁠… We shall get another⁠ ⁠… Begone!”

“And did I say that I would not give in? Do I not believe thee that another may come and give up Jesus unto you for fifteen oboli? For two oboli? For one obolus?”

Then with another low obeisance, and with ingratiating words, Judas submissively agreed to accept the money offered him. With a trembling and wrinkled hand Annas, now silent and flushed with excitement, gave him the money. He sat with averted face and in silence, biting his lips and waited until Judas had tested every silver coin between his teeth. Now and then Annas looked around and then, as quickly turned his glance to the ceiling and again bit his lips.

“There are so many false coins about now,” calmly explained Judas. “This is money offered up by pious people for the Temple,” remarked Annas looking around hastily and still more quickly turning to Judas the back of his bald head which was now crimson with anger.

“But can pious people distinguish false coins from the genuine? Only rogues can do this.”

Judas did not take home the money received from the high priest, but going beyond the city he buried it beneath a stone. And he returned with slow, heavy and cautious steps, like a wounded animal creeping to its lair after a cruel and mortal combat. But Judas had no lair of his own to which he might creep, though there was a house and in that house he saw Jesus. Tired, emaciated, worn out with his incessant war against the Pharisees who daily surrounded Him in the Temple like a wall of white, shining, learned foreheads, He was seated, leaning against the wall and was apparently fast asleep. Through the open window entered the restless echoes of the city, behind the wall was heard the knocking of Peter who was making a new table for the common meal and sang a Galilean ditty as he worked. He heard nothing and slept soundly and firmly, and this was He who had been bought for thirty pieces of silver.

Advancing noiselessly, Judas with the gentle care of a mother fearing to awaken her ailing babe, with the amazement of a dumb brute that has crept from its lair and lingers in fascination before some pretty white flower, Judas touched His soft hair and precipitately withdrew his hand. He touched it again and as noiselessly crept out.

“Lord!” he exclaimed. “Lord!”

And going to a deserted spot he wept there a long time, writhing, twisting his limbs, scratching his breast with his nails and biting his shoulders. Suddenly he ceased to weep, to moan and to gnash his teeth and lapsed into deep thought, turning his moist face to one side in the attitude of listening. And thus he stood for a long time, immobile, determined and a stranger to all like his very fate.

With a calm love and tender solicitude Judas surrounded the doomed Jesus during these last days of His brief life. Coy and timorous like a maiden in her first love, strangely intuitive and keen of perception, he divined the slightest unexpressed wish of Jesus, penetrated into the hidden depths of His feelings, His fleeting instants of yearning, His heavy moments of weariness. And no matter where the foot of Jesus stepped it rested on something soft, no matter where He turned His glance it met something pleasant. Formerly Judas had held in disfavor Mary Magdalene and the other women who were near Jesus, playing rude jokes at their expense and causing them much annoyance. Now he became their friend, their ludicrous and awkward confederate. With a profound interest he discussed with them the little intimate and beloved traits of Jesus, quizzing them insistently for a long time concerning one and the same thing. With a great show of secrecy he thrust coins into their hands, and they bought ointments, the precious and fragrant myrrh so beloved of Jesus, and anointed His feet. Haggling desperately he bought expensive wine for Jesus and then growled when Peter drank it all with the indifference of a man to whom only quantity matters. In that rocky country surrounding Jerusalem and almost bare of trees and flowers, he managed to obtain fresh spring flowers and green herbs, and offered them to Jesus through the mediation of these same women. For the first time in his life he fetched in his arms little children, finding them somewhere in the neighboring homesteads or in the highways, and forcedly caressed them to keep them from weeping. And it frequently happened that there crawled on the knees of Jesus, while he sat in deep thought, a tiny, curly haired little fellow with a soiled little nose, and insistently sought His caress. And while the two rejoiced in one another, Judas sternly walked a short distance off with the air of a jailer who has admitted a butterfly into the cell of his prisoner and then with a show of asperity grumbles about the disorder.

In the evenings, when darkness and fear stood guard at the door, the Iscariot artfully contrived to bring into the conversation Galilee, a land unknown to him but dear to Jesus, with its peaceful lakes and green shores. And he worried the clumsy Peter until stifled memories awoke in his heart and before his eyes and ears appeared vivid pictures and sounds of the beautiful life of Galilee. Avidly attentive and with mouth half-opened like a child’s, with the twinkling of anticipated laughter in His eyes, Jesus listened to Peter’s impetuous, ringing and merry speech, and at times He so loudly laughed at his conceits that the disciple had to stop his recital for minutes at a time. But better even than Peter’s was the speech of John. There was nothing ludicrous, nothing unexpectedly grotesque in his words, but his descriptions were so thoughtful, unusual and beautiful that tears appeared in the eyes of Jesus, and Judas nudged Mary Magdalene, whispering triumphantly into her ears: “How he speaks! Listen!”

“I am listening.”

“But listen still better. You women never listen well.”

And when they all dispersed to seek their bedsides, Jesus kissed John with a tender gratitude and cordially patted the shoulder of Peter.

Without envy, with a contemptuous indulgence, Judas witnessed these caresses. What signified all these tales, these kisses, these sighs, compared with that knowledge which he had, he, Judas of Kerioth, red-haired, repulsive Judas, born amid the rocks.

VI

Betraying Jesus with one hand, Judas took great pains to destroy his own plans with the other. He did not attempt to dissuade Jesus from embarking on that last perilous journey to Jerusalem, as did the women, he even inclined to side with the relatives of Jesus and with those of his disciples who considered the victory over Jerusalem indispensable to the complete triumph of the cause. But he stubbornly and insistently warned them of its dangers and depicted in vivid colors the formidable hostility of the Pharisees, their readiness to commit any crime and their unflinching determination either openly or privily to slay the prophet of Galilee.

Daily and hourly he spoke of it and there was not a believer whom Judas failed to admonish shaking his uplifted finger impressively and severely:

“Jesus must be guarded! Jesus must be guarded! Jesus must be protected when the time comes.”

Whether it was the boundless faith of the disciples in the marvelous power of their Teacher, or the consciousness of the righteousness of their cause or sheer blindness, Judas’ anxious words were met with a smile, and his endless warnings elicited even murmurs of remonstrance.

Judas managed to obtain somewhere a couple of swords, but only Peter was pleased with his foresight, and only Peter praised Jesus and the swords, while the others remarked disapprovingly:

“Are the warriors to gird ourselves with swords. And is Jesus a general and not a prophet?”

“But if they will want to slay Him?”

“They will not dare when they see that the whole people is following Him.”

“But if they should dare after all? What then?”

And John scornfully retorted:

“One might think, Judas, that thou alone lovest the Teacher.”

And, greedily clinging to these words, taking no offence, Judas began to question them eagerly, fervently, with a solemn impressiveness:

“But do ye love Him? Truly?”

And each believer who came to see Jesus he repeatedly questioned:

“And dost thou love Him? Dost thou love Him truly?”

And all answered saying that they truly loved Him. He frequently drew Thomas into conversation and warningly raising his bony forefinger crowned with a long and untidy finger nail he significantly admonished him:

“Look to it, Thomas. A terrible time is approaching. Are ye prepared? Why didst thou not take the sword which I brought?”

And Thomas sententiously replied:

“We are men unaccustomed to the use of arms. And if we take up the struggle with the Roman soldiers we shall all be slain. Besides didst thou not bring only two swords? What can be done with two swords?”

“We can get others. And we might take them away from the soldiers,” said Judas with a show of impatience, and even Thomas, the serious, smiled through his shaggy beard.

“Judas, Judas! What thoughts be these? And where didst thou procure these swords? For they resemble the swords of the Roman soldiers.”

“I stole them. I might have stolen more, but I heard voices and fled.”

Thomas answered reproachfully and sadly:

“There again thou didst wrong. Why stealest thou, Judas?”

“But nothing is another’s property.”

“Good, but the warriors may be questioned tomorrow ‘Where are your swords?’ and not finding them they may suffer punishment innocently.”

And later, after the death of Jesus, the disciples remembered these words of Judas and concluded that he had purposed to destroy them together with their Teacher by luring them into an unequal and fatal combat. And once more they cursed the hateful name of Judas of Kerioth, the Traitor.

And Judas, after such conversation, sought out the women in his anger and complained to them tearfully. And the women heard him eagerly. There was in his love to Jesus something feminine and tender and it brought him nearer to the women, making him simple, intelligible and even good-looking in their eyes, though there still remained a certain air of superiority in his attitude towards them.

“Be these men?” he bitterly denounced the disciples, turning confidingly his blind and immobile eye towards Mary, “No they are not men. They have not an obolus’ worth of blood in their veins.”

“Thou art forever speaking evil of people,” replied Mary.

“Am I ever speaking evil of people?” exclaimed Judas in surprise. “Well, I may sometimes say something evil of them, but could they not be just a trifle better? Ah Mary, stupid Mary, why art thou not a man to carry a sword?”

“I fear I could not lift it, it is so heavy,” smiled Mary.

“Thou wilt wield it, if men prove too evil to draw a sword. Didst thou give unto Jesus the lily which I found this morn in the hills? I rose at dawn to seek it and the sun was so red today, Mary. Was He glad? Did He smile?”

“Yes, He was very glad. He said that it was fragrant with the odors of Galilee.”

“Of course, thou didst not tell Him Judas had gotten it, Judas of Kerioth?”

“Thou badest me not to tell.”

“Truly, truly,” sighed Judas. “But thou mightest have mentioned it inadvertently, women are so prone to talk. Then thou didst not tell it Him by any chance? Thou wast so firm? Yes, yes, Mary, thou art a good woman. Thou knowest I have a wife somewhere. I should like to see her now: perhaps she was not a bad woman. I do not know. She used to say: ‘Judas is a liar. Judas, son of Simon, is wicked!’ And I left her. But it may be that she is a good woman. What thinkest thou?”

“How can I know, who have never seen her?”

“Truly, truly, Mary. And what thinkest thou, thirty pieces of silver⁠ ⁠… is it a large sum of money?”

“I think it is not so much.”

“Truly, truly. And what didst thou earn when thou wast a sinner? Five pieces of silver or ten? Wast thou high in price?”

Mary Magdalene blushed and dropped her head till her luxuriant golden hair hid her entire face leaving merely the rounded white chin visible:

“How mean art thou, Judas. I seek to forget it, but thou remindest me.”

“No, Mary, thou shouldest not forget it. Why? Let others forget that thou wast a sinner, but thou forget not. It is meet that others forget it, but why shouldest thou?”

“I lived in sin.”

“Let him fear who has committed no sin. But he who has committed sin, why should he fear? Do the dead fear death and not the living? No, the dead mock the living and their fear of death.”

Thus cordially talking they sat together for hours, he, well on in years, gaunt hideous to behold, with illshaped head and weirdly disproportioned face, she youthful, coy, gentle, fascinated with life as though with some legend or strange dream.

But the time passed heedlessly and the thirty pieces of silver were reposing under the stone, and the terrible day of betrayal was approaching inexorably. Already Jesus had entered Jerusalem riding on the foal of an ass, and the people had acclaimed Him, spreading their garments in His path, with cries of triumphant welcome:

“Hosannah, Hosannah! Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

And so great was the jubilation, and so irrepressible was the love that strove heavenward in these welcoming shouts that Jesus wept and His disciples proudly exclaimed:

“Is this not the Son of God who is with us?”

And they also cried out in triumph:

“Hosannah! Hosannah! Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

And that night for a long time they remained awake thinking over the solemn and triumphant entry, and Peter was like unto a madman; he was as one possessed by the demon of merriment and pride. He shouted loudly, drowning the speech of others with his leonine roar, he laughed uproariously, flinging his laughter at the heads of others like large rolling boulders, he embraced John, and James and even kissed Judas. And he boisterously admitted that he had harbored fears concerning Jesus, but now feared no longer, for he saw the love the people bore for Him. The Iscariot’s unsteady eye strayed from face to face in amazement. He mused for a while, listened and looked around again, and then led Thomas aside. Then, as if impaling him against the wall with his piercing glance he questioned him with wonderment and fear not unmixed with some dim hopefulness:

“Thomas, and if He is right? If it be He that has the rock beneath His feet, and I merely shifting sand? What then?”

“Of whom art thou speaking?” inquired Thomas.

“What will Judas of Kerioth do then? Then I shall have to strangle Him myself to bring out the Truth. Who is playing Judas false, ye or Judas himself? Who is deceiving Judas? Who?”

“I cannot understand thee, Judas. Thou speakest in riddles. Who is deceiving Judas? Who is right?”

And shaking his head Judas repeated like an echo:

“Who is deceiving Judas? Who is right?”

And still more surprised was Thomas, and he felt even worried when during the night there rang out the loud and almost joyous voice of Judas:

“Then there will be no Judas of Kerioth. Then there will be no Jesus. There will be only.⁠ ⁠… Thomas, stupid Thomas! Didst thou ever wish to seize this earth of ours and raise it in thy hands? And then perhaps to drop it?”

“That were impossible, what sayest thou Judas?”

“That is possible,” replied the Iscariot with conviction. “And we shall seize it some day and lift it up in our hands while thou art asleep, stupid Thomas. Sleep. I am merry, Thomas. When thou sleepest, the flutes of Galilee play in thy nostrils, Thomas. Sleep.”

But already the believers had scattered throughout Jerusalem and disappeared within their houses, behind walls, and the faces of the people who still walked abroad were now inscrutable. The rejoicing had ceased. Already dim rumors of peril crept out of some crevices. Peter was gloomily trying the edge of the sword given him by Judas, and ever sadder and sterner grew the face of the Teacher. Time was swiftly passing and inexorably approached the dread day of the Betrayal. Now also the Last Supper was over, pregnant with sadness and dim fears, and the vague words of Jesus of someone who would betray Him had been spoken.

“Knowest thou who will betray Him?” inquired Thomas gazing at Judas with his straight and limpid, almost transparent eyes.

“Yes, I know,” replied Judas, sternly and resolutely. “Thou, Thomas, wilt betray Him. But He does not believe Himself what He is saying. It is time. It is time. Why does He not call to His side Judas, the strong and the beautiful?”

And time, the inexorable, was now measured no longer by days but by fast fleeting hours. And it was even, and the stillness of even, and lengthy shadows gathered over the earth, the first piercing arrows of the impending night of great conflict, when a sad and solemn voice sounded through the darkness. It was Judas who spoke:

“Thou knowest where I am going, Lord? I am going to betray Thee into the hands of Thine enemies.”

And there was a long silence, and the stillness of even and piercing black shadows.

“Thou art silent, Lord? Thou commandest me to go?”

And silence again.

“Bid me stay. But Thou canst not? Or darest not? Or wilt not?”

And again silence, immense as the eyes of Eternity.

“But Thou knowest that I love Thee. Thou knowest all. Why lookest Thou thus upon Judas? Great is the secret of Thy beautiful eyes, but is mine the less? Bid me stay.⁠ ⁠… But Thou art silent. Thou art ever silent? Lord, Lord, why in anguish and with yearning have I sought Thee always, sought Thee all my life and found Thee? Make Thou me free. Lift from me the burden; it is greater than mountains of lead. Hearest Thou not the bosom of Judas of Kerioth groaning beneath it?”

And final silence, unfathomable as the last glance of Eternity.

“I go.”

And the stillness of even was not broken, it cried not out nor wept, nor faintly echoed the fine and glassy air⁠—so still was the sound of his departing steps. They sounded and were lost. And the stillness of even relapsed into musing, it stretched its lengthening shadows, and blushed darkly, then suddenly sighed with the yearning rustle of stirring foliage; it sighed and was still, lost in the embrace of Night.

Other sounds now invaded the air, rapping, tapping, knocking: as if someone had opened a cornucopia of vivid sonorous noises and they were dropping upon the earth, not singly or in twos, but in heaps. And drowning them all, echoing against the trees, the shadows and the wall, enveloping the speaker himself roared the resolute and lordly voice of Peter: he swore that he would never leave his Teacher.

“Lord!” he cried, longingly, wrathfully. “Lord! With Thee I am ready to go to prison and even unto death.”

And softly, like the faint echo of someone’s departed steps, the merciless answer sounded:

“I say unto thee, Peter, that ere the cock crow thrice today thou wilt have denied me thrice.”

VII

The moon had already risen when Jesus started towards Mount Olivet where he was wont of late to pass his nights. But He lagged strangely, and His disciples, who were ready to proceed, urged Him on. Then He suddenly spoke:

“He who has a sack let him take it, likewise a staff. And He who has none, let him sell his raiment and buy a sword. For I say unto you that this day it shall happen unto me as even was written: he was counted among the transgressors!”

The disciples were amazed and exchanged confused glances.

But Peter replied:

“Lord! Here are two swords.”

He glanced searchingly into their kindly faces, dropped His head and gently replied:

“It is enough.”

Loudly echoed the steps of the wanderers through the narrow streets and the disciples were terrified at the sounds of their own steps. Their black shadows lengthened upon the white moon-illuminated walls and they were terrified at the sight of their own shadows. Thus silently they passed through the sleeping city. Now they passed out of the gates of Jerusalem and in a deep cleft among the hills that were filled with mysterious and immobile shadows the brook of Kedron met their gaze. Now everything terrified them. The soft gurgling and the splashing of the water against the stones sounded to them like voices of people lying in ambush. The shapeless fanciful shadows of rocks and trees obstructing their way worried them, and the motionless stillness of the night appeared to them endowed with life and movement. But as they ascended and neared the garden of Gethsemane where they had spent so many nights in security and peace they gradually gained courage. Now and then they cast a backward glance at the sleeping city now reposing white in the light of the moon and discussed their recent fright; and those who walked in the rear heard an occasional fragment of the Teacher’s words. He was telling them that they would all forsake Him.

They stopped in the very outskirts of the garden. Most of the disciples regained right there and with subdued voices commenced to make preparations for sleep, spreading their mantles in the transparent lacework of shadows and moonlight. But Jesus, torn with disquietude, with four of His nearest disciples plunged further into the depths of the garden. There they sat down on the ground that had not yet grown cold from the heat of the day, and while Jesus observed silence, Peter and John lazily exchanged meaningless remarks. Yawning with weariness they spoke of the chilly night and remarked how dear the meat was in Jerusalem, while fish was not to be had at all. They were guessing at the number of worshippers that would gather in Jerusalem during the holidays, and Peter, stretching his words into a prolonged yawn, affirmed that they would amount to twenty thousand, while John, and his brother Tames indolently claimed that the number would not exceed ten thousand. Suddenly Jesus quickly rose to His feet.

“My soul is sorrowful even unto death. Tarry ye here and watch a while,” He said and with swift steps He retired into the grove where He was lost in the impenetrable maze of light and shadows.

“Where did He go?” wondered John raising himself on his elbow. Peter turned his head in the direction of the departed Teacher and wearily answered:

“I don’t know.” And once more loudly yawning he reclined on his back and lay still. The others too had quieted down by this time and the vigorous sleep of healthy fatigue chained their stolid figures. Through his heavy sleep Peter dimly saw something white bending over him and seemed to hear some voice that sounded afar off and died leaving no trace in his dulled consciousness:

“Simon Peter, sleepest thou?”

And once more he was fast asleep, and again some still voice reached his ear and died away leaving no trace:

“Could ye not watch with me one brief hour?”

“Lord, if Thou knewest how sleepy I am,” he thought in half slumber, but it seemed to him as if he had said it aloud. And again he slept and a long time passed when suddenly there stood beside him the form of Jesus and a sonorous waking voice roused him and the others:

“Are ye still sleeping and resting? It is finished. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be betrayed into the hands of sinners.”

The disciples leaped to their feet, picking up their mantles in confusion and shivering with the chill of sudden awaking. Through the maze of trees, illuminating them with the lurid light of their torches, with heavy tramping of feet and loud noise, and the crack of breaking twigs, a crowd of warriors and temple attendants was seen approaching. And from the other side the rest of the disciples came running, trembling with the cold, with terrified, sleepy faces, failing to realize what had occurred and anxiously inquiring:

“What is this? Who are these with torches?”

Thomas, pale, with his beard awry, with chatting teeth, remarked to Peter:

“Apparently these men are after us.”

Now the crowd of warriors surrounded them and the smoking unsteady glare of the torches had chased the quiet and serene radiance of the moon somewhere into the heights over the treetops. At the head of the warriors was Judas of Kerioth; scurrying hither and thither and keenly rolling his seeing eye he searched for Jesus. At last he found Him, and resting for a moment his glance on the tall and slender form for the Master he hurriedly whispered to the attendants: “He whom I shall kiss the same is the man. Take Him and lead Him carefully. But be careful, do you hear me?”

Then hurriedly moving toward Jesus, who awaited him in silence, he plunged like a dagger a steady and piercing glance into His calm, dark eyes.

“Rejoice, Rabbi,” he exclaimed loudly, imbuing the words of common salutation with a strange and terrible significance.

But Jesus was silent, and the disciples gazed awestricken upon the Traitor, unable to fathom how the soul of Man could contain so much wickedness. With a hasty look the Iscariot measured their confused ranks, noted the tremor that threatened to change into the abject palsy of terror, noted their pallor, the meaningless smiles, the nerveless movements of arms that seemed to be gripped with iron clamps at the shoulder; and his heart was set aflame with bitter anguish not unlike the agony which had oppressed Jesus a short time since. His soul transformed into a hundred ringing and sobbing chords, he rushed forward to Jesus and tenderly kissed His windchilled cheek, so softly, so tenderly, with such agony of love and yearning that were Jesus a flower upheld by a slender stem, that kiss would not have shaken from it one pearl of dew or dislodged one tender leaf.

“Judas,” said Jesus, and the lightning of His glance bared the monstrous mass of forbidding shadows that were the soul of the Iscariot, but did not reveal its boundless depths. “Judas! With a kiss betrayest thou the Son of Man?”

And He saw that hideous chaos quivering, stirring and agog through and through. Speechless and stern as Death in his haughty majesty stood Judas of Kerioth and all of his being within him groaned, thundered and wailed with a myriad of stormy and fiery voices: “Yes! With a kiss of love we betray Thee. With a kiss of love we betray Thee unto mockery, torture and death. With a voice of love we summon torturers from their dark lairs, and rear a cross. And high above the gloom of the earth upon the cross we raise up love crucified by love!”

Thus stood Judas, wordless and cold as death, and the cry of his soul was met by the cries and the tumult that encircled Jesus. With the rude indecision of armed force, with the awkwardness of a dimly grasped purpose the soldiers had already seized Him by the hand and were dragging Him somewhere, mistaking their own aimlessness for resistance, their own terror for their victim’s mockery and scorn. Like a herd of frightened lambs the disciples had huddled together, offering no resistance, though impeding everybody including themselves; and only a few had any thought of going or acting for themselves, apart from the rest. Surrounded on every side, Peter, son of Simon, with an effort, as if having lost all strength, drew the sword from its sheath and weakly dropped it with a glancing blow upon the head of one of the servants⁠—but failed to harm him in the least. And observing this Jesus commanded him to drop the useless weapon. With a faint rattle the sword fell to the ground, a piece of metal so manifestly bereft of its power to pierce and to injure that none troubled to pick it up. Thus it lay in the mud and many days later some children found it in the same spot and made it their plaything.

The soldiers were dispersing the disciples and the latter again huddled together stupidly getting into the soldiers’ way, and this continued until the soldiers were seized with a contemptuous wrath. There one of them with a frown walked up to the shouting John, while another roughly brushed aside the arm of Thomas who had placed it upon his shoulder in an endeavor to argue with him, and in his turn shook threateningly a powerful balled fist before a pair of very straight-looking and transparent eyes. And John ran, as also did Thomas and James; and all the disciples, as many as were there, forsaking Jesus, ran helter-skelter to save themselves. Losing their mantles, running into the trees, stumbling against stones and falling they fled into the mountains, driven by terror and in the stillness of the moonlit night the ground resounded under their fugitive feet. Some unknown, who had evidently just risen from sleep, for he was covered with only a blanket, excitedly scurried to and fro in the crowd of warriors and servitors. But as they tried to seize him he cried out in fear and started to run, like the others, leaving his raiment in the hands of the soldiers. Thus perfectly nude, he ran with desperate leaps and his naked body gleamed oddly in the moonlight.

When Jesus was led away Peter emerged from his hiding place behind the trees and from a distance followed his Teacher. And seeing ahead of him another man who walked in silence, he thought it was John and softly called to him:

“John, is it thou?”

“Ah, thou Peter?” replied the other stopping, and Peter recognized the Betrayer’s voice. “Why then Peter didst thou not flee with the others?”

Peter stopped and loathingly replied:

“Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Judas laughed and paying no more attention to Peter walked on towards the place where gleamed the smoking torches and the rattle of arms mingled with the tramp of feet. Peter followed him cautiously and thus almost together they entered the court of the high priest’s house and joined a crowd of servants warming themselves at the fire. Judas was sullenly warming his bony hands over the logs when he heard somewhere in the rear the loud voice of Peter:

“No, I don’t know Him.”

But someone evidently insisted that he was a disciple of Jesus, for even more loudly Peter repeated:

“But no and no, I don’t know whereof ye are speaking.”

Without looking around and smiling involuntarily Judas nodded his head affirmingly and murmured:

“Just so, Peter. Yield to none thy place at the side of Jesus.”

And he did not see how the terror-stricken Peter departed from the court in order not to be caught again. And from that evening until the very death of Jesus Judas never saw near Him any of His disciples: and in that multitude there were only these two, inseparable unto death, strangely bound together by fellow-suffering⁠—He who was betrayed unto mockery and torture and he who had betrayed Him. From one chalice of suffering they drank like brothers, the Betrayed and the Traitor, and the fiery liquid seared alike the pure and the impure lips.

Gazing fixedly at the fire which beguiled the eye into a sensation of heat, holding over it his lanky and shivering hands, all tangled into a maze of arms and legs, trembling shadows and fitful light, the Iscariot groaned pitifully and hoarsely:

“How cold! My God, how cold!”

Thus in the night time, when the fisher folk have set out in their boats leaving ashore a smouldering campfire some strange denizen of the deep may come forth from the bowels of the sea and creeping to the fire gaze on it fixedly and wildly, stretching its limbs towards the flames and groan pitifully and hoarsely:

“How cold! Oh, my God, how cold!”

Suddenly behind his back the Iscariot heard a tumult of loud voices, cries, the sound of rude laughter, full of the familiar, sleepily-greedy malice, and the thud of sharp, quick, blows raining on a living body. He turned around, pierced through and through with agonized pain, aching in every limb and in every bone⁠—they were beating Jesus.

It has come then.

He saw the soldiers lead Jesus into the guardhouse. The night was passing, the fires were going out, ashes began to cover them, and from the guardhouse there came still the noise of hoarse shouts, laughter and oaths. They were beating Jesus. As one who has lost his way the Iscariot scurried about the empty court, stopping himself suddenly on a run, raising his head and starting off again, stumbling in surprise against the campfires and the walls. Then he glued his face to the walls of the guardhouse, to the cracks in the door, to the windows and greedily watched what was going in within. He saw a stuffy, crowded, dirty little room, like all the guardhouses in the world, with a floor that had been diligently spat on and with walls that were greasy and stained as if hundreds of filthy people had walked or slept upon them. And he saw the Man who was being beaten. They smote Him on the face and on the head, they flung Him from one to another across the room like a sack. And because He did not cry out or resist after minutes of strained observation it actually appeared as though it were not a living being but some limp manikin without bones or blood that was thrown about. And the figure bent over oddly, just like a manikin, and when in falling it struck the floor with its head the impression of the contact was not like that of some hard object striking another, but as of some thing soft and incapable of pain. And after watching it long it seemed like some weird and interminable game, something that almost amounted to an illusion. After one vigorous blow the man or the manikin smoothly dropped on the knees of a soldier. He pushed it away and it turned and fell on the next man’s knees, and so on. Shouts of wild laughter greeted this game and Judas also smiled⁠—as if some powerful hand with fingers of steel had torn open his mouth. The lips of Judas had played him false this time.

The night seemed to drag and the campfires still smouldered. Judas fell back from the wall and slowly trudged over to one of the fires, stirred up the coals, revived the flames, and though now he did not feel cold, he held over it his slightly trembling hands. And longingly he murmured:

“Ah, it hurts, little son, it hurts, child, child, child. It pains, very, very much.”

Then he walked over to the window that gleamed yellow from the dim lantern within the bars and once more he commenced to watch the chastisement of Jesus. Once before the very eyes of Judas flitted the vision of His dark face, now disfigured and encircled in a maze of tangled hair. There someone’s hand seized this hair, felled the Man and methodically turning the head from side to side began to wipe with His face the filthy floor. Under the very window a soldier slept opening his wide-open mouth wherein two rows of teeth gleamed white and shiny. Now somebody’s broad back with a fat bare neck shut out the view from the window and nothing more could be seen. And suddenly all grew still.

“What is it? Why are they silent? What if they have comprehended?”

Instantly the head of Judas was filled with the roaring, shouting and tumult of a thousand frenzied thoughts. What if they have realized? What if they have comprehended that this was⁠—the very best among men. This is so plain, so simple. What is going on there now? Are they kneeling before Him, weeping softly, kissing His feet? There He will emerge in an instant, and behind Him will come forth in abject submission the others; how He will come forth and draw near to Judas, the conqueror, the Son of Man, the Lord of Truth, God.⁠ ⁠…

Who is deceiving Judas? Who is right?

But no. Shouts and uproar again. They are beating Him again. They have not comprehended. They have not realized and they are beating Him with greater violence, more cruelly. And the fires are burning low, being covered with ashes, and the smoke over them is as transparently blue as the air, and the sky is as light as the moon. It is the dawn of day.

“What is day?” asked Judas.

Now everything is ablaze, everything glows, everything has grown young, and the smoke above is no longer blue but pink. The sun is rising.

“What is the sun?” asketh Judas.

VIII

They pointed him out with their fingers, and some contemptuously, while others with hatred and terror added:

“See, this is Judas, the Traitor.”

This was the beginning of his shameful infamy to which he condemned himself for all ages. Thousands of years will pass, nation will succeed nation, and still the words will be heard in the air, uttered with contempt and dread by the good and the evil:

“Judas, the Traitor! Judas, the Traitor!”

But he listened with indifference to the words spoken concerning him, absorbed in a feeling of a supreme curiosity. From the very morn that Jesus was led out of the guardhouse after His chastisement Judas followed Him, his heart strangely free from longing, pain or joy. It was only filled with the unconquerable craving to see and to hear all. Though he had not slept all night he felt as though walking on air; where the people would not let him pass he elbowed his way forward and with agility gained a point of vantage. During the examination of Jesus by Kaiaphas he held his hand to his ear so as not to lose a word and nodded his head approvingly, whispering:

“That’s so. That’s so. Hearest Thou this, Jesus?”

But he was not free⁠—he was like a fly tied to a thread: buzzing it flies hither and thither but not for an instant the pliant and obstinate thread releases it. Thoughts that seemed hewed out of stone weighed down his head and he could not shake them off. He knew not what thoughts these were, he feared to stir them up, but he felt their presence constantly. And at times they threatened to overwhelm him, almost crushing him with their incredible weight as though the roof of some rocky vault slowly and terribly subsided over his head. Then he held his hand to his heart and shook himself as though shivering with the cold, and his glance straying to another and still another spot as Jesus was led out from the presence of Kaiaphas, he met His wearied glance at quite close quarters, and without rendering account to himself of his action, he nodded his head a few times with a show of friendliness and murmured:

“I am here, sonny, I am here.” Then he wrathfully shoved aside some gaping countryman who stood in his way. Now they were moving, an immense and noisy throng, on to Pilate, for the last examination and trial, and with the same insupportable curiosity Judas eagerly and swiftly scanned the faces of the people. Many were entirely unknown to him; Judas had never seen them before; but some there were who had shouted “Hosannah!” to Jesus, and with every step the number of such seemed to increase.

“Just so!” flashed through the mind of Judas. He reeled like a drunken man. “It is all finished. Now they will shout: He is ours! He is our Jesus! What are ye doing? And everyone will see it.⁠ ⁠…”

But the believers walked in silence, with forced smiles on their faces, pretending that all this did not concern them in the least. Others discussed something in subdued tones, but in the tumult and commotion, in the uproar of frenzied shouts of Christ’s enemies, their timid voices were drowned without leaving a trace. And again he felt relieved. Suddenly Judas noticed Thomas, who was cautiously proceeding not afar off, and with a sudden resolve he rushed forward intending to speak to him. Seeing the Traitor, Thomas was frightened and sought to escape, but in a narrow and dirty lane, between two walls, Judas caught up with him:

“Thomas! Wait!”

Thomas stopped and solemnly holding up both hands exclaimed:

“Depart from me, Satan.”

With a gesture of impatience the Iscariot replied:

“How stupid thou art, Thomas! I thought that thou hadst more sense than the others. Satan! Satan! This must be proved.”

Dropping his hands, Thomas inquired in surprise:

“But didst thou not betray the Teacher? I saw with my own eyes that thou broughtest the soldiers. Didst thou not point out Jesus unto them? If this is not betrayal, what is a betrayal?”

“Something else, something else,” hastily interposed Judas. “Listen. There are many of you here. It behooves you to meet and to demand loudly: ‘Give unto us Jesus. He is ours.’ They will not refuse you, they will not dare. They will understand themselves.⁠ ⁠…”

“What art thou saying!” replied Thomas shaking his head. “Didst thou not see the number of armed soldiers and servants of the temple? And, besides, a court has not been held yet, and we must not interfere with the court. Will not the court understand that Jesus is innocent and will not the judges immediately order Him released?”

“Dost thou think so too?” musingly inquired Judas. “Thomas, Thomas, but if this be the truth? What then? Who is right? Who deceived Judas?”

“We argued all night and we decided that the judges simply could not condemn the Innocent one. But if they should.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well?” urged the Iscariot.

“… then they are not true judges. And they will fare ill some day when they give account to the real Judge⁠ ⁠…”

“The real Judge! Is there a real one?” laughed Judas.

“And the brethren have all cursed thee, but as thou sayest that thou art not a Traitor, I think thou oughtest to be judged⁠ ⁠…”

Without waiting to hear the end Judas abruptly turned on his heels and rushed off in pursuit if the departing multitude. But he slowed down and walked deliberately, realizing that a crowd never proceeds very fast and that by walking apart one can always catch up with it.

When Pilate led Jesus out of his palace and placed Him in full view of the people, Judas, pinned to a column by the heavy backs of some soldiers, frenziedly twisted his head in order to see something between two shining helmets. He suddenly realized that now all was over indeed. The sun shone high over the heads of the multitude and under its very rays stood Jesus, bloodstained, pale, with a crown of thorns the sharp points of which had pierced His brow. He stood at the very edge of the elevation, visible from His head to His small sunbrowned feet, and so calmly expectant He was, so radiant in His sinlessness and purity that only a blind man unable to see the very sun could fail to see it, only a madman could fail to realize it. And the people were silent, so silent that Judas heard the breathing of the soldier in front of him, and the scraping of his belt as he took each breath.

“That’s it. It is all over. They will now understand,” thought Judas; and suddenly some strange sensation not unlike the blinding joy of falling from an infinite altitude into the gaping abyss of blue stopped his heart.

Contemptuously stretching his lip down to his clean-shaven, rotund chin, Pilate flings at the people dry curt words as one might cast bones at a horde of hungry hounds to cheat their thirst for fresh blood and living quivering flesh.

“Ye have brought unto me this Man as a corrupter of the people. I have examined Him before you and have found the Man guilty of nothing whereof ye accuse Him⁠ ⁠…”

Judas closed his eyes. He was waiting.

And the whole people began to shout, scream and howl with a thousand bestial and human voices:

“Death unto Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

And now, as if deriding their own souls, as if craving to taste to the dregs in one moment all the infinity of fall, frenzy and shame, these very people screaming and howling demand:

“Release unto us Barabbas. But Him crucify! Crucify!”

But the Roman has not yet spoken his final word. His haughty clean-shaven face is twitching with loathing and wrath. He understands⁠ ⁠… He has comprehended. There He is speaking softly to the servants of the temple, but his voice is drowned in the uproar of the multitude. What is he saying? Does he command them to take up their swords and to fall upon the madmen?

“Bring me water!”

Water? What kind of water? What for?

There he is washing his hands⁠ ⁠… why is he washing his white, clean ringcovered hands? And now he cries out angrily raising his hands in the face of the amazed people:

“I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man. See ye to it.”

The water is still dripping from these white fingers down on the marble slabs of the floor, but some white mass is already limply groveling at the feet of Pilate, someone’s burning and sharp lips are kissing his weakly resisting hand, clinging to it like a leech, sucking at it, drawing the blood to the surface and almost biting it. With loathing and dread he looks down and sees a gigantic and writhing body, a wild face that looks as though it had been split in twain, two eyes so strangely unlike one another, as though not one creature but a multitude lay clutching at his feet and hands. And he hears a fervent and broken whisper:

“Thou art wise! Thou art noble! Thou art wise!”

And this savage face seems to glow with such truly satanic joy that Pilate cannot repress a cry as he repels him with his foot, and Judas falls down to the ground. And lying on the flagstones, like an overturned devil, he still stretches out his hand towards Pilate and shouts as one infatuated:

“Thou art wise! Thou art noble! Thou art wise!”

Then he swiftly leaps to his feet and flees accompanied by the laughter of the soldiers. All is not yet over. When they see the cross, when they see the nails, they may comprehend then.⁠ ⁠… What then? Passingly he notices Thomas, breathless and pale, and for some reason nods to him assuringly. Then he catches up with Jesus on the way to the execution. The path is hard; the little stones roll from under one’s feet; Judas suddenly realizes that he is tired. He concentrates his mind on finding a good foothold, and as he looks about he sees Mary Magdalene weeping, he sees a multitude of weeping women, with dishevelled hair, red eyes, distorted lips, all the infinite grief of the feminine soul given over unto despair. Suddenly he revives and taking advantage of an opportune moment, he rushes forward to Jesus:

“I am with Thee,” he whispers hurriedly.

The soldiers drive him away with stinging blows of their whips, and writhing to escape the leash, gnashing his teeth at the soldiers, he hurriedly explains:

“I am with Thee. Thither. Understandest Thou? Thither!”

Wiping the blood from his face he shakes his fist at the soldier who turns around and points him out to his comrades. He looks about for some reason in search of Thomas, but finds neither him nor any of the other disciples in the accompanying crowd. Again he feels weary and heavily shuffles his feet, carefully scanning the sharp little crumbling stones underfoot.

… When the hammer was raised to nail the left hand of Jesus to the tree Judas shut his eyes and for an eternity neither breathed, nor saw, nor lived, only listened. But now iron struck iron with a gnashing sound, and blow after blow followed blunt, brief, low. One could hear the sharp nail entering the soft wood distending its particles.

One hand. It is not yet too late.

Another hand. It is not yet too late.

One foot, another. Is really all over? Irresolutely he opens his eyes and sees the cross rise unsteadily and take root in the ditch. He sees how the hands of Jesus convulse under the strain, extend agonizingly, how the wounds spread and suddenly the collapsing abdomen sinks below the ribs. The arms stretch and stretch and grow thin and white, they twist at the shoulders, the wounds under the nails redden and expand; they threaten to tear in an instant⁠ ⁠… But, they stop. All motion has stopped. Only the ribs move lightly, raised by His deep quick breathing.

On the very brow of the Earth rises the cross and on it hangs Jesus crucified. The terror and the dreams of Judas are accomplished⁠—he rises from his knees (he had been kneeling for some reason) and looks around coldly. Thus may look some stern conqueror having purposed in his heart to visit ruin and death upon all as he takes one last look on the wealthy vanquished city, still living and noisy, but already spectral beneath the cold hand of death. And suddenly as clearly as his terrible triumph the Iscariot sees its ominous frailty. What if they realize? It is not yet too late. Jesus is still living. There He gazes with his beckoning, yearning eyes.⁠ ⁠…

What can keep from tearing the thin veil that covers the eyes of the people, so thin that it almost is not? What if they suddenly comprehend? What if they move in one immense throng of men, women and children, silent, without shouting, and overwhelm the soldiers, drowning them in their own blood, root out the accursed cross and the hands of the survivors raise aloft upon the brow of the Earth the released Jesus? Hosannah! Hosannah!

Hosannah? No. Let Judas lie down on the ground, let him lie down and bare his teeth like a dog and watch and wait until they all rise. But what has happened to time? Now it stops and one longs to kick it onward, to lash it like a lazy ass, now it rushes on madly downhill, cutting off one’s breath, and one vainly seeks to steady oneself. There Mary Magdalene is weeping. There weeps the mother of Jesus. Let them weep. As if her tears meant anything, for that matter the tears of all the mothers, all the women in the universe!

“What are tears?” asks Judas and frenziedly pushes onward the disobliging time, pummels it with his fists, curses it like a slave. It is someone else’s, that is why it does not obey. If it were Judas! but it belongs to all these who are weeping, laughing, gossiping as if they were in the marketplace. It belongs to the sun, it belongs to the cross and to the heart of Jesus who is dying so slowly.

What a miserable heart is that of Judas. He is holding it with his hands but it shouts Hosannah! so loudly that all will soon hear it. He presses it tightly to the ground, and it shouts Hosannah! Hosannah! like a poltroon scattering sacred mysteries in the street.

Suddenly a loud broken cry⁠ ⁠… Dull shouts, a hurried commotion around the cross. What is it? Have they comprehended?

No, Jesus is dying. And can this be? Yes, Jesus is dying. The pale arms are limp, but the face, the breast and the legs are quivering with short convulsions. And can this be? Yes, He is dying. The breath comes less frequently. Now it has stopped. No, another sigh, Jesus is still upon earth. And still another? No⁠ ⁠… No⁠ ⁠… No⁠ ⁠… Jesus is dead.

It is finished. Hosannah! Hosannah!

The terror and the dreams are accomplished. Who will snatch the victory from the Iscariot’s hands? It is finished. Let all nations, as many as there be, flock to Golgotha and cry out with their millions of throats: Hosannah! Hosannah! let them pour out seas of blood and tears at its foot⁠—they will only find a shameful cross and a dead Jesus.

Calmly and coldly Judas scrutinizes the figure of the Dead, resting his glance an instant upon the cheek on which but the night before he had impressed his farewell kiss, and then deliberately walks away. Now the whole earth belongs to him, and he walks firmly like a commander, like a king, like He who in this universe is so infinitely and serenely alone. He notes the mother of Jesus and addresses her sternly:

“Weepest thou, mother? Weep, weep, and a long time will weep with thee all the mothers of earth. Until we shall return together with Jesus and destroy death.”

What is he saying? Is he mad or merely mocking? But he seems serious and his face is solemn, and his eyes no longer scurry about with insane haste. There he stops and with a cold scrutiny views the earth, so changed and small. How little it now is, and he feels the whole of the orb beneath his feet. He looks at the little hills gently blushing under the last rays of the sun, and he feels the mountains beneath his feet. He gazes on the sky gaping wide with its azure mouth, he gazes on the round little sun futilely striving to burn and to blind, and he feels the sky and the sun beneath his heel. Infinitely and serenely alone he has proudly sensed the impotence of all the powers that are at work in the world and has cast them all down into the abyss.

And he walks on with calm and masterful steps. And the time moves neither ahead of him nor in the rear: obediently with its invisible mass it keeps pace with him.

It is finished.

IX

Like an old hypocrite, coughing, smiling ingratiatingly, bowing profusely, Judas of Kerioth, the Traitor, appeared before the Sanhedrim. It was on the day following the murder of Jesus, towards noon. They were all there, His judges and murderers, the aged Annas with his sons, those accurate and repulsive copies of their father, and Kaiaphas, his son-in-law, wormeaten with ambition, and other members of the Sanhedrim, who had stolen their names from the memory of the people, wealthy and renowned Sadducees, proud of their power and their knowledge of the law. They received the Traitor in silence and their haughty faces remained unmoved as if nothing had entered the room. And even the very least among them, a nonentity utterly ignored by the others, raised to the ceiling his birdlike features and looked as if nothing had entered. Judas bowed, bowed and bowed, but they maintained their silence: as if not a human being had entered, but some unclean and unnoticeable insect had crept into their midst. But Judas of Kerioth was not a man to feel embarrassed: they were silent, but he kept on bowing and thought that if he had to keep on bowing until night he would do so.

At last the impatient Kaiaphas inquired:

“What dost thou want?”

Judas bowed once more and modestly replied:

“It is I, Judas of Kerioth, who betrayed unto you Jesus of Nazareth.”

“Well, what now? Thou hast received thy reward. Go,” commanded Annas, but Judas kept on bowing as if he had not heard the command. And glancing at him Kaiaphas inquired of Annas:

“How much was he given?”

“Thirty pieces of silver.”

Kaiaphas smiled and even the senile Annas smiled also. A merry smile flitted over all the haughty faces: and he of the birdlike countenance even laughed. Paling perceptibly Judas broke in:

“Quite so. Quite so. Of course, a very small sum, but is Judas dissatisfied? Does Judas cry out that he was robbed? He is content. Did he not aid a sacred cause? A sacred cause, to be sure. Do not the wisest of men listen now to Judas of Kerioth and think: ‘He is one of us, Judas of Kerioth, he is our brother, our friend, Judas of Kerioth, the Traitor.’ Does not Annas long to kneel before Judas and kiss his hand? Only Judas will not suffer it, for he is a coward, he fears that Annas might bite.”

Kaiaphas commanded:

“Drive this dog away. Why is he barking here?”

“Go hence. We have no time to listen to thy babbling,” indifferently remarked Annas.

Judas straightened up and shut his eyes. That hypocrisy which he had so lightly borne all his life he felt now as an insupportable burden, and with one movement of his eyelids he cast it off. And when he looked up again at Annas his glance was frank and straight and dreadful in its naked truthfulness. But they paid no attention even to this.

“Wouldst thou be driven out with rods?” shouted Kaiaphas.

Suffocating with the burden of terrible words which he sought to lift higher and higher as if to cast them down upon the heads of the judges Judas hoarsely inquired:

“And do ye know who He was, He whom ye yesterday condemned and crucified?”

“We know. Go.”

With one word he will now tear that thin veil that clouds their eyes, and the whole earth will shake with the impact of the merciless truth. They had souls⁠—and they will lose them. They had life⁠—and they will be deprived of it. Light had been before their eyes⁠—and eternal gloom and terror will engulf them.

And these are the words that rend the speaker’s throat:

“He was not a deceiver. He was innocent and pure. Hear ye? Judas cheated you. Judas betrayed unto you an Innocent One.”

He waited and heard the indifferent senile quaver of Annas: “And is that all thou wouldst tell us?”

“Perhaps ye have not comprehended me?” Judas replied with dignity, all color fading from his cheeks. “Judas deceived you. You have killed an Innocent One.”

One of the judges, a man with a birdlike face, smiled, but Annas was unmoved. Annas was bored, Annas yawned. And Kaiaphas joined him in a yawn and wearily remarked: “I was told of the great mind of Judas of Kerioth. But he is a fool, and a great bore as well as a fool.”

“What?” cried Judas shaken through and through with a desperate rage. “And are ye wise? Judas has deceived you, do you hear me? Not Him did he betray, but you, ye wise ones, you, ye strong ones, he betrayed unto shameful death which shall not end in eternity. Thirty pieces of silver! Yes. Yes. That is the price of your own blood, blood that is filthy as the swill which the women cast out from the gates of their houses. Oh Annas, Annas, aged, grey-bearded, stupid Annas, choking with law, why didst thou not give another piece of silver, another obolus? For at that price thou wilt be rated forever!”

“Begone!” shouted Kaiaphas trembling with wrath. But Annas stopped him with a gesture and as stolidly asked Judas:

“Is this all now?”

“If I shall go into the desert and cry out to the wild beasts: ‘Beasts of the desert, have ye heard the price they have put on their Jesus?’ What will the wild beasts do? They will creep out of their lairs, they will howl with wrath; they will forget the fear of man and they will rush here to devour you. If I tell unto the sea: ‘O sea, knowest thou the price they have put upon their Jesus?’ If I shall tell unto the mountains: ‘Ye mountains, know ye the price they have placed upon their Jesus?’ The sea and the mountains will leave their places appointed unto them since eternity and rush towards you and fall upon your heads.”

“Would not Judas like to become a prophet? He speaks so loudly,” remarked he of the birdlike face mockingly and ingratiatingly peering into the eyes of Kaiaphas.

“Today I saw a pallid sun. It looked down in terror upon this earth inquiring: ‘Where, O where is man?’ I saw today a scorpion. He sat upon a rock and laughing inquired: ‘Where, O where is man?’ I drew nearer and glanced into his eyes. And he laughed and repeated: ‘Where, O where is man?’ Where, oh, where is man? Tell me, I do not see. Has Judas become blind, poor Judas of Kerioth?”

And the Iscariot wept loudly. And in that moment he resembled a madman. Kaiaphas turned away contemptuously, but Annas thought awhile and remarked: “I see, Judas, that thou didst really receive but a small reward, and this evidently agitates thee. Here is more money, take it and give unto thy children.”

He threw something that jingled abruptly. And hardly had that sound died when another oddly resembling it succeeded: it was Judas casting handfuls of silver coins and oboli into the faces of the high priest and the judges, returning his reward for Jesus. In a crazy shower the coins flew about, striking the faces of the judges, the tables and scattering on the floor. Some of the judges sought to shield themselves with the palms of their hands, others leaping from their seats shouted and cursed. Judas aiming at Annas threw the last coin for which he had fished a long time with his trembling hand, and wrathfully spitting upon the floor walked out.

“Well. Well,” he growled passing swiftly through lanes and scaring little children. “Methinks thou didst weep, Judas, hey? Is Kaiaphas really right in calling Judas of Kerioth a stupid fool? He who weepeth in the day of the great vengeance is not worthy of it, knowest thou this, Judas? Do not let thine eyes get the best of thee, do not let thy heart play false. Do not put out the flames with thy tears, Judas of Kerioth.”

The disciples of Jesus sat sadly and silently anxiously listening to the sounds outside. There was still danger that the vengeance of the foes of Jesus would not content itself with His death, and they all expected the intrusion of soldiers and perhaps further executions. Near John, who as the favorite disciple of Jesus felt the death of the Teacher most, sat Mary Magdalene and Matthew, gently comforted him. Mary, whose face was swollen with weeping softly stroked his luxuriant wavy hair, while Matthew instructively quoted the words of Solomon:

“He that is longsuffering is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his heart than he that taketh a city.”

At that moment loudly banging the door Judas Iscariot entered the room. They leaped to their feet in terror and for an instant failed to recognize the newcomer, but when they observed his hateful countenance and the redhaired illshaped head they raised an uproar. Peter lifted up his hands and cried out:

“Begone, Traitor, begone lest I kill thee.”

But scanning the face and the eyes of the Traitor they lapsed into silence, whispering with awe:

“Leave him. Leave him. Satan has entered his body.”

Taking advantage of the silence Judas exclaimed:

“Rejoice, rejoice, ye eyes of Judas the Iscariot. Ye have just seen the coldblooded murderers, and now ye behold the cowardly traitors. Where is Jesus? I ask of you, where is Jesus?”

There was something commanding in the hoarse voice of the Iscariot and Thomas meekly replied:

“Thou knowest, Judas, that our Teacher was crucified yesterday.”

“How did you suffer it? Where was your love? Thou, beloved disciple, thou, O Rock, where were ye when they crucified your friend upon the tree?”

“But what could we do, judge thyself?” replied Thomas shrugging his shoulders.

“Thou askest this, Thomas? Well, well,” replied Judas craning his head and suddenly he broke out with vehemence: “He who loves asks not what to do. He goes and does all. He weeps, he snaps, he strangles his foe, he breaks his limbs. He who loves! When thy son is drowning, goest thou into the marketplace and askest the passerby: ‘What am I to do? My son is drowning.’ Dost thou not leap into the water and drown with the son together? He who loves!”

Peter sullenly replied to the frenzied harangue of Judas:

“I unsheathed the sword but He himself bade me put it up.”

“He bade thee? And thou didst obey?” laughed the Iscariot. “Peter, Peter, was it meet to obey Him? Does He understand aught of men and of fighting?”

“He who disobeys Him will go down to the Gehenna of fire.”

“Then why didst thou not go? Why didst thou not go, Peter? Gehenna of fire, indeed, what is Gehenna? And why didst thou not go? Why hast thou a soul if thou darest not throw it into the fire at will?”

“Silence, He himself desired this sacrifice,” exclaimed John rising to his feet. “And His sacrifice was beautiful.”

“Is there a beautiful sacrifice? What sayest thou, beloved disciple? Where there is a sacrifice, there is the slayer and the betrayer also. Sacrifice is suffering for one and shame for the others. Traitors, traitors, what have ye done with this earth? They are gazing upon this earth from above and from below with derision, saying: ‘Look at this earth, on it they crucified Jesus.’ And they spit upon it even as I do.”

Judas spat wrathfully.

“He took upon Himself the sins of all mankind. His sacrifice is beautiful,” insisted John.

“Nay, but ye upon yourselves have taken all sin. Beloved disciple! Will there not spring up from thee a race of traitors, a brood of little-souled liars? Ye blinded men, what have ye done with this earth? Ye compassed about to destroy it. You will soon kiss the cross whereon ye crucified Jesus. Yes, indeed, you will kiss the cross, Judas promises you that.”

“Judas, do riot blaspheme,” roared Peter flushing. “How could we kill all his foes? There were so many of them.”

“And thou, Peter,” angrily retorted John. “Dost thou not see that he is possessed of Satan. Get thee hence, tempter. Thou art full of lies. The Teacher commanded not to slay.”

“But did He forbid you to die? Why are ye living whereas He is dead? Why do your legs walk, your tongues utter folly, your eyes wink, whereas He is dead, immovable, voiceless? How dare thy cheeks be red, John, whereas His are pale? How darest thou shout, Peter, whereas He is silent? What ye should have done, ye ask of Judas? And Judas replies to you, beautiful, daring Judas of Kerioth: ye should have died. Ye should have fallen on the way, clutching the soldiers’ swords and hands. Ye should have drowned them in a sea of your own blood; ye should have died, died. His very Father should have called out with dread if ye all had entered.”

Judas paused, raised his hand, and suddenly noticed on the table the remains of a meal. And with a queer amazement, curiously, as if he were looking at food for the first time, he closely scrutinized it and slowly inquired: “What is this? Ye have eaten? Perhaps slept also?”

“I have slept,” curtly replied Peter, dropping his head, scenting already in Judas’ manner a tone of command. “I have slept and eaten.”

Thomas resolutely and firmly interposed: “This is all wrong, Judas. Think: if we had all died, who would have been left to tell about Jesus? Who would carry the teachings of Jesus to the people, if all of us had died, John and Peter and I?”

“And what is truth in the lips of traitors? Does it not turn to falsehood? Thomas, Thomas, dost thou not understand that thou art now a watchman at the grave of dead truth? The watchman falleth asleep, a thief cometh and carrieth away the truth⁠—tell me where is the truth? Be thou accursed, Thomas! Fruitless and beggarly wilt thou be forever, and ye are accursed with Him.”

“Be thou thyself accursed, Satan,” retorted John, and his words were repeated by James and Matthew and all the other disciples. Peter alone was silent.

“I go to Him!” said Judas raising aloft his masterful hand. “Who will follow the Iscariot to Jesus?”

“I! I! I am with thee,” cried Peter rising. But John and the others stopped him with terror, saying: “Madman, dost thou forget that he betrayed our Teacher into the hands of His enemies?”

Peter smote his breast with his fist and wept bitterly.

“Whither shall I go, Lord? O Lord, whither?”

Long ago, during his solitary rambles, Judas had picked out the spot whereon he intended to kill himself after the death of Jesus. It was on the side of the mountain, high over Jerusalem, and only one tree was growing there, twisted all out of shape, knocked about by the wind which tore at it from all sides and half-withered. One of its gnarled and leafbare branches it stretched cut over Jerusalem as though blessing the city or perhaps threatening it, and this one Judas selected whereon to fasten his noose. But the path to the tree was long and difficult, and Judas of Kerioth was very tired. Still the same sharp little stones rolled from under his feet as if dragging him back, and the mountain was high, windswept and gloomy. And Judas sat down for a rest several times, breathing heavily, while from the back through the crevices there swept over him the chilling breath of the mountain.

“Thou too, accursed hill,” contemptuously muttered Judas and breathing heavily he shook his benumbed head wherein all thoughts had turned to stone. Then suddenly he raised it, opening wide his chilled eyes and wrathfully growled:

“No, they are too bad altogether for Judas. Hearest thou, Jesus? Now wilt thou believe me? I am coming. Meet me kindly, for I am weary. I am very weary. Then together, with a brother’s embrace, we shall return to this earth. Is it well?”

And again opening wide his eyes he murmured:

“But perhaps even there thou wilt be angry with Judas of Kerioth? And perhaps thou wilt not believe? And peradventure, thou wilt send me to hell? Well, what then? I shall go to hell. And in the flames of thy hell I shall forge the iron to wreck thy heaven. Well? Wilt thou believe me then? Wilt thou then go back with me to this earth, O Jesus?”

Finally Judas reached the top of the mountain and the gnarled tree and here the wind commenced to torture him. But when Judas had chided it it began to whistle soft and low; the wind started off in another direction and was bidding him farewell.

“Well, well. But those others are curs,” responded Judas making a noose. And as the rope might play him false and break he hung it over the abyss⁠—if it did break he would still find his death upon the rocks. And before pushing himself away from the edge and hanging himself over the precipice, Judas once more carefully admonished Jesus:

“But Thou meet me kindly, for I am very weary, Jesus.”

And he leaped. The rope stretched to its limit, but sustained the weight. The neck of Judas grew thin, while his hands and legs folded and hung down limply as if wet. He died. Thus within two days, one after the other, departed from this earth Jesus of Nazareth and Judas of Kerioth, the Traitor.

All night like some hideous fruit the body of Judas swung over Jerusalem; and the wind turned his face now towards the city now to the desert. But whichever way his death-marred face turned, its red and bloodshot eyes, both of which were now alike, like brothers, resolutely gazed upon the sky. Towards morning some observant one noticed Judas suspended over the city and cried out in terror. Men came and took him down, but learning his identity threw him into a deep ravine where they cast the carcases of horses, dogs, cats and other carrion.

That same night all believers learned of the terrible death of the Traitor, and the next day all Jerusalem knew it. Rocky Judea heard it, and green-clad Galilee too; and from one sea even to another more distant one the news of the death of the Traitor was carried. Not swifter nor slower than the passing of time, but step by step with it, the message spread; and as there is no end to time there will be no end to the stories of Judas’ betrayal and his terrible death. And all⁠—the good and the bad alike⁠—will curse his shameful memory, and among all nations, as many as there are or will ever be, he will remain alone in his cruel fate⁠—Judas of Kerioth, the Traitor.

I

As a rule success had accompanied him in all his undertakings, but during the last three days complications had arisen which were unfavourable, not to say critical. His life, though a short one, had long been a game of terrible hazards; he was accustomed to these sudden turns of chance and could deal with them; the stake had before been life itself, his own and others’, and this by itself had taught him alertness, swiftness of thought, and a cold hard outlook.

Chance this time had turned dangerously against him. A mere fluke, one of those unforeseeable accidents, had provided the police with a clue; for two whole days the detectives had been on his track, a known terrorist and nihilist, drawing the net ever closer round him. One after another the conspirators’ hiding places had been cut off from him; there still remained to him a few streets and boulevards and restaurants where he might go undiscovered. But his terrible exhaustion, after two sleepless nights and days of ceaseless vigilance, had brought in its train a new danger: he might drop off to sleep anywhere, on a seat in the boulevards, even in a cab, and be ludicrously arrested as a common drunk.

It was now Tuesday. On Thursday⁠—only one day to spare⁠—he had to carry out a terrorist act of great importance. The preparations for the assassination had kept the little organization busy for some considerable time. The “honour” of throwing the last and decisive bomb had fallen to him. He must retain self-command at all costs.

But sleep.⁠ ⁠…

It was thus, on that October evening, standing at the crossing of crowded streets, that he decided to take refuge in a brothel. He would have had recourse earlier to this refuge, though none too secure, had it not been for the good reason that all his twenty-six years he had been chaste, had never known women as mere women, had never been in a brothel. Now and then he had had to fight sternly against such desires, but gradually restraint had become habit, and had produced in him an attitude of calmness and complete indifference towards the sex. So now, at the thought of being forced into close contact with a woman who traded in such pleasures, and of perhaps seeing her naked, he had forebodings of any number of unpleasantnesses and awkward moments. True, he had only decided to go to a prostitute now, when his passion was quiescent, when a step had to be taken so important and serious that virginity and the struggle for it lost their value. But in any event it was unpleasant, as might be any other obnoxious incident which must be endured. Once, when assisting in an important act, in which he played the part of second bomb-thrower, he saw a horse which had been killed with its hind parts burst open and the entrails exposed; this incident, its filthy and disgusting character, and its needlessness, gave him a similar sensation⁠—in its way even more unpleasant than the death of a comrade from an exploding bomb. And the more quietly and fearlessly, and even joyously, he anticipated Thursday, when he would probably have to die, the more was he oppressed with the prospect of a night with a woman who practised love as a profession, a thing utterly ridiculous, an incarnation of chaos, senseless, petty, and dirty.

But there was no alternative. He was tottering with fatigue.

II

It was still early when he arrived, about ten o’clock; but the great white hall with its gilded chairs and mirrors was ready for the reception of guests, and all the fires were lighted. The pianist was sitting beside the piano, a dapper young man in a black frock coat⁠—for it was an expensive house. He was smoking, carefully flicking the ash of his cigarette so as not to soil the carpet, and glancing over the music. In the corner near the darkened dining room there sat all arow, on three chairs, three girls whispering to one another.

As he entered with the manageress, two of the girls rose, but the third remained sitting; the two who rose were very décolletée, the third wore a deep black frock. The two looked at him straight, with a look of invitation, half indifferent, half weary; but the third turned aside. Her profile was calm and simple, like that of any proper young maiden⁠—a thoughtful face. Apparently she had been telling a story to the others, and the others had been listening, and now she was continuing the train of thought, telling the rest in silence.

And just because she was silent and reflective and did not look at him, because she had the appearance of a proper woman, he chose her. Never before having been to a brothel he did not know that in every well equipped house of this sort there are one or two such women, dressed in black like nuns or young widows, with pale faces, unrouged, even stern, their task being to provide an illusion of propriety to those who seek it⁠—but when they go with a man to their room, drinking and becoming like the rest, or even worse⁠—brawling and breaking the china, dancing about, undressing and dancing into the hall naked, and even killing men who are too importunate. Such are the women with whom drunken students fall in love, whom they persuade to begin new, honourable lives.

But of all this he knew nothing. And when she rose reluctantly, and looked at him with displeased and averted eyes, glancing at him sharply out of her pale and colourless face, he thought once again, “How very proper she is!”⁠—and felt some relief. But, keeping up the dissimulation, constant, unavoidable, which caused him to have two lives and made his life a stage, he balanced himself elegantly on his feet from his heels to his toes, snapped his fingers, and said to the girl with the careless air of a habitual debauchee:⁠—

“Well, what about it, my dear? Shall we pay you a visit, now, eh? Where is your little nest?”

“Now⁠—at once?” the girl asked, surprised, and raised her eyebrows. He smiled gaily, disclosing even rows of strong straight teeth, blushed deeply, and replied:

“Certainly. Why lose valuable time?”

“There will be some music soon. We can dance.”

“Dance, my fair charmer? Silly twiddles⁠—catching oneself by the tail. As to the music, it can be heard from up there?”

She looked at him and smiled.

“Fairly well.”

She was beginning to like him. He had prominent cheek bones and was clean shaven; his cheeks and the lower part of the mouth, under the clean-cut lips, were slightly blue, as when dark-bearded men shave. He had fine dark eyes, although in expression a little too unswerving; and they moved slowly and heavily, as though every movement were a great distance to be traversed. But despite his shaven face and easy manner, she reasoned, he did not resemble an actor, but rather an acclimatized foreigner.

“You are not a German?” she asked.

“Nnno. Not quite. I mean, I am an Englishman. Do you like Englishmen?”

“But what good Russian you speak! I should never have guessed!”

He recollected his British passport and the affected accent he had been using lately, and he blushed again at the thought of having forgotten to keep up the pretence as he ought to have done. Then with a slight frown, and assuming a businesslike dryness of tone in which a certain amount of weariness was perceptible, he took the girl by the elbow and led her along swiftly.

“No, I am a Russian, Russian. Now, where are we to go? Show me! This way?”

The large mirror showed the full-length figures of the pair sharply and clearly⁠—she in black, pale, and at that distance very pretty; he also in black, and just as pale.

Under the glare of the electric lights hanging from the ceiling his wide forehead and the hard mass of his prominent cheeks were peculiarly pale; and both in his face and the girl’s, where the eyes should have been, there were mysterious, fascinating hollows. And so strange was the picture of such a black stern couple against the white walls, reflected in the broad gilded mirror, that he was startled, and stopped short by the thought: “Like a bride and bridegroom.” And, as his imagination was dulled by want of sleep, and his thoughts brusque and inconsequent, the next moment, looking at the stern pair in mourning black, he thought: “As at a funeral.” And both notions were equally unpleasant.

Apparently his feelings were shared by the girl. She silently, wonderingly glanced at herself and him, him and herself; she tried to wink⁠—but the mirror would not respond to so slight a movement, and in the same dull and obstinate manner persisted in picturing this black shamefast couple. And perhaps this pleased the girl, or recalled something of herself, something sad, for she smiled gently, and lightly pressed his clenched hand.

“What a couple!” she said reflectively, and for some reason or other the dark bow of her eyelashes, with the fine curve of their droop, became more noticeable.

This he did not observe, but resolutely dragged the girl along with him, she tapping her way on high French heels on the parquet flooring.

There was a corridor, as there always is, and narrow dark little rooms with open doors. At one of them inscribed above in irregular handwriting, “Liuba,” they entered.

“And now, Liuba,” he said, looking round and unconsciously rubbing his hands one over the other, as though carefully washing them in cold water, “don’t we want wine and something else? Or some fruit?”

“Fruit is expensive here.”

“That doesn’t matter. Do you drink wine?”

He had forgotten himself and was addressing her as you; he noticed it, but did not correct himself, for there had been something in that touch of her hand which made him unwilling to use the familiar pronoun, or play the lover and act a part. This feeling, too, passed on to her; she stared at him fixedly, and answered deliberately, with some uncertainty in her voice, though none in the language she used.

“Thank you. I do drink. Wait a moment. I will return at once. I will tell them to bring only two pears and two apples. Will that be enough?”

It was now she who was using the pronoun of politeness, and through the tone of voice in which she spoke the word there could be heard the same irresolution, a slight hesitation and interrogation.

But he paid no attention to this. When he was alone, he went swiftly to work surveying the room from all sides. He tested the closing of the door⁠—it closed splendidly, on the latch and on the key; went to the window, opened both casements⁠—it was high up on the second floor and looked out on the courtyard. He frowned and shook his head. Then he experimented on the lights; there were two of them; when the one on the ceiling was switched off, the other by the bed lit up under a little red hood⁠—just as in the best hotels.

But the bed!

He grinned and raised his shoulders, as though laughing silently, distorting his face as people must who are stealthy and for some reason secretive, even when they are alone.

But the bed!

He walked round it, handled the wadded counterpane, and then with a sudden longing to be gay and saucy in his joy at the sleep he was going to have, he twisted his head like a boy, stuck out his lips, made round eyes⁠—all to express his highest degree of amazement. But at once he became serious again, sat down, and wearily waited for Liuba.

He wanted to think of Thursday, that he was now in a brothel⁠—that he was already there⁠—but the thought rebelled and stubbornly resisted him. Outraged sleep was taking its revenge. There on the street, sleep had been so gentle; now it no longer caressed his face, as with a soft downy hand, but made his own hands and feet writhe, and racked his body as though it would rend him asunder.

Suddenly he began yawning, even to the point of tears. He took out his Browning and three full clips of cartridges, and savagely blew down the barrel, as into a key. It was all in order⁠ ⁠… and he longed insufferably for sleep.

When the wine and fruit were brought in, and Liuba came in after them, he shut the door, only on the latch, and said:

“Well⁠ ⁠… all right⁠ ⁠… please help yourself, Liuba. Please do.”

“And you⁠ ⁠… ?” The girl, surprised, looked at him askance.

“I will⁠ ⁠… later on. For two nights, you see, I have been having a gay time of it and have had no sleep, and now.⁠ ⁠…” He yawned frightfully, straining his jaws.

“Well⁠ ⁠… ?”

“I will⁠ ⁠… later. Just an hour. I will⁠ ⁠… soon. And you, please drink and don’t spare. And eat the fruit. Why did you get so little?”

“But may I go into the hall? There will be some music.”

This was inconvenient. They might begin talking about him, the strange guest who had gone to sleep, and might start guessing⁠ ⁠… and that might be awkward. So, lightly restraining a yawn which was already riving his jaws, he said sedately and earnestly:

“No, Liuba. I shall ask you to stay here. You see, I don’t much like sleeping alone in a room. It’s a mere whim, but you will excuse me.⁠ ⁠…”

“Certainly. You have paid your money and.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, yes,” and he blushed for the third time, “quite true, but that isn’t what I mean.⁠ ⁠… And, if you like⁠ ⁠… you can lie down too. I will leave room for you. Only please lie next the wall. You don’t mind?”

“No, I don’t want to sleep. I will just sit here.”

“Will you read?”

“There are no books here.”

“Would you like today’s paper? I have it here. There is something interesting in it.”

“No, thank you.”

“As you like. You know best. But⁠ ⁠… with your permission.⁠ ⁠…”

He shut and locked the door and put the key in his pocket, without noticing the strange look with which the girl followed his movements. This courteous and decent conversation, such a curious conversation in this home of misery where the very air was thick with the vapours of drunken brawls, seemed to him perfectly natural and quite convincing. With the same polite air, as though he were in the company of young ladies, he touched the edge of his frock-coat and asked:

“Do you mind if I take off my coat?”

The girl scowled slightly.

“Certainly. Of course.⁠ ⁠…”

“And my waistcoat? It’s so tight.”

The girl did not answer, but merely shrugged her shoulders.

“Here is my pocketbook⁠ ⁠… and money. Will you be so good as to take care of them for me?”

“You had better leave them at the office. We always deposit such things there.”

“Why?” He looked at the girl, and turned aside in confusion. “Oh, of course⁠ ⁠… but that’s silly!”

“But do you know how much you have on you? Some people don’t know, and then afterwards.⁠ ⁠…”

“I understand. Quite. You desire.⁠ ⁠…”

He lay down, politely leaving room for her by the wall. And enchanting sleep, spaciously smiling, came and nestled with its downy cheek against his, gently fondled him, stroking his knees, and mercifully settling to rest with its soft, velvety head on his shoulder. He smiled.

“What makes you smile?” The girl smiled involuntarily.

“Because I am comfortable.⁠ ⁠… How soft your pillows are! Now we can talk awhile. Why don’t you drink something?”

“I think I shall take off my things⁠ ⁠… if you don’t mind? I shall have to sit still so long.”

Her voice had a touch of mockery. But at the sight of his unsuspecting glance, and hearing his simple.⁠ ⁠… “Certainly, please do”⁠ ⁠… she explained quite simply and seriously: “My corset is so tight. I shall take it off, too⁠ ⁠… if I may.”

“Certainly, you may.”

He turned away, blushing. But, either because insomnia had so addled his thoughts, or because all his life he had been so innocent, his “you may” sounded quite natural to him⁠ ⁠… in a house where all things were allowed and nobody ever thought of asking anybody’s leave about anything.

He heard a rustling of silk and the unbuttoning of a dress⁠—then a question:

“You are not an author?”

“What⁠ ⁠… an author? No, I am not an author. Er⁠ ⁠… do you like authors?”

“No, I do not.”

“Why? They are men.⁠ ⁠…” He yawned⁠—a long satisfying yawn.

“And what is your name?”

Silence⁠ ⁠… and then:

“My name is⁠ ⁠… N⁠—no! Peter.”

“And what are you? What do you do?”

The girl questioned him gently, but watchfully, and in a firm tone. The impression conveyed by her voice might have been that she was moving towards the bed. But he by now had ceased to hear her; he was already sleeping. For one moment an expiring thought had flickered in a single picture, in which time and space melted into a motley of shadows, gloom and light, motion and repose, a single picture of crowds and endless streets and a ceaseless turning of wheels depicted the whole of those two days and nights of frenzied chase. And in an instant all of this was stilled, dimmed, and had passed away⁠—and then in the soft half-light, in the deep shadow, he had an image of one of the picture galleries where, the day before, for two hours, he had eluded his pursuers. He seemed to be sitting on a red velvet divan, which was extraordinarily soft, and staring fixedly at a huge black picture; and such a restfulness proceeded from that old black cracked canvas, his eyes were so much rested, his thoughts reposing so gently, that for some moments, even in his sleep, he began fighting sleep, confusedly afraid of it, as though of an unknown disquietude.

But the music in the hall played on, the frequent little notes with bare heads hairless jostled up and down, and the thought came: “Now I can sleep.” And all at once he fell into a deep slumber. Triumphantly, eagerly, gentle glossy sleep soothed and embraced him⁠—and in profound silence masking their breathing they went their way into a pellucid melting sea.

Thus he slept on⁠—one hour and then another⁠—on his back in the polite posture he had assumed awake, his right hand in his pocket holding the key and his revolver; the girl, neck and arms bare sitting opposite, smoking, sipping cognac, gazing on him. Now and then, to get a better view, she craned her rather thin, flexible neck, and, when she moved, her lips curled with two deep creases of constraint. She had not thought to turn out the hanging lamp, and under the strong light he was neither young nor old nor strange nor intimate, but some unknown being⁠—the cheeks unknown, the nose ending in a bird’s beak of shape unknown, the breathing, so even and powerful and strong, unknown. His thick hair was cut short in military fashion, and she noticed on the left temple, near the eye, a little whitened scar from some former wound. There was no cross strung round his neck.

The music in the hall died down or started afresh⁠—piano and violin and songs and the pit-a-pat of dancing feet; but she sat on, smoking cigarettes and observing the sleeper. She stretched her neck inquisitively to look at his left hand which was lying on his breast⁠—a very broad palm and strong restful fingers; it seemed to weigh heavily on him, to hurt, so with a careful movement she lifted it and let it down gently at the side of the big body on the bed. Then rose swiftly and noisily, and, as though she wanted to smash the switch, roughly turned out the upper lamp, lighting the lower one under the red hood.

But even then he did not stir. His face in the pink light remained as unknown, as terrifying as before, in its immobility and repose.

She turned aside, clasped her knees with her arms, now softly reddening, threw her head back and stared motionless at the ceiling from the dusky hollows of her unblinking eyes. And in her teeth, tightly pressed, there hung a cigarette, half smoked, cold, dead.

III

Something had happened, something unexpected and terrible, something considerable and of consequence, whilst he was sleeping⁠—this much he understood at a flash, even before he was properly awake, at the first sound of a harsh, unknown voice. He took it in with that sharpened sense of danger which to him and his comrades had developed almost into a new special sense. He was up quickly and sat with his hand pressing his revolver hard, his eyes searchingly and sharply exploring the mist of the room. And when he saw her, in the same attitude, with her shoulders of that transparent rosy hue, and her bared breast, and those eyes so enigmatically dark and unswerving, he thought to himself: “She has betrayed me!” Then he looked again more steadily, sighed deeply, and corrected himself: “She hasn’t yet, but she will.”

How miserable it all was!

He drew a deep breath and asked curtly: “Well, what is it?”

She said nothing. She smiled triumphantly and spitefully, looked at him and was silent⁠—as though she already accounted him her own, and without haste or hurry wanted to gloat over her power.

“What did you say just now?” he repeated, with a frown.

“What I said? I said, get up!⁠—that’s what I said. Get up! You’ve been asleep. It’s time to play the game. This isn’t a dosshouse, my dear!”

“Tum on the light,” he commanded.

“I will not.”

He turned it on himself, and under the white light he saw her eyes infinitely wicked and black and painted, and her mouth compressed with hatred and disdain. And he saw the naked arms, and all of her, alien, decisive, ready to do something irrevocable. He saw the prostitute⁠—a creature repellant to him.

“What’s the matter with you? Are you drunk?” he asked, seriously disquieted, and put out a hand to take his high starched collar. But, anticipating his movement, she snatched at the collar, and without looking hurled it somewhere, anywhere, into the room, behind the chest of drawers, into a corner.

“I won’t give it to you!”

“What are you after now?” he asked calmly enough, but gripping her arm with a hard firm pressure all round like an iron ring, so that the fingers of her thin hand drooped powerlessly.

“Let go! You’re hurting me!” she cried, and he held her more gently, but did not release his hold.

“You⁠—look for it!”

“What is it, my dear? Are you going to shoot me? Isn’t that a revolver you have in your pocket? Well, shoot, shoot! I’ll see how you shoot me! Or would you like to tell me why you take a woman and then go to sleep by yourself and tell her to drink⁠—‘Drink, and I’ll go to sleep!’ With his hair cut and clean shaven, so that he thinks nobody will know him! Do you want to go to the police, my dear? To the police, eh?”

She laughed, loud and merrily⁠—and in a way that really frightened him, there was such a savage, despairing joy on her face, as though she had gone mad. And then the idea that all was going to be lost in such a ludicrous fashion, that he would have to commit this silly, cruel, and senseless murder, and yet himself probably perish in vain, struck him with even greater horror. Deadly pale, but externally calm and with the same resolute air, he looked at her, followed her every movement and word, collecting his thoughts.

“Well? Silent now? Lost your tongue?”

He could seize this snaky neck and crush it and she would never be able to utter a shriek. He could do it without compunction; actually, while he held her so firmly, she had been twisting herself about like a snake.

“So you know, Liuba, what I am?”

“I do. You”⁠—she enunciated the words syllable by syllable, harshly and with an air of triumph⁠—“you are a revolutionary! That’s what you are!”

“How do you know?”

She smiled mockingly.

“We aren’t quite in the backwoods here.”

“Well, suppose we admit that I.⁠ ⁠…”

“Pooh, suppose we admit! Let go of my arm! You’re all alike, you men, always ready to use your strength against a woman. Let go!”

He released her arm and sat down, looking at her with a heavy and obstinate wonder. Something was moving about his cheekbones, a little ball of muscle, with a disturbed motion; but his expression was tranquil, serious, somewhat melancholy. And this made him again seem strange and unknown to her⁠—and also very handsome.

“Well, will you know me again?” she exclaimed, and surprised herself by adding a coarse reproof. He raised his brows in surprise and spoke to her calmly, but without averting his eyes, dully, remotely, as from a great distance.

“Listen, Liuba, certainly you can betray me, not only you, but anyone in this house, or in the street. One shout⁠—Halt! arrest him!⁠—and men will come in their tens and hundreds and try to get me⁠—or kill me. And for what reason? Merely because I have done no harm, merely because I have devoted all my life to these very people. Do you understand what it means, to sacrifice one’s life?”

“No, I do not,” the girl retorted harshly, but listening attentively.

“Some do it out of stupidity, some for spite. Because, Liuba, a common man cannot endure a fine man, and the wicked do not love the good.⁠ ⁠…”

“What should they love them for?”

“Don’t think, Liuba, that I am simply praising myself. But just look what my life has been, what it is! From the age of fourteen I have been rubbing along in prisons, expelled from school, expelled from home. My parents drove me out. Once I was nearly shot dead, saved only by a miracle. Try to picture it⁠—all one’s life passed in this way, all for the sake of others, and for oneself, nothing⁠—yes, nothing!”

“And what induced you to be so⁠ ⁠… fine?” she asked jeeringly. But he replied seriously:

“I don’t know. I must have been born so.”

“And I was born such a common sort of thing! And yet I came into the world the same way you did, didn’t I?”

But he was not listening. All his mind was held by the vision of his own past, so unexpectedly, so simply heroic, called up by his own words.

“Yes⁠ ⁠… think of it⁠ ⁠… I’m 26 years old and there are already grey hairs on my head, and yet until today⁠ ⁠…” he hesitated a moment and went on firmly, proudly. “Up to now I have never known a woman.⁠ ⁠… Never⁠ ⁠… do you understand? You are the first I even see⁠ ⁠… like that. And to tell the truth, I am just a little ashamed to be looking at your bare arms.”

The music rose again wildly, and the floor vibrated with the rhythm of dancing feet, broken by a drunken man’s wild whoop, as though he were heading off a herd of stampeding horses. But in the room it was still, and the tobacco smoke rose serenely and melted into a ruddy mist.

“That is what my life has been, Liuba!”

He looked down, thoughtfully and sternly, overcome by the thought of a life so pure, so painfully beautiful. And she made no reply.

Then she got up and threw a wrap around her bare shoulders. But at the sight of his look of astonishment, almost gratitude, she smiled and brusquely threw the wrap off, and so arranged her chemise that one breast, rosy and soft, was left bared. He turned away and slightly shrugged his shoulders.

“Take a drink!” she said.

“No, I never drink anything.”

“What, never drink! But you see, I do!”

“If you’ve got some cigarettes, I’ll have one.”

“They’re very common ones.”

“I don’t care.”

And when he took the cigarette he noticed with pleasure that Liuba had put her chemise straight, and the hope that everything might yet go smoothly rose again. He was a poor smoker; he did not inhale, and womanlike held the cigarette between two straight fingers.

“You don’t even know how to smoke!” the girl exclaimed angrily, and roughly tried to snatch the cigarette from him. “Throw it away!”

“Now, there you are⁠—angry with me again!”

“Yes, I am!”

“But why, Liuba? Just think! For two nights I haven’t had any sleep, running about the town from pillar to post. And now, you’re going to give me up and they’ll have me in jail! That’s a fine finish, isn’t it? But, Liuba, I’ll never give in alive.⁠ ⁠…”

He stopped short.

“Will you shoot?”

“Yes, I shall shoot.”

The music had ceased for a time, but the wild drunken man was still halloing although apparently someone, as a joke or in earnest, had a hand on his mouth, the sounds coming through the compressed fingers even more desperately and savagely. The room reeked no longer with cheap fragrant soap, but with a thick, moist and repulsive odour; on one wall, uncovered, there hung messily and flat some petticoats and blouses. It was all so repugnant, so strange, to think that this also was life⁠—that people were living such a life day in, day out⁠—that he felt dazed and shrugged his shoulders and again looked round slowly.

“What a place this is!” he said, bemused and resting his eyes on Liuba.

“What of it?” she asked curtly.

He looked at her as she stood there, and suddenly understood that she was to be pitied; and as soon as he had grasped this he did pity her⁠—ardently.

“You are poor, Liuba?”

“Well?”

“Give me your hand.”

And, as though to assert in some way his relation to the girl as a human being, he took her hand and respectfully raised it to his lips.

“You mean that⁠ ⁠… for me?”

“Yes, Liuba, for you.”

Then quite quietly, as though thanking him, she said:

“Off you go! Get out of here, you blockhead!”

He did not understand at once.

“What?”

“Off with you. Get out of here! Get out!”

Silently, with a steady step, she crossed the room, picked up the white collar in the corner, and threw it to him with an expression of disgust, as though it had been the dirtiest, filthiest rag. And he, likewise silent, but with an expression of high resolve, without sparing even one glance at the girl, began quietly and slowly buttoning on the collar; but all in a moment, with a savage whine, Liuba struck him on his shaven cheek, with all her strength. The collar fell on the floor; he was shaken from his balance, but steadied himself. Pale, almost blue, but still silent, with the same look of lofty composure and proud incomprehension, he faced her with a stolid, unswerving stare. She was drawing rapid breaths, and staring at him in terror.

“Well?” she gasped.

He looked at her, still silent.

Then, maddened beyond endurance by his haughty unresponsiveness, terror-stricken by the stone wall against which she seemed to have flung herself, the girl lost all control of herself and seizing him by the shoulders forcibly thrust him down upon the bed. She bent over him, her face near his, and eye to eye.

“Well? Why don’t you answer? What are you trying to do with me? You scoundrel⁠—that’s what you are! Kiss my hand, will you? Come here to boast of yourself, will you? To show off your beauty! What are you trying to do with me? Do you think I’m so happy?”

She shook him by the shoulders, and her thin fingers, unconsciously curling and uncurling like a cat’s claws, scratched his body through his shirt.

“And he’s never known a woman, hasn’t he? You brute, you dare come here and brag about this to me⁠—to me for whom any man is simply.⁠ ⁠… Where’s your decency? What do you think you’re doing with me? ‘I’ll never give in alive.’ That’s the tune is it? But I⁠—of course, I’m already dead. You understand, you rascal? I’m dead! But I spit in your face⁠ ⁠… ph!⁠ ⁠… in the face of the living! There! Get out, you brute! Get out of here!”

With anger he could no longer command, he threw her off him and she fell backwards against the wall. Apparently his mind was still confused, for his next movement, equally rapid and decisive, was to seize his revolver and look at its grinning, toothless mouth. But the girl never so much as saw his bespattered face, damp and disfigured with demoniac rage, nor the black revolver. She covered her eyes with her hands, as though to crush them into the farthest recesses of her brain, stepped forward swiftly and steadily, and flung herself on the bed, face down, in a fit of silent sobbing.

Everything had turned out different from what he had anticipated. Out of vapidity and nonsense there had crept forth a chaos⁠—savage, drunken, and hysterical, with a crumpled, distorted face.

He shrugged his shoulders, put away the useless revolver, and began pacing the room, up and down. The girl was crying.

To and fro again. The girl was crying. He stopped beside her, his hands in his pockets, to look at her.

There, under his eyes, face down, lay a woman sobbing frantically in an agony of unbearable sorrow, sobbing as one who looks suddenly back on a wasted life or a better life irretrievably lost. Her naked, finely tapering shoulder blades were heaving as though to heap fuel on the raging furnace within, and sinking as though to compress the tense anguish in her bosom.

The music had started afresh; a mazurka now. And the jingle of spurs could be heard. Some officers must have come.

Such tears he had never seen! He was disconcerted. He took his hands out of his pockets, and said gently:

“Liuba!”

Still she sobbed.

“Liuba! What is the matter, Liuba?”

She answered, but so faintly that he could not hear. He sat by her on the bed, bent his shorn head, and laid a hand on her shoulders; and his hand responded with a quiver to the trembling of those pitiable shoulders.

“I can’t hear what you say, Liuba?”

Then something distant, dull, soaked in tears:

“Wait⁠—before you go⁠ ⁠… over there⁠ ⁠… some officers have arrived. They might see you⁠ ⁠… My God⁠—to think⁠ ⁠… !”

She sat up quickly on the bed, clasping her hands, eyes wide open staring into space in sudden fear. The terror lasted a moment, and then she again lay down and wept. Outside the spurs were jingling rhythmically, and the pianist with revived energy was conscientiously beating out a vigorous mazurka.

“Take a drink of water, Liuba, do! You really must⁠ ⁠… please⁠ ⁠…” he whispered as he bent over her. Her ear was covered with her hair, and fearing that she could not hear, he carefully brushed aside those dark curling locks, and discovered a hot little red shell of an ear.

“Please drink! I beg you!”

“No, I don’t want a drink. There’s no need.⁠ ⁠… It’s all over.”

She had quieted down by now. The sobbing stopped; one more long throe, and the shuddering shoulders were pathetically still; he was gently stroking her neck down to the lace of the chemise.

“Are you better, Liuba?”

She said nothing, but heaved a long sigh and turned round, quickly glancing at him. Then she relaxed and sat up, looked up at him again, and rubbed his face and eyes with the plaits of her hair. She breathed another long sigh and quite gently and simply laid her head on his shoulder, and he as simply put an arm round her and drew her silently closer to him. His fingers touched her naked shoulder, but this no longer disturbed him. And thus they sat a long while without speaking, but with now and then a sigh, staring straight ahead of them into space with unseeing eyes.

Suddenly there was a sound of voices and steps in the corridor, a jingling of spurs, quite gentle and elegant, like that of young officers. The sound came nearer and halted at the door. He rose promptly. Someone was knocking at the door, first tapping with knuckles and then banging with their fists, and a woman’s voice called out:

“Liubka, open the door!”

He looked at her and waited.

“Give me a handkerchief,” she said, without looking at him, and put her hand out. She rubbed her face hard, blew her nose noisily, threw the handkerchief on his knees, and went to the door. He watched and waited. On her way to the door she turned out the light, and it was all at once so dark that he could hear his own rather laboured breathing. And for some reason he sat down again on the creaking bed.

“Well? What is it? What do you want?” she asked through the door, without opening it, her voice calm, but still betraying some uneasiness.

Feminine voices were heard in argument and, cutting through them as scissors cut through a tangle of silk, a male voice, young, persuasive, seeming to proceed from behind strong white teeth and a soft moustache. Spurs jingled as though the speaker were responding with a bow. And⁠—strange!⁠—Liuba smiled.

“No. No! I don’t want to come⁠—Very well, do as you like. No, not for all your ‘lovely Liubas’. I won’t come.” Another knock at the door, laughter, a sound of scolding, more jingling of spurs, and it all moved away from the door, and died out somewhere down the corridor. In the dark, fumbling for his knee with her hand, Liuba sat down by him, but did not lay her head on his shoulder. She explained briefly:

“The officers are starting a dance. They are summoning everybody. They are going to have a cotillion.”

“Liuba,” he said, pleadingly, “please turn on the light. Don’t be angry.”

She got up without a word and switched it on. And now she no longer sat with him but, as before, on the chair facing the bed. Her face was surly, uninviting, but courteous⁠—like that of a hostess who cannot help sitting through an uninvited and overlong visit.

“You are not angry with me, Liuba?”

“No. Why should I be?”

“I wondered just now when you laughed so merrily.”

She laughed without looking up.

“When I feel merry, I laugh. But you can’t leave just now. You’ll have to wait until the officers get away. It won’t be long.”

“Very well. I will wait, thank you, Liuba.”

She laughed again.

“How courteous you are!”

“Don’t you like it?”

“Not too well. What are you by birth?”

“My father is a doctor in the military service. My grandfather was a peasant. We are old-ritualists.”

Liuba, surprised, looked up at him.

“Really? But you don’t wear a cross round your neck.”

“A cross!” he laughed. “We wear our cross on our backs.”

The girl frowned slightly.

“You want to go to sleep? You’d better lie down than waste time in this way.”

“No, I won’t lie down. I don’t want to sleep any more.”

“As you wish.”

There was a long and awkward silence. Liuba gazed downwards and fixed her attention on turning a ring on her finger. He looked round the room; each time be conspicuously avoided meeting the girl’s glance, and rested his eyes on the unfinished glass of cognac. Then, all at once, it became overwhelmingly clear to him, even palpably evident, that all this was no longer what it seemed⁠—that little yellow glass with the cognac, the girl so absorbed in twiddling her ring⁠—and he himself, too, he was no longer himself, but someone else, someone alien and quite apart.⁠ ⁠… Just then the music stopped and there followed a quiet jingle of spurs.⁠ ⁠… He seemed to himself to have lived at some time, not in this house, but in a place very much like it; and that he had been an active and even important person to whom something was now happening. That strange feeling was so powerful that he shuddered and shook his head; and the feeling soon left him, but not altogether; there remained some faint inexpungible trace of the turbulent memories of that which had never been. And quite often, in the course of this unusual night, he caught himself at a point whence he was looking down on some object or person, trying anxiously to recall them out of the deep darkness of the past, even out of what had never existed.

Had he not known it for a thing impossible, he would have said that he had already been here on some occasion, so familiar and habitual had it all become. And this was unpleasant; it had already imperceptibly estranged him from himself and his comrades, and mysteriously made him a part of this institution, part of its wild and loathesome life.

Silence became oppressive.

“Why aren’t you drinking?” he asked.

She shivered.

“What?”

“You haven’t finished your glass, Liuba. Why don’t you?”

“I don’t want to⁠—by myself.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t drink.”

“And I don’t drink by myself.”

“I would rather eat a pear.”

“Pray do so. They are here for that purposes.”

“Wouldn’t you like a pear?”

The girl did not answer, but turned aside and caught his glance resting on her naked and translucently rosy shoulders, and flung a grey knitted shawl over them.

“It’s rather cold,” she said abruptly.

“Yes, a little cold,” he agreed, although it was very warm in that little room.

And again there was a long and tense silence. From the hall could be heard the catchy rhythm of a noisy ritornello.

“They are dancing,” he said.

“They are dancing,” she replied.

“What was it made you so angry with me, that you struck me, Liuba?”

The girl hesitated and then answered sharply.

“There was nothing else for it so I struck you. I didn’t kill you, so why make a fuss about it?”

Her smile was ugly.

There was nothing else for it? She was looking straight at him with her dark rounded eyes, with a pallid and determined smile. Nothing else for it? He noticed a little dimple in her chin. It was hard to believe that this same head, this evil pallid head, had been lying on his shoulder a minute or two ago, that he had been caressing her!

“So that’s the reason,” he said gloomily. He paced to and fro in the room once or twice, but not toward the girl; and when he sat down again in the same place his face wore a strangely sullen and rather haughty expression. He said nothing, but, raising his eyebrows, stared at the ceiling where there played a spot of light with red edges. Something was crawling across it, something small and black, probably a belated autumn fly, revived by the heat. It had been brought to life in the night, and certainly understood nothing and would soon die. He sighed.

But now she laughed aloud.

“What is there to make you merry?” He looked up coldly and turned aside.

“I suppose⁠—you are very much like the author. You don’t mind? He too at first pities me, and then gets angry, because I do not adore him as though he were an icon. He’s so touchy. If he were God, he’d never forgive even one candle,” she smiled.

“But how do you know any authors? You don’t read anything.”

“There is one⁠ ⁠…” she said curtly.

He pondered, fixing on the girl his unswerving gaze, too calm in its scrutiny. Living in a turmoil himself, he began vaguely to recognize in the girl a rebellious spirit; and this agitated him and made him try to puzzle out why it was that her wrath had fallen on him. The fact that she had dealings with authors, and probably talked with them, that she could sometimes assume such an air of quiet dignity and yet could speak with such malice⁠—all this gave her interest and endowed her blow with the character of something more earnest and serious than the mere hysterical outburst of a half-drunk, half-naked prostitute. At first he had been only indignant, not offended; but now, in this interval of reflection, he was gradually becoming affronted, and this not only intellectually.

“Why did you hit me, Liuba? When you strike anyone in the face, you should tell them why.”

He repeated his question sullenly and persistently. Obstinacy and stony hardness were expressed in his prominent cheekbones and the heavy brow that overshadowed his eyes.

“I don’t know,” she replied with the same obduracy, but avoiding his gaze.

She did not wish to answer him. He shrugged his shoulders, and again went on, pertinaciously staring at the girl and weaving his fancies. His thought, usually sluggish, once aroused worked forcibly and could not be deterred⁠—worked almost mechanically, turning into something like a hydraulic press which slowly sinking powders up stones and bends iron beams and crushes anyone that falls beneath it⁠—slowly, indifferently, irresistibly. Turning neither to the left nor to the right, unmoved by sophisms, evasions, allusions, his thought would push forward clumsily and heavily until it ground itself down or reached the logical extreme beyond which lay the void and mystery. He did not dissociate his thought from himself; he thought integrally, with the whole of his body; and each logical deduction forthwith became real to him⁠—as happens only with very healthy or direct persons who have not yet turned thought into a pastime.

And now, alarmed, driven out of his course, like a heavy locomotive that has slipped its rails on a pitch dark night and by some miracle continues leaping over hillocks and knolls, he was seeking a road and could not anyhow find it. The girl was still silent and evidently did not wish to talk.

“Liuba, let us have a quiet talk. We must try to.⁠ ⁠…”

“I don’t want to have a quiet talk.”

Then again:

“Listen, Liuba. You hit me, and I cannot let matters rest at that.”

The girl smiled.

“No? What will you do with me? Go to the police-court?”

“No, but I shall keep coming to you until you explain.”

“You will be welcome. Madame gets her profit.”

“I shall come tomorrow. I shall come.⁠ ⁠…”

And then, suddenly, almost simultaneously with the thought that neither tomorrow nor the day after would he be able to come, there flashed upon him the surmise, almost certainty, why the girl had struck him. His face cleared.

“Oh, that’s it then! That’s why you struck me⁠—because I pitied you? I offended you with my compassion? Yes, it is very stupid⁠ ⁠… but really, I didn’t mean to⁠—though of course it hurts. After all, you are human, just as I am.⁠ ⁠…”

“Just as you are?” she smiled.

“Well, let that pass. Give me your hand. Let’s be friends.”

She turned pale.

“You want me to smack your face again?”

“Give me your hand⁠—as friends⁠—as friends,” he repeated sincerely, but for some reason in a low voice.

But Liuba got up, and moving a little distance away said:

“Do you know⁠ ⁠… either you are a fool or you have been very little beaten!”

She looked at him and laughed aloud.

“My God, yes! My author! A most perfect author! How could one help hitting you, my dear?”

She apparently chose the word author purposely, and with some special and definite meaning. And then, with supreme disdain, taking no more account of him than of a chattel or hopeless imbecile or drunkard, she walked freely up and down, and jeered:

“Or was it that I hit you too hard? What are you whining about?”

He made no reply.

“My author says that I’m a hard fighter. Perhaps he has a finer face. However hard one smacks your cheeks you seem to feel nothing! Oh, I’ve knocked lots of people’s mouths about, but I’ve never been so sorry for anyone as for my author. ‘Hit away,’ he says, ‘I deserve it.’ A drunken slobberer! It’s disgusting hitting him. He’s a brute. But I hurt my hand on your face. Here⁠—kiss it where it smarts!”

She thrust her hand to his lips and withdrew it swiftly. Her excitement was increasing. For some minutes it seemed as though she were choking in a fever; she rubbed her breast, breathing deeply through her open mouth, and unconsciously gripped the window curtains. And twice she stopped as she went to and fro to pour out a glass of cognac. The second time he remarked in a surly tone.

“You said you didn’t drink alone.”

“I have no consistency, my dear,” she replied, quite simply. “I’m drugged, and unless I drink at intervals I stifle⁠ ⁠… This revives me.”

Then all at once, as if she had only just noticed him, she raised her eyes in surprise, and laughed.

“Ah! There you are⁠—still there! Not gone yet! Sit down, sit down!” With a savage light in her eyes, she threw off the knitted wrap, again baring her rosy shoulders and thin soft arms. “Why am I all wrapped up like this? It’s hot here and I⁠ ⁠… I must have been saving him! How kind!⁠ ⁠… Look here, you might at least take your trousers off. It’s only good manners here to do without your trousers. If your drawers are dirty I’ll give you mine. Oh, never mind the slit. Here, put them on. Now, my dear boy, you must, you’ll have to.⁠ ⁠…”

She laughed until she choked, begging and putting out her hands. Then she knelt down, clasping his hands, and implored him:⁠—

“Now, my darling, do! And I’ll kiss your hand!”

He moved away, and, with an air of sullen grief, said:

“What are you trying to do with me, Liuba? What have I done to you? My relations with you are quite proper. I’m being perfectly decent to you. What are you doing? What is it? Have I offended you? If I have, forgive me. You know, I am⁠ ⁠… I don’t know about these things.”

With a contemptuous shrug of her naked shoulders, Liuba rose from her knees and sat down, breathing heavily.

“You mean you won’t put them on.”

“I’m sorry, but I should look.⁠ ⁠…”

He began saying something, hesitated and continued irresolutely, drawling his words.

“Listen, Liuba.⁠ ⁠… It’s quite true!⁠ ⁠… It’s all such nonsense! But, if you wish it, then we can put out the light? Yes, put out the light, please, Liuba.”

“What?” The girl’s eyes opened wide in bewilderment.

“I mean,” he continued hurriedly, “that you are a woman and I am⁠ ⁠… certainly I was in the wrong.⁠ ⁠… Don’t think it was compassion, Liuba. No, really it wasn’t. Really not, Liuba. I⁠ ⁠… but turn out the light, Liuba.”

With an agitated smile he put out his hands to her in the clumsy caressing way of a man who has never had to do with women. And this is what he saw: she clenched her fists with a slow effort and raised them to her chin and became, as it were, one immense gasp contained in her swelling bosom, her eyes huge and staring with horror and anguish and inexpressible contempt.

“What is the matter, Liuba?” he asked, shattered. And with a cold horror, without unclasping her fingers, almost inaudibly she exclaimed:

“Oh, you brute! My God, what a brute you are!”

Crimson with the shame of the reproof, and outraged in that he had himself committed outrage, he stamped furiously on the floor and hurled abuse in rough curt words at those wide staring eyes with their unfathomable terror and pain.

“You prostitute, you! You refuse! Silence! Silence!”

But she still quietly shook her head and repeated:

“My God! My God! What a brute you are.”

“Silence, you slut! You’re drunk. You’ve gone mad! Do you think I need your filthy body? Do you think it’s for such as you that I’ve kept myself? Sluts like you ought to be flogged!” And he lifted his hand as though to box her ears, but did not touch her.

“My God! My God!”

“And they even pity you! You ought to be extirpated, all this abomination and vice! Those who go with you, too⁠—all that rabble! And you dare to think me anything of that sort!”

He roughly took her by the hand and flung her on the chair.

“Oh, you fine man! Fine? Fine, are you?” She laughed in a transport of delight.

“Fine? Yes. All my life! Honourable! Pure! But you? What are you, you harlot, you miserable beast?”

“A fine man!” The delight of it was intoxicating her.

“Yes, fine. After tomorrow I shall be going to my death, for mankind, for you⁠ ⁠… and you? You’ll be sleeping with my executioners. Call your officers in here! I’ll fling you at their feet and tell them, ‘Take your carrion!’ Call them in!”

Liuba slowly rose to her feet, and when, in a tempest of emotion, with proud distended nostrils, he looked at her, he was met by a look as proud and even more disdainful. Even pity shone in the arrogant eyes of the prostitute; she had mounted miraculously a step of the invisible throne and thence, with a cold and stern attention, gazed down on something at her feet⁠—something petty, clamorous, pitiable. She no longer smiled; there was no trace of excitement; her eyes involuntarily seemed to look for the little step on which she was standing, so conscious was she of the new height from which she looked down on all things beneath her.

“What are you?” he repeated, without moving away, as vehement as ever, but already subdued by that calm, haughty gaze.

Then, with an ominous air of conviction, behind which lay a vista of millions of crushed lives and oceans of bitter tears and the unchecked fiery course of rebellion’s cry for justice, she asked sternly:

“What right have you to be fine when I am so common?”

“What?” he did not understand at once, but instantly felt a dread of the gulf that yawned in all its blackness at his very feet.

“I have been waiting for you for a long time.”

“You⁠—waiting for me?”

“Yes, I have been waiting for a fine man. For five years I have been waiting⁠—perhaps longer. All those who came admitted they were brutes⁠—and brutes they were. My author first said he was fine, but then admitted he was a brute, too. I don’t want that sort.”

“What, then⁠—what do you want?”

“I want you, my darling⁠—you. Yes, just such as you.” She scrutinized him carefully and quietly from head to foot and affirmatively nodded her head. “Yes⁠—thank you for coming.”

Then he who feared nothing, trembled.

“What do you want with me?” he asked, stepping back.

“It had to be a fine man, my dear, a really fine man. Those other drivellers⁠—its no good striking them⁠—you only dirty your hands. But now that I have struck you⁠—why, I can kiss my own hand! Little hand, you have hit a fine man!” She smiled, and did in fact three times stroke and kiss her right hand.

He looked at her wildly, and his usually deliberate thoughts coursed with the speed of desperation. There was approaching, like a black cloud, a Thing, terrible and irreparable as death.

“What⁠—what did you say?”

“I said it’s shameful to be fine. Didn’t you know that?”

“I never⁠—” he muttered, and sat down, deeply confused and no longer fully conscious of her.

“Then learn it now.”

She spoke calmly, and only the swelling of her half-bared bosom betrayed how profound the emotion was that lay suppressed behind that myriad cry.

“Do you realise it now?”

“What?” He was recovering himself.

“Do you realise it, I say?”

“Have patience!”

“I am patient, my dear. I have waited five years. Why shouldn’t I be patient for another five minutes?”

She sat back comfortably on the chair, as though in anticipation of a rare pleasure, and crossed her naked arms and closed her eyes.

“You say it’s shameful to be fine?”

“Yes, my pet, shameful.”

“But⁠—what you say is.⁠ ⁠…” He stopped short in terror.

“… is so! Are you afraid? Never mind, never mind⁠—it’s only at first that it’s frightening.”

“But afterwards?”

“You are going to stay with me and learn what comes afterwards.”

He did not understand.

“How can I stay?”

The girl, in her turn, was startled.

“Can you go anywhere now, after this? Look, dear, don’t be deceitful. You’re not a scoundrel like the others. You are really fine, and you will stay. It wasn’t for nothing I waited for you.”

“You’ve gone mad!” he exclaimed sharply.

She looked up at him sternly, and even threatened him with her finger.

“That’s not fine. Don’t speak like that. When a truth comes to you, bow down humbly before it and do not say: ‘You have gone mad.’ That’s what my author says, ‘you’ve gone mad!’ But you be honourable!”

“And what if I don’t stay?” he asked with a wan smile, his lips distorted and pale.

“You will,” she said with conviction. “Where can you go now? You have nowhere to go. You are honourable. I saw it the moment you kissed my hand. A fool, I thought, but honourable. You are not offended that I mistook you for a fool? It was your own fault. Well⁠—why did you offer me your innocence? You thought: I will give her my innocence and she will renounce it. Oh, you fool! You fool! At first I was even offended. Why, I thought, he doesn’t even consider me a human being! And then I saw that this, too, came from this fineness of yours. And this was your calculation: I pay her my innocence, and in return I shall be even purer than before and receive it back like a new shilling that hasn’t been in circulation. I give it to the beggar and it will come back to me.⁠ ⁠… No, my dear, that game is not coming off!”

“N⁠—not coming off?”

“N⁠—no, dear,” she drawled, “for I am not a fool. I’ve seen enough of these tradespeople. They pile up millions and then give a pound to a church and imagine they have righted themselves. No, dear, you must build me an entire church. You must give me the most precious thing you have, your innocence. Perhaps you are only giving up your innocence because it has become useless to you, because it has tarnished. Are you getting married?”

“No.”

“Supposing you had a bride awaiting you tomorrow with flowers and embraces and love, then would you give away your innocence, or not?”

“I don’t know,” he said reflectively.

“This is what I mean. I should have said: Take my life, but leave me my honour. You would give away the cheaper of the two. But, no⁠—you must give me the dearest thing of all, the thing without which you cannot live⁠—that and nothing else!”

“But why should I give it away? Why?”

“Why? Only that it may not be shameful to you.”

“But, Liuba!” he exclaimed in bewilderment. “Listen! You yourself are.⁠ ⁠…”

“Fine, you were going to say? I’ve heard that too from my author, more than once. But, my dear, that is not the truth. I’m just an ordinary girl, and you will stay and then you will know it.”

“I will not stay,” he cried aloud, between his teeth.

“Don’t shriek, my dear. Shrieks avail nothing against the truth⁠—I know that for myself.” And then in a whisper, looking straight in his eyes, she added: “For God, too, is fine!”

“Well, and then?”

“There’s no more to be said. Think it out for yourself, and I’ll stop talking. It’s only five years since I went to church. That’s the truth.”

Truth? What truth? What was this unexplored terror, that he had never met before either in the face of death or in life itself? Truth?

Square-cheeked, hardheaded, conscious only of the conflict in his soul, he sat there resting his head on his hands and slowly turning his eyes as though from one extreme of life to the other. And life was collapsing⁠—as a badly glued chest, rained upon in the autumn, falls into unrecognisable fragments of what had been so beautiful. He remembered the good fellows with whom he had lived his life and worked in a marvellous union of joy and sorrow⁠—and they seemed strange to him and their life incomprehensible and their work senseless. It was as though someone with mighty fingers had taken hold of his soul and snapped it in two, as one snaps a stick across one’s knee, and flung the fragments far apart. It was only a few hours since he left there⁠—and all his life seemed to have been spent here, in front of this half-naked woman, listening to the distant music and the jingling of spurs; and that it would always be so. And he did not know which side to turn, up or down, but only that he was opposed, tormentingly opposed, to all that had that day become part of his very life and soul. Shameful to be fine.⁠ ⁠…

He recalled the books which had taught him how to live, and he smiled bitterly. Books! There before him was one book, sitting with bare shoulders, closed eyes, an expression of beatitude on a pale distracted face, waiting patiently to be read to the end. Shameful to be fine.⁠ ⁠…

And, all at once, with unbearable pain, grief-stricken, affrighted, he realized once and for all that that life was done with, that it had already become impossible for him to be fine!

He had only lived in that he was fine, it had been his only joy, and his only weapon in the battle of life and death.

All this was gone. Nothing was left. The Dark! Whether he stayed there or returned to his own people⁠ ⁠… now, for him, his comrades were no more.

Why had he come to this accursed house! Better had he remained on the street, surrendered to the police, gone to prison where it was possible and even not disgraceful to be fine. And now it was too late even for prison.

“Are you crying?” the girl asked, perturbed.

“No,” he answered curtly. “I never cry.”

“And no need, dearie; we women can weep; you needn’t. If you wept, too, who would there be to give an answer to God?”

She was his? This woman was his?

“Liuba,” he cried in anguish, “what can I do? What can I do?”

“Stay with me. You can stay with me, for now you are mine.”

“And They?”

The girl frowned.

“What sort of people are They?”

“Men! Men!” he exclaimed in a frenzy. “Men with whom I used to work. It was not for myself⁠—no, not for self-satisfaction that I bore all this, that I was getting ready to carry out this assassination!”

“Don’t talk to me about those people,” she said sternly, though her lips trembled. “Don’t mention them to me or I shall quarrel with you again. You hear me?”

“But what are you?” he asked amazed.

“I?⁠—perhaps a cur! And all of us curs! But dearie, be careful! You’ve been able to take shelter behind us, and so be it. But do not try to hide from Truth; you will never elude her. If you must love mankind, then pity our sorry brotherhood.”

She was sitting with her hands clasped behind her head, in an attitude of blissful repose, foolishly happy, almost beside herself. She moved her head from side to side, her eyes half closed in a daydream, spoke slowly, almost chanting her words.

“My own! My love! We will drink together! We will weep together. Oh, how delightful it will be to weep with you, dear one. I would so weep all my life. He has stayed with me. He has not gone away. When I saw him today, in the glass, it burst upon me at once: This is he!⁠—my betrothed!⁠—my darling! And I do not know who you are, brother or bridegroom of mine. But oh, so closely kin, so much desired.⁠ ⁠…”

He, too, remembered that black dumb pair in the gilded mirror⁠—and the passing thought: as at a funeral. And all at once the whole thing became so intolerably painful, seemed so wild a nightmare, that he ground his teeth in his grief. His thoughts travelled farther back; he remembered his treasured revolver in his pocket, the two days of constant flight, the plain door that had no handle, and how he looked for a bell, and how a fat lackey who had not yet got his coat on straight had come out in a dirty printed linen shirt, and how he had entered with the proprietress into that white hall and seen those three strange girls.

And with it all a feeling of growing freedom came over him and at last he grasped that he was, as he had ever been, free⁠—absolutely free⁠—that he could go wherever he liked.

Sternly now he surveyed that strange room, severely, with the conviction of a man aroused for an instant from a debauch, seeing himself in foreign surroundings and condemning what he sees.

“What is all this? How idiotic! What a senseless nightmare!”

But⁠—the music was still playing on. But⁠—the woman was still sitting with her hands clasped behind her head, smiling, unable to speak, almost fainting under the load of a happiness beyond sense and experience. But⁠—this was not a dream!

“What is all this? Is this⁠—Truth?”

“Truth, my darling! You and I inseparable!”

This was Truth? Truth⁠—those crumpled petticoats hanging on the wall in their bare disorder? Truth⁠—that carpet on which thousands of drunken men had scuffled in spasms of hideous passion? Truth⁠—this stale, moist fragrance, loathesomely cleaving to the face? Truth⁠—that music and the jingling spurs? Truth⁠—that woman with her pale and harassed face and smile of pitiful bliss?

Again he rested his heavy head on his hands, looking askance with the eyes of a wolf at bay; and his thoughts ran on without connection.

So she was Truth!⁠ ⁠… That meant that tomorrow and the day after he would not go, and everyone would know why he had not gone, that he had stayed with a girl, drinking; and they would call him traitor and coward and rascal. Some would intercede for him⁠—would guess⁠ ⁠… no, better not count on that, better see it all as it was! All over then? Was this the end? Into the dark⁠—thus⁠—into the dark? And what lay beyond? He did not know. In the dark? Probably some new horror. But then as yet he did not understand their ways. How strange that one had to learn to be common! And from whom? From her? No, she was no use. She didn’t know anything. He would find out for himself. One had to become really common oneself in order to.⁠ ⁠… Yes, he would wreck something that was great! And then? And then, some day he would come back to her, or where they were drinking, or into a prison, and he would say: “Now I am not ashamed, now I am not guilty in any respect in your eyes. Now I am one like you, besmirched, fallen, unhappy!” Or he would go into the open street and say: “Look at me, what I am! I had everything⁠—intellect, honour, dignity⁠—stranger still, immortality. And all this I flung at the feet of a whore. I renounced it all because she was common!” What would they say? They would gape, and be astounded, and say, “What a fool!” Yes⁠—yes, a fool! Was he guilty because he was fine? Let her⁠—let everyone⁠—try to be fine! “Sell all thou hast and give to the poor.” But that was just what he had done, all that he had. But this was Christ⁠—in whom he did not believe.⁠ ⁠… Or perhaps.⁠ ⁠… “He who loses his soul”⁠—not his life, but his soul.⁠ ⁠… That was what he was contemplating. Perhaps⁠ ⁠… did Christ himself sin with the sinners, commit adultery, get drunk? No, he only forgave those who did, and even loved them. Well, so did he love and forgive and pity her. Then, why sacrifice himself? For she was not of the faith. Nor he. Nor was this Christ; but something else, something more dreadful.

“Oh, this is dreadful, Liuba!”

“Dreadful, darling? Yes, it is dreadful to see Truth.”

Truth⁠—again she named it! But what made it dreadful? Why should he dread what he so desired? No⁠—no⁠—there was nothing to fear. There, in the open, in front of all those gaping mouths, would he not be the highest of them all? Though naked and dirty and ragged⁠—and his face would be horrible then⁠—he who had lost abandoned himself, would he not be the terrible proclaimer of justice eternal, to which God himself must submit⁠—otherwise he were not God?

“There is nothing dreadful about it, Liuba.”

“Yes, darling, there is. You are not afraid, and that is well. But do not provoke it. There is no need to do that.”

“So that is it⁠—that is my end! It is not what I expected⁠—not what I expected for the end of my young and beautiful life. My God, but this is senseless! I must have gone mad! Still it is not too late⁠ ⁠… not too late⁠ ⁠… I can still escape.”

“My darling,” the woman was murmuring, her hands still clasped behind her head.

He glanced at her and frowned. Her eyes were blissfully closed; a happy, unthinking smile upon her lips expressed an unquenchable thirst, an insatiable hunger, as though she had just tasted something and was preparing for more.

He looked down on her and frowned⁠—on her thin soft arms, on the dark hollows of her armpits; and he got up without any haste. With a last effort to save something precious⁠—life or reason, or the good old Truth⁠—without any flurry, but solemnly, he began dressing himself. He could not find his collar.

“Tell me, have you seen my collar?”

“Where are you going?” The woman looked round. Her hands fell away from her head, and the whole of her strained forward towards him.

“I am going away.”

“You are going away?” she repeated, dragging the words. “You are going? Where?”

He smiled derisively.

“As if I had nowhere to go! I am going to my comrades.”

“To the fine folk? Have you cheated me?”

“Yes. To the fine folk.” Again the same smile. He had finished dressing, he was feeling his pockets.

“Give me my pocketbook.”

She handed it to him.

“And my watch.”

She gave it to him. They had been lying together on the little table.

“Goodbye.”

“Are you frightened?”

The question was quiet and simple. He looked up. There stood a woman, tall and shapely, with thin, almost childlike arms, a pale smile, and blanched lips, asking: “Are you frightened?”

How strangely she could change! Sometimes forceful and even terrible, she was now pathetic and more like a girl than a woman. But all this was of no account. He stepped toward the door.

“But I thought you were going to stay.⁠ ⁠…”

“What?”

“The key’s in your pocket⁠—for my sake.”

The lock was already creaking.

“Very well, then! Go⁠ ⁠… go to your comrades and.⁠ ⁠…”

It was then, at the last moment, when he had nothing to do but to open the door and go out and seek his comrades and end a noble life with a heroic death⁠—it was then he committed the wild, incomprehensible act that ruined his life. It may have been a frenzy that sometimes unaccountably seizes hold of the strongest and calmest minds; or it may have been actually that, through the drunken scraping of a fiddle somewhere in that bawdy house, through the sorcery of the downcast eyes of a prostitute, he discovered a last new terrible truth of life, a truth of his own, which none other could see and understand. Whichever it were⁠—insanity or revelation, lies or truth, this new understanding of his⁠—he accepted it manfully and unconditionally, with that inflexible spirit which had drawn his previous life along one straight, fiery line, directing its flight like the feathers on an arrow.

He passed his hand slowly, very slowly, over his hard, bristly skull, and, without even shutting the door, simply returned and sat in his former place on the bed. His broad cheekbones, his paleness, made him look more than ever a foreigner.

“What’s the matter? Have you forgotten something?”

The girl was astonished. She no longer expected anything.

“No.”

“What is it? Why don’t you go?”

Quietly, with the expression of a stone on which life has engraved one last commandment, grim and new, he answered:

“I do not wish to be fine.”

She still waited, not daring to believe, suddenly shrinking from what she had so much sought and yearned for. She knelt down. He smiled gently, and in the same new and impressive manner stood over her and placed his hand on her head and repeated:

“I do not want to be fine.”

The woman busied herself swiftly in her joy. She undressed him like a child, unlaced his boots, fumbling at the knots, stroked his head, his knees, and never so much as smiled⁠—so full was her heart. Then she looked up into his face and was afraid.

“How pale you are! Drink something now⁠—at once! Are you feeling ill, Peter?”

“My name is Alexis.”

“Never mind that. Here, let me give you some in a glass. Well, take care then; don’t choke yourself! If you’re not used to it, it’s not so easy as out of a glass.”

She opened her mouth, seeing him drink with slow, sceptical gulps. He coughed.

“Never mind! You’ll be a good drinker, I can see that! Oh, how happy I am!”

With an animal cry she leapt on him, and began smothering him with short, vigorous kisses, to which he had no time to respond. It was funny⁠—she was a stranger, yet kissed so hard! He held her firmly for a moment, held her immovable, and was silent awhile, himself motionless⁠—held her as though he too felt the strength of quiescence, the strength of a woman, as his own strength. And the woman, joyously, obediently, became limp in his arms.

“So be it!” he said, with an imperceptible sigh.

The woman bestirred herself anew, burning in the savagery of her joy as in a fire. Her movements filled the room, as if she were not one but a score of half-witted women who spoke, stirred, went to and fro, kissed him. She plied him with cognac, and drank more herself. Then a sudden recollection seized her; she clasped her hands.

“But the revolver⁠—we forgot that! Give it to me⁠—quick, quick! I must take it to the office.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I’m scared of the thing! Would it go off at once?”

He smiled, and repeated:

“Would it go off at once? Yes, it would. At once!”

He took out his revolver, and, deliberately weighing in his hand that silent and obedient weapon, gave it to the girl. He also handed her the cartridge clips.

“Take them!”

When he was left alone and without the revolver he had carried so many years, the half open door letting in the sound of strange voices and the clink of spurs, he felt the whole weight of the great burden he had taken on his shoulders. He walked silently across the room in the direction where They were to be found, and said one word:

“Well?”

A chill came over him as he crossed his arms, facing Them; and that one little word held many meanings⁠—a last farewell⁠—some obscure challenge, some irrevocable evil resolution to fight everyone, even his own comrades⁠—a little, a very little, sense of reproach.

He was still standing there when Liuba ran in, excitedly calling to him from the door.

“Dearie, dearie, now don’t be angry. I’ve asked my friends here, some of them. You don’t mind? You see, I want so much to show them my sweetheart, my darling; you don’t mind? They’re dears! Nobody has taken them this evening and they’re all alone. The officers have gone to bed now. One of them noticed your revolver and liked it. A very fine one, he said. You don’t mind? You don’t mind, dear?” And the girl smothered him with short, sharp kisses.

The women were already coming in, chattering and simpering⁠—five or six of the ugliest or oldest of the establishment⁠—painted, with drooping eyes, their hair combed up over their brows. Some of them affected attitudes of shame, and giggled; others quietly eyed the cognac, and looking at him earnestly shook hands. Apparently they had already been to bed; they were all in scanty wrappers; one very fat woman, indolent and indifferent, had come in nothing but a petticoat, her bare arms and corpulent bosom incredibly fat. This fat woman, and another one with an evil birdlike aged face, on which the white paint lay like dirty stucco on a wall, were quite drunk; the others were merry. All this mob of women, half naked, giggling, surrounded him; and an intolerable stench of bodies and stale beer rose and mingled with the clammy, soapy air of the room. A sweating lackey hurried in with cognac, dressed in a tight frocks coat much too small for him, and the girls greeted him with a chorus of:

“Màrkusha! Oh, Màrkusha! Dear Màrkusha!”

Apparently it was a custom of the house to greet him with such exclamations, for even the fat drunken woman murmured lazily, “Màrkusha!”

They drank and clinked glasses, all talking at once about affairs of their own. The evil-looking woman with the birdlike face was irritably and noisily telling of a guest who took her for a time⁠ ⁠… and then something had happened. There was much interchange of gutterswords and phrases, pronounced not with the indifference of men, but with a peculiar asperity, even acidity; and every object was called by its proper name.

At first they paid little heed to him, and he maintained an obstinate silence, merely looking on. Liuba, full of her happiness, sat quietly beside him on the bed, one arm about his neck, herself drinking little, but constantly plying him, and from time to time whispering in his ear, “Darling!”

He drank heavily, but it did not make him tipsy; what was happening in him was something different, something which strong alcohol often secretly effects. Whilst he drank and sat there silent, the work was going on in him, vast, destructive, swift, and numbing. It was as though all he had known in his past life, all he had loved and meditated⁠—talks with companions, books, perilous and alluring tasks⁠—was noiselessly being burned, annihilated without a trace, and he himself not injured in the process, but rather made stronger and harder. With every glass he drank he seemed to return to some earlier self of his, to some primitive rebel ancestor, for whom rebellion was religion and religion rebellion. Like a colour being washed away in boiling water, his foreign bookish wisdom was fading and was being replaced by something of his very own, wild and dark as the black earth⁠—from whose bleak stretches, from the infinitudes of slumbrous forest and boundless plain, blew the wind that was the life-breath of this ultimate blind wisdom of his; and in this wind could be heard the tumultuous jangling of bells, and through it could be seen the bloodred dawn of great fires, and the clank of iron fetters, and the rapture of prayer, and the Satanic laughter of myriad giant throats; and above his uncovered head the murky dome of the sky.

Thus he sat. Broad cheeked, pallid, already quite at home with these miserable creatures racketing around him. And, in his soul, laid waste by the conflagration of a desolated world, there glowed and gleamed, like a white fire of incandescent steel, one thing alone⁠—his flaming will; blind now and purposeless, it was still greedily reaching out afar, while his body, undisturbed, was secretly being steeled in the feeling of limitless power and ability to create all things or to shatter all things at will.

Suddenly he hammered on the table with his fist.

“Drink, Liubka! Drink!”

And when, radiant and smiling, she had poured herself out a glass, he lifted his, and cried aloud.

“Here’s to our Brotherhood!”

“You mean Them?” whispered Liuba.

“No, these. To our Brotherhood! To the blackguards, brutes and cowards, to those who are crushed by life, to those perishing from syphilis, to.⁠ ⁠…”

The other girls laughed, the fat one indolently objecting:

“Oh, come, that’s going a bit too far, my dear!”

“Hush!” said Liuba, turning very pale, “He is my betrothed.”

“To those who are blind from birth! Ye who can see, pluck out your eyes! For it is shameful”⁠—and he banged on the table⁠—“it is shameful for those who have sight to look upon those who are blind from birth! If with our light we cannot illumine all the darkness, then let us put out the signal fires, let us all crawl in the dark! If there be not paradise for all, then I will have none for myself! And this, girls, this is no part of paradise, but simply and plainly a piggery! A toast, girls! That all the signal fires be extinguished. Drink! To the Dark!”

He staggered a little as he drank off his glass. He spoke rather thickly, but firmly, precisely, with pauses, enunciating every syllable. Nobody understood his wild speech, but they found him pleasing in himself, his pale figure and his peculiar quality of wickedness. Then Liuba suddenly took up the word, stretching out her hands.

“He is my betrothed. He will stay with me. He was virtuous and had comrades, and now he will stay with me!”

“Come and take Màrkusha’s place,” the fat woman drawled.

“Shut up, Manka, or I’ll smash your face! He will stay with me. He was virtuous.⁠ ⁠…”

“We were all virtuous once,” the evil old woman grumbled. And the others joined in: “I was straight four years ago⁠ ⁠… I’m an honourable woman still⁠ ⁠… I swear to God.⁠ ⁠…”

Liuba was nearly weeping.

“Silence, you sluts! You had your honour taken from you; but he gives it me himself. He takes it and gives it for my honour. But I don’t want honour! You’re a lot of⁠ ⁠… and he’s still an innocent boy!”

She broke into sobs. There was a general outburst of laughter. They guffawed as only the drunken can, without any restraint; the little room, saturated with sounds, and unable to absorb any more, threw it all back in a deafening roar. They laughed until the tears fell; they rolled together and groaned with it. The fat woman clucked in a little thin voice and tumbled exhausted from her chair.

And, last of all, he laughed out loud at the sight of them.

It was as though the Satanic world itself had foregathered there to laugh to its grave that little sprig of virtue, the dead innocence itself joining in the laughter.

The only one who did not laugh was Liuba. Trembling with agitation, she wrung her hands and shouted at them, and finally flung herself with her fists on the fat woman, who even with her beam-like arms could hardly ward off her blows.

“So be it!” he shouted in his laughter. But the others could hear nothing.

At last the noise died down a little.

“So be it!” he cried, a second time. “But, peace! Silence!⁠—I have something to show you!”

“Leave them alone,” said Liuba, wiping her tears away with her fist. “We must get rid of them.”

Still shaking with laughter he turned round to face her.

“Are you frightened?” he asked. “Was it honour you wanted after all? You fool! It’s the only thing you ever have wanted! Leave me alone!”

Without taking any more notice of her, he addressed himself to the others, rising and holding his closed hands above his head.

“Listen! I’ll show you something! Look here, at my hands!”

Merry and curious, they looked at his hands, and waited obediently, like children, with gaping mouths.

“Here! Here! See?” He shook his hands. “I hold my life in my hands! Do you see?”

“Yes! Yes! Go on!”

“My life was noble, it was! It was pure and beautiful. Yes, it was! It was like those pretty porcelain vases. And now, look! I fling it away.⁠ ⁠…” He let fall his hands, almost with a groan, and all their eyes looked downwards as though there really lay something down there, something delicate and brittle, that had been shattered into fragments⁠—a beautiful human life.

“Trample on it, now, girls! Trample it to pieces until not a bit of it is left!”

Like children enjoying a new game, with a whoop and a laugh, they leapt up and began trampling on the spot where lay the fragments of that invisible dainty porcelain, a beautiful human life. Gradually a new frenzy overcame them. The laughter and shrieks died away, and nothing but their heavy breathing was audible above the continuous stamping and clatter of feet⁠—rabid, unrelenting, implacable.

Liuba, like an affronted queen, watched it a moment over his shoulder with savage eyes; then suddenly, as though she had only just understood and been driven mad, with a wild groan of elation she burst into the midst of the jostling women and joined the trampling in a faster measure. But for the earnestness of the drunken faces, the ferocity of the bleary eyes, the wickedness of the depraved and twisted mouths, it might all have been taken for some new kind of dance without music, without rhythm.

With his fingers gripping into his hard bristly skull, the man looked on, calm and grim.

VI

Two voices were speaking in the dark⁠—Liuba’s, intimate, tentative, sensitive, with delicate intonations of private apprehension such as a woman’s voice always gains in the dark⁠—and his, hard, quiet, distant. He spoke his words too precisely, too harshly⁠—the only sign of intoxication not quite passed away.

“Are your eyes open?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you thinking about something?”

“Yes.”

Silence⁠—and the dark. Then again the thoughtful, vigilant voice of the woman.

“Tell me something more about your comrades, will you?”

“What for?⁠ ⁠… They⁠—they were.”

He said were as the living speak of the dead, or as the dead might speak of the living, and through the even course of his calm and almost indifferent narration it resounded like a funeral knell, as though he were an old man telling his children the heroic tale of a long departed past. And, in the darkness, before the girl’s enchanted eyes, there rose the image of a little group of young men, pitifully young, bereft of father and mother, and hopelessly hostile both to the world they were fighting and to the world they were fighting for. Having travelled by dream to the distant future, to the land of brotherly men as yet unborn, they lived their short lives like pale bloodstained shadows or spectres, the scarecrows of humanity. And their lives were stupidly short⁠—the gallows awaited every one of them, or penal servitude, or insanity⁠—nothing else to look forward to but prison, the scaffold, or the madhouse. And there were women among them.⁠ ⁠…

Liuba started and raised herself on her elbows.

“Women? What do you mean, darling?”

“Young, gentle girls, still in their teens. They follow in the steps of the men, manfully, daringly, die with them.⁠ ⁠…”

“Die! Oh my God!” she cried, clutching his shoulder.

“What? Are you touched by this?”

“Never mind, darling. I sometimes.⁠ ⁠… Go on with your story! Go on!”

And he went on with his story, and there happened a wonderful thing. Ice was turned into fire. Through the funeral notes of his requiem speech, suddenly rang for the girl, her eyes wide open now and burning, the gospel of a new, joyous, and mighty life. Tears rose in her eyes and dried there as in a furnace; she was excited to the pitch of rebellion, eager for every word. Like a hammer upon glowing iron, his words were forging in her a new responsive soul. Steadily, regularly, it fell⁠—beating the soul ever to a finer temper⁠—and suddenly, in the suffocating stench of that room, there spoke aloud a new and unknown voice, the voice of a human being.

“Darling, am I not also a woman?”

“What do you mean?”

“I also might go with Them?”

He did not reply, and in his silence he seemed to her so remarkable and so great (he had been Their comrade, had lived with Them) that it felt uncomfortable to be lying beside him, embracing him. She moved away a little and left only a hand touching him, so that the contact might be less; and forgetting her hatred of the Fine, her tears and curses, and the long years of inviolable solitude in the depths⁠—overcome by the beauty and self-denial of Their lives⁠—her face flushed with excitement, and she was ready to weep at the terrible thought that They might not accept her.

“Dear, but will they take me? My God, if they won’t! What do you think? Tell me they’ll take me⁠—they won’t be squeamish! They won’t say: You are impossible, you are vile, you have sold yourself! Answer me!”

Silence⁠—and then a reply that rejoiced.

“Yes, they will! Why not, indeed?”

“Oh, my darling. But.⁠ ⁠…”

“Fine people, they are!” The man’s voice had the finality of a big fat full stop, but the girl triumphantly repeated, with a touching confidence:

“Yes! They are fine!”

And so radiant was her smile that it seemed as if the very darkness smiled in sympathy and some little stars strayed in as well, little blue points of light. For a new truth had reached her⁠—one that brought not fear, but joy.

Then the shy suppliant voice.

“Let us go to them, dear? You’ll take me with you? You won’t be ashamed of having such a companion? For they’ll accept me, won’t they? Just as you did when you came here? Surely you were driven here for some purpose! But⁠—to stay here⁠—you would simply drop into the cesspool. As for me, I⁠—I⁠—I will try. Why don’t you say anything?”

Grim silence again, in which could be heard the beating of two hearts⁠—one rapid, hurried, excited; the other hard and slow, strongely slow.

“Would you be shamed to go back with such as me?”

A stern prolonged silence, and then a reply, solid and inflexible as unpolished rock:

“I am not going back. I don’t want to be fine.”

Silence. Then presently:

“They are gentlemen,” he said, and his voice sounded solitary and strained.

“Who?” she asked, dully.

“They⁠—Those who were.”

A long silence⁠—this time as though a bird had thrown itself down and was falling, whirling through the air on its pliant wings, but unable to reach the earth, unable to strike the ground and lie at rest.

In the dark he knew that Liuba, silently, carefully, making the least stir possible, passed over him; was busying herself with something.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t like lying there like that. I want to get dressed.”

Then she must have put something on and sat down; for the chair creaked ever so little; and it became so still⁠—as silent as though the room were empty. The stillness lasted a long time; and then the calm, serious voice spoke:

“I think, Liuba, there is still one cognac left on the table. Take a drink and come and lie down again.”

VII

Day was already dawning, and in the house all was as quiet as in any other house, when the police appeared. After long arguments and hesitations Mark had been dispatched to the police station with the revolver and cartridges and a circumstantial account of the strange visitor. The police at once guessed who he was. For three days they had had him on their nerves. They had been seeing him here, there, and everywhere; but finally, all trace of him had been lost. Somebody had suggested searching the brothels of the district; but just then somebody else got another false clue, so the public resorts were forgotten.

The telephone tinkled excitedly. Half an hour later, in the chill of the October morning, heavy boots were scrunching the hoarfrost and along the empty streets moved in silence a company of policemen and detectives. In front of them, feeling in every inch of his body what a mistake it was to take the risks of such exposure, marched the district superintendent, an elderly man, very tall, in a thick official overcoat, the shape of a sack. He was yawning, burying his flabby red nose in his grey whiskers; and he was thinking that he ought to wait for the military; that it was nonsense to go for such a man without soldiers, with nothing but stupid drowsy policemen who didn’t know how to shoot. More than once he reached the point of calling himself the slave of duty, yawning every time long and heavily.

The superintendent was a drunkard, a regular debauchee of the resorts of his district; and they paid him heavily for the right to exist. He had no desire to die. When they called him from his bed, he had nursed his revolver for a long time from one greasy palm to the other, and although there was little time to spare he had ordered them to clean his jacket, as though for a review. That very night at the police station, he remembered, conversation had turned on this same man who had been dodging them all, and the superintendent, with the cynicism of an old sot, had called the man a hero and himself an old police trollop. When his assistants laughed, he had assured them that such heroes must exist, if only to be hanged. “You hang him⁠—and it pleases you both: him because he is going straight to the Kingdom of Heaven, and you as a demonstration that brave men still exist. Don’t snigger⁠—it’s true.”

On that chill October morning, marching along the cold streets, he appreciated clearly that the talk of yesterday was lies; that the man was nothing but a rascal. He was ashamed of his own boyish extravagance.

“A hero, indeed!” the superintendent prayerfully recanted. “Lord, if he so much as stirs a finger, the blackguard, I’ll kill him like a dog. By God, I will!”

And that set him thinking why he, the superintendent, an old man full of gout, so much desired to live. Because there was hoar frost on the streets? He turned round and shouted savagely: “Quick march, there! Don’t go like sheep!”

The wind blew into his overcoat. His jacket was too wide and his whole body quivered in it like the yolk of an egg in a stirring basin. He felt as if he was suddenly shrinking. The palms of his hands, despite the cold, were still sweaty.

They surrounded the house as though they had come to take not one sleeper but a host in ambush. Then some of them crept along the dark corridor on tiptoe to the fearsome door.

A desperate knock⁠—a shout⁠—threats to shoot through the door. And when, almost knocking Liuba, half naked, off her feet, they burst into the little room in close formation and filled it with their boots and cloaks and rifles⁠—then they saw him⁠—sitting on the bed in his shirt, with his bare hairy legs hanging down⁠—sitting there silent. No bomb⁠—nothing terrible⁠—nothing but the ordinary room of a prostitute, filthy and repulsive in the early morning light, with its stretch of tattered carpet and scattered clothes, the table smeared and stained with liquor⁠—and sitting on the bed a man, clean shaven and with drowsy eyes, high cheekbones, a swollen face, hairy legs⁠—silent.

“Hands up!” shouted the superintendent, holding his revolver tighter in his damp hand.

But the man neither raised his arms nor made any answer.

“Search him!” the superintendent ordered.

“There’s nothing to search! I took his revolver away. Oh, my God!” Liuba cried, her teeth chattering with fear. She had nothing on but a crumpled chemise; among the others, all wrapped in their cloaks, the two, man and woman, both half naked, roused feelings of shame, disgust, and contempt.

They searched his clothing, ransacked the carpet, peered into the corners, into the cupboard, and found nothing.

“I took his revolver from him,” Liuba thoughtlessly insisted.

“Silence Liubka!” the superintendent shouted. He knew the girl well, had spent two or three nights with her. He believed her; but his relief was so unexpected that out of sheer pleasure he wanted to shout and command and show his authority.

“Your name?”

“I shall not say. I shall not answer any questions at all.”

“All right, sir, all right,” the superintendent replied ironically, but somewhat abashed. Then he looked again at the naked hairy feet and at the girl shuddering in the corner, and suddenly became suspicious.

“Is this the right man?” he said, taking a detective aside. “Something seems.⁠ ⁠…”

The detective went and stared closely in the man’s face, then nodded his head decisively.

“Yes. It’s he. He’s only shaved his beard. You can recognise him by his cheekbones.”

“A brigand’s cheekbones, sure enough.”

“And look at the eyes, too. I could pick him out of a thousand by his eyes.”

“His eyes? Let me see the photograph.”

He took a long look at the unfinished proof photograph of a man, very handsome, wonderfully pure and young, with a long bushy Russian beard. The expression on the face was the same. Not grim, but very calm and bright. The cheekbones were not markedly prominent.

“You see! His cheekbones don’t stand out like.⁠ ⁠…”

“They are concealed by the beard, but if you feel under it with the eye.⁠ ⁠…”

“It may be, but.⁠ ⁠… Is he a hard drinker?”

The detective, tall and thin, with a yellow face and sparse beard, himself a hard drinker, smiled patronizingly.

“There’s no drinking among them.”

“I know there isn’t but still.⁠ ⁠…” The superintendent approached the man. “Listen! Were you an accomplice in the murder of N⁠⸺?” It was a very important and well known name.

But the man remained silent and only smiled and fidgeted with one hairy leg; the toes were bent and distorted by boots.

“You are being examined!”

“You may as well leave him alone. He won’t reply. We’d better wait for the captain and prosecutor. They’ll make him talk.”

The superintendent smiled, but in his heart for some reason he felt the shrinking again.

They had been tearing up the carpet; they had upset something, and there was a very unpleasant smell in the ill-ventilated room.

“What filth!” thought the superintendent, though in the matter of cleanliness he was by no means nice. And he looked with disgust at that naked swinging foot. “So he is still fidgeting with his foot,” he thought.

He turned round; a young policeman, with pure white eyelashes and eyebrows, was sneering at Liuba, holding his rifle with both hands as a village night watchman holds his staff.

“Well, Liubka,” the superintendent cried, approaching her. “Why didn’t you report at once who you had with you, you bitch?”

“Oh, I was.⁠ ⁠…”

The superintendent smacked her face twice, quite neatly, first on one cheek then on the other.

“Take that then! I’ll show you!”

The man’s brows went up and the foot ceased swinging.

“So you don’t like that, young fellow?” The contempt of the superintendent was growing apace. “What are you going to do about it? You kissed this face, didn’t you, and we’ll do what we damn well.⁠ ⁠…”

He laughed, and the policeman smiled in some agitation. And what was more surprising, even the downtrodden Liuba laughed. She looked at the old superintendent in a friendly way, as though she enjoyed his jokes and jollity.

From the moment of the arrival of the police she had never looked at the man, betraying him naturally and openly; and this he saw, and was silent and smiled half scoffingly, a strange smile⁠—as a gray stone in the forest, sunk into the ground and mossgrown, might smile.

Half dressed women were crowding about the door, amongst them some of those who had visited them. But they looked at him indifferently, with a dull curiosity, as though this was the first time they had seen him. Apparently they remembered nothing of the night. They were soon hustled away.

It was now daylight, and the room was more bleak and repulsive than ever. Two officers who evidently had not had their full sleep came in, their faces ruffled, but properly dressed and clean.

“It’s no good, gentlemen, really,” the superintendent said with a spiteful glance at the man. The officers approached, looked him up and down from his crown to his naked feet with those bent toes, surveyed Liuba, and casually exchanged observations.

“Yes⁠—he’s good looking,” said the young one, the one who had invited them all to the cotillion. He had splendid white teeth and silky whiskers and soft eyes with girlish lashes. He looked at the arrested man with disdainful compassion, and wrinkled his eyes as if he were going to cry. There was a corn on the left little toe⁠ ⁠… somehow it was horrible and disgusting to see that little yellow mound. And the legs were dirty. “This is a fine pass for you to come to, sir,” he said, shaking his head and painfully contracting his brows.

“So that’s how it is, Mr. Anarchist? You’re no better than us sinners with the girls? The flesh was weak, eh?” jeered the other, the elder.

“Why did you give up your revolver? You might at least have had a shot for it. I understand that you found yourself here, as anyone might find himself; but why did you give up your revolver? A poor example to set your comrades!” said the little officer, hotly; and then explained to the elder: “He had a Browning with three cartridge clips. Just think of it! Stupid!”

But the man, smiling contemptuously from the height of his new, unmeasured, and terrible truth, looked on the little excited officer and indifferently kept on swinging his leg. The fact of his being nearly naked, of having dirty hairy legs with bent and crooked toes, gave him no sense of shame. Had they taken him just as he was and planted him in the most populous square of the city, in front of all the men and women and children, he would have gone on dangling that hairy leg with the same equanimity, smiling the same disdainful smile.

“Do they know what comradeship is?” said the superintendent. He was savagely looking askance at that swaying leg, and indolently trying to dissuade the officers. “It’s no good talking to him, gentlemen, I swear! No good! You know the kind of thing⁠—instructions!”

Other officers entered quite freely, surveyed the scene and chatted together. One of them, evidently an old acquaintance of the superintendent, shook hands with him. Liuba was already coquetting with the officers.

“Just imagine! A Browning with three clips and, like a fool, he gave it up!” the little officer was relating. “I can’t understand that!”

“You, Misha, will never understand this.”

“For, after all, they are no cowards!”

“You, Misha, are an idealist, and the milk has not yet dried on your lips.”

“Samson and Delilah,” one short snuffling officer said ironically; he had a little drooping nose and thin whiskers combed back and upwards.

“Oh Delilah! What a smiler!”

They laughed.

The superintendent, smiling pleasantly and rubbing his flabby red nose downwards, suddenly approached the man and stood as if to screen him from the officers with his own carcase encased in the loose hanging coat; and he murmured under his breath, rolling his eyes wildly:

“Shameful, sir! You might at least have put your drawers on, sir! Shameful! And a hero, too? Involved with a prostitute⁠ ⁠… with this carrion-flesh? What will your comrades say of you⁠—eh, you cur?”

Liuba, stretching her naked neck, heard him. They were together now, side by side, these three plain truths of life, the corrupt old drunkard who yearned for heroes, the dissolute woman into whose soul some scattered seeds of purpose and self-denial had fallen⁠—and the man. After the superintendent’s words, he paled slightly, and seemed to wish to say something⁠—but changed his mind and smiled, and went on swinging that hairy leg.

The officers wandered off; the police accommodated themselves to the situation, to the presence of the half naked couple, and stood about sleepily, with that absence of visible thought which renders the faces of all guards alike.

The superintendent put his hands on the table and pondered deeply and sadly⁠—that he would not get a nap today, that he would have to go to the station and set matters on foot. But something else made him even more melancholy and weary.

“May I dress myself?” asked Liuba.

“No!”

“I’m cold.”

“Never mind⁠—sit as you are!”

The superintendent didn’t even look at her. So she turned away, and, stretching out her thin neck, whispered something to the man, softly, with her lips only. He raised his brows in enquiry, and she repeated:

“Darling! My Darling!”

He nodded and smiled affectionately. Then seeing him smile to her so gently, though plainly forgetting nothing⁠—seeing him, who was so handsome and proud, now naked and despised by all, with his dirty bare legs, she was suddenly flushed with a feeling of unbearable love and demoniac blind wrath. She gasped, and flung herself on her knees on that damp floor, and embraced those cold hairy feet.

“Dress yourself, darling!” she murmured in an ecstasy. “Dress yourself!”

“Liubka, stop this!” The superintendent dragged her away. “He’s not worth it!”

The girl sprang to her feet.

“Silence, you old profligate! He’s better than the whole lot of you put together!”

“He’s a swine!”

“You’re a swine!”

“What?” The superintendent promptly lost his temper. “Tackle her, my man! Hold her down. Leave your rifle alone, you blockhead!”

“Oh, darling, why did you give up your revolver?” the girl moaned, struggling with the policeman. “Why didn’t you bring a bomb? We might have⁠ ⁠… might have⁠ ⁠… them all to.⁠ ⁠…”

“Gag her!”

The panting woman struggled desperately, trying to bite the rough fingers that were holding her. The policeman with the white eyelashes, disconcerted, not knowing how to fight a woman, was seizing her by her hair, by her breasts, trying to fling her on the ground and sniffing in his desperation.

From the corridor new voices were heard, loud, unconcerned, and the jangle of a police officer’s spurs. A sweet, sincere, barytone voice was leading, as though a star was making his entrance and now at last the real and serious opera was about to commence.

The superintendent pulled his coat straight.

As the Minister was a very stout man, inclined to apoplexy, they feared to arouse in him any dangerous excitement, and it was with every possible precaution that they informed him that a very serious attempt upon his life had been planned. When they saw that he received the news calmly, even with a smile, they gave him, also, the details. The attempt was to be made on the following day at the time that he was to start out with his official report; several men, terrorists, whose plans had already been betrayed by a provocateur, and who were now under the vigilant surveillance of detectives, were to meet at one o’clock in the afternoon in front of his house, and, armed with bombs and revolvers, were to wait till he came out. There the terrorists were to be trapped.

“Wait!” muttered the Minister, perplexed. “How did they know that I was to leave the house at one o’clock in the afternoon with my report, when I myself learned of it only the day before yesterday?”

The Chief of the Guards stretched out his arms with a shrug.

“Exactly at one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency,” he said.

Half surprised, half commending the work of the police, who had managed everything skilfully, the Minister shook his head, a morose smile upon his thick, dark lips, and still smiling obediently, and not desiring to interfere with the plans of the police, he hastily made ready, and went out to pass the night in someone else’s hospitable palace. His wife and his two children were also removed from the dangerous house, before which the bomb-throwers were to gather upon the following day.

While the lights were burning in the palace, and courteous, familiar faces were bowing to him, smiling and expressing their concern, the dignitary experienced a sensation of pleasant excitement⁠—he felt as if he had already received, or was soon to receive, some great and unexpected reward. But the people went away, the lights were extinguished, and through the mirrors, the lace-like and fantastic reflection of the electric lamps on the street, quivered across the ceiling and over the walls. A stranger in the house, with its paintings, its statues and its silence, the light⁠—itself silent and indefinite⁠—awakened painful thoughts in him as to the vanity of bolts and guards and walls. And then, in the dead of night, in the silence and solitude of a strange bedroom, a sensation of unbearable fear swept over the dignitary.

He had some kidney trouble, and whenever he grew strongly agitated, his face, his hands and his feet became swollen. Now, rising like a mountain of bloated flesh above the taut springs of the bed, he felt, with the anguish of a sick man, his swollen face, which seemed to him to belong to someone else. Unceasingly he kept thinking of the cruel fate which people were preparing for him. He recalled, one after another, all the recent horrible instances of bombs that had been thrown at men of even greater eminence than himself; he recalled how the bombs had torn bodies to pieces, had spattered brains over dirty brick walls, had knocked teeth from their roots. And influenced by these meditations, it seemed to him that his own stout, sickly body, outspread on the bed, was already experiencing the fiery shock of the explosion. He seemed to be able to feel his arms being severed from the shoulders, his teeth knocked out, his brains scattered into particles, his feet growing numb, lying quietly, their toes upward, like those of a dead man. He stirred with an effort, breathed loudly and coughed in order not to seem to himself to resemble a corpse in any way. He encouraged himself with the live noise of the grating springs, of the rustling blanket; and to assure himself that he was actually alive and not dead, he uttered in a bass voice, loudly and abruptly, in the silence and solitude of the bedroom:

“Molodtsi! Molodtsi! Molodtsi! (Good boys)!”

He was praising the detectives, the police, and the soldiers⁠—all those who guarded his life, and who so opportunely and so cleverly had averted the assassination. But even though he stirred, even though he praised his protectors, even though he forced an unnatural smile, in order to express his contempt for the foolish, unsuccessful terrorists, he nevertheless did not believe in his safety, he was not sure that his life would not leave him suddenly, at once. Death, which people had devised for him, and which was only in their minds, in their intention, seemed to him to be already standing there in the room. It seemed to him that Death would remain standing there, and would not go away until those people had been captured, until the bombs had been taken from them, until they had been placed in a strong prison. There Death was standing in the corner, and would not go away⁠—it could not go away, even as an obedient sentinel stationed on guard by a superior’s will and order.

“At one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!” this phrase kept ringing, changing its tone continually: now it was cheerfully mocking, now angry, now dull and obstinate. It sounded as if a hundred wound-up gramophones had been placed in his room, and all of them, one after another, were shouting with idiotic repetition the words they had been made to shout:

“At one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!”

And suddenly, this one o’clock in the afternoon tomorrow, which but a short while ago was not in any way different from other hours, which was only a quiet movement of the hand along the dial of his gold watch, assumed an ominous finality, sprang out of the dial, began to live separately, stretched itself into an enormously huge black pole which cut all life in two. It seemed as if no other hours had existed before it and no other hours would exist after it⁠—as if this hour alone, insolent and presumptuous, had a right to a certain peculiar existence.

“Well, what do you want?” asked the Minister angrily, muttering between his teeth.

The gramophone shouted:

“At one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!” and the black pole smiled and bowed. Gnashing his teeth, the Minister rose in his bed to a sitting posture, leaning his face on the palms of his hands⁠—he positively could not sleep on that dreadful night.

Clasping his face in his swollen, perfumed palms, he pictured to himself with horrifying clearness how on the following morning, not knowing anything of the plot against his life, he would have risen, would have drunk his coffee, not knowing anything, and then would have put on his coat in the hallway. And neither he, nor the doorkeeper who would have handed him his fur coat, nor the lackey who would have brought him the coffee, would have known that it was utterly useless to drink coffee, and to put on the coat, since a few instants later, everything⁠—the fur coat and his body and the coffee within it⁠—would be destroyed by an explosion, would be seized by death. The doorkeeper would have opened the glass door.⁠ ⁠… He, the amiable, kind, gentle doorkeeper, with the blue, typical eyes of a soldier, and with medals across his breast⁠—he himself with his own hands would have opened the terrible door, opened it because he knew nothing. Everybody would have smiled because they did not know anything.

“Oho!” he suddenly said aloud, and slowly removed his hands from his face. Peering into the darkness, far ahead of him, with a fixed, strained look, he outstretched his hand just as slowly, felt the button on the wall and pressed it. Then he arose, and without putting on his slippers, walked in his bare feet over the rug in the strange, unfamiliar bedroom, found the button of another lamp upon the wall and pressed it. It became light and pleasant, and only the disarranged bed with the blanket, which had slipped off to the floor, spoke of the horror, not altogether past.

In his nightclothes, with his beard disheveled by his restless movements, with his angry eyes, the dignitary resembled any other angry old man who suffered with insomnia and shortness of breath. It was as if the death which people were preparing for him, had made him bare, had torn away from him the magnificence and splendor which had surrounded him⁠—and it was hard to believe that it was he who had so much power, that his body was but an ordinary plain human body that must have perished terribly in the flame and roar of a monstrous explosion. Without dressing himself and not feeling the cold, he sat down in the first armchair he found, stroking his disheveled beard, and fixed his eyes in deep, calm thoughtfulness upon the unfamiliar plaster figures of the ceiling.

So that was the trouble! That was why he had trembled in fear and had become so agitated! That was why Death seemed to stand in the corner and would not go away, could not go away!

“Fools!” he said emphatically, with contempt.

“Fools!” he repeated more loudly, and turned his head slightly toward the door that those to whom he was referring might hear it. He was referring to those whom he had praised but a moment before, who in the excess of their zeal had told him of the plot against his life.

“Of course,” he thought deeply, an easy, convincing idea arising in his mind. “Now that they have told me, I know, and feel terrified, but if I had not been told, I would not have known anything and would have drunk my coffee calmly. After that Death would have come⁠—but then, am I so afraid of Death? Here have I been suffering with kidney trouble, and I must surely die from it some day, and yet I am not afraid⁠—because I do not know anything. And those fools told me: ‘At one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!’ and they thought I would be glad. But instead of that Death stationed itself in the corner and would not go away. It would not go away because it was my thought. It is not death that is terrible, but the knowledge of it: it would be utterly impossible to live if a man could know exactly and definitely the day and hour of his death. And the fools cautioned me: ‘At one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!’ ”

He began to feel lighthearted and cheerful, as if someone had told him that he was immortal, that he would never die. And, feeling himself again strong and wise amidst the herd of fools who had so stupidly and impudently broken into the mystery of the future, he began to think of the bliss of ignorance, and his thoughts were the painful thoughts of an old, sick man who had gone through endless experience. It was not given to any living being⁠—man or beast⁠—to know the day and hour of death. Here had he been ill not long ago and the physicians told him that he must expect the end, that he should make his final arrangements⁠—but he had not believed them and he remained alive. In his youth he had become entangled in an affair and had resolved to end his life; he had even loaded the revolver, had written his letters, and had fixed upon the hour for suicide⁠—but before the very end he had suddenly changed his mind. It would always be thus⁠—at the very last moment something would change, an unexpected accident would befall⁠—no one could tell when he would die.

“At one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!” those kind asses had said to him, and although they had told him of it only that death might be averted, the mere knowledge of its possibility at a certain hour again filled him with horror. It was probable that some day he should be assassinated, but it would not happen tomorrow⁠—it would not happen tomorrow⁠—and he could sleep undisturbed, as if he were really immortal. Fools⁠—they did not know what a great law they had dislodged, what an abyss they had opened, when they said in their idiotic kindness: “At one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!”

“No, not at one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency, but no one knows when. No one knows when! What?”

“Nothing,” answered Silence, “nothing.”

“But you did say something.”

“Nothing, nonsense. I say: tomorrow, at one o’clock in the afternoon!”

There was a sudden, acute pain in his heart⁠—and he understood that he would have neither sleep, nor peace, nor joy until that accursed black hour standing out of the dial should have passed. Only the shadow of the knowledge of something which no living being could know stood there in the corner, and that was enough to darken the world and envelop him with the impenetrable gloom of horror. The once disturbed fear of death diffused through his body, penetrated into his bones.

He no longer feared the murderers of the next day⁠—they had vanished, they had been forgotten, they had mingled with the crowd of hostile faces and incidents which surrounded his life. He now feared something sudden and inevitable⁠—an apoplectic stroke, heart failure, some foolish thin little vessel which might suddenly fail to withstand the pressure of the blood and might burst like a tight glove upon swollen fingers.

His short, thick neck seemed terrible to him. It became unbearable for him to look upon his short, swollen fingers⁠—to feel how short they were and how they were filled with the moisture of death. And if before, when it was dark, he had had to stir in order not to resemble a corpse, now in the bright, cold, inimical, dreadful light he was so filled with horror that he could not move in order to get a cigarette or to ring for someone. His nerves were giving way. Each one of them seemed as if it were a bent wire, at the top of which there was a small head with mad, wide-open frightened eyes and a convulsively gaping, speechless mouth. He could not draw his breath.

Suddenly in the darkness, amidst the dust and cobwebs somewhere upon the ceiling, an electric bell came to life. The small, metallic tongue, agitatedly, in terror, kept striking the edge of the ringing cap, became silent⁠—and again quivered in an unceasing, frightened din. His Excellency was ringing his bell in his own room.

People began to run. Here and there, in the shadows upon the walls, lamps flared up⁠—there were not enough of them to give light, but there were enough to cast shadows. The shadows appeared everywhere; they rose in the corners, they stretched across the ceiling; tremulously clinging to each and every elevation, they covered the walls. And it was hard to understand where all these innumerable, deformed silent shadows⁠—voiceless souls of voiceless objects⁠—had been before.

A deep, trembling voice said something loudly. Then the doctor was hastily summoned by telephone; the dignitary was collapsing. The wife of his Excellency was also called.

Everything befell as the police had foretold. Four terrorists, three men and a woman, armed with bombs, infernal machines and revolvers, were seized at the very entrance of the house, and another woman was later found and arrested in the house where the conspiracy had been hatched. She was its mistress. At the same time a great deal of dynamite and half finished bomb explosives were seized. All those arrested were very young; the eldest of the men was twenty-eight years old, the younger of the women was only nineteen. They were tried in the same fortress in which they were imprisoned after the arrest; they were tried swiftly and secretly, as was done during that unmerciful time.

At the trial all of them were calm, but very serious and thoughtful. Their contempt for the judges was so intense that none of them wished to emphasize his daring by even a superfluous smile or by a feigned expression of cheerfulness. Each was simply as calm as was necessary to hedge in his soul, from curious, evil and inimical eyes, the great gloom that precedes death.

Sometimes they refused to answer questions; sometimes they answered, briefly, simply and precisely, as though they were answering not the judge, but statisticians, for the purpose of supplying information for particular special tables. Three of them, one woman and two men, gave their real names, while two others refused and thus remained unknown to the judges.

They manifested for all that was going on at the trial a certain curiosity, softened, as though through a haze, such as is peculiar to persons who are very ill or are carried away by some great, all-absorbing idea. They glanced up occasionally, caught some word in the air more interesting than the others, and then resumed the thought from which their attention had been distracted.

The man who was nearest to the judges called himself Sergey Golovin, the son of a retired colonel, himself an ex-officer. He was still a very young, light-haired, broad-shouldered man, so strong that neither the prison nor the expectation of inevitable death could remove the color from his cheeks and the expression of youthful, happy frankness from his blue eyes. He kept energetically tugging at his bushy, small beard, to which he had not become accustomed, and continually blinking, kept looking out of the window.

It was toward the end of winter, when amidst the snowstorms and the gloomy, frosty days, the approaching spring sent as a forerunner a clear, warm, sunny day, or but an hour, yet so full of spring, so eagerly young and beaming that sparrows on the streets lost their wits for joy, and people seemed almost as intoxicated. And now the strange and beautiful sky could be seen through an upper window which was dust-covered and unwashed since the last summer. At first sight the sky seemed to be milky-gray⁠—smoke-colored⁠—but when you looked longer the dark blue color began to penetrate through the shade, grew into an ever deeper blue⁠—ever brighter, ever more intense. And the fact that it did not reveal itself all at once, but hid itself chastely in the smoke of transparent clouds, made it as charming as the girl you love. And Sergey Golovin looked at the sky, tugged at his beard, blinked now one eye, now the other, with its long, curved lashes, earnestly pondering over something. Once he began to move his fingers rapidly and thoughtlessly, knitted his brow in some joy, but then he glanced about and his joy died out like a spark which is stepped upon. Almost instantly an earthen, deathly blue, without first changing into pallor, showed through the color of his cheeks. He clutched his downy hair, tore their roots painfully with his fingers, whose tips had turned white. But the joy of life and spring was stronger, and a few minutes later his frank young face was again yearning toward the spring sky.

The young, pale girl, known only by the name of Musya, was also looking in the same direction, at the sky. She was younger than Golovin, but she seemed older in her gravity and in the darkness of her open, proud eyes. Only her very thin, slender neck, and her delicate girlish hands spoke of her youth; but in addition there was that ineffable something, which is youth itself, and which sounded so distinctly in her clear, melodious voice, tuned irreproachably like a precious instrument, every simple word, every exclamation giving evidence of its musical timbre. She was very pale, but it was not a deathly pallor, but that peculiar warm whiteness of a person within whom, as it were, a great, strong fire is burning, whose body glows transparently like fine Sèvres porcelain. She sat almost motionless, and only at times she touched with an imperceptible movement of her fingers the circular mark on the middle finger of her right hand, the mark of a ring which had been recently removed.

She gazed at the sky without caressing kindness or joyous recollections⁠—she looked at it simply because in all the filthy, official hall the blue bit of sky was the most beautiful, the purest, the most truthful object, and the only one that did not try to search hidden depths in her eyes.

The judges pitied Sergey Golovin; her they despised.

Her neighbor, known only by the name of Werner, sat also motionless, in a somewhat affected pose, his hands folded between his knees. If a face may be said to look like a false door, this unknown man closed his face like an iron door and bolted it with an iron lock. He stared motionlessly at the dirty wooden floor, and it was impossible to tell whether he was calm or whether he was intensely agitated, whether he was thinking of something, or whether he was listening to the testimony of the detectives as presented to the court. He was not tall in stature. His features were refined and delicate. Tender and handsome, so that he reminded you of a moonlit night in the South near the seashore, where the cypress trees throw their dark shadows, he at the same time gave the impression of tremendous, calm power, of invincible firmness, of cold and audacious courage. The very politeness with which he gave brief and precise answers seemed dangerous, on his lips, in his half bow. And if the prison garb looked upon the others like the ridiculous costume of a buffoon, upon him it was not noticeable, so foreign was it to his personality. And although the other terrorists had been seized with bombs and infernal machines upon them, and Werner had had but a black revolver, the judges for some reason regarded him as the leader of the others and treated him with a certain deference, although succinctly and in a businesslike manner.

The next man, Vasily Kashirin, was torn between a terrible, dominating fear of death and a desperate desire to restrain the fear and not betray it to the judges. From early morning, from the time they had been led into court, he had been suffocating from an intolerable palpitation of his heart. Perspiration came out in drops all along his forehead; his hands were also perspiring and cold, and his cold, sweat-covered shirt clung to his body, interfering with the freedom of his movements. With a supernatural effort of willpower he forced his fingers not to tremble, his voice to be firm and distinct, his eyes to be calm. He saw nothing about him; the voices came to him as through a mist, and it was to this mist that he made his desperate efforts to answer firmly, to answer loudly. But having answered, he immediately forgot question as well as answer, and was again struggling with himself silently and terribly. Death was disclosed in him so clearly that the judges avoided looking at him. It was hard to define his age, as is the case with a corpse which has begun to decompose. According to his passport, he was only twenty-three years old. Once or twice Werner quietly touched his knee with his hand, and each time Kashirin spoke shortly:

“Never mind!”

The most terrible sensation was when he was suddenly seized with an insufferable desire to cry out, without words, the desperate cry of a beast. He touched Werner quickly, and Werner, without lifting his eyes, said softly:

“Never mind, Vasya. It will soon be over.”

And embracing them all with a motherly, anxious look, the fifth terrorist, Tanya Kovalchuk, was faint with alarm. She had never had any children; she was still young and red-cheeked, just as Sergey Golovin, but she seemed as a mother to all of them: so full of anxiety, of boundless love were her looks, her smiles, her sighs. She paid not the slightest attention to the trial, regarding it as though it were something entirely irrelevant, and she listened only to the manner in which the others were answering the questions, to hear whether the voice was trembling, whether there was fear, whether it was necessary to give water to anyone.

She could not look at Vasya in her anguish and only wrung her fingers silently. At Musya and Werner she gazed proudly and respectfully, and she assumed a serious and concentrated expression, and then tried to transfer her smile to Sergey Golovin.

“The dear boy is looking at the sky. Look, look, my darling!” she thought about Golovin.

“And Vasya! What is it? My God, my God! What am I to do with him? If I should speak to him I might make it still worse. He might suddenly start to cry.”

So like a calm pond at dawn, reflecting every hastening, passing cloud, she reflected upon her full, gentle, kind face every swift sensation, every thought of the other four. She did not give a single thought to the fact that she, too, was upon trial, that she, too, would be hanged; she was entirely indifferent to it. It was in her house that the bombs and the dynamite had been discovered, and, strange though it may seem, it was she who had met the police with pistol-shots and had wounded one of the detectives in the head.

The trial ended at about eight o’clock, when it had become dark. Before Musya’s and Golovin’s eyes the sky, which had been turning ever bluer, was gradually losing its tint, but it did not turn rosy, did not smile softly as in summer evenings, but became muddy, gray, and suddenly grew cold, wintry. Golovin heaved a sigh, stretched himself, glanced again twice at the window, but the cold darkness of the night alone was there; then continuing to tug at his short beard, he began to examine with childish curiosity the judges, the soldiers with their muskets, and he smiled at Tanya Kovalchuk. When the sky had darkened Musya calmly, without lowering her eyes to the ground, turned them to the corner where a small cobweb was quivering from the imperceptible radiations of the steam heat, and thus she remained until the sentence was pronounced.

After the verdict, having bidden goodbye to their frock-coated lawyers, and evading each other’s helplessly confused, pitying and guilty eyes, the convicted terrorists crowded in the doorway for a moment and exchanged brief words.

“Never mind, Vasya. Everything will be over soon,” said Werner.

“I am all right, brother,” Kashirin replied loudly, calmly and even somewhat cheerfully. And indeed, his face had turned slightly rosy, and no longer looked like that of a decomposing corpse.

“The devil take them; they’ve hanged us,” Golovin cursed quaintly.

“That was to be expected,” replied Werner calmly.

“Tomorrow the sentence will be pronounced in its final form and we shall all be placed together,” said Tanya Kovalchuk consolingly. “Until the execution we shall all be together.”

Musya was silent. Then she resolutely moved forward.

Two weeks before the terrorists had been tried the same military district court, with a different set of judges, had tried and condemned to death by hanging Ivan Yanson, a peasant.

Ivan Yanson was a workman for a well-to-do farmer, in no way different from other workmen. He was an Estonian by birth, from Vezenberg, and in the course of several years, passing from one farm to another, he had come close to the capital. He spoke Russian very poorly, and as his master was a Russian, by name Lazarev, and as there were no Estonians in the neighborhood, Yanson had practically remained silent for almost two years. In general, he was apparently not inclined to talk, and was silent not only with human beings, but even with animals. He would water the horse in silence, harness it in silence, moving about it, slowly and lazily, with short, irresolute steps, and when the horse, annoyed by his manner, would begin to frolic, to become capricious, he would beat it in silence with a heavy whip. He would beat it cruelly, with stolid, angry persistency, and when this happened at a time when he was suffering from the aftereffects of a carouse, he would work himself into a frenzy. At such times the crack of the whip could be heard in the house, with the frightened, painful pounding of the horse’s hoofs upon the board floor of the barn. For beating the horse his master would beat Yanson, but then, finding that he could not be reformed, paid no more attention to him.

Once or twice a month Yanson became intoxicated, usually on those days when he took his master to the large railroad station, where there was a refreshment bar. After leaving his master at the station, he would drive off about half a verst away, and there, stalling the sled and the horse in the snow on the side of the road, he would wait until the train had gone. The sled would stand sideways, almost overturned, the horse standing with widely spread legs up to his belly in a snowbank, from time to time lowering his head to lick the soft, downy snow, while Yanson would recline in an awkward position in the sled as if dozing away. The unfastened ear-lappets of his worn fur cap would hang down like the ears of a setter, and the moist sweat would stand under his little reddish nose.

Soon he would return to the station, and would quickly become intoxicated.

On his way back to the farm, the whole ten versts, he would drive at a fast gallop. The little horse, driven to madness by the whip, would rear, as if possessed by a demon; the sled would sway, almost overturn, striking against poles, and Yanson, letting the reins go, would half sing, half exclaim abrupt, meaningless phrases in Estonian. But more often he would not sing, but with his teeth gritted together in an onrush of unspeakable rage, suffering and delight, he would drive silently on as though blind. He would not notice those who passed him, he would not call to them to look out, he would not slacken his mad pace, either at the turns of the road or on the long slopes of the mountain roads. How it happened at such times that he crushed no one, how he himself was never dashed to death in one of these mad rides, was inexplicable.

He would have been driven from this place, as he had been driven from other places, but he was cheap and other workmen were not better, and thus he remained there two years. His life was uneventful. One day he received a letter, written in Estonian, but as he himself was illiterate, and as the others did not understand Estonian, the letter remained unread; and as if not understanding that the letter might bring him tidings from his native home, he flung it into the manure with a certain savage, grim indifference. At one time Yanson tried to make love to the cook, but he was not successful, and was rudely rejected and ridiculed. He was short in stature, his face was freckled, and his small, sleepy eyes were somewhat of an indefinite color. Yanson took his failure indifferently, and never again bothered the cook.

But while Yanson spoke but little, he was listening to something all the time. He heard the sounds of the dismal, snow-covered fields, with their heaps of frozen manure resembling rows of small, snow-covered graves, the sounds of the blue, tender distance, of the buzzing telegraph wires, and the conversation of other people. What the fields and telegraph wires spoke to him he alone knew, and the conversation of the people were disquieting, full of rumors about murders and robberies and arson. And one night he heard in the neighboring village the little church bell ringing faintly and helplessly, and the crackling of the flames of a fire. Some vagabonds had plundered a rich farm, had killed the master and his wife, and had set fire to the house.

And on their farm, too, they lived in fear; the dogs were loose, not only at night, but also during the day, and the master slept with a gun by his side. He wished to give such a gun to Yanson, only it was an old one with one barrel. But Yanson turned the gun about in his hand, shook his head and declined it. His master did not understand the reason and scolded him, but the reason was that Yanson had more faith in the power of his Finnish knife than in the rusty gun.

“It would kill me,” he said, looking at his master sleepily with his glassy eyes, and the master waved his hand in despair.

“You fool! Think of having to live with such workmen!”

And this same Ivan Yanson, who distrusted a gun, one winter evening, when the other workmen had been sent away to the station, committed a very complicated attempt at robbery, murder and rape. He did it in a surprisingly simple manner. He locked the cook in the kitchen, lazily, with the air of a man who is longing to sleep, walked over to his master from behind and swiftly stabbed him several times in the back with his knife. The master fell unconscious, and the mistress began to run about, screaming, while Yanson, showing his teeth and brandishing his knife, began to ransack the trunks and the chests of drawers. He found the money he sought, and then, as if noticing the mistress for the first time, and as though unexpectedly even to himself, he rushed upon her in order to violate her. But as he had let his knife drop to the floor, the mistress proved stronger than he, and not only did not allow him to harm her, but almost choked him into unconsciousness. Then the master on the floor turned, the cook thundered upon the door with the oven-fork, breaking it open, and Yanson ran away into the fields. He was caught an hour later, kneeling down behind the corner of the barn, striking one match after another, which would not ignite, in an attempt to set the place on fire.

A few days later the master died of blood poisoning, and Yanson, when his turn among other robbers and murderers came, was tried and condemned to death. In court he was the same as always; a little man, freckled, with sleepy, glassy eyes. It seemed as if he did not understand in the least the meaning of what was going on about him; he appeared to be entirely indifferent. He blinked his white eyelashes, stupidly, without curiosity; examined the sombre, unfamiliar courtroom, and picked his nose with his hard, shriveled, unbending finger. Only those who had seen him on Sundays at church would have known that he had made an attempt to adorn himself. He wore on his neck a knitted, muddy-red shawl, and in places had dampened the hair of his head. Where the hair was wet it lay dark and smooth, while on the other side it stuck up in light and sparse tufts, like straws upon a hail-beaten, wasted meadow.

When the sentence was pronounced⁠—death by hanging⁠—Yanson suddenly became agitated. He reddened deeply and began to tie and untie the shawl about his neck as though it were choking him. Then he waved his arms stupidly and said, turning to the judge who had not read the sentence, and pointing with his finger at the judge who read it:

“He said that I should be hanged.”

“Who do you mean?” asked the presiding judge, who had pronounced the sentence in a deep, bass voice. Everyone smiled; some tried to hide their smiles behind their mustaches and their papers. Yanson pointed his index finger at the presiding judge and answered angrily, looking at him askance:

“You!”

“Well?”

Yanson again turned his eyes to the judge who had been silent, restraining a smile, whom he felt to be a friend, a man who had nothing to do with the sentence, and repeated:

“He said I should be hanged. Why must I be hanged?”

“Take the prisoner away.”

But Yanson succeeded in repeating once more, convincingly and weightily:

“Why must I be hanged?”

He looked so absurd, with his small, angry face, with his outstretched finger, that even the soldier of the convoy, breaking the rule, said to him in an undertone as he led him away from the courtroom:

“You are a fool, young man!”

“Why must I be hanged?” repeated Yanson stubbornly.

“They’ll swing you up so quickly that you’ll have no time to kick.”

“Keep still!” cried the other convoy angrily. But he himself could not refrain from adding:

“A robber, too! Why did you take a human life, you fool? You must hang for that!”

“They might pardon him,” said the first soldier, who began to feel sorry for Yanson.

“Oh, yes! They’ll pardon people like him, will they? Well, we’ve talked enough.”

But Yanson had become silent again.

He was again placed in the cell in which he had already sat for a month and to which he had grown accustomed, just as he had become accustomed to everything: to blows, to vodka, to the dismal, snow-covered fields, with their snow-heaps resembling graves. And now he even began to feel cheerful when he saw his bed, the familiar window with the grating, and when he was given something to eat⁠—he had not eaten anything since morning. He had an unpleasant recollection of what had taken place in the court, but of that he could not think⁠—he was unable to recall it. And death by hanging he could not picture to himself at all.

Although Yanson had been condemned to death, there were many others similarly sentenced, and he was not regarded as an important criminal. They spoke to him accordingly, with neither fear nor respect, just as they would speak to prisoners who were not to be executed. The warden, on learning of the verdict, said to him:

“Well, my friend, they’ve hanged you!”

“When are they going to hang me?” asked Yanson distrustfully. The warden meditated a moment.

“Well, you’ll have to wait⁠—until they can get together a whole party. It isn’t worth bothering for one man, especially for a man like you. It is necessary to work up the right spirit.”

“And when will that be?” persisted Yanson. He was not at all offended that it was not worth while to hang him alone. He did not believe it, but considered it as an excuse for postponing the execution, preparatory to revoking it altogether. And he was seized with joy; the confused, terrible moment, of which it was so painful to think, retreated far into the distance, becoming fictitious and improbable, as death always seems.

“When? When?” cried the warden, a dull, morose old man, growing angry. “It isn’t like hanging a dog, which you take behind the barn⁠—and it is done in no time. I suppose you would like to be hanged like that, you fool!”

“I don’t want to be hanged,” and suddenly Yanson frowned strangely. “He said that I should be hanged, but I don’t want it.”

And perhaps for the first time in his life he laughed, a hoarse, absurd, yet gay and joyous laughter. It sounded like the cackling of a goose, Ga-ga-ga! The warden looked at him in astonishment, then knit his brow sternly. This strange gayety of a man who was to be executed was an offence to the prison, as well as to the very executioner; it made them appear absurd. And suddenly, for the briefest instant, it appeared to the old warden, who had passed all his life in the prison, and who looked upon its laws as the laws of nature, that the prison and all the life within it was something like an insane asylum, in which he, the warden, was the chief lunatic.

“Pshaw! The devil take you!” and he spat aside. “Why are you giggling here? This is no dramshop!”

“And I don’t want to be hanged⁠—ga-ga-ga!” laughed Yanson.

“Satan!” muttered the inspector, feeling the need of making the sign of the cross.

This little man, with his small, wizened face⁠—he resembled least of all the devil⁠—but there was that in his silly giggling which destroyed the sanctity and the strength of the prison. If he laughed longer, it seemed to the warden as if the walls might fall asunder, the grating melt and drop out, as if the warden himself might lead the prisoners to the gates, bowing and saying: “Take a walk in the city, gentlemen; or perhaps some of you would like to go to the village?”

“Satan!”

But Yanson had stopped laughing, and was now winking cunningly.

“You had better look out!” said the warden, with an indefinite threat, and he walked away, glancing back of him.

Yanson was calm and cheerful throughout the evening. He repeated to himself, “I shall not be hanged,” and it seemed to him so convincing, so wise, so irrefutable, that it was unnecessary to feel uneasy. He had long forgotten about his crime, only sometimes he regretted that he had not been successful in attacking his master’s wife. But he soon forgot that, too.

Every morning Yanson asked when he was to be hanged, and every morning the warden answered him angrily:

“Take your time, you devil! Wait!” and he would walk off quickly before Yanson could begin to laugh.

And from these monotonously repeated words, and from the fact that each day came, passed and ended as every ordinary day had passed, Yanson became convinced that there would be no execution. He began to lose all memory of the trial, and would roll about all day long on his cot, vaguely and happily dreaming about the white melancholy fields, with their snow-mounds, about the refreshment bar at the railroad station, and about other things still more vague and bright. He was well fed in the prison, and somehow he began to grow stout rapidly and to assume airs.

“Now she would have liked me,” he thought of his master’s wife. “Now I am stout⁠—not worse-looking than the master.”

But he longed for a drink of vodka, to drink and to take a ride on horseback, to ride fast, madly.

When the terrorists were arrested the news of it reached the prison. And in answer to Yanson’s usual question, the warden said eagerly and unexpectedly:

“It won’t be long now!”

He looked at Yanson calmly with an air of importance and repeated:

“It won’t be long now. I suppose in about a week.”

Yanson turned pale, and as though falling asleep, so turbid was the look in his glassy eyes, asked:

“Are you joking?”

“First you could not wait, and now you think I am joking. We are not allowed to joke here. You like to joke, but we are not allowed to,” said the warden with dignity as he went away.

Toward evening of that day Yanson had already grown thinner. His skin, which had stretched out and had become smooth for a time, was suddenly covered with a multitude of small wrinkles, and in places it seemed even to hang down. His eyes became sleepy, and all his motions were now so slow and languid as though each turn of the head, each move of the fingers, each step of the foot were a complicated and cumbersome undertaking which required very careful deliberation. At night he lay on his cot, but did not close his eyes, and thus, heavy with sleep, they remained open until morning.

“Aha!” said the warden with satisfaction, seeing him on the following day. “This is no dramshop for you, my dear!”

With a feeling of pleasant gratification, like a scientist whose experiment had proved successful again, he examined the condemned man closely and carefully from head to foot. Now everything would go along as necessary. Satan was disgraced, the sacredness of the prison and the execution was reestablished, and the old man inquired condescendingly, even with a feeling of sincere pity:

“Do you want to meet somebody or not?”

“What for?”

“Well, to say goodbye! Have you no mother, for instance, or a brother?”

“I must not be hanged,” said Yanson softly, and looked askance at the warden. “I don’t want to be hanged.”

The warden looked at him and waved his hand in silence.

Toward evening Yanson grew somewhat calmer.

The day had been so ordinary, the cloudy winter sky looked so ordinary, the footsteps of people and their conversation on matters of business sounded so ordinary, the smell of the sour soup of cabbage was so ordinary, customary and natural that he again ceased believing in the execution. But the night became terrible to him. Before this Yanson had felt the night simply as darkness, as an especially dark time, when it was necessary to go to sleep, but now he began to be aware of its mysterious and uncanny nature. In order not to believe in death, it was necessary to hear and see and feel ordinary things about him, footsteps, voices, light, the soup of sour cabbage. But in the dark everything was unnatural; the silence and the darkness were in themselves something like death.

And the longer the night dragged the more dreadful it became. With the ignorant innocence of a child or a savage, who believe everything possible, Yanson felt like crying to the sun: “Shine!” He begged, he implored that the sun should shine, but the night drew its long, dark hours remorselessly over the earth, and there was no power that could hasten its course. And this impossibility, arising for the first time before the weak consciousness of Yanson, filled him with terror. Still not daring to realize it clearly, he already felt the inevitability of approaching death, and felt himself making the first step upon the gallows, with benumbed feet.

Day quieted him, but night again filled him with fear, and so it was until one night when he realized fully that death was inevitable, that it would come in three days at dawn with the sunrise.

He had never thought of what death was, and it had no image to him⁠—but now he realized clearly, he saw, he felt that it had entered his cell and was looking for him, groping about with its hands. And to save himself, he began to run wildly about the room.

But the cell was so small that it seemed that its corners were not sharp but dull, and that all of them were pushing him into the center of the room. And there was nothing behind which to hide. And the door was locked. And it was dark. Several times he struck his body against the walls, making no sound, and once he struck against the door⁠—it gave forth a dull, empty sound. He stumbled over something and fell upon his face, and then he felt that it was going to seize him. Lying on his stomach, holding to the floor, hiding his face in the dark, dirty asphalt, Yanson howled in terror. He lay; and cried at the top of his voice until someone came. And when he was lifted from the floor and seated upon the cot, and cold water was poured over his head, he still did not dare open his tightly closed eyes. He opened one eye, and noticing someone’s boot in one of the corners of the room, he commenced crying again.

But the cold water began to produce its effect in bringing him to his senses. To help the effect, the warden on duty, the same old man, administered medicine to Yanson in the form of several blows upon the head. And this sensation of life returning to him really drove the fear of death away. Yanson opened his eyes, and then, his mind utterly confused, he slept soundly for the remainder of the night. He lay on his back, with mouth open, and snored loudly, and between his lashes, which were not tightly closed, his flat, dead eyes, which were upturned so that the pupil did not show, could be seen.

Later, everything in the world⁠—day and night, footsteps, voices, the soup of sour cabbage, produced in him a continuous terror, plunging him into a state of savage uncomprehending astonishment. His weak mind was unable to combine these two things which so monstrously contradicted each other⁠—the bright day, the odor and taste of cabbage⁠—and the fact that two days later he must die. He did not think of anything. He did not even count the hours, but simply stood in mute stupefaction before this contradiction which tore his brain in two. And he became evenly pale, neither white nor redder in parts, and appeared to be calm. Only he ate nothing and ceased sleeping altogether. He sat all night long on a stool, his legs crossed under him, in fright. Or he walked about in his cell, quietly, stealthily, and sleepily looking about him on all sides. His mouth was half-open all the time, as though from incessant astonishment, and before taking the most ordinary thing into his hands, he would examine it stupidly for a long time, and would take it distrustfully.

When he became thus, the wardens as well as the sentinel who watched him through the little window, ceased paying further attention to him. This was the customary condition of prisoners, and reminded the wardens of cattle being led to slaughter after a staggering blow.

“Now he is stunned, now he will feel nothing until his very death,” said the warden, looking at him with experienced eyes. “Ivan! Do you hear? Ivan!”

“I must not be hanged,” answered Yanson, in a dull voice, and his lower jaw again drooped.

“You should not have committed murder. You would not be hanged then,” answered the chief warden, a young but very important-looking man with medals on his chest. “You committed murder, yet you do not want to be hanged?”

“He wants to kill human beings without paying for it. Fool! fool!” said another.

“I don’t want to be hanged,” said Yanson.

“Well, my friend, you may want it or not, that’s your affair,” replied the chief warden indifferently. “Instead of talking nonsense, you had better arrange your affairs. You still have something.”

“He has nothing. One shirt and a suit of clothes. And a fur cap! A sport!”

Thus time passed until Thursday. And on Thursday, at midnight a number of people entered Yanson’s cell, and one man, with shoulder-straps, said:

“Well, get ready. We must go.”

Yanson, moving slowly and drowsily as before, put on everything he had and tied his muddy-red muffler about his neck. The man with shoulder-straps, smoking a cigarette, said to someone while watching Yanson dress:

“What a warm day this will be. Real spring.”

Yanson’s small eyes were closing; he seemed to be falling asleep, and he moved so slowly and stiffly that the warden cried to him:

“Hey, there! Quicker! Have you fallen asleep?”

Suddenly Yanson stopped.

“I don’t want to be hanged,” said he.

He was taken by the arms and led away, and began to stride obediently, raising his shoulders. Outside he found himself in the moist, spring air, and beads of sweat stood under his little nose. Notwithstanding that it was night, it was thawing very strongly and drops of water were dripping upon the stones. And waiting while the soldiers, clanking their sabres and bending their heads, were stepping into the unlighted black carriage, Yanson lazily moved his finger under his moist nose and adjusted the badly tied muffler about his neck.

The same council-chamber of the military district court which had condemned Yanson had also condemned to death a peasant of the Government of Oryol, of the District of Yeletzk, Mikhail Golubets, nicknamed Tsiganok, also Tatarin. His latest crime, proven beyond question, had been the murder of three people and armed robbery. Behind that, his dark past disappeared in a depth of mystery. There were vague rumors that he had participated in a series of other murders and robberies, and in his path there was felt to be a dark trail of blood, fire, and drunken debauchery. He called himself murderer with utter frankness and sincerity, and scornfully regarded those who, according to the latest fashion, styled themselves “expropriators.” Of his last crime, since it was useless for him to deny anything, he spoke freely and in detail, but in answer to questions about his past, he merely gritted his teeth, whistled, and said:

“Search for the wind of the fields!”

When he was annoyed in cross-examination, Tsiganok assumed a serious and dignified air:

“All of us from Oryol are thoroughbreds,” he would say gravely and deliberately. “Oryol and Kroma are the homes of first-class thieves. Karachev and Livna are the breeding-places of thieves. And Yeletz⁠—is the parent of all thieves. Now⁠—what else is there to say?”

He was nicknamed Tsiganok (gypsy) because of his appearance and his thievish manner. He was black-haired, lean, with yellow spots on his prominent, Tartar-like cheekbones. His glance was swift, brief, but fearfully direct and searching, and the thing upon which he looked for a moment seemed to lose something, seemed to deliver up to him a part of itself, and to become something else. It was just as unpleasant and repugnant to take a cigarette at which he looked, as though it had already been in his mouth. There was a certain constant restlessness in him, now twisting him like a rag, now throwing him about like a body of coiling live wires. And he drank water almost by the bucket.

To all questions during the trial he answered shortly, firmly, jumping up quickly, and at times he seemed to answer even with pleasure.

“Correct!” he would say.

Sometimes he emphasized it.

“Cor-r-rect!”

At one time, suddenly, when they were speaking of something that would hardly have seemed to suggest it, he jumped to his feet and asked the presiding judge:

“Will you allow me to whistle?”

“What for?” asked the judge, surprised.

“They said that I gave the signal to my comrades. I would like to show you how. It is very interesting.”

The judge consented, somewhat wonderingly. Tsiganok quickly placed four fingers in his mouth, two fingers of each hand, rolled his eyes fiercely⁠—and then the dead air of the courtroom was suddenly rent by a real, wild, murderer’s whistle⁠—at which frightened horses leap and rear on their hind legs and human faces involuntarily blanch. The mortal anguish of him who is to be assassinated, the wild joy of the murderer, the dreadful warning, the call, the gloom and loneliness of a stormy autumn night⁠—all this rang in his piercing shriek, which was neither human nor beastly.

The presiding officer shouted⁠—then waved his arm at Tsiganok, and Tsiganok obediently became silent. And, like an artist who had triumphantly performed a difficult aria, he sat down, wiped his wet fingers upon his coat, and surveyed those present with an air of satisfaction.

“What a robber!” said one of the judges, rubbing his ear.

Another one, however, with a wild Russian beard, but with the eyes of a Tartar, like those of Tsiganok, gazed pensively above Tsiganok’s head, then smiled and remarked:

“It is indeed interesting.”

With light hearts, without mercy, without the slightest pangs of conscience, the judges brought out against Tsiganok a verdict of death.

“Correct!” said Tsiganok, when the verdict was pronounced. “In the open field and on a crossbeam! Correct!”

And turning to the convoy, he hurled with bravado:

“Well, are we not going? Come on, you sour-coat. And hold your gun⁠—I might take it away from you!”

The soldier looked at him sternly, with fear, exchanged glances with his comrade, and felt the lock of his gun. The other did the same. And all the way to the prison the soldiers felt that they were not walking but flying through the air⁠—as if hypnotized by the prisoner, they felt neither the ground beneath their feet, nor the passage of time, nor themselves.

Mishka Tsiganok, like Yanson, had had to spend seventeen days in prison before his execution. And all seventeen days passed as though they were one day⁠—they were bound up in one inextinguishable thought of escape, of freedom, of life. The restlessness of Tsiganok, which was now repressed by the walls and the bars and the dead window through which nothing could be seen, turned all its fury upon himself and burned his soul like coals scattered upon boards. As though he were in a drunken vapor, bright but incomplete images swarmed upon him, failing and then becoming confused, and then again rushing through his mind in an unrestrainable blinding whirlwind⁠—and all were bent toward escape, toward liberty, toward life. With his nostrils expanded, like those of a horse, Tsiganok smelt the air for hours long⁠—it seemed to him that he could smell the odor of hemp, of the smoke of fire⁠—the colorless and biting smell of burning. Now he whirled about in the room like a top, touching the walls, tapping them nervously with his fingers from time to time, taking aim, boring the ceiling with his gaze, filing the prison bars. By his restlessness, he had tired out the soldiers who watched him through the little window, and who, several times, in despair, had threatened to shoot. Tsiganok would retort, coarsely and derisively, and the quarrel would end peacefully because the dispute would soon turn into boorish, unoffending abuse, after which shooting would have seemed absurd and impossible.

Tsiganok slept during the nights soundly, without stirring, in unchanging yet live motionlessness, like a wire spring in temporary inactivity. But as soon as he arose, he immediately commenced to walk, to plan, to grope about. His hands were always dry and hot, but his heart at times would suddenly grow cold, as if a cake of unmelting ice had been placed upon his chest, sending a slight, dry shiver through his whole body. At such times, Tsiganok, always dark in complexion, would turn black, assuming the shade of bluish cast-iron. And he acquired a curious habit; as though he had eaten too much of something sickeningly sweet, he kept licking his lips, smacking them, and would spit on the floor, hissingly, through his teeth. When he spoke, he did not finish his words, so rapidly did his thoughts run that his tongue was unable to compass them.

One day the chief warden, accompanied by a soldier, entered his cell. He looked askance at the floor and said gruffly:

“Look! How dirty he has made it!”

Tsiganok retorted quickly:

“You’ve made the whole world dirty, you fat-face, and yet I haven’t said anything to you. What brings you here?”

The warden, speaking as gruffly as before, asked him whether he would act as executioner. Tsiganok burst out laughing, showing his teeth.

“You can’t find anyone else? That’s good! Go ahead, hang! Ha! ha! ha! The necks are there, the rope is there, but there is nobody to string it up. By God! that’s good!”

“You’ll save your neck if you do it.”

“Of course⁠—I couldn’t hang them if I were dead. Well said, you fool!”

“Well, what do you say? Is it all the same to you?”

“And how do you hang them here? I suppose they’re choked on the sly.”

“No, with music,” snarled the warden.

“Well, what a fool! Of course it can be done with music. This way!” and he began to sing, with a bold and daring swing.

“You have lost your wits, my friend,” said the warden. “What do you say? Speak sensibly.”

Tsiganok grinned.

“How eager you are! Come another time and I’ll tell you.”

After that, into that chaos of bright, yet incomplete images which oppressed Tsiganok by their impetuosity, a new image came⁠—how good it would be to become a hangman in a red shirt. He pictured to himself vividly a square crowded with people, a high scaffold, and he, Tsiganok, in a red shirt walking about upon the scaffold with an ax. The sun shone overhead, gaily flashing from the ax, and everything was so gay and bright that even the man whose head was soon to be chopped off was smiling. And behind the crowd, wagons and the heads of horses could be seen⁠—the peasants had come from the village; and beyond them, further, he could see the village itself.

“Ts-akh!”

Tsiganok smacked his lips, licking them, and spat. And suddenly he felt as though a fur cap had been pushed over his head to his very mouth⁠—it became black and stifling, and his heart again became like a cake of unmelting ice, sending a slight, dry shiver through his whole body.

The warden came in twice again, and Tsiganok, showing his teeth, said:

“How eager you are! Come in again!”

Finally one day the warden shouted through the casement window as he passed rapidly:

“You’ve let your chance slip by, you fool! We’ve found somebody else.”

“The devil take you! Hang yourself!” snarled Tsiganok, and he stopped dreaming of the execution.

But toward the end, the nearer he approached the time, the weight of the fragments of his broken images became unbearable. Tsiganok now felt like standing still, like spreading his legs and standing⁠—but a whirling current of thoughts carried him away and there was nothing at which he could clutch⁠—everything about him swam. And his sleep also became uneasy. Dreams even more violent than his thoughts appeared⁠—new dreams, solid, heavy, like wooden painted blocks. And it was no longer like a current, but like an endless fall to an endless depth, a whirling flight through the whole visible world of colors.

When Tsiganok was free he had worn only a pair of dashing mustaches, but in the prison a short, black, bristly beard grew on his face and it made him look fearsome, insane. At times Tsiganok really lost his senses and whirled absurdly about in the cell, still tapping upon the rough, plastered walls nervously. And he drank water like a horse.

At times toward evening when they lit the lamp, Tsiganok would stand on all fours in the middle of his cell and would howl the quivering howl of a wolf. He was peculiarly serious while doing it, and would howl as though he were performing an important and indispensable act. He would fill his chest with air and then exhale it, slowly in a prolonged tremulous howl, and, cocking his eyes, would listen intently as the sound issued forth. And the very quiver in his voice seemed in a manner intentional. He did not scream wildly, but drew out each note carefully in that mournful wail full of untold sorrow and terror.

Then he would suddenly break off howling and for several minutes would remain silent, still standing on all fours. Then suddenly he would mutter softly, staring at the ground:

“My darlings, my sweethearts!⁠ ⁠… My darlings, my sweethearts! have pity.⁠ ⁠… My darlings!⁠ ⁠… My sweethearts!”

And it seemed again as if he were listening intently to his own voice. As he said each word he would listen.

Then he would jump up and for a whole hour would curse continually.

He cursed picturesquely, shouting and rolling his bloodshot eyes.

“If you hang me⁠—hang me!” and he would burst out cursing again.

And the sentinel, in the meantime white as chalk, weeping with pain and fright, would knock at the door with the butt-end of the gun and cry helplessly:

“I’ll fire! I’ll kill you as sure as I live! Do you hear?”

But he dared not shoot. If there was no actual rebellion they never fired at those who had been condemned to death. And Tsiganok would gnash his teeth, would curse and spit. His brain thus racked on a monstrously sharp blade between life and death was falling to pieces like a lump of dry clay.

When they entered the cell at midnight to lead Tsiganok to the execution he began to bustle about and seemed to have recovered his spirits. Again he had that sweet taste in his mouth, and his saliva collected abundantly, but his cheeks turned rosy and in his eyes began to glisten his former somewhat savage slyness. Dressing himself he asked the official:

“Who is going to do the hanging? A new man? I suppose he hasn’t learned his job yet.”

“You needn’t worry about it,” answered the official dryly.

“I can’t help worrying, your Honor. I am going to be hanged, not you. At least don’t be stingy with the government’s soap on the noose.”

“All right, all right! Keep quiet!”

“This man here has eaten all your soap,” said Tsiganok, pointing to the warden. “See how his face shines.”

“Silence!”

“Don’t be stingy!”

And Tsiganok burst out laughing. But he began to feel that it was getting ever sweeter in his mouth, and suddenly his legs began to feel strangely numb. Still, on coming out into the yard, he managed to exclaim:

“The carriage of the Count of Bengal!”

The verdict concerning the five terrorists was pronounced finally and confirmed upon the same day. The condemned were not told when the execution would take place, but they knew from the usual procedure that they would be hanged the same night, or, at the very latest, upon the following night. And when it was proposed to them that they meet their relatives upon the following Thursday they understood that the execution would take place on Friday at dawn.

Tanya Kovalchuk had no near relatives, and those whom she had were somewhere in the wilderness in Little Russia, and it was not likely that they even knew of the trial or of the coming execution. Musya and Werner, as unidentified people, were not supposed to have relatives, and only two, Sergey Golovin and Vasily Kashirin, were to meet their parents. Both of them looked upon that meeting with terror and anguish, yet they dared not refuse the old people the last word, the last kiss.

Sergey Golovin was particularly tortured by the thought of the coming meeting. He dearly loved his father and mother; he had seen them but a short while before, and now he was in a state of terror as to what would happen when they came to see him. The execution itself, in all its monstrous horror, in its brain-stunning madness, he could imagine more easily, and it seemed less terrible than these other few moments of meeting, brief and unsatisfactory, which seemed to reach beyond time, beyond life itself. How to look, what to think, what to say, his mind could not determine. The most simple and ordinary act, to take his father by the hand, to kiss him, and to say, “How do you do, father?” seemed to him unspeakably horrible in its monstrous, inhuman, absurd deceitfulness.

After the sentence the condemned were not placed together in one cell, as Tanya Kovalchuk had supposed they would be, but each was put in solitary confinement, and all the morning, until eleven o’clock, when his parents came, Sergey Golovin paced his cell furiously, tugged at his beard, frowned pitiably and muttered inaudibly. Sometimes he would stop abruptly, would breathe deeply and then exhale like a man who has been too long under water. But he was so healthy, his young life was so strong within him, that even in the moments of most painful suffering his blood played under his skin, reddening his cheeks, and his blue eyes shone brightly and frankly.

But everything was far different from what he had anticipated.

Nikolay Sergeyevich Golovin, Sergey’s father, a retired colonel, was the first to enter the room where the meeting took place. He was all white⁠—his face, his beard, his hair, and his hands⁠—as if he were a snow statue attired in man’s clothes. He had on the same old but well-cleaned coat, smelling of benzine, with new shoulder-straps crosswise, that he had always worn, and he entered firmly, with an air of stateliness, with strong and steady steps. He stretched out his white, thin hand and said loudly:

“How do you do, Sergey?”

Behind him Sergey’s mother entered with short steps, smiling strangely. But she also pressed his hands and repeated loudly:

“How do you do, Seryozhenka?”

She kissed him on the lips and sat down silently. She did not rush over to him; she did not burst into tears; she did not break into a sob; she did not do any of the terrible things which Sergey had feared. She just kissed him and silently sat down. And with her trembling hands she even adjusted her black silk dress.

Sergey did not know that the colonel, having locked himself all the previous night in his little study, had deliberated upon this ritual with all his power. “We must not aggravate, but ease the last moments of our son,” resolved the colonel firmly, and he carefully weighed every possible phase of the conversation, every act and movement that might take place on the following day. But somehow he became confused, forgetting what he had prepared, and he wept bitterly in the corner of the oilcloth-covered couch. In the morning he explained to his wife how she should behave at the meeting.

“The main thing is, kiss⁠—and say nothing!” he taught her. “Later you may speak⁠—after a while⁠—but when you kiss him, be silent. Don’t speak right after the kiss, do you understand? Or you will say what you should not say.”

“I understand, Nikolay Sergeyevich,” answered the mother, weeping.

“And you must not weep. For God’s sake, do not weep! You will kill him if you weep, old woman!”

“Why do you weep?”

“With women one cannot help weeping. But you must not weep, do you hear?”

“Very well, Nikolay Sergeyevich.”

Riding in the drozhky, he had intended to school her in the instructions again, but he forgot. And so they rode in silence, bent, both gray and old, and they were lost in thought, while the city was gay and noisy. It was Shrovetide, and the streets were crowded.

They sat down. Then the colonel stood up, assumed a studied pose, placing his right hand upon the border of his coat. Sergey sat for an instant, looked closely upon the wrinkled face of his mother and then jumped up.

“Be seated, Seryozhenka,” begged the mother.

“Sit down, Sergey,” repeated the father.

They became silent. The mother smiled.

“How we have petitioned for you, Seryozhenka! Father⁠—”

“You should not have done that, mother⁠—”

The colonel spoke firmly:

“We had to do it, Sergey, so that you should not think your parents had forsaken you.”

They became silent again. It was terrible for them to utter even a word, as though each word in the language had lost its individual meaning and meant but one thing⁠—Death. Sergey looked at his father’s coat, which smelt of benzine, and thought: “They have no servant now, consequently he must have cleaned it himself. How is it that I never before noticed when he cleaned his coat? I suppose he does it in the morning.” Suddenly he asked:

“And how is sister? Is she well?”

“Ninochka does not know anything,” the mother answered hastily.

The colonel interrupted her sternly: “Why should you tell a falsehood? The child read it in the newspapers. Let Sergey know that everybody⁠—that those who are dearest to him⁠—were thinking of him⁠—at this time⁠—and⁠—”

He could not say any more and stopped. Suddenly the mother’s face contracted, then it spread out, became agitated, wet and wild-looking. Her discolored eyes stared blindly, and her breathing became more frequent, and briefer, louder.

“Se⁠—Se⁠—Se⁠—Ser⁠—” she repeated without moving her lips. “Ser⁠—”

“Dear mother!”

The colonel strode forward, and all quivering in every fold of his coat, in every wrinkle of his face, not understanding how terrible he himself looked in his deathlike whiteness, in his heroic, desperate firmness. He said to his wife:

“Be silent! Don’t torture him! Don’t torture him! He has to die! Don’t torture him!”

Frightened, she had already become silent, but he still shook his clenched fists before him and repeated:

“Don’t torture him!”

Then he stepped back, placed his trembling hands behind his back, and loudly, with an expression of forced calm, asked with pale lips:

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning,” answered Sergey, his lips also pale.

The mother looked at the ground, chewing her lips, as if she did not hear anything. And continuing to chew, she uttered these simple words, strangely, as though they dropped like lead:

“Ninochka told me to kiss you, Seryozhenka.”

“Kiss her for me,” said Sergey.

“Very well. The Khvostovs send you their regards.”

“Which Khvostovs? Oh, yes!”

The colonel interrupted:

“Well, we must go. Get up, mother; we must go.” The two men lifted the weakened old woman.

“Bid him goodbye!” ordered the colonel. “Make the sign of the cross.”

She did everything as she was told. But as she made the sign of the cross, and kissed her son a brief kiss, she shook her head and murmured weakly:

“No, it isn’t the right way! It is not the right way! What will I say? How will I say it? No, it is not the right way!”

“Goodbye, Sergey!” said the father. They shook hands, and kissed each other quickly but heartily.

“You⁠—” began Sergey.

“Well?” asked the father abruptly.

“No, no! It is not the right way! How shall I say it?” repeated the mother weakly, nodding her head. She had sat down again and was rocking herself back and forth.

“You⁠—” Sergey began again. Suddenly his face wrinkled pitiably, childishly, and his eyes filled with tears immediately. Through the sparkling gleams of his tears he looked closely into the white face of his father, whose eyes had also filled.

“You, father, are a noble man!”

“What is that? What are you saying?” said the colonel, surprised. And then suddenly, as if broken in two, he fell with his head upon his son’s shoulder. He had been taller than Sergey, but now he became short, and his dry, downy head lay like a white ball upon his son’s shoulder. And they kissed silently and passionately: Sergey kissed the silvery white hair, and the old man kissed the prisoner’s garb.

“And I?” suddenly said a loud voice.

They looked around. Sergey’s mother was standing, her head thrown back, looking at them angrily, almost with contempt.

“What is it, mother?” cried the colonel.

“And I?” she said, shaking her head with insane intensity. “You kiss⁠—and I? You men! Yes? And I? And I?”

“Mother!” Sergey rushed over to her.

What took place then it is unnecessary and impossible to describe.⁠ ⁠…

The last words of the colonel were:

“I give you my blessing for your death, Seryozha. Die bravely, like an officer.”

And they went away. Somehow they went away. They had been there, they had stood, they had spoken⁠—and suddenly they had gone. Here sat his mother, there stood his father⁠—and suddenly somehow they had gone away. Returning to the cell, Sergey lay down on the cot, his face turned toward the wall, in order to hide it from the soldiers, and he wept for a long time. Then, exhausted by his tears, he slept soundly.

To Vasily Kashirin only his mother came. His father, who was a wealthy tradesman, did not want to come. Vasily met the old woman, as he was pacing up and down the room, trembling with cold, although it was warm, even hot. And the conversation was brief, painful.

“It wasn’t worth coming, mother. You’ll only torture yourself and me.”

“Why did you do it, Vasya? Why did you do it? Oh, Lord!” The old woman burst out weeping, wiping her face with the ends of her black, woolen kerchief. And with the habit which he and his brothers had always had of crying at their mother, who did not understand anything, he stopped, and, shuddering as with cold, spoke angrily:

“There! You see! I knew it! You understand nothing, mother! Nothing!”

“Well⁠—well⁠—all right! Do you feel⁠—cold?”

“Cold!” Vasily answered bluntly, and again began to pace the room, looking at his mother askance, as if annoyed.

“Perhaps you have caught cold?”

“Oh, mother what is a cold, when⁠—” and he waved his hand helplessly.

The old woman was about to say: “And your father ordered wheat cakes beginning with Monday,” but she was frightened, and said:

“I told him: ‘It is your son, you should go, give him your blessing.’ No, the old beast persisted⁠—”

“Let him go to the devil! What sort of father has he been to me? He has been a scoundrel all his life, and remains a scoundrel!”

“Vasenka! Do you speak of your father like this?” said the old woman reproachfully, straightening herself.

“About my father!”

“About your own father?”

“He is no father to me!”

It was strange and absurd. Before him was the thought of death, while here something small, empty and trivial arose, and his words cracked like the shells of nuts under foot. And almost crying with sorrow⁠—because of the eternal misunderstanding which all his life long had stood like a wall between him and those nearest to him, and which even now, in the last hour before death, peered at him stupidly and strangely through small, widely opened eyes⁠—Vasily exclaimed:

“Don’t you understand that I am to be hanged soon? Hanged! Do you understand it? Hanged!”

“You shouldn’t have harmed anybody and nobody would⁠—” cried the old woman.

“My God! What is this? Even beasts do not act like this! Am I not your son?”

He began to cry, and seated himself in a corner. The old woman also burst out crying in her corner. Powerless, even for an instant, to blend in a feeling of love and to offset by it the horror of impending death, they wept their cold tears of loneliness which did not warm their hearts. The mother said:

“You ask whether I am a mother to you? You reproach me! And I have grown completely gray during these days. I have become an old woman. And yet you say⁠—you reproach me!”

“Well, mother, it is all right. Forgive me. It is time for you to go. Kiss my brothers for me.”

“Am I not your mother? Do I not feel sorry?”

At last she went away. She wept bitterly, wiping her face with the edges of her kerchief, and she did not see the road. And the farther she got from the prison the more bitterly she wept. She retraced her steps to the prison, and then she strangely lost her way in the city in which she had been born, in which she lived to her old age. She strolled into a deserted little garden with a few old, gnarled trees, and she seated herself upon a wet bench, from which the snow had melted.

And suddenly she understood. He was to be hanged upon the morrow!

The old woman jumped up, about to run, but suddenly her head began to swim terribly and she fell to the ground. The icy path was wet and slippery, and she could not rise. She turned about, lifted herself on her elbows and knelt, then fell back on her side. The black kerchief had slipped down, baring upon the back of her head a bald spot amid her muddy-gray hair; and then somehow it seemed to her that she was feasting at a wedding, that her son was getting married, and she had been drinking wine and had become intoxicated.

“I can’t! My God! I can’t!” she cried, as though declining something. Swaying her head, she crawled over the wet, frozen crust, and all the time it seemed to her that they were pouring out more wine for her, more wine!

And her heart had already begun to pain her from her intoxicated laughter, from the rejoicing, from the wild dancing⁠—and they kept on pouring more wine for her⁠—pouring more wine!

On the fortress where the condemned terrorists were imprisoned there was a steeple with an old-fashioned clock upon it. At every hour, at every half-hour, and at every quarter-hour the clock rang out in long-drawn, mournful chimes, slowly melting high in the air, like the distant and plaintive call of migrating birds. In the daytime, this strange and sad music was lost in the noise of the city, of the wide and crowded street which passed near the fortress. The cars buzzed along, the hoofs of the horses beat upon the pavements, the rocking automobiles honked in the distance, peasant izvozchiks had come especially from the outskirts of the city for the Shrovetide season and the tinkling of the bells upon the necks of their little horses filled the air. The prattle of voices⁠—an intoxicated, merry Shrovetide prattle of voices arose everywhere. And in the midst of these various noises there was the young thawing spring, the muddy pools on the meadows, the trees of the squares which had suddenly become black. From the sea a warm breeze was blowing in broad, moist gusts. It was almost as if one could have seen the tiny fresh particles of air carried away, merged into the free, endless expanse of the atmosphere⁠—could have heard them laughing in their flight.

At night the street grew quiet in the lonely light of the large, electric sun. And then, the enormous fortress, within whose walls there was not a single light, passed into darkness and silence, separating itself from the ever living, stirring city by a wall of silence, motionlessness and darkness. Then it was that the strokes of the clock became audible. A strange melody, foreign to earth, was slowly and mournfully born and died out up in the heights. It was born again; deceiving the ear, it rang plaintively and softly⁠—it broke off⁠—and rang again. Like large, transparent, glassy drops, hours and minutes descended from an unknown height into a metallic, softly resounding bell.

This was the only sound that reached the cells, by day and night, where the condemned remained in solitary confinement. Through the roof, through the thickness of the stone walls, it penetrated, stirring the silence⁠—it passed unnoticed, to return again, also unnoticed. Sometimes they awaited it in despair, living from one sound to the next, trusting the silence no longer. Only important criminals were sent to this prison. There were special rules there, stern, grim and severe, like the corner of the fortress wall, and if there be nobility in cruelty, then the dull, dead, solemnly mute silence, which caught the slightest rustle and breathing, was noble.

And in this solemn silence, broken by the mournful tolling of the departing minutes, separated from all that lives, five human beings, two women and three men, waited for the advent of night, of dawn and the execution, and all of them prepared for it, each in his or her own way.

Just as Tanya Kovalchuk had thought all her life only of others and never of herself, so now she suffered and grieved painfully, but only for her comrades. She pictured death, only as awaiting them, as something tormenting only to Sergey Golovin, to Musya, to the others⁠—as for herself, it did not concern her.

As a recompense for her firmness and restraint in the courtroom she wept for long hours, as old women who have experienced great misery, or as very sympathetic and kindhearted young people know how to weep. And the fear that perhaps Seryozha was without tobacco or Werner without the strong tea to which he was accustomed, in addition to the fact that they were to die, caused her no less pain than the idea of the execution itself. Death was something inevitable and even unimportant, of which it was not worth while to think; but for a man in prison, before his execution, to be left without tobacco⁠—that was altogether unbearable. She recalled and went over in her mind all the pleasant details of their life together, and then she grew faint with fear when she pictured to herself the meeting between Sergey and his parents.

She felt particularly sorry for Musya. It had long seemed to her that Musya loved Werner, and although this was not a fact, she still dreamed of something good and bright for both of them. When she had been free, Musya had worn a silver ring, on which was the design of a skull, bones, and a crown of thorns about them. Tanya Kovalchuk had often looked upon the ring as a symbol of doom, and she would ask Musya, now in jest, now in earnest, to remove the ring.

“Make me a present of it,” she had begged.

“No, Tanechka, I will not give it to you. But perhaps you will soon have another ring upon your finger.”

For some reason or other they all in turn had thought that she would doubtless soon marry, and this had offended her⁠—she wanted no husband. And recalling these half-jesting conversations with Musya, and the fact that now Musya was actually condemned to death, she choked with tears in her maternal pity. And each time the clock struck she raised her tear-stained face and listened⁠—how were they in the other cells receiving this drawn-out, persistent call of death?

But Musya was happy.

With her hands folded behind her back, dressed in a prisoner’s garb which was much too large for her, and which made her look very much like a man⁠—like a stripling dressed in someone else’s clothes⁠—she paced her cell evenly and tirelessly. The sleeves of the coat were too long for her, and she turned them up, and her thin, almost childish, emaciated hands peeped out of the wide holes like a beautiful flower out of a coarse earthen jug. The rough material of the coat rubbed her thin white neck, and sometimes Musya would free her throat with both hands and would cautiously feel the spot where the irritated skin was red and smarted.

Musya paced the cell, and, blushing in agitation, she imagined that she was justifying herself before the people. She tried to justify herself for the fact that she, who was so young, so insignificant, who had done so little, and who was not at all a heroine, was yet to undergo the same honorable and beautiful death by which real heroes and martyrs had died before her. With unshakable faith in human kindness, in their compassion, in their love, she pictured to herself how people were now agitated on her account, how they suffered, how they pitied her, and she felt so ashamed that she blushed, as if, by dying upon the scaffold, she had committed some tremendous, awkward blunder.

At the last meeting with their counsel she had asked him to bring her poison, but suddenly she had changed her mind. What if he and the others, she thought, should consider that she was doing it merely to become conspicuous, or out of cowardice, that instead of dying modestly and unnoticed, she was attempting to glorify herself. And she added hastily:

“No, it isn’t necessary.”

And now she desired but one thing⁠—to be able to explain to people, to prove to them so that they should have not the slightest doubt that she was not at all a heroine, that it was not terrible to die, that they should not feel sorry for her, nor trouble themselves about her. She wished to be able to explain to them that she was not at all to blame that she, who was so young and so insignificant, was to undergo such a martyr’s death, and that so much trouble should be made on her account.

Like a person who is actually accused of a crime, Musya sought justification. She endeavored to find something that would at least make her sacrifice more momentous, which might give it real value. She reasoned:

“Of course, I am young and could have lived for a long time. But⁠—”

And as a candle darkens in the glare of the rising sun, so her youth and her life seemed dull and dark compared to that great and resplendent radiance which would shine above her simple head. There was no justification.

But perhaps that peculiar something which she bore in her soul⁠—boundless love, boundless eagerness to do great deeds, her boundless contempt for herself⁠—was a justification in itself. She felt that she was really not to blame that she was hindered from doing the things she could have done, which she had wished to do⁠—that she had been smitten upon the threshold of the temple, at the foot of the altar.

But if that were so, if a person is appreciated not only for what he has done, but also for what he had intended to do⁠—then⁠—then she was worthy of the crown of the martyr!

“Is it possible?” thought Musya bashfully. “Is it possible that I am worthy of it? That I deserve that people should weep for me, should be agitated over my fate, over such a little and insignificant girl?”

And she was seized with sudden joy. There were no doubts, no hesitations⁠—she was received into their midst⁠—she entered justified the ranks of those noble people who always ascend to heaven through fires, tortures and executions. Bright peace and tranquillity and endless, calmly radiant happiness! It was as if she had already departed from earth and was nearing the unknown sun of truth and life, and was incorporeally soaring in its light.

“And that is⁠—Death? That is not Death!” thought Musya blissfully.

And if scientists, philosophers and hangmen from the world over should come to her cell, spreading before her books, scalpels, axes and nooses, and were to attempt to prove to her that Death existed, that a human being dies and is killed, that there is no immortality, they would only surprise her. How could there be no deathlessness, since she was already deathless? Of what other deathlessness, of what other death, could there be a question, since she was already dead and immortal, alive in death, as she had been dead in life?

And if a coffin were brought into her cell with her own decomposing body in it, and she were told:

“Look! That is you!”

She would look and would answer:

“No, it is not I.”

And if they should attempt to convince her, frightening her by the ominous sight of her own decomposed body, that it was she⁠—she, Musya, would answer with a smile:

“No. You think that it is I, but it isn’t. I am the one you are speaking to; how can I be the other one?”

“But you will die and become like that.”

“No, I will not die.”

“You will be executed. Here is the noose.”

“I will be executed, but I will not die. How can I die, when I am already⁠—now⁠—immortal?”

And the scientists and philosophers and hangmen would retreat, speaking⁠—with a shudder:

“Do not touch this place. It is holy.”

What else was Musya thinking about? She was thinking of many things, for to her the thread of life was not broken by Death, but kept winding along calmly and evenly. She thought of her comrades, of those who were far away, and who in pain and sorrow were living through the execution together with them, and of those near by who were to mount the scaffold with her. She was surprised at Vasily⁠—that he should have been so disturbed⁠—he, who had always been so brave, and who had jested with Death. Thus, only on Tuesday morning, when all together they had attached explosive projectiles to their belts, which several hours later were to tear them into pieces, Tanya Kovalchuk’s hands had trembled with nervousness, and it had become necessary to put her aside, while Vasily jested, made merry, turned about, and was even so reckless that Werner had said sternly:

“You must not be too familiar with Death.”

What was he afraid of now? But this incomprehensible fear was so foreign to Musya’s soul that she ceased searching for the cause of it⁠—and suddenly she was seized with a desperate desire to see Seryozha Golovin, to laugh with him. She meditated a little while, and then an even more desperate desire came over her to see Werner and to convince him of something. And imagining to herself that Werner was in the next cell, driving his heels into the ground with his distinct, measured steps, Musya spoke, as if addressing him:

“No, Werner, my dear; it is all nonsense; it isn’t at all important whether or not you are killed. You are a sensible man, but you seem to be playing chess, and that by taking one figure after another the game is won. The important thing, Werner, is that we ourselves are ready to die. Do you understand? What do those people think? That there is nothing more terrible than death. They themselves have invented Death, they are themselves afraid of it, and they try to frighten us with it. I should like to do this⁠—I should like to go out alone before a whole regiment of soldiers and fire upon them with a revolver. It would not matter that I would be alone, while they would be thousands, or that I might not kill any of them. It is that which is important⁠—that they are thousands. When thousands kill one, it means that the one has conquered. That is true, Werner, my dear.⁠ ⁠…”

But this, too, became so clear to her that she did not feel like arguing further⁠—Werner must understand it himself. Perhaps her mind simply did not want to stop at one thought⁠—just as a bird that soars with ease, which sees endless horizons, and to which all space, all the depth, all the joy of the soft and caressing azure are accessible. The bell of the clock rang unceasingly, disturbing the deep silence. And into this harmonious, remote, beautiful sound the thoughts of the people flowed, and also began to ring for her; and the smoothly gliding images turned into music. It was just as if, on a quiet, dark night, Musya was riding along a broad, even road, while the easy springs of the carriage rocked her and the little bells tinkled. All alarm and agitation had passed, the fatigued body had dissolved in the darkness, and her joyously wearied fancy calmly created bright images, carried away by their color and their peaceful tranquillity. Musya recalled three of her comrades who had been hanged but a short time before, and their faces seemed bright and happy and near to her⁠—nearer than those in life. Thus does a man think with joy in the morning of the house of his friends where he is to go in the evening, and a greeting rises to his smiling lips.

Musya became very tired from walking. She lay down cautiously on the cot and continued to dream with slightly closed eyes. The clock-bell rang unceasingly, stirring the mute silence, and bright, singing images floated calmly before her. Musya thought:

“Is it possible that this is Death? My God! How beautiful it is! Or is it Life? I do not know. I do not know. I will look and listen.”

Her hearing had long given way to her imagination⁠—from the first moment of her imprisonment. Inclined to be very musical, her ear had become keen in the silence, and on this background of silence, out of the meagre bits of reality, the footsteps of the guards in the corridors, the ringing of the clock, the rustling of the wind on the iron roof, the creaking of the lantern⁠—it created complete musical pictures. At first Musya was afraid of them, brushed them away from her as if they were the hallucinations of a sickly mind. But later she understood that she herself was well, and that this was no derangement of any kind⁠—and she gave herself up to the dreams calmly.

And now, suddenly, she seemed to hear clearly and distinctly the sounds of military music. In astonishment, she opened her eyes, lifted her head⁠—outside the window was black night, and the clock was striking. “Again,” she thought calmly, and closed her eyes. And as soon as she did so the music resounded anew. She could hear distinctly how the soldiers, a whole regiment, were coming from behind the corner of the fortress, on the right, and now they were passing her window. Their feet beat time with measured steps upon the frozen ground: One-two! One-two! She could even hear at times the leather of the boots creaking, how suddenly someone’s foot slipped and immediately recovered its steps. And the music came ever nearer⁠—it was an entirely unfamiliar but a very loud and spirited holiday march. Evidently there was some sort of celebration in the fortress.

Now the band came up alongside of her window and the cell was filled with merry, rhythmic, harmoniously blended sounds. One large brass trumpet brayed harshly out of tune, now too late, now comically running ahead⁠—Musya could almost see the little soldier playing it, a great expression of earnestness on his face⁠—and she laughed.

Then everything moved away. The footsteps died out⁠—One-two! One-two! At a distance the music sounded still more beautiful and cheerful. The trumpet resounded now and then with its merry, loud brass voice, out of tune⁠—and then everything died away. And the clock on the tower struck again, slowly, mournfully, hardly stirring the silence.

“They are gone!” thought Musya, with a feeling of slight sadness. She felt sorry for the departing sounds, which had been so cheerful and so comical. She was even sorry for the departed little soldiers, because those busy soldiers, with their brass trumpets and their creaking boots, were of an entirely different sort, not at all like those at whom she had felt like firing a revolver.

“Come again!” she begged tenderly. And more came. The figures bent over her, they surrounded her in a transparent cloud and lifted her up, where the migrating birds were soaring and screaming, like heralds. On the right of her, on the left, above and below her⁠—they screamed like heralds. They called, they announced from afar their flight. They flapped their wide wings and the darkness supported them, even as the light had supported them. And on their convex breasts, cleaving the air asunder, the city far below reflected a blue light. Musya’s heart beat ever more evenly, her breathing grew ever more calm and quiet. She was falling asleep. Her face looked fatigued and pale. Beneath her eyes were dark circles, her girlish, emaciated hands seemed so thin⁠—but upon her lips was a smile. Tomorrow, with the rise of the sun, this human face would be distorted with an inhuman grimace, her brain would be covered with thick blood, and her eyes would bulge from their sockets and look glassy⁠—but now she slept quietly and smiled in her great immortality.

Musya fell asleep.

And the life of the prison went on, deaf and sensitive, blind and sharp-sighted, like eternal alarm itself. Somewhere people were walking. Somewhere people were whispering. A gun clanked. It seemed as if someone shouted. Perhaps no one shouted at all⁠—perhaps it merely seemed so in the silence.

The little casement window in the door opened noiselessly. A dark, mustached face appeared in the black hole. For a long time it stared at Musya in astonishment⁠—and then disappeared as noiselessly as it had appeared.

The bells rang and sang, for a long time, painfully. It seemed as if the tired Hours were climbing up a high mountain toward midnight, and that it was becoming ever harder and harder to ascend. They fall, they slip, they slide down with a groan⁠—and then again, they climb painfully toward the black height.

Somewhere people were walking. Somewhere people were whispering. And they were already harnessing the horses to the black carriages without lanterns.

Sergey Golovin never thought of death, as though it were something not to be considered, something that did not concern him in the least. He was a strong, healthy, cheerful youth, endowed with that calm, clear joy of living which causes every evil thought and feeling that might injure life to disappear from the organism without leaving any trace. Just as all cuts, wounds and stings on his body healed rapidly, so all that weighed upon his soul and wounded it immediately rose to the surface and disappeared. And he brought into every work, even into his enjoyments, the same calm and optimistic seriousness⁠—it mattered not whether he was occupied with photography, with bicycling or with preparations for a terroristic act. Everything in life was joyous, everything in life was important, everything should be done well.

And he did everything well: he was an excellent sailor, an expert shot with the revolver. He was as faithful in friendship as in love, and a fanatic believer in the “word of honor.” His comrades laughed at him, saying that if the most notorious spy told him upon his word of honor that he was not a spy, Sergey would believe him and would shake hands with him as with any comrade. He had one fault⁠—he was convinced that he could sing well, whereas in fact he had no ear for music and even sang the revolutionary songs out of tune, and felt offended when his friends laughed at him.

“Either you are all asses, or I am an ass,” he would declare seriously and even angrily. And all his friends as seriously declared: “You are an ass. We can tell by your voice.”

But, as is sometimes the case with good people, he was perhaps liked more for this little foible than for his good qualities.

He feared death so little and thought of it so little that on the fatal morning, before leaving the house of Tanya Kovalchuk, he was the only one who had breakfasted properly, with an appetite. He drank two glasses of tea with milk, and a whole five-copeck roll of bread. Then he glanced at Werner’s untouched bread and said:

“Why don’t you eat? Eat. We must brace up.”

“I don’t feel like eating.”

“Then I’ll eat it. May I?”

“You have a fine appetite, Seryozha.”

Instead of answering, Sergey, his mouth full, began to sing in a dull voice, out of tune:

“Hostile whirlwinds are blowing over us⁠ ⁠…”

After the arrest he at first grew sad; the work had not been done well, they had failed; but then he thought: “There is something else now that must be done well⁠—and that is, to die,” and he cheered up again. And however strange it may seem, beginning with the second morning in the fortress, he commenced devoting himself to gymnastics according to the unusually rational system of a certain German named Müller, which absorbed his interest. He undressed himself completely and, to the alarm and astonishment of the guard who watched him, he carefully went through all the prescribed eighteen exercises. The fact that the guard watched him and was apparently astonished, pleased him as a propagandist of the Müller system; and although he knew that he would get no answer he nevertheless spoke to the eye staring in the little window:

“It’s a good system, my friend, it braces you up. It should be introduced in your regiment,” he shouted convincingly and kindly, so as not to frighten the soldier, not suspecting that the guard considered him a harmless lunatic.

The fear of death came over him gradually. It was as if somebody were striking his heart a powerful blow with the fist from below. This sensation was rather painful than terrible. Then the sensation was forgotten, but it returned again a few hours later, and each time it grew more intense and of longer duration, and thus it began to assume vague outlines of some great, even unbearable fear.

“Is it possible that I am afraid?” thought Sergey in astonishment. “What nonsense!”

It was not he who was afraid⁠—it was his young, sound, strong body, which could not be deceived either by the exercises prescribed by the Müller system, or by the cold rubdowns. On the contrary, the stronger and the fresher his body became after the cold water, the keener and the more unbearable became the sensations of his recurrent fear. And just at those moments when, during his freedom, he had felt a special influx of the joy and power of life⁠—in the mornings after he had slept soundly and gone through his physical exercises⁠—now there appeared this deadening fear which was so foreign to his nature. He noticed this and thought:

“It is foolish, Sergey! To die more easily, you should weaken the body and not strengthen it. It is foolish!”

So he dropped his gymnastics and the rubdowns. To the soldier he shouted, as if to explain and justify himself:

“Never mind that I have stopped. It’s a good thing, my friend⁠—but not for those who are to be hanged. But it’s very good for all others.”

And, indeed, he began to feel somewhat better. He tried also to eat less, so as to grow still weaker, but notwithstanding the lack of pure air and exercises, his appetite was very good⁠—it was difficult for him to control it, and he ate everything that was brought to him. Then he began to manage differently⁠—before starting to eat he would pour out half into the pail, and this seemed to work. A dull drowsiness and faintness came over him.

“I’ll show you what I can do!” he threatened his body, and at the same time sadly, yet tenderly he felt his flabby, softened muscles with his hand.

Soon, however, his body grew accustomed to this regime as well, and the fear of death appeared again⁠—not so keen, nor so burning, but more disgusting, somewhat akin to a nauseating sensation. “It’s because they are dragging it out so long,” thought Sergey. “It would be a good idea to sleep all the time till the day of the execution,” and he tried to sleep as much as possible. At first he succeeded, but later, either because he had slept too much, or for some other reason, insomnia appeared. And with it came eager, penetrating thoughts and a longing for life.

“I am not afraid of this devil!” he thought of Death. “I simply feel sorry for my life. It is a splendid thing, no matter what the pessimists say about it. What if they were to hang a pessimist? Ah, I feel sorry for life, very sorry! And why does my beard grow now? It didn’t grow before, but suddenly it grows⁠—why?”

He shook his head mournfully, heaving long, painful sighs. Silence⁠—then a sigh; then a brief silence again⁠—followed by a longer, deeper sigh.

Thus it went on until the trial and the terrible meeting with his parents. When he awoke in his cell the next day he realized clearly that everything between him and life was ended, that there were only a few empty hours of waiting and then death would come⁠—and a strange sensation took possession of him. He felt as though he had been stripped, stripped entirely⁠—as if not only his clothes, but the sun, the air, the noise of voices and his ability to do things had been wrested from him. Death was not there as yet, but life was there no longer⁠—there was something new, something astonishing, inexplicable, not entirely reasonable and yet not altogether without meaning⁠—something so deep and mysterious and supernatural that it was impossible to understand.

“Fie, you devil!” wondered Sergey, painfully. “What is this? Where am I? I⁠—who am I?”

He examined himself attentively, with interest, beginning with his large prison slippers, ending with his stomach where his coat protruded. He paced the cell, spreading out his arms and continuing to survey himself like a woman in a new dress which is too long for her. He tried to turn his head, and it turned. And this strange, terrible, uncouth creature was he, Sergey Golovin, and soon he would be no more!

Everything became strange.

He tried to walk across the cell⁠—and it seemed strange to him that he could walk. He tried to sit down⁠—and it seemed strange to him that he could sit. He tried to drink some water⁠—and it seemed strange to him that he could drink, that he could swallow, that he could hold the cup, that he had fingers and that those fingers were trembling. He choked, began to cough and while coughing, thought: “How strange it is that I am coughing.”

“Am I losing my reason?” thought Sergey, growing cold. “Am I coming to that, too? The devil take them!”

He rubbed his forehead with his hand, and this also seemed strange to him. And then he remained breathless, motionless, petrified for hours, suppressing every thought, all loud breathing, all motion⁠—for every thought seemed to him but madness, every motion⁠—madness. Time was no more; it appeared transformed into space, airless and transparent, into an enormous square upon which all were there⁠—the earth and life and people. He saw all that at one glance, all to the very end, to the mysterious abyss⁠—Death. And he was tortured not by the fact that Death was visible, but that both Life and Death were visible at the same time. The curtain which through eternity has hidden the mystery of life and the mystery of death was pushed aside by a sacrilegious hand, and the mysteries ceased to be mysteries⁠—yet they remained incomprehensible, like the Truth written in a foreign tongue. There were no conceptions in his human mind, no words in his human language that could define what he saw. And the words “I am afraid” were uttered by him only because there were no other words, because no other conceptions existed, nor could other conceptions exist which would grasp this new, un-human condition. Thus would it be with a man if, while remaining within the bounds of human reason, experience and feelings, he were suddenly to see God Himself. He would see Him but would not understand, even though he knew that it was God, and he would tremble with inconceivable sufferings of incomprehension.

“There is Müller for you!” he suddenly uttered loudly, with extreme conviction, and shook his head. And with that unexpected break in his feelings, of which the human soul is so capable, he laughed heartily and cheerfully.

“Oh, Müller! My dear Müller! Oh, you splendid German! After all you are right, Müller, and I am an ass!”

He paced the cell quickly several times and to the great astonishment of the soldier who was watching him through the peephole, he quickly undressed himself and cheerfully went through all the eighteen exercises with the greatest care. He stretched and expanded his young, somewhat emaciated body, sat down for a moment, drew deep breaths of air and exhaled it, stood up on tiptoe, stretched his arms and his feet. And after each exercise he announced, with satisfaction:

“That’s it! That’s the real way, Müller!” His cheeks flushed; drops of warm, pleasant perspiration came from the pores of his body, and his heart beat soundly and evenly.

“The fact is, Müller,” philosophized Sergey, expanding his chest so that the ribs under his thin, tight skin were outlined clearly⁠—“the fact is, that there is a nineteenth exercise⁠—to hang by the neck motionless. That is called execution. Do you understand, Müller? They take a live man, let us say Sergey Golovin, they swaddle him as a doll and they hang him by the neck until he is dead. It is a foolish exercise, Müller, but it can’t be helped⁠—we have to do it.”

He bent over on the right side and repeated:

“We have to do it, Müller.”

Under the same ringing of the clock, separated from Sergey and Musya by only a few empty cells, but yet so painfully desolate and alone in the whole world as though no other soul existed, poor Vasily Kashirin was passing the last hours of his life in terror and in anguish.

Perspiring, his moist shirt clinging to his body, his once curly hair disheveled, he tossed about in the cell convulsively and hopelessly, like a man suffering from an unbearable physical torture. He would sit down for awhile, then start to run again, he would press his forehead against the wall, stop and seek something with his eyes⁠—as if looking for some medicine. His expression changed as though he had two different faces. The former, the young face, had disappeared somewhere, and a new one, a terrible face that had seemed to have come out of the darkness, had taken its place.

The fear of death had come upon him all at once and taken possession of him completely and forcibly. In the morning, while facing almost certain death, he had been carefree and had scorned it, but toward evening when he was placed in a cell in solitary confinement, he was whirled and carried away by a wave of mad fear. So long as he went of his own free will to face danger and death, so long as he had death, even though it seemed terrible, in his own hands, he felt at ease. He was even cheerful; in the sensation of boundless freedom, of brave and firm conviction of his fearless will, his little, shrunken, womanish fear was drowned, leaving no trace. With an infernal machine at his girdle, he made the cruel force of dynamite his own, also its fiery death-bearing power. And as he walked along the street, amidst the bustling, plain people, who were occupied with their affairs, who were hurriedly avoiding the dangers from the horses of carriages and cars, he seemed to himself as a stranger from another, unknown world, where neither death nor fear was known.

And suddenly this harsh, wild, stupefying change. He can no longer go where he pleases, but he is led where others please. He can no longer choose the place he likes, but he is placed in a stone cage, and locked up like a thing. He can no longer choose freely, like all people, between life and death, but he will surely and inevitably be put to death. The incarnation of willpower, life and strength an instant before, he has now become a wretched image of the most pitiful weakness in the world. He has been transformed into an animal waiting to be slaughtered, a deaf-mute object which may be taken from place to place, burnt and broken. It matters not what he might say, nobody would listen to his words, and if he endeavored to shout, they would stop his mouth with a rag. Whether he can walk alone or not, they will take him away and hang him. And if he should offer resistance, struggle or lie down on the ground⁠—they will overpower him, lift him, bind him and carry him, bound, to the gallows. And the fact that this machine-like work will be performed over him by human beings like himself, lent to them a new, extraordinary and ominous aspect⁠—they seemed to him like ghosts that came to him for this one purpose, or like automatic puppets on springs. They would seize him, take him, carry him, hang him, pull him by the feet. They would cut the rope, take him down, carry him off and bury him.

From the first day of his imprisonment the people and life seemed to him to have turned into an incomprehensibly terrible world of phantoms and automatic puppets. Almost maddened with fear, he attempted to picture to himself that human beings had tongues and that they could speak, but he could not⁠—they seemed to him to be mute. He tried to recall their speech, the meaning of the words that people used in their relations with one another⁠—but he could not. Their mouths seemed to open, some sounds were heard; then they moved their feet and disappeared. And nothing more.

Thus would a man feel if he were at night alone in his house and suddenly all objects were to come to life, start to move and overpower him. And suddenly they would all begin to judge him: the cupboard, the chair, the writing-table and the divan. He would cry and toss about, entreating, calling for help, while they would speak among themselves in their own language, and then would lead him to the scaffold⁠—they, the cupboard, the chair, the writing-table and the divan. And the other objects would look on.

To Vasily Kashirin, who was condemned to death by hanging, everything now seemed like children’s playthings: his cell, the door with the peephole, the strokes of the wound-up clock, the carefully molded fortress, and especially that mechanical puppet with the gun who stamped his feet in the corridor, and the others who, frightening him, peeped into his cell through the little window and handed him the food in silence. And that which he was experiencing was not the fear of death; death was now rather welcome to him. Death with all its eternal mysteriousness and incomprehensibility was more acceptable to his reason than this strangely and fantastically changed world. What is more, death seemed to have been destroyed completely in this insane world of phantoms and puppets, having lost its great and enigmatic significance, becoming something mechanical and only for that reason terrible. He would be seized, taken, led, hanged, pulled by the feet, the rope would be cut, he would be taken down, carried off and buried.

And the man would have disappeared from the world.

At the trial the nearness of his comrades brought Kashirin to himself. For an instant he imagined he saw real people; they were sitting and trying him, speaking like human beings, listening, apparently understanding him. But as he mentally rehearsed the meeting with his mother he clearly felt with the terror of a man who is beginning to lose his reason and who realizes it, that this old woman in the black little kerchief was only an artificial, mechanical puppet, of the kind that can say “pa-pa,” “ma-ma,” but somewhat better constructed. He tried to speak to her, while thinking at the same time with a shudder:

“O Lord! That is a puppet. A mother doll. And there is a soldier-puppet, and there, at home, is a father-puppet, and this is the puppet of Vasily Kashirin.”

It seemed to him that in another moment he would hear somewhere the creaking of the mechanism, the screeching of unoiled wheels. When his mother began to cry, something human again flashed for an instant, but at the very first words it disappeared again, and it was interesting and terrible to see that water was flowing from the eyes of the doll.

Then, in his cell, when the terror had become unbearable, Vasily Kashirin attempted to pray. Of all that had surrounded his childhood days in his father’s house under the guise of religion only a repulsive, bitter and irritating sediment remained; but faith there was none. But once, perhaps in his earliest childhood, he had heard a few words which had filled him with palpitating emotion and which remained during all his life enwrapped with tender poetry. These words were:

“The joy of all the afflicted⁠ ⁠…”

It had happened, during painful periods in his life, that he whispered to himself, not in prayer, without being definitely conscious of it, these words: “The joy of all the afflicted”⁠—and suddenly he would feel relieved and a desire would come over him to go to some dear friend and question gently:

“Our life⁠—is this life? Eh, my dearest, is this life?”

And then suddenly it would appear laughable to him and he would feel like mussing up his hair, putting forth his knee and thrusting out his chest as though to receive heavy blows; saying: “Here, strike!”

He did not tell anybody, not even his nearest comrades, about his “joy of all the afflicted” and it was as though he himself did not know about it⁠—so deeply was it hidden in his soul. He recalled it but rarely and cautiously.

Now when the terror of the insoluble mystery, which appeared so plainly before him, enveloped him completely, even as the water in high-flood covers the willow twigs on the shore⁠—a desire came upon him to pray. He felt like kneeling, but he was ashamed of the soldier and, folding his arms on his chest, he whispered softly:

“The joy of all the afflicted!”

And he repeated tenderly, in anguish:

“Joy of all the afflicted, come to me, help Vaska Kashirin.”

“Long ago, while he was yet in his first term at the university and used to go off on a spree sometimes, before he had made the acquaintance of Werner and before he had entered the organization, he used then to call himself half-boastingly, half-pityingly, ‘Vaska Kashirin,’⁠—and now for some reason or other he suddenly felt like calling himself by the same name again. But the words had a dead and toneless sound.

“The joy of all the afflicted!”

Something stirred. It was as though someone’s calm and mournful image had flashed up in the distance and died out quietly, without illuminating the deathly gloom. The wound-up clock in the steeple struck. The soldier in the corridor made a noise with his gun or with his saber and he yawned, slowly, at intervals.

“Joy of all the afflicted! You are silent! Will you not say anything to Vaska Kashirin?”

He smiled patiently and waited. All was empty within his soul and about him. And the calm, mournful image did not reappear. He recalled, painfully and unnecessarily, wax candles burning; the priest in his vestments; the icon painted on the wall. He recalled his father, bending and stretching himself, praying and bowing to the ground, while looking sidewise to see whether Vaska was praying, or whether he was planning some mischief. And a feeling of still greater terror came over Vasily than before the prayer.

Everything now disappeared.

Madness came crawling painfully. His consciousness was dying out like an extinguishing bonfire, growing icy like the corpse of a man who had just died, whose heart is still warm but whose hands and feet had already become stiffened with cold. His dying reason flared up as red as blood again and said that he, Vasily Kashirin, might perhaps become insane here, suffer pains for which there is no name, reach a degree of anguish and suffering that had never been experienced by a single living being; that he might beat his head against the wall, pick his eyes out with his fingers, speak and shout whatever he pleased, that he might plead with tears that he could endure it no longer⁠—and nothing would happen. Nothing could happen.

And nothing happened. His feet, which had a consciousness and life of their own, continued to walk and to carry his trembling, moist body. His hands, which had a consciousness of their own, endeavored in vain to fasten the coat which was open at his chest and to warm his trembling, moist body. His body quivered with cold. His eyes stared. And this was calm itself embodied.

But there was one more moment of wild terror. That was when people entered his cell. He did not even imagine that this visit meant that it was time to go to the execution; he simply saw the people and was frightened like a child.

“I will not do it! I will not do it!” he whispered inaudibly with his livid lips and silently retreated to the depth of the cell, even as in childhood he shrank when his father lifted his hand.

“We must start.”

The people were speaking, walking around him, handing him something. He closed his eyes, he shook a little⁠—and began to dress himself slowly. His consciousness must have returned to him, for he suddenly asked the official for a cigarette. And the official generously opened his silver cigarette-case upon which was a chased figure in the style of the decadents.

The unidentified man, who called himself Werner, was tired of life and struggle. There was a time when he loved life very dearly, when he enjoyed the theater, literature and social intercourse. Endowed with an excellent memory and a firm will, he had mastered several European languages and could easily pass for a German, a Frenchman or an Englishman. He usually spoke German with a Bavarian accent, but when he felt like it, he could speak like a born Berliner. He was fond of dress, his manners were excellent and he alone, of all the members of the organization, dared attend the balls given in high society, without running the risk of being recognized as an outsider.

But for a long time, altogether unnoticed by his comrades, there had ripened in his soul a dark contempt for mankind; contempt mingled with despair and painful, almost deadly fatigue. By nature rather a mathematician than a poet, he had not known until now any inspiration, any ecstasy and at times he felt like a madman, looking for the squaring of a circle in pools of human blood. The enemy against whom he struggled every day could not inspire him with respect. It was a dense net of stupidity, treachery and falsehood, vile insults and base deceptions. The last incident which seemed to have destroyed in him forever the desire to live, was the murder of the provocateur which he had committed by order of the organization. He had killed him in cold blood, but when he saw that dead, deceitful, now calm, and after all pitiful, human face, he suddenly ceased to respect himself and his work. Not that he was seized with a feeling of repentance, but he simply stopped appreciating himself. He became uninteresting to himself, unimportant, a dull stranger. But being a man of strong, unbroken willpower, he did not leave the organization. He remained outwardly the same as before, only there was something cold, yet painful in his eyes. He never spoke to anyone of this.

He possessed another rare quality: just as there are people who have never known headaches, so Werner had never known fear. When other people were afraid, he looked upon them without censure but also without any particular compassion, just as upon a rather contagious illness from which, however, he himself had never suffered. He felt sorry for his comrades, especially for Vasya Kashirin; but that was a cold, almost official pity, which even some of the judges may have felt at times.

Werner understood that the execution was not merely death, that it was something different⁠—but he resolved to face it calmly, as something not to be considered; to live until the end as if nothing had happened and as if nothing could happen. Only in this way could he express his greatest contempt for capital punishment and preserve his last freedom of the spirit which could not be torn away from him. At the trial⁠—and even his comrades who knew well his cold, haughty fearlessness would perhaps not have believed this⁠—he thought neither of death nor of life⁠—but concentrated his attention deeply and coolly upon a difficult chess game which he was playing. A superior chess player, he had started this game on the first day of his imprisonment and continued it uninterruptedly. Even the sentence condemning him to death by hanging did not remove a single figure from his imaginary chessboard.

Even the knowledge that he would not be able to finish this game, did not stop him; and the morning of the last day that he was to remain on earth he started by correcting a not altogether successful move he had made on the previous day. Clasping his lowered hands between his knees, he sat for a long time motionless, then he rose and began to walk, meditating. His walk was peculiar: he leaned the upper part of his body slightly forward and stamped the ground with his heels firmly and distinctly. His steps usually left deep, plain imprints even on dry ground. He whistled softly, in one breath, a simple Italian melody, which helped his meditation.

But this time for some reason or other the thing did not work well. With an unpleasant feeling that he had made some important, even grave blunder, he went back several times and examined the game almost from the beginning. He found no blunder, yet the feeling about a blunder committed not only failed to leave him, but even grew ever more intense and unpleasant. Suddenly an unexpected and offensive thought came into his mind: Did the blunder perhaps consist in his playing chess simply because he wanted to distract his attention from the execution and thus shield himself against the fear of death which is apparently inevitable in every person condemned to death?

“No. What for?” he answered coldly and closed calmly his imaginary chessboard. And with the same concentration with which he had played chess, he tried to give himself an account of the horror and the helplessness of his situation. As though he were going through a strict examination, he looked over the cell, trying not to let anything escape. He counted the hours that remained until the execution, made for himself an approximate and quite exact picture of the execution itself and shrugged his shoulders.

“Well?” he said to someone half-questioningly. “Here it is. Where is the fear?”

Indeed there was no fear. Not only was it not there, but something entirely different, the reverse of fear, developed⁠—a sensation of confused, but enormous and savage joy. And the error, which he had not yet discovered, no longer called forth in him vexation or irritation⁠—it seemed to speak loudly of something good and unexpected, as though he had believed a dear friend of his to be dead, and that friend turned out to be alive, safe and sound and laughing.

Werner again shrugged his shoulders and felt his pulse⁠—his heart was beating faster than usual, but soundly and evenly, with a specially ringing throb. He looked about once more, attentively, like a novice for the first time in prison⁠—examined the walls, the bolts, the chair which was screwed to the floor, and thought:

“Why do I feel so easy, so joyous and free? Yes, so free? I think of the execution tomorrow⁠—and I feel as though it is not there. I look at the walls⁠—and I feel as though they are not here, either. And I feel so free, as though I were not in prison, but had just come out of some prison where I had spent all my life. What does this mean?”

His hands began to tremble⁠—something Werner had not experienced before. His thoughts fluttered ever more furiously. It was as if tongues of fire had flashed up in his mind, and the fire wanted to burst forth and illumine the distance which was still dark as night. Now the light pierced through and the widely illuminated distance began to shine.

The fatigue that had tormented Werner during the last two years had disappeared; the dead, cold, heavy serpent with its closed eyes and mouth clinched in death, had fallen away from his breast. Before the face of death, beautiful Youth came back to him physically. Indeed, it was more than beautiful Youth. With that wonderful clarity of the spirit which in rare moments comes over man and lifts him to the loftiest peaks of meditation, Werner suddenly perceived both life and death, and he was awed by the splendor of the unprecedented spectacle. It seemed to him that he was walking along the highest mountain-ridge, which was narrow like the blade of a knife, and on one side he saw Life, on the other side⁠—Death⁠—like two sparkling, deep, beautiful seas, blending in one boundless, broad surface at the horizon.

“What is this? What a divine spectacle!” he said slowly, rising involuntarily and straightening himself, as if in the presence of a supreme being. And destroying the walls, space and time with the impetuosity of his all-penetrating look, he cast a wide glance somewhere into the depth of the life he was to forsake.

And life appeared to him in a new light. He did not strive, as before, to clothe in words that which he had seen; nor were there such words in the still poor, meager human language. That small, cynical and evil feeling which had called forth in him a contempt for mankind and at times even an aversion for the sight of a human face, had disappeared completely. Thus, for a man who goes up in an airship, the filth and litter of the narrow streets disappear and that which was ugly becomes beautiful.

Unconsciously Werner stepped over to the table and leaned his right hand on it. Proud and commanding by nature, he had never before assumed such a proud, free, commanding pose, had never turned his head and never looked as he did now⁠—for he had never yet been as free and dominant as he was here in the prison, with but a few hours from execution and death.

Now men seemed new to him⁠—they appeared amiable and charming to his clarified vision. Soaring over time, he saw clearly how young mankind was, that but yesterday it had been howling like a beast in the forests; and that which had seemed to him terrible in human beings, unpardonable and repulsive, suddenly became very dear to him⁠—like the inability of a child to walk as grown people do, like a child’s unconnected lisping, flashing with sparks of genius; like a child’s comical blunders, errors and painful bruises.

“My dear people!” Werner suddenly smiled and at once lost all that was imposing in his pose; he again became a prisoner who finds his cell narrow and uncomfortable under lock, and he was tired of the annoying, searching eye staring at him through the peephole in the door. And, strange to say, almost instantly he forgot all that he had seen a little while before so clearly and distinctly; and, what is still stranger, he did not even make an effort to recall it. He simply sat down as comfortably as possible, without the usual stiffness of his body, and surveyed the walls and the bars with a faint and gentle, strange, un-Werner-like smile. Still another new thing happened to Werner⁠—something that had never happened to him before: he suddenly started to weep.

“My dear comrades!” he whispered, crying bitterly. “My dear comrades!”

By what mysterious ways did he change from the feeling of proud and boundless freedom to this tender and passionate compassion? He did not know, nor did he think of it. Did he pity his dear comrades, or did his tears conceal something else, a still loftier and more passionate feeling?⁠—His suddenly revived and rejuvenated heart did not know this either. He wept and whispered:

“My dear comrades! My dear, dear comrades!”

In this man, who was bitterly weeping and smiling through tears, no one could have recognized the cold and haughty, weary, yet daring Werner⁠—neither the judges, nor the comrades, nor even he himself.

Before placing the condemned people in coaches, all five were brought together in a large cold room with a vaulted ceiling, which resembled an office, where people worked no longer, or a deserted waiting-room. They were now permitted to speak to one another.

Only Tanya Kovalchuk availed herself at once of the permission. The others firmly and silently shook each other’s hands, which were as cold as ice and as hot as fire⁠—and silently, trying not to look at each other, they crowded together in an awkward, absentminded group. Now that they were together, they felt somewhat ashamed of what each of them had experienced when alone; and they were afraid to look, so as not to notice or to show that new, peculiar, somewhat shameful sensation that each of them felt or suspected the others of feeling.

But after a short silence they glanced at each other, smiled and immediately began to feel at ease and unrestrained, as before. No change seemed to have occurred, and if it had occurred, it had come so gently over all of them that it could not be discerned in anyone separately. All spoke and moved about strangely: abruptly, by jolts, either too fast or too slowly. Sometimes they seemed to choke with their words and repeated them a number of times; sometimes they did not finish a phrase they had started, or thought they had finished⁠—they did not notice it. They all blinked their eyes and examined ordinary objects curiously, not recognizing them, like people who had worn eyeglasses and had suddenly taken them off; and all of them frequently turned around abruptly, as though someone behind them was calling them all the time and showing them something. But they did not notice this, either. Musya’s and Tanya Kovalchuk’s cheeks and ears were burning; Sergey was at first somewhat pale, but he soon recovered and looked as he always did.

Only Vasily attracted everybody’s attention. Even among them, he looked strange and terrible. Werner became agitated and said to Musya in a low voice, with tender anxiety:

“What does this mean, Musyechka? Is it possible that he⁠—What? I must go to him.”

Vasily looked at Werner from the distance, as though not recognizing him, and he lowered his eyes.

“Vasya, what have you done with your hair? What is the matter with you? Never mind, my dear, never mind, it will soon be over. We must keep up, we must, we must.”

Vasily was silent. But when it seemed that he would no longer say anything, a dull, belated, terribly remote answer came⁠—like an answer from the grave:

“I’m all right. I hold my own.”

Then he repeated:

“I hold my own.”

Werner was delighted.

“That’s the way, that’s the way. Good boy. That’s the way.”

But his eyes met Vasily’s dark, wearied glance fixed upon him from the distance and he thought with instant sorrow: “From where is he looking? From where is he speaking?” and with profound tenderness, with which people address a grave, he said:

“Vasya, do you hear? I love you very much.”

“So do I love you very much,” answered the tongue, moving with difficulty.

Suddenly Musya took Werner by the hand and with an expression of surprise, she said like an actress on the stage, with measured emphasis:

“Werner, what is this? You said, ‘I love’? You never before said ‘I love’ to anybody. And why are you all so⁠—tender and serene? Why?”

“Why?”

And like an actor, also accentuating what he felt, Werner pressed Musya’s hand firmly:

“Yes, now I love very much. Don’t tell it to the others⁠—it isn’t necessary, I feel somewhat ashamed, but I love deeply.”

Their eyes met and flashed up brightly, and everything about them seemed to have plunged in darkness. It is thus that in the flash of lightning all other lights are instantly darkened and the heavy yellow flame casts a shadow upon earth.

“Yes,” said Musya, “yes, Werner.”

“Yes,” he answered, “yes, Musya, yes.”

They understood each other and something was firmly settled between them at this moment. And his eyes glistening, Werner again became agitated and quickly stepped over to Sergey.

“Seryozha!”

But Tanya Kovalchuk answered. Almost crying with maternal pride, she tugged Sergey frantically by the sleeve.

“Listen, Werner! I am crying here for him, I am wearing myself to death, and he is occupying himself with gymnastics!”

“According to the Müller system?” smiled Werner.

Sergey knit his brow confusedly.

“You needn’t laugh, Werner. I have convinced myself conclusively⁠—”

All began to laugh. Drawing strength and courage from one another, they gradually regained their poise⁠—became the same as they used to be. They did not notice this, however, and thought that they had never changed at all. Suddenly Werner interrupted their laughter and said to Sergey very earnestly:

“You are right, Seryozha. You are perfectly right.”

“No, but you must understand,” said Golovin gladly. “Of course, we⁠—”

But at this point they were asked to start. And their jailers were so kind as to permit them to ride in pairs, as they pleased. Altogether the jailers were extremely kind; even too kind. It was as if they tried partly to show themselves humane and partly to show that they were not there at all, but that everything was being done as by machinery. But they were all pale.

“Musya, you go with him.” Werner pointed at Vasily, who stood motionless.

“I understand,” Musya nodded. “And you?”

“I? Tanya will go with Sergey, you go with Vasya.⁠ ⁠… I will go alone. That doesn’t matter, I can do it, you know.”

When they went out in the yard, the moist, soft darkness rushed warmly and strongly against their faces, their eyes, taking their breath away, then suddenly it penetrated their bodies tenderly and refreshingly. It was hard to believe that this wonderful effect was produced simply by the spring wind, the warm, moist wind. And the really wonderful spring night was filled with the odor of melting snow, and through the boundless space the noise of drops resounded. Hastily and frequently, as though trying to overtake one another, little drops were falling, striking in unison a ringing tune. Suddenly one of them would strike out of tune and all was mingled in a merry splash in hasty confusion. Then a large, heavy drop would strike firmly and again the fast, spring melody resounded distinctly. And over the city, above the roofs of the fortress, hung a pale redness in the sky reflected by the electric lights.

“U-ach!” Sergey Golovin heaved a deep sigh and held his breath, as though he regretted to exhale from his lungs the fine, fresh air.

“How long have you had such weather?” inquired Werner. “It’s real spring.”

“It’s only the second day,” was the polite answer. “Before that we had mostly frosty weather.”

The dark carriages rolled over noiselessly one after another, took them in by twos, started off into the darkness⁠—there where the lantern was shaking at the gate. The convoys like gray silhouettes surrounded each carriage; the horseshoes struck noisily against the ground, or plashed upon the melting snow.

When Werner bent down, about to climb into the carriage, the gendarme whispered to him:

“There is somebody else going along with you.”

Werner was surprised.

“Where? Where is he going? Oh, yes! Another one? Who is he?”

The gendarme was silent. Indeed, in a dark corner a small, motionless but living figure pressed close to the side of the carriage. By the reflection of the lantern Werner noticed the flash of an open eye. Seating himself, Werner pushed his foot against the other man’s knee.

“Excuse me, comrade.”

The man made no reply. It was only when the carriage started, that he suddenly asked in broken Russian, speaking with difficulty:

“Who are you?”

“I am Werner, condemned to hanging for the attempt upon N⁠⸺. And you?”

“I am Yanson. They must not hang me.”

They were riding thus in order to appear two hours later face to face before the inexplicable great mystery, in order to pass from Life to Death⁠—and they were introducing each other. Life and Death moved simultaneously, and until the very end Life remained life, to the most ridiculous and insipid trifles.

“What have you done, Yanson?”

“I killed my master with a knife. I stole money.”

It seemed from the tone of his voice that Yanson was falling asleep. Werner found his flabby hand in the darkness and pressed it. Yanson withdrew it drowsily.

“Are you afraid?” asked Werner.

“I don’t want to be hanged.”

They became silent. Werner again found the Estonian’s hand and pressed it firmly between his dry, burning palms. Yanson’s hand lay motionless, like a board, but he made no longer any effort to withdraw it.

It was close and suffocating in the carriage. The air was filled with the smell of soldiers’ clothes, mustiness, and the leather of wet boots. The young gendarme who sat opposite Werner breathed warmly upon him, and in his breath there was the odor of onions and cheap tobacco. But some brisk, fresh air came in through certain clefts, and because of this, spring was felt even more intensely in this small, stifling, moving box, than outside. The carriage kept turning now to the right, now to the left, now it seemed to turn back. At times it seemed as though they had been turning around on one and the same spot for hours for some reason or other. At first a bluish electric light penetrated through the lowered, heavy window shades; then suddenly, after a certain turn it grew dark, and only by this could they guess that they had turned into deserted streets in the outskirts of the city and that they were nearing the S. railroad station. Sometimes during sharp turns, Werner’s live, bent knee would strike against the live, bent knee of the gendarme, and it was hard to believe that the execution was approaching.

“Where are we going?” Yanson asked suddenly. He was somewhat dizzy from the continuous turning of the dark box and he felt slightly sick at his stomach.

Werner answered and pressed the Estonian’s hand more firmly. He felt like saying something especially kind and caressing to this little, sleepy man, and he already loved him as he had never loved anyone in his life.

“You don’t seem to sit comfortably, my dear man. Move over here, to me.”

Yanson was silent for awhile, then he replied:

“Well, thank you. I’m sitting all right. Are they going to hang you too?”

“Yes,” answered Werner, almost laughing with unexpected jollity, and he waved his hand easily and freely, as though he were speaking of some absurd and trifling joke which kind but terribly comical people wanted to play on him.

“Have you a wife?” asked Yanson.

“No. I have no wife. I am single.”

“I am also alone. Alone,” said Yanson.

Werner’s head also began to feel dizzy. And at times it seemed that they were going to some festival; strange to say, almost all those who went to the scaffold experienced the same sensation and mingled with sorrow and fear there was a vague joy as they anticipated the extraordinary thing that was soon to befall them. Reality was intoxicated with madness and Death, united with Life, brought forth apparitions. It seemed very possible that flags were waving over the houses.

“We have arrived!” said Werner gayly when the carriage stopped, and he jumped out easily. But with Yanson it was a rather slow affair: silently and very drowsily he resisted and would not come out. He seized the knob. The gendarme opened the weak fingers and pulled his hand away. Then Yanson seized the corner of the carriage, the door, the high wheel, but immediately let it go upon the slightest effort on the part of the gendarme. He did not exactly seize these things; he rather cleaved to each object sleepily and silently, and was torn away easily, without any effort. Finally he got up.

There were no flags. The railroad station was dark, deserted and lifeless; the passenger trains were not running any longer, and the train which was silently waiting for these passengers on the way needed no bright light, no commotion. Suddenly Werner began to feel weary. It was not fear, nor anguish, but a feeling of enormous, painful, tormenting weariness which makes one feel like going off somewhere, lying down and closing one’s eyes very tightly. Werner stretched himself and yawned slowly. Yanson also stretched himself and quickly yawned several times.

“I wish they’d be quicker about it,” said Werner wearily. Yanson was silent, shrinking together.

When the condemned moved along the deserted platform which was surrounded by soldiers, to the dimly lighted cars, Werner found himself near Sergey Golovin; Sergey, pointing with his hand somewhere aside, began to say something, but only the word “lantern” was heard distinctly, and the rest was drowned in slow and weary yawning.

“What did you say?” asked Werner, also yawning.

“The lantern. The lamp in the lantern is smoking,” said Sergey. Werner looked around. Indeed, the lamp in the lantern was smoking very much, and the glass had already turned black on top.

“Yes, it is smoking.”

Suddenly he thought: “What have I to do with the smoking of the lamp, since⁠—”

Sergey apparently thought the same, as he glanced quickly at Werner and turned away. But both stopped yawning.

They all went to the cars themselves, only Yanson had to be led by the arms. At first he stamped his feet and his boots seemed to stick to the boards of the platform. Then he bent his knees and fell into the arms of the gendarmes, his feet dangled like those of a very intoxicated man, and the tips of the boots scraped against the wood. It took a long time until he was silently pushed through the door.

Vasily Kashirin also moved himself, unconsciously imitating the movements of his comrades⁠—he did everything as they did. But on boarding the platform of the car, he stumbled, and a gendarme took him by the elbow to support him. Vasily shuddered and screamed shrilly, drawing back his arm:

“Ai!”

“What is it, Vasya?” Werner rushed over to him. Vasily was silent, trembling in every limb. The confused and even offended gendarme explained:

“I wanted to keep him from falling, and he⁠—”

“Come, Vasya, let me hold you,” said Werner, about to take him by the arm. But Vasily drew back his arm again and cried more loudly than before:

“Ai!”

“Vasya, it is I, Werner.”

“I know. Don’t touch me. I’ll go myself.”

And continuing to tremble he entered the car himself and seated himself in a corner. Bending over to Musya, Werner asked her softly, pointing with his eyes at Vasily:

“How about him?”

“Bad,” answered Musya, also in a soft voice. “He is dead already. Werner, tell me, is there such a thing as death?”

“I don’t know, Musya, but I think that there is no such thing,” replied Werner seriously and thoughtfully.

“That’s what I have thought. But he? I was tortured with him in the carriage⁠—it was like riding with a corpse.”

“I don’t know, Musya. Perhaps there is such a thing as death for some people. Meanwhile, perhaps, but later there will be no death. For me death also existed before, but now it exists no longer.”

Musya’s somewhat paled cheeks flushed as she asked:

“It did exist, Werner? It did?”

“It did. But not now any longer. Just the same as with you.”

A noise was heard in the doorway of the car. Mishka Tsiganok entered, stamping noisily with his heels, breathing loudly and spitting. He cast a swift glance and stopped obdurately.

“No room here, gendarme!” he shouted to the tired gendarme who looked at him angrily. “You make it so that I am comfortable here, otherwise I won’t go⁠—hang me here on the lamppost. What a carriage they gave me, dogs! Is that a carriage? It’s the devil’s belly, not a carriage!”

But suddenly he bent down his head, stretched out his neck and thus went forward to the others. Out of the disheveled frame of hair and beard his black eyes looked wildly and sharply with an almost insane expression.

“Ah, gentlemen!” he drawled out. “So that’s what it is. Hello, master!”

He thrust his hand to Werner and sat down opposite him. And bending closely over to him, he winked one eye and quickly passed his hand over his throat.

“You, too? What?”

“Yes!” smiled Werner.

“Are all of us to be hanged?”

“All.”

“Oho!” Tsiganok grinned, showing his teeth, and quickly felt everybody with his eyes, stopping for an instant longer on Musya and Yanson. Then he winked again to Werner.

“The Minister?”

“Yes, the Minister. And you?”

“I am here for something else, master. People like me don’t deal with ministers. I am a murderer, master, that’s what I am. An ordinary murderer. Never mind, master, move away a little, I haven’t come into your company of my own will. There will be room enough for all of us in the other world.”

He surveyed them all with one swift, suspicious, wild glance from under his disheveled hair. But all looked at him silently and seriously, even with apparent interest. He grinned, showing his teeth, and quickly clapped Werner on the knee several times.

“That’s the way, master! How does the song run? ‘Don’t rustle, O green little mother forest.⁠ ⁠…’ ”

“Why do you call me ‘master,’ since we are all going⁠—”

“Correct,” Tsiganok agreed with satisfaction. “What kind of master are you, if you are going to hang right beside me? There is a master for you”; and he pointed with his finger at the silent gendarme. “Eh, that fellow there is not worse than our kind”; he pointed with his eyes at Vasily. “Master! Eh there, master! You’re afraid, aren’t you?”

“No,” answered the heavy tongue.

“Never mind that ‘No.’ Don’t be ashamed; there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Only a dog wags his tail and snarls when he is taken to be hanged, but you are a man. Who is that dope? He isn’t one of you, is he?”

He darted his glance rapidly about, and hissing, kept spitting continuously. Yanson, curled up into a motionless bundle, pressed closely into the corner. The flaps of his outworn fur cap stirred, but he maintained silence. Werner answered for him:

“He killed his employer.”

“O Lord!” wondered Tsiganok. “Why are such people allowed to kill?”

For some time Tsiganok had been looking sideways at Musya; now turning quickly, he stared at her sharply, straight into her face.

“Young lady, young lady! What about you? Her cheeks are rosy and she is laughing. Look, she is really laughing,” he said, clasping Werner’s knee with his clutching, ironlike fingers. “Look, look!”

Reddening, smiling confusedly, Musya also gazed straight into his sharp and wildly searching eyes.

The wheels rattled fast and noisily. The small cars kept hopping along the narrow rails. Now at a curve or at a crossing the small engine whistled shrilly and carefully⁠—the engineer was afraid lest he might run over somebody. It was strange to think that so much humane painstaking care and exertion was being introduced into the business of hanging people; that the most insane deed on earth was being committed with such an air of simplicity and reasonableness. The cars were running, and human beings sat in them as people always do, and they rode as people usually ride; and then there would be a halt, as usual.

“The train will stop for five minutes.”

And there death would be waiting⁠—eternity⁠—the great mystery.

The little cars ran on carefully.

Sergey Golovin at one time had lived for several years with his relatives at their country-house, along this very road. He had traveled upon it by day as well as by night, and he knew it well. He closed his eyes, and thought that he might now simply be returning home⁠—that he had stayed out late in the city with acquaintances, and was now coming back on the last train.

“We will soon be there,” he said, opening his eyes and looking out of the grated, mute window.

Nobody stirred, nobody answered; only Tsiganok spat quickly several times and his eyes ran over the car, as though feeling the windows, the doors, the soldiers.

“It’s cold,” said Vasily Kashirin, his lips closed tightly, as though really frozen; and his words sounded strangely.

Tanya Kovalchuk began to bustle about.

“Here’s a handkerchief. Tie it about your neck. It’s a very warm one.”

“Around the neck?” Sergey asked suddenly, startled by his own question. But as the same thing occurred to all of them, no one seemed to hear him. It was as if nothing had been said, or as if they had all said the same thing at the same time.

“Never mind, Vasya, tie it about your neck. It will be warmer,” Werner advised him. Then he turned to Yanson and asked gently:

“And you, friend, are you cold?”

“Werner, perhaps he wants to smoke. Comrade, perhaps you would like to smoke?” asked Musya. “We have something to smoke.”

“I do.”

“Give him a cigarette, Seryozha,” said Werner delightedly. But Sergey was already getting out a cigarette. All looked on with friendliness, watching how Yanson’s fingers took the cigarette, how the match flared, and then how the blue smoke issued from Yanson’s mouth.

“Thanks,” said Yanson; “it’s good.”

“How strange!” said Sergey.

“What is strange?” Werner turned around. “What is strange?”

“I mean⁠—the cigarette.”

Yanson held a cigarette, an ordinary cigarette, in his ordinary live hands, and, pale-faced, looked at it with surprise, even with terror. And all fixed their eyes upon the little tube, from the end of which smoke was issuing, like a bluish ribbon, wafted aside by the breathing, with the ashes, gathering, turning black. The light went out.

“The light’s out,” said Tanya.

“Yes, the light’s out.”

“Let it go,” said Werner, frowning, looking uneasily at Yanson, whose hand, holding the cigarette, was hanging loosely, as if dead. Suddenly Tsiganok turned quickly, bent over to Werner, close to him, face to face, and rolling the whites of his eyes, like a horse, whispered:

“Master, how about the convoys? Suppose we⁠—eh? Shall we try?”

“No, don’t do it,” Werner replied, also in a whisper. “We shall drink it to the bitter end.”

“Why not? It’s livelier in a fight! Eh? I strike him, he strikes me, and you don’t even know how the thing is done. It’s just as if you don’t die at all.”

“No, you shouldn’t do it,” said Werner, and turned to Yanson. “Why don’t you smoke, friend?”

Suddenly Yanson’s wizened face became woefully wrinkled, as if somebody had pulled strings which set all the wrinkles in motion. And, as in a dream, he began to whimper, without tears, in a dry, strained voice:

“I don’t want to smoke. Aha! aha! aha! Why should I be hanged? Aha! aha! aha!”

They began to bustle about him. Tanya Kovalchuk, weeping freely, petted him on the arm, and adjusted the drooping earlaps of his worn fur cap.

“My dear, do not cry! My own! my dear! Poor, unfortunate little fellow!”

Musya looked aside. Tsiganok caught her glance and grinned, showing his teeth.

“What a queer fellow! He drinks tea, and yet feels cold,” he said, with an abrupt laugh. But suddenly his own face became bluish-black, like cast-iron, and his large yellow teeth flashed.

Suddenly the little cars trembled and slackened their speed. All, except Yanson and Kashirin, rose and sat down again quickly.

“Here is the station,” said Sergey.

It seemed to them as if all the air had been suddenly pumped out of the car, it became so difficult to breathe. The heart grew larger, making the chest almost burst, beating in the throat, tossing about madly⁠—shouting in horror with its blood-filled voice. And the eyes looked upon the quivering floor, and the ears heard how the wheels were turning ever more slowly⁠—the wheels slipped and turned again, and then suddenly⁠—they stopped.

The train had halted.

Then a dream set in. It was not terrible, rather fantastic, unfamiliar to the memory, strange. The dreamer himself seemed to remain aside, only his bodiless apparition moved about, spoke soundlessly, walked noiselessly, suffered without suffering. As in a dream, they walked out of the car, formed into parties of two, inhaled the peculiarly fresh spring air of the forest. As in a dream, Yanson resisted bluntly, powerlessly, and was dragged out of the car silently.

They descended the steps of the station.

“Are we to walk?” asked someone almost cheerily.

“It isn’t far now,” answered another, also cheerily.

Then they walked in a large, black, silent crowd amid the forest, along a rough, wet and soft spring road. From the forest, from the snow, a fresh, strong breath of air was wafted. The feet slipped, sometimes sinking into the snow, and involuntarily the hands of the comrades clung to each other. And the convoys, breathing with difficulty, walked over the untouched snow on each side of the road. Someone said in an angry voice:

“Why didn’t they clear the road? Did they want us to turn somersaults in the snow?”

Someone else apologized guiltily.

“We cleaned it, your Honor. But it is thawing and it can’t be helped.”

Consciousness of what they were doing returned to the prisoners, but not completely⁠—in fragments, in strange parts. Now, suddenly, their minds practically admitted:

“It is indeed impossible to clear the road.”

Then again everything died out, and only their sense of smell remained: the unbearably fresh smell of the forest and of the melting snow. And everything became unusually clear to the consciousness: the forest, the night, the road and the fact that soon they would be hanged. Their conversation, restrained to whispers, flashed in fragments.

“It is almost four o’clock.”

“I said we started too early.”

“The sun dawns at five.”

“Of course, at five. We should have⁠—”

They stopped in a meadow, in the darkness. A little distance away, beyond the bare trees, two small lanterns moved silently. There were the gallows.

“I lost one of my rubbers,” said Sergey Golovin.

“Really?” asked Werner, not understanding what he said.

“I lost a rubber. It’s cold.”

“Where’s Vasily?”

“I don’t know. There he is.”

Vasily stood, gloomy, motionless.

“And where is Musya?”

“Here I am. Is that you, Werner?”

They began to look about, avoiding the direction of the gallows, where the lanterns continued to move about silently with terrible suggestiveness. On the left, the bare forest seemed to be growing thinner, and something large and white and flat was visible. A damp wind issued from it.

“The sea,” said Sergey Golovin, inhaling the air with nose and mouth. “The sea is there!”

Musya answered sonorously:

“My love which is as broad as the sea!”

“What is that, Musya?”

“The banks of life cannot hold my love, which is as broad as the sea.”

“My love which is as broad as the sea,” echoed Sergey, thoughtfully, carried away by the sound of her voice and by her words.

“My love which is as broad as the sea,” repeated Werner, and suddenly he spoke wonderingly, cheerfully:

“Musya, how young you are!”

Suddenly Tsiganok whispered warmly, out of breath, right into Werner’s ear:

“Master! master! There’s the forest! My God! what’s that? There⁠—where the lanterns are⁠—are those the gallows? What does it mean?”

Werner looked at him. Tsiganok was writhing in agony before his death.

“We must bid each other goodbye,” said Tanya Kovalchuk.

“Wait, they have yet to read the sentence,” answered Werner. “Where is Yanson?”

Yanson was lying on the snow, and about him people were busying themselves. There was a smell of ammonia in the air.

“Well, what is it, doctor? Will you be through soon?” someone asked impatiently.

“It’s nothing. He has simply fainted. Rub his ears with snow! He is coming to himself already! You may read the sentence!”

The light of the dark lantern flashed upon the paper and on the white, gloveless hands holding it. Both the paper and the hands quivered slightly, and the voice also quivered:

“Gentlemen, perhaps it is not necessary to read the sentence to you. You know it already. What do you say?”

“Don’t read it,” Werner answered for them all, and the little lantern was soon extinguished.

The services of the priest were also declined by them all. Tsiganok said:

“Stop your fooling, father⁠—you will forgive me, but they will hang me. Go to⁠—where you came from.”

And the dark, broad silhouette of the priest moved back silently and quickly and disappeared. Day was breaking: the snow turned whiter, the figures of the people became more distinct, and the forest⁠—thinner, more melancholy.

“Gentlemen, you must go in pairs. Take your places in pairs as you wish, but I ask you to hurry up.”

Werner pointed to Yanson, who was now standing, supported by two gendarmes.

“I will go with him. And you, Seryozha, take Vasily. Go ahead.”

“Very well.”

“You and I go together, Musechka, shall we not?” asked Tanya Kovalchuk. “Come, let us kiss each other goodbye.”

They kissed one another quickly. Tsiganok kissed firmly, so that they felt his teeth; Yanson softly, drowsily, with his mouth half open⁠—and it seemed that he did not understand what he was doing.

When Sergey Golovin and Kashirin had gone a few steps, Kashirin suddenly stopped and said loudly and distinctly:

“Goodbye, comrades.”

“Goodbye, comrade,” they shouted in answer.

They went off. It grew quiet. The lanterns beyond the trees became motionless. They awaited an outcry, a voice, some kind of noise⁠—but it was just as quiet there as it was among them⁠—and the yellow lanterns were motionless.

“Oh, my God!” someone cried hoarsely and wildly. They looked about. It was Tsiganok, writhing in agony at the thought of death. “They are hanging!”

They turned away from him, and again it became quiet. Tsiganok was writhing, catching at the air with his hands.

“How is that, gentlemen? Am I to go alone? It’s livelier to die together. Gentlemen, what does it mean?”

He seized Werner by the hand, his fingers clutching and then relaxing.

“Dear master, at least you come with me? Eh? Do me the favor? Don’t refuse.”

Werner answered painfully:

“I can’t, my dear fellow. I am going with him.”

“Oh, my God! Must I go alone, then? My God! How is it to be?”

Musya stepped forward and said softly:

“You may go with me.”

Tsiganok stepped back and rolled the whites of his eyes wildly.

“With you!”

“Yes.”

“Just think of her! What a little girl! And you’re not afraid? If you are, I would rather go alone!”

“No, I am not afraid.”

Tsiganok grinned.

“Just think of her! But do you know that I am a murderer? Don’t you despise me? You had better not do it. I shan’t be angry at you.”

Musya was silent, and in the faint light of dawn her face was pale and enigmatic. Then suddenly she walked over to Tsiganok quickly, and, throwing her arms about his neck, kissed him firmly upon his lips. He took her by the shoulders with his fingers, held her away from himself, then shook her, and, with loud smacks, kissed her on the lips, on the nose, on the eyes.

“Come!”

Suddenly the soldier standing nearest them staggered forward, and opening his hands, let his gun drop. He did not stoop down to regain it, but stood for an instant motionless, turned abruptly and, like a blind man, walked toward the forest over the untouched snow.

“Where are you going?” called out another soldier in fright. “Halt!”

But the man continued walking through the deep snow silently and with difficulty. Then he must have stumbled over something, for he waved his arms and fell face downward. And there he remained lying on the snow.

“Pick up the gun, you sour-faced gray-coat, or I’ll pick it up,” said Tsiganok sternly to the other soldier. “You don’t know your business!”

The little lanterns began to move about busily again. Now it was the turn of Werner and Yanson.

“Goodbye, master!” called Tsiganok loudly. “We’ll meet each other in the other world, you’ll see! Don’t turn away from me. When you see me, bring me some water to drink⁠—it will be hot there for me!”

“Goodbye!”

“I don’t want to be hanged!” said Yanson drowsily.

Werner took him by the hand, and then the Estonian walked a few steps alone. But later they saw him stop and fall down in the snow. Soldiers bent over him, lifted him up and carried him on, and he struggled faintly in their arms. Why did he not cry? He must have forgotten even that he had a voice.

And again the little yellow lanterns became motionless.

“And I, Musechka,” said Tanya Kovalchuk mournfully, “must I go alone? We lived together, and now⁠—”

“Tanechka, dearest⁠—”

But Tsiganok took her part heatedly. Holding her by the hand, as though fearing that someone would take her away from him, he said quickly, in a businesslike manner, to Tanya:

“Ah, young lady, you can go alone! You are a pure soul⁠—you can go alone wherever you please! But I⁠—I can’t! A murderer!⁠ ⁠… Understand? I can’t go alone! Where are you going, you murderer? they will ask me. Why, I even stole horses, by God! But with her it is just as if⁠—just as if I were with an infant, understand? Do you understand me?”

“I do. Go. Come, let me kiss you once more, Musechka.”

“Kiss! Kiss each other!” urged Tsiganok. “That’s a woman’s job! You must bid each other a hearty goodbye!”

Musya and Tsiganok moved forward. Musya walked cautiously, slipping, and by force of habit raising her skirts slightly. And the man led her to death firmly, holding her arm carefully and feeling the ground with his foot.

The lights stopped moving. It was quiet and lonely around Tanya Kovalchuk. The soldiers were silent, all gray in the soft, colorless light of daybreak.

“I am alone,” sighed Tanya Kovalchuk suddenly. “Seryozha is dead, Werner is dead⁠—and Vasya, too. I am alone! Soldiers! soldiers! I am alone, alone⁠—”

The sun was rising over the sea.

The bodies were placed in a box. Then they were taken away. With stretched necks, with bulging eyes, with blue, swollen tongues, looking like some unknown, terrible flowers between the lips, which were covered with bloody foam⁠—the bodies were hurried back along the same road by which they had come⁠—alive. And the spring snow was just as soft and fresh; the spring air was just as strong and fragrant. And on the snow lay Sergey’s black rubber-shoe, wet, trampled under foot.

Thus did men greet the rising sun.

I

I was twenty-seven years old and had just maintained my thesis for the degree of Doctor of Mathematics with unusual success, when I was suddenly seized in the middle of the night and thrown into this prison. I shall not narrate to you the details of the monstrous crime of which I was accused⁠—there are events which people should neither remember nor even know, that they may not acquire a feeling of aversion for themselves; but no doubt there are many people among the living who remember that terrible case and “the human brute,” as the newspapers called me at that time. They probably remember how the entire civilised society of the land unanimously demanded that the criminal be put to death, and it is due only to the inexplicable kindness of the man at the head of the Government at the time that I am alive, and I now write these lines for the edification of the weak and the wavering.

I shall say briefly: My father, my elder brother, and my sister were murdered brutally, and I was supposed to have committed the crime for the purpose of securing a really enormous inheritance.

I am an old man now; I shall die soon, and you have not the slightest ground for doubting when I say that I was entirely innocent of the monstrous and horrible crime, for which twelve honest and conscientious judges unanimously sentenced me to death. The death sentence was finally commuted to imprisonment for life in solitary confinement.

It was merely a fatal linking of circumstances, of grave and insignificant events, of vague silence and indefinite words, which gave me the appearance and likeness of the criminal, innocent though I was. But he who would suspect me of being ill-disposed toward my strict judges would be profoundly mistaken. They were perfectly right, perfectly right. As people who can judge things and events only by their appearance, and who are deprived of the ability to penetrate their own mysterious being, they could not act differently, nor should they have acted differently.

It so happened that in the game of circumstances, the truth concerning my actions, which I alone knew, assumed all the features of an insolent and shameless lie; and however strange it may seem to my kind and serious reader, I could establish the truth of my innocence only by falsehood, and not by the truth.

Later on, when I was already in prison, in going over in detail the story of the crime and the trial, and picturing myself in the place of one of my judges, I came to the inevitable conclusion each time that I was guilty. Then I produced a very interesting and instructive work; having set aside entirely the question of truth and falsehood on general principles, I subjected the facts and the words to numerous combinations, erecting structures, even as small children build various structures with their wooden blocks; and after persistent efforts I finally succeeded in finding a certain combination of facts which, though strong in principle, seemed so plausible that my actual innocence became perfectly clear, exactly and positively established.

To this day I remember the great feeling of astonishment, mingled with fear, which I experienced at my strange and unexpected discovery; by telling the truth I lead people into error and thus deceive them, while by maintaining falsehood I lead them, on the contrary, to the truth and to knowledge.

I did not yet understand at that time that, like Newton and his famous apple, I discovered unexpectedly the great law upon which the entire history of human thought rests, which seeks not the truth, but verisimilitude, the appearance of truth⁠—that is, the harmony between that which is seen and that which is conceived, based on the strict laws of logical reasoning. And instead of rejoicing, I exclaimed in an outburst of naive, juvenile despair: “Where, then, is the truth? Where is the truth in this world of phantoms and falsehood?” (See my “Diary of a Prisoner” of June 29, 18⁠—.)

I know that at the present time, when I have but five or six more years to live, I could easily secure my pardon if I but asked for it. But aside from my being accustomed to the prison and for several other important reasons, of which I shall speak later, I simply have no right to ask for pardon, and thus break the force and natural course of the lawful and entirely justified verdict. Nor would I want to hear people apply to me the words, “a victim of judicial error,” as some of my gentle visitors expressed themselves, to my sorrow. I repeat, there was no error, nor could there be any error in a case in which a combination of definite circumstances inevitably lead a normally constructed and developed mind to the one and only conclusion.

I was convicted justly, although I did not commit the crime⁠—such is the simple and clear truth, and I live joyously and peacefully my last few years on earth with a sense of respect for this truth.

The only purpose by which I was guided in writing these modest notes is to show to my indulgent reader that under the most painful conditions, where it would seem that there remains no room for hope or life⁠—a human being, a being of the highest order, possessing a mind and a will, finds both hope and life. I want to show how a human being, condemned to death, looked with free eyes upon the world, through the grated window of his prison, and discovered the great purpose, harmony, and beauty of the universe⁠—to the disgrace of those fools who, being free, living a life of plenty and happiness, slander life disgustingly.

Some of my visitors reproach me for being “haughty”; they ask me where I secured the right to teach and to preach; cruel in their reasoning, they would like to drive away even the smile from the face of the man who has been imprisoned for life as a murderer.

No. Just as the kind and bright smile will not leave my lips, as an evidence of a clear and unstained conscience, so my soul will never be darkened, my soul, which has passed firmly through the defiles of life, which has been carried by a mighty will power across these terrible abysses and bottomless pits, where so many daring people have found their heroic, but, alas! fruitless, death.

And if the tone of my confessions may sometimes seem too positive to my indulgent reader, it is not at all due to the absence of modesty in me, but it is due to the fact that I firmly believe that I am right, and also to my firm desire to be useful to my neighbour as far as my faint powers permit.

Here I must apologise for my frequent references to my “Diary of a Prisoner,” which is unknown to the reader; but the fact is that I consider the complete publication of my “Diary” too premature and perhaps even dangerous. Begun during the remote period of cruel disillusions, of the shipwreck of all my beliefs and hopes, breathing boundless despair, my note book bears evidence in places that its author was, if not in a state of complete insanity, on the brink of insanity. And if we recall how contagious that illness is, my caution in the use of my “Diary” will become entirely clear.

O, blooming youth! With an involuntary tear in my eye I recall your magnificent dreams, your daring visions and outbursts, your impetuous, seething power⁠—but I should not want your return, blooming youth! Only with the greyness of the hair comes clear wisdom, and that great aptitude for unprejudiced reflection which makes of all old men philosophers and often even sages.

II

Those of my kind visitors who honour me by expressing their delight and even⁠—may this little indiscretion be forgiven me!⁠—even their adoration of my spiritual clearness, can hardly imagine what I was when I came to this prison. The tens of years which have passed over my head and which have whitened my hair cannot muffle the slight agitation which I experience at the recollection of the first moments when, with the creaking of the rusty hinges, the fatal prison doors opened and then closed behind me forever.

Not endowed with literary talent, which in reality is an indomitable inclination to invent and to lie, I shall attempt to introduce myself to my indulgent reader exactly as I was at that remote time.

I was a young man, twenty-seven years of age⁠—as I had occasion to mention before⁠—unrestrained, impetuous, given to abrupt deviations. A certain dreaminess, peculiar to my age; a self-respect which was easily offended and which revolted at the slightest insignificant provocation; a passionate impetuosity in solving world problems; fits of melancholy alternated by equally wild fits of merriment⁠—all this gave the young mathematician a character of extreme unsteadiness, of sad and harsh discord.

I must also mention the extreme pride, a family trait, which I inherited from my mother, and which often hindered me from taking the advice of riper and more experienced people than myself; also my extreme obstinacy in carrying out my purposes, a good quality in itself, which becomes dangerous, however, when the purpose in question is not sufficiently well founded and considered.

Thus, during the first days of my confinement, I behaved like all other fools who are thrown into prison. I shouted loudly and, of course, vainly about my innocence; I demanded violently my immediate freedom and even beat against the door and the walls with my fists. The door and the walls naturally remained mute, while I caused myself a rather sharp pain. I remember I even beat my head against the wall, and for hours I lay unconscious on the stone floor of my cell; and for some time, when I had grown desperate, I refused food, until the persistent demands of my organism defeated my obstinacy.

I cursed my judges and threatened them with merciless vengeance. At last I commenced to regard all human life, the whole world, even Heaven, as an enormous injustice, a derision and a mockery. Forgetting that in my position I could hardly be unprejudiced, I came with the self-confidence of youth, with the sickly pain of a prisoner, gradually to the complete negation of life and its great meaning.

Those were indeed terrible days and nights, when, crushed by the walls, getting no answer to any of my questions, I paced my cell endlessly and hurled one after another into the dark abyss all the great valuables which life has bestowed upon us: friendship, love, reason and justice.

In some justification to myself I may mention the fact that during the first and most painful years of my imprisonment a series of events happened which reflected themselves rather painfully upon my psychic nature. Thus I learned with the profoundest indignation that the girl, whose name I shall not mention and who was to become my wife, married another man. She was one of the few who believed in my innocence; at the last parting she swore to me to remain faithful to me unto death, and rather to die than betray her love for me⁠—and within one year after that she married a man I knew, who possessed certain good qualities, but who was not at all a sensible man. I did not want to understand at that time that such a marriage was natural on the part of a young, healthy, and beautiful girl. But, alas! we all forget our natural science when we are deceived by the woman we love⁠—may this little jest be forgiven me! At the present time Mme. N. is a happy and respected mother, and this proves better than anything else how wise and entirely in accordance with the demands of nature and life was her marriage at that time, which vexed me so painfully.

I must confess, however, that at that time I was not at all calm. Her exceedingly amiable and kind letter in which she notified me of her marriage, expressing profound regret that changed circumstances and a suddenly awakened love compelled her to break her promise to me⁠—that amiable, truthful letter, scented with perfume, bearing the traces of her tender fingers, seemed to me a message from the devil himself.

The letters of fire burned my exhausted brains, and in a wild ecstasy I shook the doors of my cell and called violently:

“Come! Let me look into your lying eyes! Let me hear your lying voice! Let me but touch with my fingers your tender throat and pour into your death rattle my last bitter laugh!”

From this quotation my indulgent reader will see how right were the judges who convicted me for murder; they had really foreseen in me a murderer.

My gloomy view of life at the time was aggravated by several other events. Two years after the marriage of my fiancée, consequently three years after the first day of my imprisonment, my mother died⁠—she died, as I learned, of profound grief for me. However strange it may seem, she remained firmly convinced to the end of her days that I had committed the monstrous crime. Evidently this conviction was an inexhaustible source of grief to her, the chief cause of the gloomy melancholy which fettered her lips in silence and caused her death through paralysis of the heart. As I was told, she never mentioned my name nor the names of those who died so tragically, and she bequeathed the entire enormous fortune, which was supposed to have served as the motive for the murder, to various charitable organisations. It is characteristic that even under such terrible conditions her motherly instinct did not forsake her altogether; in a postscript to the will she left me a considerable sum, which secures my existence whether I am in prison or at large.

Now I understand that, however great her grief may have been, that alone was not enough to cause her death; the real cause was her advanced age and a series of illnesses which had undermined her once strong and sound organism. In the name of justice, I must say that my father, a weak-charactered man, was not at all a model husband and family man; by numerous betrayals, by falsehood and deception he had led my mother to despair, constantly offending her pride and her strict, unbribable truthfulness. But at that time I did not understand it; the death of my mother seemed to me one of the most cruel manifestations of universal injustice, and called forth a new stream of useless and sacrilegious curses.

I do not know whether I ought to tire the attention of the reader with the story of other events of a similar nature. I shall mention but briefly that one after another my friends, who remained my friends from the time when I was happy and free, stopped visiting me. According to their words, they believed in my innocence, and at first warmly expressed to me their sympathy. But our lives, mine in prison and theirs at liberty, were so different that gradually under the pressure of perfectly natural causes, such as forgetfulness, official and other duties, the absence of mutual interests, they visited me ever more and more rarely, and finally ceased to see me entirely. I cannot recall without a smile that even the death of my mother, even the betrayal of the girl I loved did not arouse in me such a hopelessly bitter feeling as these gentlemen, whose names I remember but vaguely now, succeeded in wresting from my soul.

“What horror! What pain! My friends, you have left me alone! My friends, do you understand what you have done? You have left me alone. Can you conceive of leaving a human being alone? Even a serpent has its mate, even a spider has its comrade⁠—and you have left a human being alone! You have given him a soul⁠—and left him alone! You have given him a heart, a mind, a hand for a handshake, lips for a kiss⁠—and you have left him alone! What shall he do now that you have left him alone?”

Thus I exclaimed in my “Diary of a Prisoner,” tormented by woeful perplexities. In my juvenile blindness, in the pain of my young, senseless heart, I still did not want to understand that the solitude, of which I complained so bitterly, like the mind, was an advantage given to man over other creatures, in order to fence around the sacred mysteries of his soul from the stranger’s gaze.

Let my serious reader consider what would have become of life if man were robbed of his right, of his duty to be alone. In the gathering of idle chatterers, amid the dull collection of transparent glass dolls, that kill each other with their sameness; in the wild city where all doors are open, and all windows are open⁠—passersby look wearily through the glass walls and observe the same evidences of the hearth and the alcove. Only the creatures that can be alone possess a face; while those that know no solitude⁠—the great, blissful, sacred solitude of the soul⁠—have snouts instead of faces.

And in calling my friends “perfidious traitors” I, poor youth that I was, could not understand the wise law of life, according to which neither friendship, nor love, nor even the tenderest attachment of sister and mother, is eternal. Deceived by the lies of the poets, who proclaimed eternal friendship and love, I did not want to see that which my indulgent reader observes from the windows of his dwelling⁠—how friends, relatives, mother and wife, in apparent despair and in tears, follow their dead to the cemetery, and after a lapse of some time return from there. No one buries himself together with the dead, no one asks the dead to make room in the coffin, and if the grief-stricken wife exclaims, in an outburst of tears, “Oh, bury me together with him!” she is merely expressing symbolically the extreme degree of her despair⁠—one could easily convince himself of this by trying, in jest, to push her down into the grave. And those who restrain her are merely expressing symbolically their sympathy and understanding, thus lending the necessary aspect of solemn grief to the funeral custom.

Man must subject himself to the laws of life, not of death, nor to the fiction of the poets, however beautiful it may be. But can the fictitious be beautiful? Is there no beauty in the stern truth of life, in the mighty work of its wise laws, which subjects to itself with great disinterestedness the movements of the heavenly luminaries, as well as the restless linking of the tiny creatures called human beings?

III

Thus I lived sadly in my prison for five or six years.

The first redeeming ray flashed upon me when I least expected it.

Endowed with the gift of imagination, I made my former fiancée the object of all my thoughts. She became my love and my dream.

Another circumstance which suddenly revealed to me the ground under my feet was, strange as it may seem, the conviction that it was impossible to make my escape from prison.

During the first period of my imprisonment, I, as a youthful and enthusiastic dreamer, made all kinds of plans for escape, and some of them seemed to me entirely possible of realisation. Cherishing deceptive hopes, this thought naturally kept me in a state of tense alarm and hindered my attention from concentrating itself on more important and substantial matters. As soon as I despaired of one plan I created another, but of course I did not make any progress⁠—I merely moved within a closed circle. It is hardly necessary to mention that each transition from one plan to another was accompanied by cruel sufferings, which tormented my soul, just as the eagle tortured the body of Prometheus.

One day, while staring with a weary look at the walls of my cell, I suddenly began to feel how irresistibly thick the stone was, how strong the cement which kept it together, how skilfully and mathematically this severe fortress was constructed. It is true, my first sensation was extremely painful; it was, perhaps, a horror of hopelessness.

I cannot recall what I did and how I felt during the two or three months that followed. The first note in my diary after a long period of silence does not explain very much. Briefly I state only that they made new clothes for me and that I had grown stout.

The fact is that, after all my hopes had been abandoned, the consciousness of the impossibility of my escape once for all extinguished also my painful alarm and liberated my mind, which was then already inclined to lofty contemplation and the joys of mathematics.

But the following is the day I consider as the first real day of my liberation. It was a beautiful spring morning (May 6) and the balmy, invigourating air was pouring into the open window; while walking back and forth in my cell I unconsciously glanced, at each turn, with a vague interest, at the high window, where the iron grate outlined its form sharply and distinctly against the background of the azure, cloudless sky.

“Why is the sky so beautiful through these bars?” I reflected as I walked. “Is not this the effect of the aesthetic law of contrasts, according to which azure stands out prominently beside black? Or is it not, perhaps, a manifestation of some other, higher law, according to which the infinite may be conceived by the human mind only when it is brought within certain boundaries, for instance, when it is enclosed within a square?”

When I recalled that at the sight of a wide open window, which was not protected by bars, or of the sky, I had usually experienced a desire to fly, which was painful because of its uselessness and absurdity⁠—I suddenly began to experience a feeling of tenderness for the bars; tender gratitude, even love. Forged by hand, by the weak human hand of some ignorant blacksmith, who did not even give himself an account of the profound meaning of his creation; placed in the wall by an equally ignorant mason, it suddenly represented in itself a model of beauty, nobility and power. Having seized the infinite within its iron squares, it became congealed in cold and proud peace, frightening the ignorant, giving food for thought to the intelligent and delighting the sage!

IV

In order to make the further narrative clearer to my indulgent reader, I am compelled to say a few words about the exclusive, quite flattering, and, I fear, not entirely deserved, position which I occupy in our prison. On one hand, my spiritual clearness, my rare and perfect view of life, and the nobility of my feelings, which impress all those who speak to me; and, on the other hand, several rather unimportant favours which I have done to the Warden, have given me a series of privileges, of which I avail myself, rather moderately, of course, not desiring to upset the general plan and system of our prison.

Thus, during the weekly visiting days, my visitors are not limited to any special time for their interviews, and all those who wish to see me are admitted, sometimes forming quite a large audience. Not daring to accept altogether the assurances made somewhat ironically by the Warden, to the effect that I would be “the pride of any prison,” I may say, nevertheless, without any false modesty, that my words are treated with proper respect, and that among my visitors I number quite a few warm and enthusiastic admirers, both men and women. I shall mention that the Warden himself and some of his assistants honour me by their visits, drawing from me strength and courage for the purpose of continuing their hard work. Of course I use the prison library freely, and even the archives of the prison; and if the Warden politely refused to grant my request for an exact plan of the prison, it is not at all because of his lack of confidence in me, but because such a plan is a state secret.⁠ ⁠…

Our prison is a huge five-story building. Situated in the outskirts of the city, at the edge of a deserted field, overgrown with high grass, it attracts the attention of the wayfarer by its rigid outlines, promising him peace and rest after his endless wanderings. Not being plastered, the building has retained its natural dark red colour of old brick, and at close view, I am told, it produces a gloomy, even threatening, impression, especially on nervous people, to whom the red bricks recall blood and bloody lumps of human flesh. The small, dark, flat windows with iron bars naturally complete the impression and lend to the whole a character of gloomy harmony, or stern beauty. Even during good weather, when the sun shines upon our prison, it does not lose any of its dark and grim importance, and is constantly reminding the people that there are laws in existence and that punishment awaits those who break them.

My cell is on the fifth story, and my grated window commands a splendid view of the distant city and a part of the deserted field to the right. On the left, beyond the boundary of my vision, are the outskirts of the city, and, as I am told, the church and the cemetery adjoining it. Of the existence of the church and even the cemetery I had known before from the mournful tolling of the bells, which custom requires during the burial of the dead.

Quite in keeping with the external style of architecture, the interior arrangement of our prison is also finished harmoniously and properly constructed. For the purpose of conveying to the reader a clearer idea of the prison, I will take the liberty of giving the example of a fool who might make up his mind to run away from our prison. Admitting that the brave fellow possessed supernatural, Herculean strength and broke the lock of his room⁠—what would he find? The corridor, with numerous grated doors, which could withstand cannonading⁠—and armed keepers. Let us suppose that he kills all the keepers, breaks all the doors, and comes out into the yard⁠—perhaps he may think that he is already free. But what of the walls? The walls which encircle our prison, with three rings of stone?

I omitted the guard advisedly. The guard is indefatigable. Day and night I hear behind my doors the footsteps of the guard; day and night his eye watches me through the little window in my door, controlling my movements, reading on my face my thoughts, my intentions and my dreams. In the daytime I could deceive his attention with lies, assuming a cheerful and carefree expression on my face, but I have rarely met the man who could lie even in his sleep. No matter how much I would be on my guard during the day, at night I would betray myself by an involuntary moan, by a twitch of the face, by an expression of fatigue or grief, or by other manifestations of a guilty and uneasy conscience. Only very few people of unusual will power are able to lie even in their sleep, skilfully managing the features of their faces, sometimes even preserving a courteous and bright smile on their lips, when their souls, given over to dreams, are quivering from the horrors of a monstrous nightmare⁠—but, as exceptions, these cannot be taken into consideration. I am profoundly happy that I am not a criminal, that my conscience is clear and calm.

“Read, my friend, read,” I say to the watchful eye as I lay myself down to sleep peacefully. “You will not be able to read anything on my face!”

And it was I who invented the window in the prison door.

I feel that my reader is astonished and smiles incredulously, mentally calling me an old liar, but there are instances in which modesty is superfluous and even dangerous. Yes, this simple and great invention belongs to me, just as Newton’s system belongs to Newton, and as Kepler’s laws of the revolution of the planets belong to Kepler.

Later on, encouraged by the success of my invention, I devised and introduced in our prison a series of little innovations, which were concerned only with details; thus the form of chains and locks used in our prison has been changed.

The little window in the door was my invention, and, if anyone should dare deny this, I would call him a liar and a scoundrel.

I came upon this invention under the following circumstances: One day, during the roll call, a certain prisoner killed with the iron leg of his bed the Inspector who entered his cell. Of course the rascal was hanged in the yard of our prison, and the administration light mindedly grew calm, but I was in despair⁠—the great purpose of the prison proved to be wrong since such horrible deeds were possible. How is it that no one had noticed that the prisoner had broken off the leg of his bed? How is it that no one had noticed the state of agitation in which the prisoner must have been before committing the murder?

By taking up the question so directly I thus approached considerably the solution of the problem; and indeed, after two or three weeks had elapsed I arrived simply and even unexpectedly at my great discovery. I confess frankly that before telling my discovery to the Warden of the prison I experienced moments of a certain hesitation, which was quite natural in my position of prisoner. To the reader who may still be surprised at this hesitation, knowing me to be a man of a clear, unstained conscience, I will answer by a quotation from my “Diary of a Prisoner,” relating to that period:

“How difficult is the position of the man who is convicted, though innocent, as I am. If he is sad, if his lips are sealed in silence, and his eyes are lowered, people say of him: ‘He is repenting; he is suffering from pangs of conscience.’

“If in the innocence of his heart he smiles brightly and kindly, the keeper thinks: ‘There, by a false and feigned smile, he wishes to hide his secret.’

“No matter what he does, he seems guilty⁠—such is the force of the prejudice against which it is necessary to struggle. But I am innocent, and I shall be myself, firmly confident that my spiritual clearness will destroy the malicious magic of prejudice.”

And on the following day the Warden of the prison pressed my hand warmly, expressing his gratitude to me, and a month later little holes were made in all doors in every prison in the land, thus opening a field for wide and fruitful observation.

The entire system of our prison life gives me deep satisfaction. The hours for rising and going to bed, for meals and walks are arranged so rationally, in accordance with the real requirements of nature, that soon they lose the appearance of compulsion and become natural, even dear habits. Only in this way can I explain the interesting fact that when I was free I was a nervous and weak young man, susceptible to colds and illness, whereas in prison I have grown considerably stronger and that for my sixty years I am enjoying an enviable state of health. I am not stout, but I am not thin, either; my lungs are in good condition and I have saved almost all my teeth, with the exception of two on the left side of the jaw; I am good natured, even tempered; my sleep is sound, almost without any dreams. In figure, in which an expression of calm power and self-confidence predominates, and in face, I resemble somewhat Michelangelo’s Moses⁠—that is, at least what some of my friendly visitors have told me.

But even more than by the regular and healthy regime, the strengthening of my soul and body was helped by the wonderful, yet natural, peculiarity of our prison, which eliminates entirely the accidental and the unexpected from its life. Having neither a family nor friends, I am perfectly safe from the shocks, so injurious to life, which are caused by treachery, by the illness or death of relatives⁠—let my indulgent reader recall how many people have perished before his eyes not of their own fault, but because capricious fate had linked them to people unworthy of them. Without changing my feeling of love into trivial personal attachments, I thus make it free for the broad and mighty love for all mankind; and as mankind is immortal, not subjected to illness, and as a harmonious whole it is undoubtedly progressing toward perfection, love for it becomes the surest guarantee of spiritual and physical soundness.

My day is clear. So are also my days of the future, which are coming toward me in radiant and even order. A murderer will not break into my cell for the purpose of robbing me, a mad automobile will not crush me, the illness of a child will not torture me, cruel treachery will not steal its way to me from the darkness. My mind is free, my heart is calm, my soul is clear and bright.

The clear and rigid rules of our prison define everything that I must not do, thus freeing me from those unbearable hesitations, doubts, and errors with which practical life is filled. True, sometimes there penetrates even into our prison, through its high walls, something which ignorant people call chance, or even Fate, and which is only an inevitable reflection of the general laws; but the life of the prison, agitated for a moment, quickly goes back to its habitual rut, like a river after an overflow. To this category of accidents belong the above-mentioned murder of the Inspector, the rare and always unsuccessful attempts at escape, and also the executions, which take place in one of the remotest yards of our prison.

There is still another peculiarity in the system of our prison, which I consider most beneficial, and which gives to the whole thing a character of stern and noble justice. Left to himself, and only to himself, the prisoner cannot count upon support, or upon that spurious, wretched pity which so often falls to the lot of weak people, disfiguring thereby the fundamental purposes of nature.

I confess that I think, with a certain sense of pride, that if I am now enjoying general respect and admiration, if my mind is strong, my will powerful, my view of life clear and bright, I owe it only to myself, to my power and my perseverance. How many weak people would have perished in my place as victims of madness, despair, or grief? But I have conquered everything! I have changed the world. I gave to my soul the form which my mind desired. In the desert, working alone, exhausted with fatigue, I have erected a stately structure in which I now live joyously and calmly, like a king. Destroy it⁠—and tomorrow I shall begin to build a new structure, and in my bloody sweat I shall erect it! For I must live!

Forgive my involuntary pathos in the last lines, which is so unbecoming to my balanced and calm nature. But it is hard to restrain myself when I recall the road I have travelled. I hope, however, that in the future I shall not darken the mood of my reader with any outbursts of agitated feelings. Only he shouts who is not confident of the truth of his words; calm firmness and cold simplicity are becoming to the truth.

P.S.⁠—I do not remember whether I told you that the criminal who murdered my father has not been found as yet.

V

Deviating from time to time from the calm form of a historical narrative I must pause on current events. Thus I will permit myself to acquaint my readers in a few lines with a rather interesting specimen of the human species which I have found accidentally in our prison.

One afternoon a few days ago the Warden came to me for the usual chat, and among other things told me there was a very unfortunate man in prison at the time upon whom I could exert a beneficent influence. I expressed my willingness in the most cordial manner, and for several days in succession I have had long discussions with the artist K., by permission of the Warden. The spirit of hostility, even of obstinacy, with which, to my regret, he met me at his first visit, has now disappeared entirely under the influence of my discussion. Listening willingly and with interest to my ever pacifying words he gradually told me his rather unusual story after a series of persistent questions.

He is a man of about twenty-six or twenty-eight, of pleasant appearance, and rather good manners, which show that he is a well-bred man. A certain quite natural unrestraint in his speech, a passionate vehemence with which he talks about himself, occasionally a bitter, even ironical laughter, followed by painful pensiveness, from which it is difficult to arouse him even by a touch of the hand⁠—these complete the makeup of my new acquaintance. Personally to me he is not particularly sympathetic, and however strange it may seem I am especially annoyed by his disgusting habit of constantly moving his thin, emaciated fingers and clutching helplessly the hand of the person with whom he speaks.

K. told me very little of his past life.

“Well, what is there to tell? I was an artist, that’s all,” he repeated, with a sorrowful grimace, and refused to talk about the “immoral act” for which he was condemned to solitary confinement.

“I don’t want to corrupt you, grandpa⁠—live honestly,” he would jest in a somewhat unbecoming familiar tone, which I tolerated simply because I wished to please the Warden of the prison, having learned from the prisoner the real cause of his sufferings, which sometimes assumed an acute form of violence and threats. During one of these painful minutes, when K.’s will power was weak, as a result of insomnia, from which he was suffering, I seated myself on his bed and treated him in general with fatherly kindness, and he blurted out everything to me right there and then.

Not desiring to tire the reader with an exact reproduction of his hysterical outbursts, his laughter and his tears, I shall give only the facts of his story.

K.’s grief, at first not quite clear to me, consists of the fact that instead of paper or canvas for his drawings he was given a large slate and a slate pencil. (By the way, the art with which he mastered the material, which was new to him, is remarkable. I have seen some of his productions, and it seems to me that they could satisfy the taste of the most fastidious expert of graphic arts. Personally I am indifferent to the art of painting, preferring live and truthful nature.) Thus, owing to the nature of the material, before commencing a new picture, K. had to destroy the previous one by wiping it off his slate, and this seemed to lead him every time to the verge of madness.

“You cannot imagine what it means,” he would say, clutching my hands with his thin, clinging fingers. “While I draw, you know, I forget entirely that it is useless; I am usually very cheerful and I even whistle some tune, and once I was even incarcerated for that, as it is forbidden to whistle in this cursed prison. But that is a trifle⁠—for I had at least a good sleep there. But when I finish my picture⁠—no, even when I approach the end of the picture, I am seized with a sensation so terrible that I feel like tearing the brain from my head and trampling it with my feet. Do you understand me?”

“I understand you, my friend, I understand you perfectly, and I sympathise with you.”

“Really? Well, then, listen, old man. I make the last strokes with so much pain, with such a sense of sorrow and hopelessness, as though I were bidding goodbye to the person I loved best of all. But here I have finished it. Do you understand what it means? It means that it has assumed life, that it lives, that there is a certain mysterious spirit in it. And yet it is already doomed to death, it is dead already, dead like a herring. Can you understand it at all? I do not understand it. And, now, imagine, I⁠—fool that I am⁠—I nevertheless rejoice, I cry and rejoice. No, I think, this picture I shall not destroy; it is so good that I shall not destroy it. Let it live. And it is a fact that at such times I do not feel like drawing anything new, I have not the slightest desire for it. And yet it is dreadful. Do you understand me?”

“Perfectly, my friend. No doubt the drawing ceases to please you on the following day⁠—”

“Oh, what nonsense you are prating, old man! (That is exactly what he said. ‘Nonsense.’) How can a dying child cease to please you? Of course, if he lived, he might have become a scoundrel, but when he is dying⁠—No, old man, that isn’t it. For I am killing it myself. I do not sleep all night long, I jump up, I look at it, and I love it so dearly that I feel like stealing it. Stealing it from whom? What do I know? But when morning sets in I feel that I cannot do without it, that I must take up that cursed pencil again and create anew. What a mockery! To create! What am I, a galley slave?”

“My friend, you are in a prison.”

“My dear old man! When I begin to steal over to the slate with the sponge in my hand I feel like a murderer. It happens that I go around it for a day or two. Do you know, one day I bit off a finger of my right hand so as not to draw any more, but that, of course, was only a trifle, for I started to learn drawing with my left hand. What is this necessity for creating! To create by all means, create for suffering⁠—create with the knowledge that it will all perish! Do you understand it?”

“Finish it, my friend, don’t be agitated; then I will expound to you my views.”

Unfortunately, my advice hardly reached the ears of K. In one of those paroxysms of despair, which frighten the Warden of our prison, K. began to throw himself about in his bed, tear his clothes, shout and sob, manifesting in general all the symptoms of extreme mortification. I looked at the sufferings of the unfortunate youth with deep emotion (compared with me he was a youth), vainly endeavouring to hold his fingers which were tearing his clothes. I knew that for this breach of discipline new incarceration awaited him.

“O, impetuous youth,” I thought when he had grown somewhat calmer, and I was tenderly unfolding his fine hair which had become entangled, “how easily you fall into despair! A bit of drawing, which may in the end fall into the hands of a dealer in old rags, or a dealer in old bronze and cemented porcelain, can cause you so much suffering!” But, of course, I did not tell this to my youthful friend, striving, as anyone should under similar circumstances, not to irritate him by unnecessary contradictions.

“Thank you, old man,” said K., apparently calm now. “To tell the truth you seemed very strange to me at first; your face is so venerable, but your eyes. Have you murdered anybody, old man?”

I deliberately quote the malicious and careless phrase to show how in the eyes of lightminded and shallow people the stamp of a terrible accusation is transformed into the stamp of the crime itself. Controlling my feeling of bitterness, I remarked calmly to the impertinent youth:

“You are an artist, my child; to you are known the mysteries of the human face, that flexible, mobile and deceptive masque, which, like the sea, reflects the hurrying clouds and the azure ether. Being green, the sea turns blue under the clear sky and black when the sky is black, when the heavy clouds are dark. What do you want of my face, over which hangs an accusation of the most cruel crime?”

But, occupied with his own thoughts, the artist apparently paid no particular attention to my words and continued in a broken voice:

“What am I to do? You saw my drawing. I destroyed it, and it is already a whole week since I touched my pencil. Of course,” he resumed thoughtfully, rubbing his brow, “it would be better to break the slate; to punish me they would not give me another one⁠—”

“You had better return it to the authorities.”

“Very well, I may hold out another week, but what then? I know myself. Even now that devil is pushing my hand: ‘Take the pencil, take the pencil.’ ”

At that moment, as my eyes wandered distractedly over his cell, I suddenly noticed that some of the artist’s clothes hanging on the wall were unnaturally stretched, and one end was skilfully fastened by the back of the cot. Assuming an air that I was tired and that I wanted to walk about in the cell, I staggered as from a quiver of senility in my legs, and pushed the clothes aside. The entire wall was covered with drawings!

The artist had already leaped from his cot, and thus we stood facing each other in silence. I said in a tone of gentle reproach:

“How did you allow yourself to do this, my friend? You know the rules of the prison, according to which no inscriptions or drawing on the walls are permissible?”

“I know no rules,” said K. morosely.

“And then,” I continued, sternly this time, “you lied to me, my friend. You said that you did not take the pencil into your hands for a whole week.”

“Of course I didn’t,” said the artist, with a strange smile, and even a challenge. Even when caught red-handed, he did not betray any signs of repentance, and looked rather sarcastic than guilty. Having examined more closely the drawings on the wall, which represented human figures in various positions, I became interested in the strange reddish-yellow colour of an unknown pencil.

“Is this iodine? You told me that you had a pain and that you secured iodine.”

“No. It is blood.”

“Blood?”

“Yes.”

I must say frankly that I even liked him at that moment.

“How did you get it?”

“From my hand.”

“From your hand? But how did you manage to hide yourself from the eye that is watching you?”

He smiled cunningly, and even winked.

“Don’t you know that you can always deceive if only you want to do it?”

My sympathies for him were immediately dispersed. I saw before me a man who was not particularly clever, but in all probability terribly spoiled already, who did not even admit the thought that there are people who simply cannot lie. Recalling, however, the promise I had made to the Warden, I assumed a calm air of dignity and said to him tenderly, as only a mother could speak to her child:

“Don’t be surprised and don’t condemn me for being so strict, my friend. I am an old man. I have passed half of my life in this prison; I have formed certain habits, like all old people, and submitting to all rules myself, I am perhaps overdoing it somewhat in demanding the same of others. You will of course wipe off these drawings yourself⁠—although I feel sorry for them, for I admire them sincerely⁠—and I will not say anything to the administration. We will forget all this, as if nothing had happened. Are you satisfied?”

He answered drowsily:

“Very well.”

“In our prison, where we have the sad pleasure of being confined, everything is arranged in accordance with a most purposeful plan and is most strictly subjected to laws and rules. And the very strict order, on account of which the existence of your creations is so short lived, and, I may say, ephemeral, is full of the profoundest wisdom. Allowing you to perfect yourself in your art, it wisely guards other people against the perhaps injurious influence of your productions, and in any case it completes logically, finishes, enforces, and makes clear the meaning of your solitary confinement. What does solitary confinement in our prison mean? It means that the prisoner should be alone. But would he be alone if by his productions he would communicate in some way or other with other people outside?”

By the expression of K.’s face I noticed with a sense of profound joy that my words had produced on him the proper impression, bringing him back from the realm of poetic inventions to the land of stern but beautiful reality. And, raising my voice, I continued:

“As for the rule you have broken, which forbids any inscription or drawing on the walls of our prison, it is not less logical. Years will pass; in your place there may be another prisoner like you⁠—and he may see that which you have drawn. Shall this be tolerated? Just think of it! And what would become of the walls of our prison if everyone who wished it were to leave upon them his profane marks?”

“To the devil with it!”

This is exactly how K. expressed himself. He said it loudly, even with an air of calmness.

“What do you mean to say by this, my youthful friend?”

“I wish to say that you may perish here, my old friend, but I shall leave this place.”

“You can’t escape from our prison,” I retorted, sternly.

“Have you tried?”

“Yes, I have tried.”

He looked at me incredulously and smiled. He smiled!

“You are a coward, old man. You are simply a miserable coward.”

I⁠—a coward! Oh, if that self-satisfied puppy knew what a tempest of rage he had aroused in my soul he would have squealed for fright and would have hidden himself on the bed. I⁠—a coward! The world has crumbled upon my head, but has not crushed me, and out of its terrible fragments I have created a new world, according to my own design and plan; all the evil forces of life⁠—solitude, imprisonment, treachery, and falsehood⁠—all have taken up arms against me, but I have subjected them all to my will. And I who have subjected to myself even my dreams⁠—I am a coward?

But I shall not tire the attention of my indulgent reader with these lyrical deviations, which have no bearing on the matter. I continue.

After a pause, broken only by K.’s loud breathing, I said to him sadly:

“I⁠—a coward! And you say this to the man who came with the sole aim of helping you? Of helping you not only in word but also in deed?”

“You wish to help me? In what way?”

“I will get you paper and pencil.”

The artist was silent. And his voice was soft and timid when he asked, hesitatingly:

“And⁠—my drawings⁠—will remain?”

“Yes; they will remain.”

It is hard to describe the vehement delight into which the exalted young man was thrown; naive and pure-hearted youth knows no bounds either in grief or in joy. He pressed my hand warmly, shook me, disturbing my old bones; he called me friend, father, even “dear old phiz” (!) and a thousand other endearing and somewhat naive names. To my regret our conversation lasted too long, and, notwithstanding the entreaties of the young man, who would not part with me, I hurried away to my cell.

I did not go to the Warden of the prison, as I felt somewhat agitated. At that remote time I paced my cell until late in the night, striving to understand what means of escaping from our prison that rather foolish young man could have discovered. Was it possible to run away from our prison? No, I could not admit and I must not admit it. And gradually conjuring up in my memory everything I knew about our prison, I understood that K. must have hit upon an old plan, which I had long discarded, and that he would convince himself of its impracticability even as I convinced myself. It is impossible to escape from our prison.

But, tormented by doubts, I measured my lonely cell for a long time, thinking of various plans that might relieve K.’s position and thus divert him from the idea of making his escape. He must not run away from our prison under any circumstances. Then I gave myself to peaceful and sound sleep, with which benevolent nature has rewarded those who have a clear conscience and a pure soul.

By the way, lest I forget, I shall mention the fact that I destroyed my “Diary of a Prisoner” that night. I had long wished to do it, but the natural pity and fainthearted love which we feel for our blunders and our shortcomings restrained me; besides, there was nothing in my “Diary” that could have compromised me in any way. And if I have destroyed it now it is due solely to my desire to throw my past into oblivion and to save my reader from the tediousness of long complaints and moans, from the horror of sacrilegious cursings. May it rest in peace!

VI

Having conveyed to the Warden of our prison the contents of my conversation with K., I asked him not to punish the young man for spoiling the walls, which would thus betray me, and I, to save the youth, suggested the following plan, which was accepted by the Warden after a few purely formal objections.

“It is important for him,” I said, “that his drawings should be preserved, but it is apparently immaterial to him in whose possession these drawings are. Let him, then, avail himself of his art, paint your portrait, Mr. Warden, and after that the portraits of the entire staff of your officials. To say nothing of the honour you would show him by this condescension⁠—an honour which he will surely know how to appreciate⁠—the painting may be useful to you as a very original ornament in your drawing room or study. Besides, nothing will prevent us from destroying the drawings if we should not care for them, for the naive and somewhat selfish young man apparently does not even admit the thought that anybody’s hand would destroy his productions.”

Smiling, the Warden suggested, with a politeness that flattered me extremely, that the series of portraits should commence with mine. I quote word for word that which the Warden said to me:

“Your face actually calls for reproduction on canvas. We shall hang your portrait in the office.”

The zeal of creativeness⁠—these are the only words I can apply to the passionate, silent agitation in which K. reproduced my features. Usually talkative, he now maintained silence for hours, leaving unanswered my jests and remarks.

“Be silent, old man, be silent⁠—you are at your best when you are silent,” he repeated persistently, calling forth an involuntary smile by his zeal as a professional.

My portrait would remind you, my indulgent reader, of that mysterious peculiarity of artists, according to which they very often transmit their own feelings, even their external features, to the subject upon which they are working. Thus, reproducing with remarkable likeness, the lower part of my face, where kindness and the expression of authoritativeness and calm dignity are so harmoniously blended, K. undoubtedly introduced into my eyes his own suffering and even his horror. Their fixed, immobile gaze; madness glimmering somewhere in their depth; the painful eloquence of a deep and infinitely lonely soul⁠—all that was not mine.

“Is this I?” I exclaimed, laughing, when from the canvas this terrible face, full of wild contradictions, stared at me. “My friend, I do not congratulate you on this portrait. I do not think it is successful.”

“It is you, old man, you! It is well drawn. You criticise it wrongly. Where will you hang it?”

He grew talkative again like a magpie, that amiable young man, and all because his wretched painting was to be preserved for some time. O impetuous, O happy youth! Here I could not restrain myself from a little jest for the purpose of teaching a lesson to the self-confident youngster, so I asked him, with a smile:

“Well, Mr. Artist, what do you think? Am I murderer or not?”

The artist, closing one eye, examined me and the portrait critically. Then whistling a polka, he answered recklessly: “The devil knows you, old man!”

I smiled. K. understood my jest at last, burst out laughing and then said with sudden seriousness:

“You are speaking of the human face but do you know that there is nothing worse in the world than the human face? Even when it tells the truth, when it shouts about the truth, it lies, it lies, old man, for it speaks its own language. Do you know, old man, a terrible incident happened to me? It was in one of the picture galleries in Spain. I was examining a portrait of Christ, when suddenly⁠—Christ, you understand, Christ⁠—great eyes, dark, terrible suffering, sorrow, grief, love⁠—well, in a word⁠—Christ. Suddenly I was struck with something; suddenly it seemed to me that it was the face of the greatest wrongdoer, tormented by the greatest unheard-of woes of repentance⁠—Old man, why do you look at me so! Old man!”

Nearing my eyes to the very face of the artist, I asked him in a cautious whisper, as the occasion required, dividing each word from the other:

“Don’t you think that when the devil tempted Him in the desert He did not renounce him, as He said later, but consented, sold Himself⁠—that He did not renounce the devil, but sold Himself. Do you understand? Does not that passage in the Gospels seem doubtful to you?”

Extreme fright was expressed on the face of my young friend. Forcing the palms of his hands against my chest, as if to push me away, he ejaculated in a voice so low that I could hardly hear his indistinct words:

“What? You say Jesus sold Himself? What for?”

I explained softly:

“That the people, my child, that the people should believe Him.”

“Well?”

I smiled. K.’s eyes became round, as if a noose was strangling him. Suddenly, with that lack of respect for old age which was one of his characteristics, he threw me down on the bed with a sharp thrust and jumped away into a corner. When I was slowly getting up from the awkward position into which the unrestraint of that young man had forced me⁠—I fell backward, with my head between the pillow and the back of the bed⁠—he cried to me loudly:

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare get up, you Devil.”

But I did not think of rising to my feet. I simply sat down on the bed, and, thus seated, with an involuntary smile at the passionate outburst of the youth, I shook my head good naturedly and laughed.

“Oh, young man, young man! You yourself have drawn me into this theological conversation.”

But he stared at me stubbornly, wide eyed, and kept repeating:

“Sit there, sit there! I did not say this. No, no!”

“You said it, you, young man⁠—you. Do you remember Spain, the picture gallery! You said it and now you deny it, mocking my clumsy old age. Oh!”

K. suddenly lowered his hands and admitted in a low voice:

“Yes. I said it. But you, old man⁠—”

I do not remember what he said after that⁠—it is so hard to recall all the childish chatter of this kind, but unfortunately too light-minded young man. I remember only that we parted as friends, and he pressed my hand warmly, expressing to me his sincere gratitude, even calling me, so far as I can remember, his “saviour.”

By the way, I succeeded in convincing the Warden that the portrait of even such a man as I, after all a prisoner, was out of place in such a solemn official room as the office of our prison. And now the portrait hangs on the wall of my cell, pleasantly breaking the cold monotony of the pure white walls.

Leaving for a time our artist, who is now carried away by the portrait of the Warden, I shall continue my story.

VII

My spiritual clearness, as I had the pleasure of informing the reader before, has built up for me a considerable circle of men and women admirers. With self-evident emotion I shall tell of the pleasant hours of our hearty conversations, which I modestly call “My talks.”

It is difficult for me to explain how I deserved it, but the majority of those who come to me regard me with a feeling of the profoundest respect, even adoration, and only a few come for the purpose of arguing with me, but these arguments are usually of a moderate and proper character. I usually seat myself in the middle of the room, in a soft and deep armchair, which is furnished me for this occasion by the Warden; my hearers surround me closely, and some of them, the more enthusiastic youths and maidens, seat themselves at my feet.

Having before me an audience more than half of which is composed of women, and entirely disposed in my favour, I always appeal not so much to the mind as to the sensitive and truthful heart. Fortunately I possess a certain oratorical power, and the customary effects of the oratorical art, to which all preachers, beginning in all probability with Mohammed, have resorted, and which I can handle rather cleverly, allow me to influence my hearers in the desired direction. It is easily understood that to the dear ladies in my audience I am not so much the sage, who has solved the mystery of the iron grate, as a great martyr of a righteous cause, which they do not quite understand. Shunning abstract discussions, they eagerly hang on every word of compassion and kindness, and respond with the same. Allowing them to love me and to believe in my immutable knowledge of life, I afford them the happy opportunity to depart at least for a time from the coldness of life, from its painful doubts and questions.

I say openly without any false modesty, which I despise even as I despise hypocrisy, there were lectures at which I myself being in a state of exaltation, called forth in my audience, especially in my nervous lady visitors, a mood of intense agitation, which turned into hysterical laughter and tears. Of course I am not a prophet; I am merely a modest thinker, but no one would succeed in convincing my lady admirers that there is no prophetic meaning and significance in my speeches.

I remember one such lecture which took place two months ago. The night before I could not sleep as soundly as I usually slept; perhaps it was simply because of the full moon, which affects sleep, disturbing and interrupting it. I vaguely remember the strange sensation which I experienced when the pale crescent of the moon appeared in my window and the iron squares cut it with ominous black lines into small silver squares.⁠ ⁠…

When I started for the lecture I felt exhausted and rather inclined to silence than to conversation; the vision of the night before disturbed me. But when I saw those dear faces, those eyes full of hope and ardent entreaty for friendly advice; when I saw before me that rich field, already ploughed, waiting only for the good seed to be sown, my heart began to burn with delight, pity and love. Avoiding the customary formalities which accompany the meetings of people, declining the hands outstretched to greet me, I turned to the audience, which was agitated at the very sight of me, and gave them my blessing with a gesture to which I know how to lend a peculiar majesty.

“Come unto me,” I exclaimed; “come unto me; you who have gone away from that life. Here, in this quiet abode, under the sacred protection of the iron grate, at my heart overflowing with love, you will find rest and comfort. My beloved children, give me your sad soul, exhausted from suffering, and I shall clothe it with light. I shall carry it to those blissful lands where the sun of eternal truth and love never sets.”

Many had begun to cry already, but, as it was too early for tears, I interrupted them with a gesture of fatherly impatience, and continued:

“You, dear girl, who came from the world which calls itself free⁠—what gloomy shadows lie on your charming and beautiful face! And you, my daring youth, why are you so pale? Why do I see, instead of the ecstasy of victory, the fear of defeat in your lowered eyes? And you, honest mother, tell me, what wind has made your eyes so red? What furious rain has lashed your wizened face? What snow has whitened your hair, for it used to be dark?”

But the weeping and the sobs drowned the end of my speech, and besides, I admit it without feeling ashamed of it, I myself brushed away more than one treacherous tear from my eyes. Without allowing the agitation to subside completely, I called in a voice of stern and truthful reproach:

“Do not weep because your soul is dark, stricken with misfortunes, blinded by chaos, clipped of its wings by doubts; give it to me and I shall direct it toward the light, toward order and reason. I know the truth. I have conceived the world! I have discovered the great principle of its purpose! I have solved the sacred formula of the iron grate! I demand of you⁠—swear to me by the cold iron of its squares that henceforth you will confess to me without shame or fear all your deeds, your errors and doubts, all the secret thoughts of your soul and the dreams and desires of your body!”

“We swear! We swear! We swear! Save us! Reveal to us the truth! Take our sins upon yourself! Save us! Save us!” numerous exclamations resounded.

I must mention the sad incident which occurred during that same lecture. At the moment when the excitement reached its height and the hearts had already opened, ready to unburden themselves, a certain youth, looking morose and embittered, exclaimed loudly, evidently addressing himself to me:

“Liar! Do not listen to him. He is lying!”

The indulgent reader will easily believe that it was only by a great effort that I succeeded in saving the incautious youth from the fury of the audience. Offended in that which is most precious to a human being, his faith in goodness and the divine purpose of life, my women admirers rushed upon the foolish youth in a mob and would have beaten him cruelly. Remembering, however, that there was more joy to the pastor in one sinner who repents than in ten righteous men, I took the young man aside where no one could hear us, and entered into a brief conversation with him.

“Did you call me a liar, my child?”

Moved by my kindness, the poor young man became confused and answered hesitatingly:

“Pardon me for my harshness, but it seems to me that you are not telling the truth.”

“I understand you, my friend. You must have been agitated by the intense ecstasy of the women, and you, as a sensible man, not inclined to mysticism, suspected me of fraud, of a hideous fraud. No, no, don’t excuse yourself. I understand you. But I wish you would understand me. Out of the mire of superstitions, out of the deep gulf of prejudices and unfounded beliefs, I want to lead their strayed thoughts and place them upon the solid foundation of strictly logical reasoning. The iron grate, which I mentioned, is not a mystical sign; it is only a formula, a simple, sober, honest, mathematical formula. To you, as a sensible man, I will willingly explain this formula. The grate is the scheme in which are placed all the laws guiding the universe, which do away with chaos, substituting in its place strict, iron, inviolable order, forgotten by mankind. As a brightminded man you will easily understand⁠—”

“Pardon me. I did not understand you, and if you will permit me I⁠—But why do you make them swear?”

“My friend, the soul of man, believing itself free and constantly suffering from this spurious freedom, is demanding fetters for itself⁠—to some these fetters are an oath, to others a vow, to still others simply a word of honour. You will give me your word of honour, will you not?”

“I will.”

“And by this you are simply striving to enter the harmony of the world, where everything is subjected to a law. Is not the falling of a stone the fulfilment of a vow, of the vow called the law of gravitation?”

I shall not go into detail about this conversation and the others that followed. The obstinate and unrestrained youth, who had insulted me by calling me liar, became one of my warmest adherents.

I must return to the others. During the time that I talked with the young man, the desire for penitence among my charming proselytes reached its height. Not patient enough to wait for me, they commenced in a state of intense ecstasy to confess to one another, giving to the room an appearance of a garden where dozens of birds of paradise were twittering at the same time. When I returned, each of them separately unfolded her agitated soul to me.⁠ ⁠…

I saw how, from day to day, from hour to hour, terrible chaos was struggling in their souls with an eager inclination for harmony and order; how in the bloody struggle between eternal falsehood and immortal truth, falsehood, through inconceivable ways, passed into truth, and truth became falsehood. I found in the human soul all the forces in the world, and none of them was dormant, and in the mad whirlpool each soul became like a fountain, whose source is the abyss of the sea and whose summit the sky. And every human being, as I have learned and seen, is like the rich and powerful master who gave a masquerade ball at his castle and illuminated it with many lights; and strange masks came from everywhere and the master greeted them, bowing courteously, and vainly asking them who they were; and new, ever stranger, ever more terrible, masks were arriving, and the master bowed to them ever more courteously, staggering from fatigue and fear. And they were laughing and whispering strange words about the eternal chaos, whence they came, obeying the call of the master. And lights were burning in the castle⁠—and in the distance lighted windows were visible, reminding him of the festival, and the exhausted master kept bowing ever lower, ever more courteously, ever more cheerfully. My indulgent reader will easily understand that in addition to a certain sense of fear which I experienced, the greatest delight and even joyous emotion soon came upon me⁠—for I saw that eternal chaos was defeated and the triumphant hymn of bright harmony was rising to the skies.⁠ ⁠…

Not without a sense of pride I shall mention the modest offerings by which my kind admirers were striving to express to me their feelings of love and adoration. I am not afraid of calling out a smile on the lips of my readers, for I feel how comical it is⁠—I will say that among the offerings brought me at first were fruit, cakes, all kinds of sweetmeats. But I am afraid, however, that no one will believe me when I say that I have actually declined these offerings, preferring the observance of the prison regime in all its rigidness.

At the last lecture, a kind and honourable lady brought me a basketful of live flowers. To my regret, I was compelled to decline this present, too.

“Forgive me, madam, but flowers do not enter into the system of our prison. I appreciate very much your magnanimous attention⁠—I kiss your hands, madam⁠—” I said, “but I am compelled to decline the flowers. Travelling along the thorny road to self-renunciation, I must not caress my eyes with the ephemeral and illusionary beauty of these charming lilies and roses. All flowers perish in our prison, madam.”

Yesterday another lady brought me a very valuable crucifix of ivory, a family heirloom, she said. Not afflicted with the sin of hypocrisy, I told my generous lady frankly that I do not believe in miracles.

“But at the same time,” I said, “I regard with the profoundest respect Him who is justly called the Saviour of the world, and I honour greatly His services to mankind.

“If I should tell you, madam, that the Gospel has long been my favourite book, that there is not a day in my life that I do not open this great Book, drawing from it strength and courage to be able to continue my hard course⁠—you will understand that your liberal gift could not have fallen into better hands. Henceforth, thanks to you, the sad solitude of my cell will vanish; I am not alone. I bless you, my daughter.”

I cannot forego mentioning the strange thoughts brought out by the crucifix as it hung there beside my portrait. It was twilight; outside the wall the bell was tolling heavily in the invisible church, calling the believers together; in the distance, over the deserted field, overgrown with high grass, an unknown wanderer was plodding along, passing into the unknown distance, like a little black dot. It was as quiet in our prison as in a sepulchre. I looked long and attentively at the features of Jesus, which were so calm, so joyous compared with him who looked silently and dully from the wall beside Him. And with my habit, formed during the long years of solitude, of addressing inanimate things aloud, I said to the motionless crucifix:

“Good evening, Jesus. I am glad to welcome You in our prison. There are three of us here: You, I, and the one who is looking from the wall, and I hope that we three will manage to live in peace and in harmony. He is looking silently, and You are silent, and Your eyes are closed⁠—I shall speak for the three of us, a sure sign that our peace will never be broken.”

They were silent, and, continuing, I addressed my speech to the portrait:

“Where are you looking so intently and so strangely, my unknown friend and roommate? In your eyes I see mystery and reproach. Is it possible that you dare reproach Him? Answer!”

And, pretending that the portrait answered, I continued in a different voice with an expression of extreme sternness and boundless grief:

“Yes, I do reproach Him. Jesus, Jesus! Why is Your face so pure, so blissful? You have passed only over the brink of human sufferings, as over the brink of an abyss, and only the foam of the bloody and miry waves have touched You. Do You command me, a human being, to sink into the dark depth? Great is Your Golgotha, Jesus, but too reverent and joyous, and one small but interesting stroke is missing⁠—the horror of aimlessness!”

Here I interrupted the speech of the Portrait, with an expression of anger.

“How dare you,” I exclaimed; “how dare you speak of aimlessness in our prison?”

They were silent; and suddenly Jesus, without opening His eyes⁠—He even seemed to close them more tightly⁠—answered:

“Who knows the mysteries of the heart of Jesus?”

I burst into laughter, and my esteemed reader will easily understand this laughter. It turned out that I, a cool and sober mathematician, possessed a poetic talent and could compose very interesting comedies.

I do not know how all this would have ended, for I had already prepared a thundering answer for my roommate when the appearance of the keeper, who brought me food, suddenly interrupted me. But apparently my face bore traces of excitement, for the man asked me with stern sympathy:

“Were you praying?”

I do not remember what I answered.

VIII

Last Sunday a great misfortune occurred in our prison: The artist K., whom the reader knows already, ended his life in suicide by flinging himself from the table with his head against the stone floor. The fall and the force of the blow had been so skilfully calculated by the unfortunate young man that his skull was split in two. The grief of the Warden was indescribable. Having called me to the office, the Warden, without shaking hands with me, reproached me in angry and harsh terms for having deceived him, and he regained his calm, only after my hearty apologies and promises that such accidents would not happen again. I promised to prepare a project for watching the criminals which would render suicide impossible. The esteemed wife of the Warden, whose portrait remained unfinished, was also grieved by the death of the artist.

Of course, I had not expected this outcome, either, although a few days before committing suicide, K. had provoked in me a feeling of uneasiness. Upon entering his cell one morning, and greeting him, I noticed with amazement that he was sitting before his slate once more drawing human figures.

“What does this mean, my friend?” I inquired cautiously. “And how about the portrait of the second assistant?”

“The devil take it!”

“But you⁠—”

“The devil take it!”

After a pause I remarked distractedly:

“Your portrait of the Warden is meeting with great success. Although some of the people who have seen it say that the right moustache is somewhat shorter than the left⁠—”

“Shorter?”

“Yes, shorter. But in general they find that you caught the likeness very successfully.”

K. had put aside his slate pencil and, perfectly calm, said:

“Tell your Warden that I am not going to paint that prison riffraff any more.”

After these words there was nothing left for me to do but leave him, which I decided to do. But the artist, who could not get along without giving vent to his effusions, seized me by the hand and said with his usual enthusiasm:

“Just think of it, old man, what a horror! Every day a new repulsive face appears before me. They sit and stare at me with their froglike eyes. What am I to do? At first I laughed⁠—I even liked it⁠—but when the froglike eyes stared at me every day I was seized with horror. I was afraid they might start to quack⁠—qua-qua!”

Indeed there was a certain fear, even madness, in the eyes of the artist⁠—the madness which shortly led him to his untimely grave.

“Old man, it is necessary to have something beautiful. Do you understand me?”

“And the wife of the Warden? Is she not⁠—”

I shall pass in silence the unbecoming expressions with which he spoke of the lady in his excitement. I must, however, admit that to a certain extent the artist was right in his complaints. I had been present several times at the sittings, and noticed that all who had posed for the artist behaved rather unnaturally. Sincere and naive, conscious of the importance of their position, convinced that the features of their faces perpetuated upon the canvas would go down to posterity, they exaggerated somewhat the qualities which are so characteristic of their high and responsible office in our prison. A certain bombast of pose, an exaggerated expression of stern authority, an obvious consciousness of their own importance, and a noticeable contempt for those on whom their eyes were directed⁠—all this disfigured their kind and affable faces. But I cannot understand what horrible features the artist found where there should have been a smile. I was even indignant at the superficial attitude with which an artist, who considered himself talented and sensible, passed the people without noticing that a divine spark was glimmering in each one of them. In the quest after some fantastic beauty he light-mindedly passed by the true beauties with which the human soul is filled. I cannot help feeling sorry for those unfortunate people who, like K., because of a peculiar construction of their brains, always turn their eyes toward the dark side, whereas there is so much joy and light in our prison!

When I said this to K. I heard, to my regret, the same stereotyped and indecent answer:

“The devil take it!”

All I could do was to shrug my shoulders. Suddenly changing his tone and bearing, the artist turned to me seriously with a question which, in my opinion, was also indecent:

“Why do you lie, old man?”

I was astonished, of course.

“I lie?”

“Well, let it be the truth, if you like, but why? I am looking and thinking. Why did you say that? Why?”

My indulgent reader, who knows well what the truth has cost me, will readily understand my profound indignation. I deliberately mention this audacious and other calumnious phrases to show in what an atmosphere of malice, distrust, and disrespect I have to plod along the hard road of suffering. He insisted rudely:

“I have had enough of your smiles. Tell me plainly, why do you speak so?”

Then, I admit, I flared up:

“You want to know why I speak the truth? Because I hate falsehood and I commit it to eternal anathema! Because fate has made me a victim of injustice, and as a victim, like Him who took upon Himself the great sin of the world and its great sufferings, I wish to point out the way to mankind. Wretched egoist, you know only yourself and your miserable art, while I love mankind.”

My anger grew. I felt the veins on my forehead swelling.

“Fool, miserable dauber, unfortunate schoolboy, in love with colours! Human beings pass before you, and you see only their froglike eyes. How did your tongue turn to say such a thing? Oh, if you only looked even once into the human soul! What treasures of tenderness, love, humble faith, holy humility, you would have discovered there! And to you, bold man, it would have seemed as if you entered a temple⁠—a bright, illuminated temple. But it is said of people like you⁠—‘do not cast your pearls before swine.’ ”

The artist was silent, crushed by my angry and unrestrained speech. Finally he sighed and said:

“Forgive me, old man; I am talking nonsense, of course, but I am so unfortunate and so lonely. Of course, my dear old man, it is all true about the divine spark and about beauty, but a polished boot is also beautiful. I cannot, I cannot! Just think of it! How can a man have such moustaches as he has? And yet he is complaining that the left moustache is shorter!”

He laughed like a child, and, heaving a sigh, added:

“I’ll make another attempt. I will paint the lady. There is really something good in her. Although she is after all⁠—a cow.”

He laughed again, and, fearing to brush away with his sleeve the drawing on the slate, he cautiously placed it in the corner.

Here I did that which my duty compelled me to do. Seizing the slate, I smashed it to pieces with a powerful blow. I thought that the artist would rush upon me furiously, but he did not. To his weak mind my act seemed so blasphemous, so supernaturally horrible, that his deathlike lips could not utter a word.

“What have you done?” he asked at last in a low voice. “You have broken it?”

And raising my hand I replied solemnly:

“Foolish youth, I have done that which I would have done to my heart if it wanted to jest and mock me! Unfortunate youth, can you not see that your art has long been mocking you, that from that slate of yours the devil himself was making hideous faces at you?”

“Yes. The devil!”

“Being far from your wonderful art, I did not understand you at first, nor your longing, your horror of aimlessness. But when I entered your cell today and noticed you at your ruinous occupation, I said to myself: It is better that he should not create at all than to create in this manner. Listen to me.”

I then revealed for the first time to this youth the sacred formula of the iron grate, which, dividing the infinite into squares, thereby subjects it to itself. K. listened to my words with emotion, looking with the horror of an ignorant man at the figures which must have seemed to him to be cabalistic, but which were nothing else than the ordinary figures used in mathematics.

“I am your slave, old man,” he said at last, kissing my hand with his cold lips.

“No, you will be my favourite pupil, my son. I bless you.”

And it seemed to me that the artist was saved. True, he regarded me with great joy, which could easily be explained by the extreme respect with which I inspired him, and he painted the portrait of the Warden’s wife with such zeal and enthusiasm that the esteemed lady was sincerely moved. And, strange to say, the artist succeeded in making so strangely beautiful the features of this woman, who was stout and no longer young, that the Warden, long accustomed to the face of his wife, was greatly delighted by its new expression. Thus everything went on smoothly, when suddenly this catastrophe occurred, the entire horror of which I alone knew.

Not desiring to call forth any unnecessary disputes, I concealed from the Warden the fact that on the eve of his death the artist had thrown a letter into my cell, which I noticed only in the morning. I did not preserve the note, nor do I remember all that the unfortunate youth told me in his farewell message; I think it was a letter of thanks for my effort to save him. He wrote that he regretted sincerely that his failing strength did not permit him to avail himself of my instructions. But one phrase impressed itself deeply in my memory, and you will understand the reason for it when I repeat it in all its terrifying simplicity.

“I am going away from your prison,” thus read the phrase.

And he really did go away. Here are the walls, here is the little window in the door, here is our prison, but he is not there; he has gone away. Consequently I, too, could go away. Instead of having wasted dozens of years on a titanic struggle, instead of being tormented by the throes of despair, instead of growing enfeebled by horror in the face of unsolved mysteries, of striving to subject the world to my mind and my will, I could have climbed the table and⁠—one instant of pain⁠—I would be free; I would be triumphant over the lock and the walls, over truth and falsehood, over joys and sufferings. I will not say that I had not thought of suicide before as a means of escaping from our prison, but now for the first time it appeared before me in all its attractiveness. In a fit of base faintheartedness, which I shall not conceal from my reader, even as I do not conceal from him my good qualities; perhaps even in a fit of temporary insanity I momentarily forgot all I knew about our prison and its great purpose. I forgot⁠—I am ashamed to say⁠—even the great formula of the iron grate, which I conceived and mastered with such difficulty, and I prepared a noose made of my towel for the purpose of strangling myself. But at the last moment, when all was ready, and it was but necessary to push away the taburet, I asked myself, with my habit of reasoning which did not forsake me even at that time: But where am I going? The answer was: I am going to death. But what is death? And the answer was: I do not know.

These brief reflections were enough for me to come to myself, and with a bitter laugh at my cowardice I removed the fatal noose from my neck. Just as I had been ready to sob for grief a minute before, so now I laughed⁠—I laughed like a madman, realising that another trap, placed before me by derisive fate, had so brilliantly been evaded by me. Oh, how many traps there are in the life of man! Like a cunning fisherman, fate catches him now with the alluring bait of some truth, now with the hairy little worm of dark falsehood, now with the phantom of life, now with the phantom of death.

My dear young man, my fascinating fool, my charming silly fellow⁠—who told you that our prison ends here, that from one prison you did not fall into another prison, from which it will hardly be possible for you to run away? You were too hasty, my friend, you forgot to ask me something else⁠—I would have told it to you. I would have told you that omnipotent law reigns over that which you call nonexistence and death just as it reigns over that which you call life and existence. Only the fools, dying, believe that they have made an end of themselves⁠—they have ended but one form of themselves, in order to assume another form immediately.

Thus I reflected, laughing at the foolish suicide, the ridiculous destroyer of the fetters of eternity. And this is what I said addressing myself to my two silent roommates hanging motionlessly on the white wall of my cell:

“I believe and confess that our prison is immortal. What do you say to this, my friends?”

But they were silent. And having burst into good-natured laughter⁠—What quiet roommates I have! I undressed slowly and gave myself to peaceful sleep. In my dream I saw another majestic prison, and wonderful jailers with white wings on their backs, and the Chief Warden of the prison himself. I do not remember whether there were any little windows in the doors or not, but I think there were. I recall that something like an angel’s eye was fixed upon me with tender attention and love. My indulgent reader will, of course, guess that I am jesting. I did not dream at all. I am not in the habit of dreaming.

Without hoping that the Warden, occupied with pressing official affairs, would understand me thoroughly and appreciate my idea concerning the impossibility of escaping from our prison, I confined myself, in my report, to an indication of several ways in which suicides could be averted. With magnanimous shortsightedness peculiar to busy and trusting people, the Warden failed to notice the weak points of my project and clasped my hand warmly, expressing to me his gratitude in the name of our entire prison.

On that day I had the honour, for the first time, to drink a glass of tea at the home of the Warden, in the presence of his kind wife and charming children, who called me “Grandpa.” Tears of emotion which gathered in my eyes could but faintly express the feelings that came over me.

At the request of the Warden’s wife, who took a deep interest in me, I related in detail the story of the tragic murders which led me so unexpectedly and so terribly to the prison. I could not find expressions strong enough⁠—there are no expressions strong enough in the human language⁠—to brand adequately the unknown criminal, who not only murdered three helpless people, but who mocked them brutally in a fit of blind and savage rage.

As the investigation and the autopsy showed, the murderer dealt the last blows after the people had been dead. It is very possible, however⁠—even murderers should be given their due⁠—that the man, intoxicated by the sight of blood, ceased to be a human being and became a beast, the son of chaos, the child of dark and terrible desires. It was characteristic that the murderer, after having committed the crime, drank wine and ate biscuits⁠—some of these were left on the table together with the marks of his bloodstained fingers. But there was something so horrible that my mind could neither understand nor explain: the murderer, after lighting a cigar himself, apparently moved by a feeling of strange kindness, put a lighted cigar between the closed teeth of my father.

I had not recalled these details in many years. They had almost been erased by the hand of time, and now while relating them to my shocked listeners, who would not believe that such horrors were possible, I felt my face turning pale and my hair quivering on my head. In an outburst of grief and anger I rose from my armchair, and straightening myself to my full height, I exclaimed:

“Justice on earth is often powerless, but I implore heavenly justice, I implore the justice of life which never forgives, I implore all the higher laws under whose authority man lives. May the guilty one not escape his deserved punishment! His punishment!”

Moved by my sobs, my listeners there and then expressed their zeal and readiness to work for my liberation, and thus at least partly redeem the injustice heaped upon me. I apologised and returned to my cell.

Evidently my old organism cannot bear such agitation any longer; besides, it is hard even for a strong man to picture in his imagination certain images without risking the loss of his reason. Only in this way can I explain the strange hallucination which appeared before my fatigued eyes in the solitude of my cell. As though benumbed I gazed aimlessly at the tightly closed door, when suddenly it seemed to me that someone was standing behind me. I had felt this deceptive sensation before, so I did not turn around for some time. But when I turned around at last I saw⁠—in the distance, between the crucifix and my portrait, about a quarter of a yard above the floor⁠—the body of my father, as though hanging in the air. It is hard for me to give the details, for twilight had long set in, but I can say with certainty that it was the image of a corpse, and not of a living being, although a cigar was smoking in its mouth. To be more exact, there was no smoke from the cigar, but a faintly reddish light was seen. It is characteristic that I did not sense the odour of tobacco either at that time or later⁠—I had long given up smoking. Here⁠—I must confess my weakness, but the illusion was striking⁠—I commenced to speak to the hallucination. Advancing as closely as possible⁠—the body did not retreat as I approached, but remained perfectly motionless⁠—I said to the ghost:

“I thank you, father. You know how your son is suffering, and you have come⁠—you have come to testify to my innocence. I thank you, father. Give me your hand, and with a firm filial handclasp I will respond to your unexpected visit. Don’t you want to? Let me have your hand. Give me your hand, or I will call you a liar!”

I stretched out my hand, but of course the hallucination did not deem it worth while to respond, and I was forever deprived of the opportunity of feeling the touch of a ghost. The cry which I uttered and which so upset my friend, the jailer, creating some confusion in the prison, was called forth by the sudden disappearance of the phantom⁠—it was so sudden that the space in the place where the corpse had been seemed to me more terrible than the corpse itself.

Such is the power of human imagination when, excited, it creates phantoms and visions, peopling the bottomless and ever silent emptiness with them. It is sad to admit that there are people, however, who believe in ghosts and build upon this belief nonsensical theories about certain relations between the world of the living and the enigmatic land inhabited by the dead. I understand that the human ear and eye can be deceived⁠—but how can the great and lucid human mind fall into such coarse and ridiculous deception?

I asked the jailer:

“I feel a strange sensation, as though there were the odour of cigar smoke in my cell. Don’t you smell it?”

The jailer sniffed the air conscientiously and replied:

“No I don’t. You only imagined it.”

If you need any confirmation, here is a splendid proof that all I had seen, if it existed at all, existed only in the net of my eye.

IX

Something altogether unexpected has happened; the efforts of my friends, the Warden and his wife, were crowned with success, and for two months I have been free, out of prison.

I am happy to inform you that immediately upon my leaving the prison I occupied a very honourable position, to which I could hardly have aspired, conscious of my humble qualities. The entire press met me with unanimous enthusiasm. Numerous journalists, photographers, even caricaturists (the people of our time are so fond of laughter and clever witticisms), in hundreds of articles and drawings reproduced the story of my remarkable life. With striking unanimity the newspapers assigned to me the name of “Master,” a highly flattering name, which I accepted, after some hesitation, with deep gratitude. I do not know whether it is worth mentioning the few hostile notices called forth by irritation and envy⁠—a vice which so frequently stains the human soul. In one of these notices, which appeared, by the way, in a very filthy little newspaper, a certain scamp, guided by wretched gossip and baseless rumours about my chats in our prison, called me a “zealot and liar.” Enraged by the insolence of the miserable scribbler, my friends wanted to prosecute him, but I persuaded them not to do it. Vice is its own proper punishment.

The fortune which my kind mother had left me and which had grown considerably during the time I was in prison has enabled me to settle down to a life of luxury in one of the most aristocratic hotels. I have a large retinue of servants at my command and an automobile⁠—a splendid invention with which I now became acquainted for the first time⁠—and I have skilfully arranged my financial affairs. Live flowers brought to me in abundance by my charming lady visitors give to my nook the appearance of a flower garden or even a bit of a tropical forest. My servant, a very decent young man, is in a state of despair. He says that he had never seen such a variety of flowers and had never smelled such a variety of odours at the same time. If not for my advanced age and the strict and serious propriety with which I treat my visitors, I do not know how far they would have gone in the expression of their feelings. How many perfumed notes! How many languid sighs and humbly imploring eyes! There was even a fascinating stranger with a black veil⁠—three times she appeared mysteriously, and when she learned that I had visitors she disappeared just as mysteriously.

I will add that at the present time I have had the honour of being elected an honourary member of numerous humanitarian organisations such as “The League of Peace,” “The League for Combating Juvenile Criminality,” “The Society of the Friends of Man,” and others. Besides, at the request of the editor of one of the most widely read newspapers, I am to begin next month a series of public lectures, for which purpose I am going on a tour together with my kind impresario.

I have already prepared my material for the first three lectures and, in the hope that my reader may be interested, I shall give the synopsis of these lectures.

First lecture

Chaos or order? The eternal struggle between chaos and order. The eternal revolt and the defeat of chaos, the rebel. The triumph of law and order.

Second lecture

What is the soul of man? The eternal conflict in the soul of man between chaos, whence it came, and harmony, whither it strives irresistibly. Falsehood, as the offspring of chaos, and Truth, as the child of harmony. The triumph of truth and the downfall of falsehood.

Third lecture

The explanation of the sacred formula of the iron grate.

As my indulgent reader will see, justice is after all not an empty sound, and I am getting a great reward for my sufferings. But not daring to reproach fate which was so merciful to me, I nevertheless do not feel that sense of contentment which, it would seem, I ought to feel. True, at first I was positively happy, but soon my habit for strictly logical reasoning, the clearness and honesty of my views, gained by contemplating the world through a mathematically correct grate, have led me to a series of disillusions.

I am afraid to say it now with full certainty, but it seems to me that all their life of this so-called freedom is a continuous self-deception and falsehood. The life of each of these people, whom I have seen during these days, is moving in a strictly defined circle, which is just as solid as the corridors of our prison, just as closed as the dial of the watches which they, in the innocence of their mind, lift every minute to their eyes, not understanding the fatal meaning of the eternally moving hand, which is eternally returning to its place, and each of them feels this, even as the circus horse probably feels it, but in a state of strange blindness each one assures us that he is perfectly free and moving forward. Like the stupid bird which is beating itself to exhaustion against the transparent glass obstacle, without understanding what it is that obstructs its way, these people are helplessly beating against the walls of their glass prison.

I was greatly mistaken, it seems, also in the significance of the greetings which fell to my lot when I left the prison. Of course I was convinced that in me they greeted the representative of our prison, a leader hardened by experience, a master, who came to them only for the purpose of revealing to them the great mystery of purpose. And when they congratulated me upon the freedom granted to me I responded with thanks, not suspecting what an idiotic meaning they placed on the word. May I be forgiven this coarse expression, but I am powerless now to restrain my aversion for their stupid life, for their thoughts, for their feelings.

Foolish hypocrites, fearing to tell the truth even when it adorns them! My hardened truthfulness was cruelly taxed in the midst of these false and trivial people. Not a single person believed that I was never so happy as in prison. Why, then, are they so surprised at me, and why do they print my portraits? Are there so few idiots that are unhappy in prison? And the most remarkable thing, which only my indulgent reader will be able to appreciate, is this: Often distrusting me completely, they nevertheless sincerely go into raptures over me, bowing before me, clasping my hands and mumbling at every step, “Master! Master!”

If they only profited by their constant lying⁠—but, no; they are perfectly disinterested, and they lie as though by someone’s higher order; they lie in the fanatical conviction that falsehood is in no way different from the truth. Wretched actors, even incapable of a decent makeup, they writhe from morning till night on the boards of the stage, and, dying the most real death, suffering the most real sufferings, they bring into their deathly convulsions the cheap art of the harlequin. Even their crooks are not real; they only play the roles of crooks, while remaining honest people; and the role of honest people is played by rogues, and played poorly, and the public sees it, but in the name of the same fatal falsehood it gives them wreaths and bouquets. And if there is really a talented actor who can wipe away the boundary between truth and deception, so that even they begin to believe, they go into raptures, call him great, start a subscription for a monument, but do not give any money. Desperate cowards, they fear themselves most of all, and admiring delightedly the reflection of their spuriously made-up faces in the mirror, they howl with fear and rage when someone incautiously holds up the mirror to their soul.

My indulgent reader should accept all this relatively, not forgetting that certain grumblings are natural in old age. Of course, I have met quite a number of most worthy people, absolutely truthful, sincere, and courageous; I am proud to admit that I found among them also a proper estimate of my personality. With the support of these friends of mine I hope to complete successfully my struggle for truth and justice. I am sufficiently strong for my sixty years, and, it seems, there is no power that could break my iron will.

At times I am seized with fatigue owing to their absurd mode of life. I have not the proper rest even at night.

The consciousness that while going to bed I may absentmindedly have forgotten to lock my bedroom door compels me to jump from my bed dozens of times and to feel the lock with a quiver of horror.

Not long ago it happened that I locked my door and hid the key under my pillow, perfectly confident that my room was locked, when suddenly I heard a knock, then the door opened, and my servant entered with a smile on his face. You, dear reader, will easily understand the horror I experienced at this unexpected visit⁠—it seemed to me that someone had entered my soul. And though I have absolutely nothing to conceal, this breaking into my room seems to me indecent, to say the least.

I caught a cold a few days ago⁠—there is a terrible draught in their windows⁠—and I asked my servant to watch me at night. In the morning I asked him, in jest:

“Well, did I talk much in my sleep?”

“No, you didn’t talk at all.”

“I had a terrible dream, and I remember I even cried.”

“No, you smiled all the time, and I thought⁠—what fine dreams our Master must see!”

The dear youth must have been sincerely devoted to me, and I am deeply moved by such devotion during these painful days.

Tomorrow I shall sit down to prepare my lectures. It is high time!

X

My God! What has happened to me? I do not know how I shall tell my reader about it. I was on the brink of the abyss, I almost perished. What cruel temptations fate is sending me! Fools, we smile, without suspecting anything, when some murderous hand is already lifted to attack us; we smile, and the very next instant we open our eyes wide with horror. I⁠—I cried. I cried. Another moment and deceived, I would have hurled myself down, thinking that I was flying toward the sky.

It turned out that “the charming stranger” who wore a dark veil, and who came to me so mysteriously three times, was no one else than Mme. N., my former fiancée, my love, my dream and my suffering.

But order! order! May my indulgent reader forgive the involuntary incoherence of the preceding lines, but I am sixty years old, and my strength is beginning to fail me, and I am alone. My unknown reader, be my friend at this moment, for I am not of iron, and my strength is beginning to fail me. Listen, my friend; I shall endeavour to tell you exactly and in detail, as objectively as my cold and clear mind will be able to do it, all that has happened. You must understand that which my tongue may omit.

I was sitting, engaged upon the preparation of my lecture, seriously carried away by the absorbing work, when my servant announced that the strange lady in the black veil was there again, and that she wished to see me. I confess I was irritated, that I was ready to decline to see her, but my curiosity, coupled with my desire not to offend her, led me to receive the unexpected guest. Assuming the expression of majestic nobleness with which I usually greet my visitors, and softening that expression somewhat by a smile in view of the romantic character of the affair, I ordered my servant to open the door.

“Please be seated, my dear guest,” I said politely to the stranger, who stood as dazed before me, still keeping the veil on her face.

She sat down.

“Although I respect all secrecy,” I continued jestingly, “I would nevertheless ask you to remove this gloomy cover which disfigures you. Does the human face need a mask?”

The strange visitor declined, in a state of agitation.

“Very well, I’ll take it off, but not now⁠—later. First I want to see you well.”

The pleasant voice of the stranger did not call forth any recollections in me. Deeply interested and even flattered, I submitted to my strange visitor all the treasures of my mind, experience and talent. With enthusiasm I related to her the edifying story of my life, constantly illuminating every detail with a ray of the Great Purpose. (In this I availed myself partly of the material on which I had just been working, preparing my lectures.) The passionate attention with which the strange lady listened to my words, the frequent, deep sighs, the nervous quiver of her thin fingers in her black gloves, her agitated exclamations⁠—inspired me.

Carried away by my own narrative, I confess, I did not pay proper attention to the queer behaviour of my strange visitor. Having lost all restraint, she now clasped my hands, now pushed them away, she cried and availing herself of each pause in my speech, she implored:

“Don’t, don’t, don’t! Stop speaking! I can’t listen to it!”

And at the moment when I least expected it she tore the veil from her face, and before my eyes⁠—before my eyes appeared her face, the face of my love, of my dream, of my boundless and bitter sorrow. Perhaps because I lived all my life dreaming of her alone, with her alone I was young, with her I had developed and grown old, with her I was advancing to the grave⁠—her face seemed to me neither old nor faded⁠—it was exactly as I had pictured it in my dreams⁠—it seemed endlessly dear to me.

What has happened to me? For the first time in tens of years I forgot that I had a face⁠—for the first time in tens of years I looked helplessly, like a youngster, like a criminal caught red-handed, waiting for some deadly blow.

“You see! You see! It is I. It is I! My God, why are you silent? Don’t you recognise me?”

Did I recognise her? It were better not to have known that face at all! It were better for me to have grown blind rather than to see her again!

“Why are you silent? How terrible you are! You have forgotten me!”

“Madam⁠—”

Of course, I should have continued in this manner; I saw how she staggered. I saw how with trembling fingers, almost falling, she was looking for her veil; I saw that another word of courageous truth, and the terrible vision would vanish never to appear again. But some stranger within me⁠—not I⁠—not I⁠—uttered the following absurd, ridiculous phrase, in which, despite its chilliness, rang so much jealousy and hopeless sorrow:

“Madam, you have deceived me. I don’t know you. Perhaps you entered the wrong door. I suppose your husband and your children are waiting for you. Please, my servant will take you down to the carriage.”

Could I think that these words, uttered in the same stern and cold voice, would have such a strange effect upon the woman’s heart? With a cry, all the bitter passion of which I could not describe, she threw herself before me on her knees, exclaiming:

“So you do love me!”

Forgetting that our life had already been lived, that we were old, that all had been ruined and scattered like dust by Time, and that it can never return again; forgetting that I was grey, that my shoulders were bent, that the voice of passion sounds strangely when it comes from old lips⁠—I burst into impetuous reproaches and complaints.

“Yes, I did deceive you!” her deathly pale lips uttered. “I knew that you were innocent⁠—”

“Be silent. Be silent.”

“Everybody laughed at me⁠—even your friends, your mother whom I despised for it⁠—all betrayed you. Only I kept repeating: ‘He is innocent!’ ”

Oh, if this woman knew what she was doing to me with her words! If the trumpet of the angel, announcing the day of judgment, had resounded at my very ear, I would not have been so frightened as now. What is the blaring of a trumpet calling to battle and struggle to the ear of the brave? It was as if an abyss had opened at my feet. It was as if an abyss had opened before me, and as though blinded by lightning, as though dazed by a blow, I shouted in an outburst of wild and strange ecstasy:

“Be silent! I⁠—”

If that woman were sent by God, she would have become silent. If she were sent by the devil, she would have become silent even then. But there was neither God nor devil in her, and interrupting me, not permitting me to finish the phrase, she went on:

“No, I will not be silent. I must tell you all. I have waited for you so many years. Listen, listen!”

But suddenly she saw my face and she retreated, seized with horror.

“What is it? What is the matter with you? Why do you laugh? I am afraid of your laughter! Stop laughing! Don’t! Don’t!”

But I was not laughing at all, I only smiled softly. And then I said very seriously, without smiling:

“I am smiling because I am glad to see you. Tell me about yourself.”

And, as in a dream, I saw her face and I heard her soft terrible whisper:

“You know that I love you. You know that all my life I loved you alone. I lived with another and was faithful to him. I have children, but you know they are all strangers to me⁠—he and the children and I myself. Yes, I deceived you, I am a criminal, but I do not know how it happened. He was so kind to me, he made me believe that he was convinced of your innocence⁠—later I learned that he did not tell the truth, and with this, just think of it, with this he won me.”

“You lie!”

“I swear to you. For a whole year he followed me and spoke only of you. One day he even cried when I told him about you, about your sufferings, about your love.”

“But he was lying!”

“Of course he was lying. But at that time he seemed so dear to me, so kind that I kissed him on the forehead. Then we used to bring you flowers to the prison. One day as we were returning from you⁠—listen⁠—he suddenly proposed that we should go out driving. The evening was so beautiful⁠—”

“And you went! How did you dare go out with him? You had just seen my prison, you had just been near me, and yet you dared go with him. How base!”

“Be silent. Be silent. I know I am a criminal. But I was so exhausted, so tired, and you were so far away. Understand me.”

She began to cry, wringing her hands.

“Understand me. I was so exhausted. And he⁠—he saw how I felt⁠—and yet he dared kiss me.”

“He kissed you! And you allowed him? On the lips?”

“No, no! Only on the cheek.”

“You lie!”

“No, no. I swear to you.”

I began to laugh.

“You responded? And you were driving in the forest⁠—you, my fiancée, my love, my dream! And all this for my sake? Tell me! Speak!”

In my rage I wrung her arms, and wriggling like a snake, vainly trying to evade my look, she whispered:

“Forgive me; forgive me.”

“How many children have you?”

“Forgive me.”

But my reason forsook me, and in my growing rage I cried, stamping my foot:

“How many children have you? Speak, or I will kill you!”

I actually said this. Evidently I was losing my reason completely if I could threaten to kill a helpless woman. And she, surmising apparently that my threats were mere words, answered with feigned readiness:

“Kill me! You have a right to do it! I am a criminal. I deceived you. You are a martyr, a saint! When you told me⁠—is it true that even in your thoughts you never deceived me⁠—even in your thoughts!”

And again an abyss opened before me. Everything trembled, everything fell, everything became an absurd dream, and in the last effort to save my extinguishing reason I shouted:

“But you are happy! You cannot be unhappy; you have no right to be unhappy! Otherwise I shall lose my mind.”

But she did not understand. With a bitter laugh, with a senseless smile, in which her suffering mingled with bright, heavenly joy, she said:

“I am happy! I⁠—happy! Oh, my friend, only near you I can find happiness. From the moment you left the prison I began to despise my home. I am alone there; I am a stranger to all. If you only knew how I hate that scoundrel! You are sensible; you must have felt that you were not alone in prison, that I was always with you there⁠—”

“And he?”

“Be silent! Be silent! If you only heard with what delight I called him scoundrel!”

She burst into laughter, frightening me by the wild expression on her face.

“Just think of it! All his life he embraced only a lie. And when, deceived, happy, he fell asleep, I looked at him with wide-open eyes, I gnashed my teeth softly, and I felt like pinching him, like sticking him with a pin.”

She burst into laughter again. It seemed to me that she was driving wedges into my brain. Clasping my head, I cried:

“You lie! You lie to me!”

Indeed, it was easier for me to speak to the ghost than to the woman. What could I say to her? My mind was growing dim. And how could I repulse her when she, full of love and passion, kissed my hands, my eyes, my face? It was she, my love, my dream, my bitter sorrow!

“I love you! I love you!”

And I believed her⁠—I believed her love. I believed everything. And once more I felt that my locks were black, and I saw myself young again. And I knelt before her and wept for a long time, and whispered to her about my sufferings, about the pain of solitude, about a heart cruelly broken, about offended, disfigured, mutilated thoughts. And, laughing and crying, she stroked my hair. Suddenly she noticed that it was grey, and she cried strangely:

“What is it? And life? I am an old woman already.”

On leaving me she demanded that I escort her to the threshold, like a young man; and I did. Before going she said to me:

“I am coming back tomorrow. I know my children will deny me⁠—my daughter is to marry soon. You and I will go away. Do you love me?”

“I do.”

“We will go far, far away, my dear. You wanted to deliver some lectures. You should not do it. I don’t like what you say about that iron grate. You are exhausted, you need a rest. Shall it be so?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I forgot my veil. Keep it, keep it as a remembrance of this day. My dear!”

In the vestibule, in the presence of the sleepy porter, she kissed me. There was the odour of some new perfume, unlike the perfume with which her letter was scented. And her coquettish laugh was like a sob as she disappeared behind the glass door.

That night I aroused my servant, ordered him to pack our things, and we went away. I shall not say where I am at present, but last night and tonight trees were rustling over my head and the rain was beating against my windows. Here the windows are small, and I feel much better. I wrote her a rather long letter, the contents of which I shall not reproduce. I shall never see her again.

But what am I to do? May the reader pardon these incoherent questions. They are so natural in a man in my condition. Besides, I caught an acute rheumatism while travelling, which is most painful and even dangerous for a man of my age, and which does not permit me to reason calmly. For some reason or another I think very often about my young friend K., who went to an untimely grave. How does he feel in his new prison?

Tomorrow morning, if my strength will permit me, I intend to pay a visit to the Warden of our prison and to his esteemed wife. Our prison⁠—

XI

I am profoundly happy to inform my dear reader that I have completely recovered my physical as well as my spiritual powers. A long rest out in the country, amid nature’s soothing beauties; the contemplation of village life, which is so simple and bright; the absence of the noise of the city, where hundreds of windmills are stupidly flapping their long arms before your very nose, and finally the complete solitude, undisturbed by anything⁠—all these have restored to my unbalanced view of the world all its former steadiness and its iron, irresistible firmness. I look upon my future calmly and confidently, and although it promises me nothing but a lonely grave and the last journey to an unknown distance, I am ready to meet death just as courageously as I lived my life, drawing strength from my solitude, from the consciousness of my innocence and my uprightness.

After long hesitations, which are not quite intelligible to me now, I finally resolved to establish for myself the system of our prison in all its rigidness. For that purpose, finding a small house in the outskirts of the city, which was to be leased for a long term of years, I hired it. Then with the kind assistance of the Warden of our prison, (I cannot express my gratitude to him adequately enough in words,) I invited to the new place one of the most experienced jailers, who is still a young man, but already hardened in the strict principles of our prison. Availing myself of his instruction, and also of the suggestions of the obliging Warden, I have engaged workmen who transformed one of the rooms into a cell. The measurements as well as the form and all the details of my new, and, I hope, my last dwelling are strictly in accordance with my plan. My cell is 8 by 4 yards, 4 yards high, the walls are painted grey at the bottom, the upper part of the walls and the ceiling are white, and near the ceiling there is a square window 1½ by 1½ yards, with a massive iron grate, which has already become rusty with age. In the door, locked with a heavy and strong lock, which issues a loud creak at each turn of the key, there is a small hole for observation, and below it a little window, through which the food is brought and received. The furnishing of the cell: a table, a chair, and a cot fastened to the wall; on the wall a crucifix, my portrait, and the rules concerning the conduct of the prisoners, in a black frame; and in the corner a closet filled with books. This last, being a violation of the strict harmony of my dwelling, I was compelled to do by extreme and sad necessity; the jailer positively refused to be my librarian and to bring the books according to my order, and to engage a special librarian seemed to me to be an act of unnecessary eccentricity. Aside from this, in elaborating my plans, I met with strong opposition not only from the local population, which simply declared me to be insane, but even from the enlightened people. Even the Warden endeavoured for some time to dissuade me, but finally he clasped my hand warmly, with an expression of sincere regret at not being in a position to offer me a place in our prison.

I cannot recall the first day of my confinement without a bitter smile. A mob of impertinent and ignorant idlers yelled from morning till night at my window, with their heads lifted high (my cell is situated in the second story), and they heaped upon me senseless abuse; there were even efforts⁠—to the disgrace of my townspeople⁠—to storm my dwelling, and one heavy stone almost crushed my head. Only the police, which arrived in time, succeeded in averting the catastrophe. When, in the evening, I went out for a walk, hundreds of fools, adults and children, followed me, shouting and whistling, heaping abuse upon me, and even hurling mud at me. Thus, like a persecuted prophet, I wended my way without fear amidst the maddened crowd, answering their blows and curses with proud silence.

What has stirred these fools? In what way have I offended their empty heads? When I lied to them, they kissed my hands; now, when I have reestablished the sacred truth of my life in all its strictness and purity, they burst into curses, they branded me with contempt, they hurled mud at me. They were disturbed because I dared to live alone, and because I did not ask them for a place in the “common cell for rogues.” How difficult it is to be truthful in this world!

True, my perseverance and firmness finally defeated them. With the naivete of savages, who honour all they do not understand, they commenced, in the second year, to bow to me, and they are making ever lower bows to me, because their amazement is growing ever greater, their fear of the inexplicable is growing ever deeper. And the fact that I never respond to their greetings fills them with delight, and the fact that I never smile in response to their flattering smiles, fills them with a firm assurance that they are guilty before me for some grave wrong, and that I know their guilt. Having lost confidence in their own and other people’s words, they revere my silence, even as people revere every silence and every mystery. If I were to start to speak suddenly, I would again become human to them and would disillusion them bitterly, no matter what I would say; in my silence I am to them like their eternally silent God. For these strange people would cease believing their God as soon as their God would commence to speak. Their women are already regarding me as a saint. And the kneeling women and sick children that I often find at the threshold of my dwelling undoubtedly expect of me a trifle⁠—to heal them, to perform a miracle. Well, another year or two will pass, and I shall commence to perform miracles as well as those of whom they speak with such enthusiasm. Strange people, at times I feel sorry for them, and I begin to feel really angry at the devil who so skilfully mixed the cards in their game that only the cheat knows the truth, his little cheating truth about the marked queens and the marked kings. They bow too low, however, and this hinders me from developing a sense of mercy, otherwise⁠—smile at my jest, indulgent reader⁠—I would not restrain myself from the temptation of performing two or three small, but effective miracles.

I must go back to the description of my prison.

Having constructed my cell completely, I offered my jailer the following alternative: He must observe with regard to me the rules of the prison regime in all its rigidness, and in that case he would inherit all my fortune according to my will, or he would receive nothing if he failed to do his duty. It seemed that in putting the matter before him so clearly I would meet with no difficulties. Yet at the very first instance, when I should have been incarcerated for violating some prison regulation, this naive and timid man absolutely refused to do it; and only when I threatened to get another man immediately, a more conscientious jailer, was he compelled to perform his duty. Though he always locked the door punctually, he at first neglected his duty of watching me through the peephole; and when I tried to test his firmness by suggesting a change in some rule or other to the detriment of common sense he yielded willingly and quickly. One day, on trapping him in this way, I said to him:

“My friend, you are simply foolish. If you will not watch me and guard me properly I shall run away to another prison, taking my legacy along with me. What will you do then?”

I am happy to inform you that at the present time all these misunderstandings have been removed, and if there is anything I can complain of it is rather excessive strictness than mildness. Now that my jailer has entered into the spirit of his position this honest man treats me with extreme sternness, not for the sake of the profit but for the sake of the principle. Thus, in the beginning of this week he incarcerated me for twenty-four hours for violating some rule, of which, it seemed to me, I was not guilty; and protesting against this seeming injustice I had the unpardonable weakness to say to him:

“In the end I will drive you away from here. You must not forget that you are my servant.”

“Before you drive me away I will incarcerate you,” replied this worthy man.

“But how about the money?” I asked with astonishment. “Don’t you know that you will be deprived of it?”

“Do I need your money? I would give up all my own money if I could stop being what I am. But what can I do if you violate the rule and I must punish you by incarcerating you?”

I am powerless to describe the joyous emotion which came over me at the thought that the consciousness of duty had at last entered his dark mind, and that now, even if in a moment of weakness I wanted to leave my prison, my conscientious jailer would not permit me to do it. The spark of firmness which glittered in his round eyes showed me clearly that no matter where I might run away he would find me and bring me back; and that the revolver which he often forgot to take before, and which he now cleans every day, would do its work in the event I decided to run away.

And for the first time in all these years I fell asleep on the stone floor of my dark cell with a happy smile, realising that my plan was crowned with complete success, passing from the realm of eccentricity to the domain of stern and austere reality. And the fear which I felt while falling asleep in the presence of my jailer, my fear of his resolute look, of his revolver; my timid desire to hear a word of praise from him, or to call forth perhaps a smile on his lips, reechoed in my soul as the harmonious clanking of my eternal and last chains.

Thus I pass my last years. As before, my health is sound and my free spirit is clear. Let some call me a fool and laugh at me; in their pitiful blindness let others regard me as a saint and expect me to perform miracles; an upright man to some people, to others⁠—a liar and a deceiver⁠—I myself know who I am, and I do not ask them to understand me. And if there are people who will accuse me of deception, of baseness, even of the lack of simple honour⁠—for there are scoundrels who are convinced to this day that I committed murder⁠—no one will dare accuse me of cowardice, no one will dare say that I could not perform my painful duty to the end. From the beginning till the end I remained firm and unbribable; and though a bugbear, a fanatic, a dark horror to some people, I may awaken in others a heroic dream of the infinite power of man.

I have long discontinued to receive visitors, and with the death of the Warden of our prison, my only true friend, whom I visited occasionally, my last tie with this world was broken. Only I and my ferocious jailer, who watches every movement of mine with mad suspicion, and the black grate which has caught in its iron embrace and muzzled the infinite⁠—this is my life. Silently accepting the low bows, in my cold estrangement from the people I am passing my last road.

I am thinking of death ever more frequently, but even before death I do not bend my fearless look. Whether it brings me eternal rest or a new unknown and terrible struggle, I am humbly prepared to accept it.

Farewell, my dear reader! Like a vague phantom you appeared before my eyes and passed, leaving me alone before the face of life and death. Do not be angry because at times I deceived you and lied⁠—you, too, would have lied perhaps in my place. Nevertheless I loved you sincerely, and sincerely longed for your love; and the thought of your sympathy for me was quite a support to me in my moments and days of hardship. I am sending you my last farewell and my sincere advice. Forget about my existence, even as I shall henceforth forget about yours forever.

A deserted field, overgrown with high grass, devoid of an echo, extends like a deep carpet to the very fence of our prison, whose majestic outlines subdue my imagination and my mind. When the dying sun illumines it with its last rays, and our prison, all in red, stands like a queen, like a martyr, with the dark wounds of its grated windows, and the sun rises silently and proudly over the plain⁠—with sorrow, like a lover, I send my complaints and my sighs and my tender reproach and vows to her, to my love, to my dream, to my bitter and last sorrow. I wish I could forever remain near her, but here I look back⁠—and black against the fiery frame of the sunset stands my jailer, stands and waits.

With a sigh I go back in silence, and he moves behind me noiselessly, about two steps away, watching every move of mine.

Our prison is beautiful at sunset.

Chant the First

Chant the Second

I

A misty February twilight is descending over the ocean. The newly fallen snow has melted and the warm air is heavy and damp. The northwestern wind from the sea is driving it silently toward the mainland, bringing in its wake a sharply fragrant mixture of brine, of boundless space, of undisturbed, free and mysterious distances.

In the sky, where the sun is setting, a noiseless destruction of an unknown city, of an unknown land, is taking place; structures, magnificent palaces with towers, are crumbling; mountains are silently splitting asunder and, bending slowly, are tumbling down. But no cry, no moan, no crash of the fall reaches the earth⁠—the monstrous play of shadows is noiseless; and the great surface of the ocean, as though ready for something, as though waiting for something, reflecting it faintly, listens to it in silence.

Silence reigns also in the fishermen’s settlement. The fishermen have gone fishing; the children are sleeping and only the restless women, gathered in front of the houses, are talking softly, lingering before going to sleep, beyond which there is always the unknown.

The light of the sea and the sky behind the houses, and the houses and their bark roofs are black and sharp, and there is no perspective: the houses that are far and those that are near seem to stand side by side as if attached to one another, the roofs and the walls embracing one another, pressing close to one another, seized with the same uneasiness before the eternal unknown.

Right here there is also a little church, its side wall formed crudely of rough granite, with a deep window which seems to be concealing itself.

A cautious sound of women’s voices is heard, softened by uneasiness and by the approaching night.

“We can sleep peacefully tonight. The sea is calm and the rollers are breaking like the clock in the steeple of old Dan.”

“They will come back with the morning tide. My husband told me that they will come back with the morning tide.”

“Perhaps they will come back with the evening tide. It is better for us to think they will come back in the evening, so that our waiting will not be in vain.

“But I must build a fire in the stove.”

“When the men are away from home, one does not feel like starting a fire. I never build a fire, even when I am awake; it seems to me that fire brings a storm. It is better to be quiet and silent.”

“And listen to the wind? No, that is terrible.”

“I love the fire. I should like to sleep near the fire, but my husband does not allow it.”

“Why doesn’t old Dan come here? It is time to strike the hour.”

“Old Dan will play in the church tonight; he cannot bear such silence as this. When the sea is roaring, old Dan hides himself and is silent⁠—he is afraid of the sea. But, as soon as the waves calm down, Dan crawls out quietly and sits down to play his organ.”

The women laugh softly.

“He reproaches the sea.”

“He is complaining to God against it. He knows how to complain well. One feels like crying when he tells God about those who have perished at sea. Mariet, have you seen Dan today? Why are you silent, Mariet?”

Mariet is the adopted daughter of the abbot, in whose house old Dan, the organist, lives. Absorbed in thought, she does not hear the question.

“Mariet, do you hear? Anna is asking you whether you have seen Dan today.”

“Yes, I think I have. I don’t remember. He is in his room. He does not like to leave his room when father goes fishing.”

“Dan is fond of the city priests. He cannot get used to the idea of a priest who goes fishing, like an ordinary fisherman, and who goes to sea with our husbands.”

“He is simply afraid of the sea.”

“You may say what you like, but I believe we have the very best priest in the world.”

“That’s true. I fear him, but I love him as a father.”

“May God forgive me, but I would have been proud and always happy, if I were his adopted daughter. Do you hear, Mariet?”

The women laugh softly and tenderly.

“Do you hear, Mariet?”

“I do. But aren’t you tired of always laughing at the same thing? Yes, I am his daughter⁠—Is it so funny that you will laugh all your life at it?”

The women commence to justify themselves confusedly.

“But he laughs at it himself.”

“The abbot is fond of jesting. He says so comically: ‘My adopted daughter,’ and then he strikes himself with his fist and shouts: ‘She’s my real daughter, not my adopted daughter. She’s my real daughter.’ ”

“I have never known my mother, but this laughter would have been unpleasant to her. I feel it,” says Mariet.

The women grow silent. The breakers strike against the shore dully with the regularity of a great pendulum. The unknown city, wrapped with fire and smoke, is still being destroyed in the sky; yet it does not fall down completely; and the sea is waiting. Mariet lifts her lowered head.

“What were you going to say, Mariet?”

“Didn’t he pass here?” asks Mariet in a low voice.

Another woman answers timidly:

“Hush! Why do you speak of him? I fear him. No, he did not pass this way.”

“He did. I saw from the window that he passed by.”

“You are mistaken; it was someone else.”

“Who else could that be? Is it possible to make a mistake, if you have once seen him walk? No one walks as he does.”

“Naval officers, Englishmen, walk like that.”

“No. Haven’t I seen naval officers in the city? They walk firmly, but openly; even a girl could trust them.”

“Oh, look out!”

Frightened and cautious laughter.

“No, don’t laugh. He walks without looking at the ground; he puts his feet down as if the ground itself must take them cautiously and place them.”

“But if there’s a stone on the road? We have many stones here.”

“He does not bend down, nor does he hide his head when a strong wind blows.”

“Of course not. Of course not. He does not hide his head.”

“Is it true that he is handsome? Who has seen him at close range?”

“I,” says Mariet.

“No, no, don’t speak of him; I shall not be able to sleep all night. Since they settled on that hill, in that accursed castle, I know no rest; I am dying of fear. You are also afraid. Confess it.”

“Well, not all of us are afraid.”

“What have they come here for? There are two of them. What is there for them to do here in our poor land, where we have nothing but stones and the sea?”

“They drink gin. The sailor comes every morning for gin.”

“They are simply drunkards who don’t want anybody to disturb their drinking. When the sailor passes along the street he leaves behind him an odour as of an open bottle of rum.”

“But is that their business⁠—drinking gin? I fear them. Where is the ship that brought them here? They came from the sea.”

“I saw the ship,” says Mariet.

The women begin to question her in amazement.

“You? Why, then, didn’t you say anything about it? Tell us what you know.”

Mariet maintains silence. Suddenly one of the women exclaims:

“Ah, look! They have lit a lamp. There is a light in the castle!”

On the left, about half a mile away from the village, a faint light flares up, a red little coal in the dark blue of the twilight and the distance. There upon a high rock, overhanging the sea, stands an ancient castle, a grim heritage of grey and mysterious antiquity. Long destroyed, long ruined, it blends with the rocks, continuing and delusively ending them by the broken, dented line of its batteries, its shattered roofs, its half-crumbled towers. Now the rocks and the castle are covered with a smoky shroud of twilight. They seem airy, devoid of any weight, and almost as fantastic as those monstrous heaps of structures which are piled up and which are falling so noiselessly in the sky. But while the others are falling this one stands, and a live light reddens against the deep blue⁠—and it is just as strange a sight as if a human hand were to kindle a light in the clouds.

Turning their heads in that direction, the women look on with frightened eyes.

“Do you see,” says one of them. “It is even worse than a light on a cemetery. Who needs a light among the tombstones?”

“It is getting cold toward night and the sailor must have thrown some branches into the fireplace, that’s all. At least, I think so,” says Mariet.

“And I think that the abbot should have gone there with holy water long ago.”

“Or with the gendarmes! If that isn’t the devil himself, it is surely one of his assistants.”

“It is impossible to live peacefully with such neighbours close by.”

“I am afraid for the children.”

“And for your soul?”

Two elderly women rise silently and go away. Then a third, an old woman, also rises.

“We must ask the abbot whether it isn’t a sin to look at such a light.”

She goes off. The smoke in the sky is ever increasing and the fire is subsiding, and the unknown city is already near its dark end. The sea odour is growing ever sharper and stronger. Night is coming from the shore.

Their heads turned, the women watch the departing old woman. Then they turn again toward the light.

Mariet, as though defending someone, says softly:

“There can’t be anything bad in light. For there is light in the candles on God’s altar.”

“But there is also fire for Satan in hell,” says another old woman, heavily and angrily, and then goes off. Now four remain, all young girls.

“I am afraid,” says one, pressing close to her companion.

The noiseless and cold conflagration in the sky is ended; the city is destroyed; the unknown land is in ruins. There are no longer any walls or falling towers; a heap of pale blue gigantic shapes have fallen silently into the abyss of the ocean and the night. A young little star glances at the earth with frightened eyes; it feels like coming out of the clouds near the castle, and because of its inmost neighbourship the heavy castle grows darker, and the light in its window seems redder and darker.

“Good night, Mariet,” says the girl who sat alone, and then she goes off.

“Let us also go; it is getting cold,” say the other two, rising. “Good night, Mariet.”

“Good night.”

“Why are you alone, Mariet? Why are you alone, Mariet, in the daytime and at night, on week days and on merry holidays? Do you love to think of your betrothed?”

“Yes, I do. I love to think of Philipp.”

The girl laughs.

“But you don’t want to see him. When he goes out to sea, you look at the sea for hours; when he comes back⁠—you are not there. Where are you hiding yourself?”

“I love to think of Philipp.”

“Like a blind man he gropes among the houses, forever calling: ‘Mariet! Mariet! Have you not seen Mariet?’ ”

They go off laughing and repeating:

“Good night, Mariet. ‘Have you not seen Mariet! Mariet!’ ”

The girl is left alone. She looks at the light in the castle. She hears soft, irresolute footsteps.

Old Dan, of small stature, slim, a coughing old man with a clean-shaven face, comes out from behind the church. Because of his irresoluteness, or because of the weakness of his eyes, he steps uncertainly, touching the ground cautiously and with a certain degree of fear.

“Oho! Oho!”

“Is that you, Dan?”

“The sea is calm, Dan. Are you going to play tonight?”

“Oho! I shall ring the bell seven times. Seven times I shall ring it and send to God seven of His holy hours.”

He takes the rope of the bell and strikes the hour⁠—seven ringing and slow strokes. The wind plays with them, it drops them to the ground, but before they touch it, it catches them tenderly, sways them softly and with a light accompaniment of whistling carries them off to the dark coast.

“Oh, no!” mutters Dan. “Bad hours, they fall to the ground. They are not His holy hours and He will send them back. Oh, a storm is coming! O Lord, have mercy on those who are perishing at sea!”

He mutters and coughs.

“Dan, I have seen the ship again today. Do you hear, Dan?”

“Many ships are going out to sea.”

“But this one had black sails. It was again going toward the sun.”

“Many ships are going out to sea. Listen, Mariet, there was once a wise king⁠—Oh, how wise he was!⁠—and he commanded that the sea be lashed with chains. Oho!”

“I know, Dan. You told me about it.”

“Oho, with chains! But it did not occur to him to christen the sea. Why did it not occur to him to do that, Mariet? Ah, why did he not think of it? We have no such kings now.”

“What would have happened, Dan?”

“Oho!”

He whispers softly:

“All the rivers and the streams have already been christened, and the cross of the Lord has touched even many stagnant swamps; only the sea remained⁠—that nasty, salty, deep pool.”

“Why do you scold it? It does not like to be scolded,” Mariet reproaches him.

“Oho! Let the sea not like it⁠—I am not afraid of it. The sea thinks it is also an organ and music for God. It is a nasty, hissing, furious pool. A salty spit of satan. Fie! Fie! Fie!”

He goes to the doors at the entrance of the church muttering angrily, threatening, as though celebrating some victory:

“Oho! Oho!”

“Dan!”

“Go home.”

“Dan! Why don’t you light candles when you play? Dan, I don’t love my betrothed. Do you hear, Dan?”

Dan turns his head unwillingly.

“I have heard it long ago, Mariet. Tell it to your father.”

“Where is my mother, Dan?”

“Oho! You are mad again, Mariet? You are gazing too much at the sea⁠—yes. I am going to tell⁠—I am going to tell your father, yes.”

He enters the church. Soon the sounds of the organ are heard. Faint in the first, long-drawn, deeply pensive chords, they rapidly gain strength. And with a passionate sadness, their human melodies now wrestle with the dull and gloomy plaintiveness of the tireless surf. Like seagulls in a storm, the sounds soar amidst the high waves, unable to rise higher on their overburdened wings. The stern ocean holds them captive by its wild and eternal charms. But when they have risen, the lowered ocean roars more dully; now they rise still higher⁠—and the heavy, almost voiceless pile of water is shaking helplessly. Varied voices resound through the expanse of the resplendent distances. Day has one sorrow, night has another sorrow, and the proud, ever rebellious, black ocean suddenly seems to become an eternal slave.

Her cheek pressed against the cold stone of the wall, Mariet is listening, all alone. She is growing reconciled to something; she is grieving ever more quietly.

Suddenly, firm footsteps are heard on the road; the cobblestones are creaking under the vigorous steps⁠—and a man appears from behind the church. He walks slowly and sternly, like those who do not roam in vain, and who know the earth from end to end. He carries his hat in his hands; he is thinking of something, looking ahead. On his broad shoulders is set a round, strong head, with short hair; his dark profile is stern and commandingly haughty, and, although the man is dressed in a partly military uniform, he does not subject his body to the discipline of his clothes, but masters it as a free man. The folds of his clothes fall submissively.

Mariet greets him:

“Good evening.”

He walks on quite a distance, then stops and turns his head slowly. He waits silently, as though regretting to part with his silence.

“Did you say ‘Good evening’ to me?” he asks at last.

“Yes, to you. Good evening.”

He looks at her silently.

“Well, good evening. This is the first time I have been greeted in this land, and I was surprised when I heard your voice. Come nearer to me. Why don’t you sleep when all are sleeping? Who are you?”

“I am the daughter of the abbot of this place.”

He laughs:

“Have priests children? Or are there special priests in your land?”

“Yes, the priests are different here.”

“Now, I recall, Khorre told me something about the priest of this place.”

“Who is Khorre?”

“My sailor. The one who buys gin in your settlement.”

He suddenly laughs again and continues:

“Yes, he told me something. Was it your father who cursed the Pope and declared his own church independent?”

“Yes.”

“And he makes his own prayers? And goes to sea with the fishermen? And punishes with his own hands those who disobey him?”

“Yes. I am his daughter. My name is Mariet. And what is your name?”

“I have many names. Which one shall I tell you?”

“The one by which you were christened.”

“What makes you think that I was christened?”

“Then tell me the name by which your mother called you.”

“What makes you think that I had a mother? I do not know my mother.”

Mariet says softly:

“Neither do I know my mother.”

Both are silent. They look at each other kindly.

“Is that so?” he says. “You, too, don’t know your mother? Well, then, call me Haggart.”

“Haggart?”

“Yes. Do you like the name? I have invented it myself⁠—Haggart. It’s a pity that you have been named already. I would have invented a fine name for you.”

Suddenly he frowned.

“Tell me, Mariet, why is your land so mournful? I walk along your paths and only the cobblestones creak under my feet. And on both sides are huge rocks.”

“That is on the road to the castle⁠—none of us ever go there. Is it true that these stones stop the passersby with the question: ‘Where are you going?’ ”

“No, they are mute. Why is your land so mournful? It is almost a week since I’ve seen my shadow. It is impossible! I don’t see my shadow.”

“Our land is very cheerful and full of joy. It is still winter now, but soon spring will come, and sunshine will come back with it. You shall see it, Haggart.”

He speaks with contempt:

“And you are sitting and waiting calmly for its return? You must be a fine set of people! Ah, if I only had a ship!”

“What would you have done?”

He looks at her morosely and shakes his head suspiciously.

“You are too inquisitive, little girl. Has anyone sent you over to me?”

“No. What do you need a ship for?”

Haggart laughs good-naturedly and ironically:

“She asks what a man needs a ship for. You must be a fine set of people. You don’t know what a man needs a ship for! And you speak seriously? If I had a ship I would have rushed toward the sun. And it would not matter how it sets its golden sails, I would overtake it with my black sails. And I would force it to outline my shadow on the deck of my ship. And I would put my foot upon it this way!”

He stamps his foot firmly. Then Mariet asks, cautiously:

“Did you say with black sails?”

“That’s what I said. Why do you always ask questions? I have no ship, you know. Goodbye.”

He puts on his hat, but does not move. Mariet maintains silence. Then he says, very angrily:

“Perhaps you, too, like the music of your old Dan, that old fool?”

“You know his name?”

“Khorre told me it. I don’t like his music, no, no. Bring me a good, honest dog, or beast, and he will howl. You will say that he knows no music⁠—he does, but he can’t bear falsehood. Here is music. Listen!”

He takes Mariet by the hand and turns her roughly, her face toward the ocean.

“Do you hear? This is music. Your Dan has robbed the sea and the wind. No, he is worse than a thief, he is a deceiver! He should be hanged on a sailyard⁠—your Dan! Goodbye!”

He goes, but after taking two steps he turns around.

“I said goodbye to you. Go home. Let this fool play alone. Well, go.”

Mariet is silent, motionless. Haggart laughs:

“Are you afraid perhaps that I have forgotten your name? I remember it. Your name is Mariet. Go, Mariet.”

She says softly:

“I have seen your ship.”

Haggart advances to her quickly and bends down. His face is terrible.

“It is not true. When?”

“Last evening.”

“It is not true! Which way was it going?”

“Toward the sun.”

“Last evening I was drunk and I slept. But this is not true. I have never seen it. You are testing me. Beware!”

“Shall I tell you if I see it again?”

“How can you tell me?”

“I shall come up your hill.”

Haggart looks at her attentively.

“If you are only telling me the truth. What sort of people are there in your land⁠—false or not? In the lands I know, all the people are false. Has anyone else seen that ship?”

“I don’t know. I was alone on the shore. Now I see that it was not your ship. You are not glad to hear of it.”

Haggart is silent, as though he has forgotten her presence.

“You have a pretty uniform. You are silent? I shall come up to you.”

Haggart is silent. His dark profile is stern and wildly gloomy; every motion of his powerful body, every fold of his clothes, is full of the dull silence of the taciturnity of long hours, or days, or perhaps of a lifetime.

“Your sailor will not kill me? You are silent. I have a betrothed. His name is Philipp, but I don’t love him. You are now like that rock which lies on the road leading to the castle.”

Haggart turns around silently and starts.

“I also remember your name. Your name is Haggart.”

He goes away.

“Haggart!” calls Mariet, but he has already disappeared behind the house. Only the creaking of the scattered cobblestones is heard, dying away in the misty air. Dan, who has taken a rest, is playing again; he is telling God about those who have perished at sea.

The night is growing darker. Neither the rock nor the castle is visible now; only the light in the window is redder and brighter.

The dull thuds of the tireless breakers are telling the story of different lives.

II

A strong wind is tossing the fragment of a sail which is hanging over the large, open window. The sail is too small to cover the entire window, and, through the gaping hole, the dark night is breathing inclement weather. There is no rain, but the warm wind, saturated with the sea, is heavy and damp.

Here in the tower live Haggart and his sailor, Khorre. Both are sleeping now a heavy, drunken sleep. On the table and in the corners of the room there are empty bottles, and the remains of food; the only taburet is overturned, lying on one side. Toward evening the sailor got up, lit a large illumination lamp, and was about to do more, but he was overcome by intoxication again and fell asleep upon his thin mattress of straw and seagrass. Tossed by the wind, the flame of the illumination-lamp is quivering in yellow, restless spots over the uneven, mutilated walls, losing itself in the dark opening of the door, which leads to the other rooms of the castle.

Haggart lies on his back, and the same quivering yellow shades run noiselessly over his strong forehead, approach his closed eyes, his straight, sharply outlined nose, and, tossing about in confusion, rush back to the wall. The breathing of the sleeping man is deep and uneven; from time to time his heavy, strange hand lifts itself, makes several weak, unfinished movements, and falls down on his breast helplessly.

Outside the window the breakers are roaring and raging, beating against the rocks⁠—this is the second day a storm is raging in the ocean. The ancient tower is quivering from the violent blows of the waves. It responds to the storm with the rustling of the falling plaster, with the rattling of the little cobblestones as they are torn down, with the whisper and moans of the wind which has lost its way in the passages. It whispers and mutters like an old woman.

The sailor begins to feel cold on the stone floor, on which the wind spreads itself like water; he tosses about, folds his legs under himself, draws his head into his shoulders, gropes for his imaginary clothes, but is unable to wake up⁠—his intoxication produced by a two days’ spree is heavy and severe. But now the wind whines more powerfully than before; something heaves a deep groan. Perhaps a part of a destroyed wall has sunk into the sea. The quivering yellow spots commence to toss about upon the crooked wall more desperately, and Khorre awakes.

He sits up on his mattress, looks around, but is unable to understand anything.

The wind is hissing like a robber summoning other robbers, and filling the night with disquieting phantoms. It seems as if the sea were full of sinking vessels, of people who are drowning and desperately struggling with death. Voices are heard. Somewhere near by people are shouting, scolding each other, laughing and singing, like madmen, or talking sensibly and rapidly⁠—it seems that soon one will see a strange human face distorted by horror or laughter, or fingers bent convulsively. But there is a strong smell of the sea, and that, together with the cold, brings Khorre to his senses.

“Noni!” he calls hoarsely, but Haggart does not hear him. After a moment’s thought, he calls once more:

“Captain. Noni! Get up.”

But Haggart does not answer and the sailor mutters:

“Noni is drunk and he sleeps. Let him sleep. Oh, what a cold night it is. There isn’t enough warmth in it even to warm your nose. I am cold. I feel cold and lonesome, Noni. I can’t drink like that, although everybody knows I am a drunkard. But it is one thing to drink, and another to drown in gin⁠—that’s an entirely different matter. Noni⁠—you are like a drowned man, simply like a corpse. I feel ashamed for your sake, Noni. I shall drink now and⁠—”

He rises, and staggering, finds an unopened bottle and drinks.

“A fine wind. They call this a storm⁠—do you hear, Noni? They call this a storm. What will they call a real storm?”

He drinks again.

“A fine wind!”

He goes over to the window and, pushing aside the corner of the sail, looks out.

“Not a single light on the sea, or in the village. They have hidden themselves and are sleeping⁠—they are waiting for the storm to pass. B-r-r, how cold! I would have driven them all out to sea; it is mean to go to sea only when the weather is calm. That is cheating the sea. I am a pirate, that’s true; my name is Khorre, and I should have been hanged long ago on a yard, that’s true, too⁠—but I shall never allow myself such meanness as to cheat the sea. Why did you bring me to this hole, Noni?”

He picks up some brushwood, and throws it into the fireplace.

“I love you, Noni. I am now going to start a fire to warm your feet. I used to be your nurse, Noni; but you have lost your reason⁠—that’s true. I am a wise man, but I don’t understand your conduct at all. Why did you drop your ship? You will be hanged, Noni, you will be hanged, and I will dangle by your side. You have lost your reason, that’s true!”

He starts a fire, then prepares food and drink.

“What will you say when you wake up? ‘Fire.’ And I will answer, ‘Here it is.’ Then you will say, ‘Something to drink.’ And I will answer, ‘Here it is.’ And then you will drink your fill again, and I will drink with you, and you will prate nonsense. How long is this going to last? We have lived this way two months now, or perhaps two years, or twenty years⁠—I am drowning in gin⁠—I don’t understand your conduct at all, Noni.”

He drinks.

“Either I have lost my mind from this gin, or a ship is being wrecked near by. How they are crying!”

He looks out of the window.

“No, no one is here. It is the wind. The wind feels weary, and it plays all by itself. It has seen many shipwrecks, and now it is inventing. The wind itself is crying; the wind itself is scolding and sobbing; and the wind itself is laughing⁠—the rogue! But if you think that this rag with which I have covered the window is a sail, and that this ruin of a castle is a three-masted brig, you are a fool! We are not going anywhere! We are standing securely at our moorings, do you hear?”

He pushes the sleeping man cautiously.

“Get up, Noni. I feel lonesome. If we must drink, let’s drink together⁠—I feel lonesome. Noni!”

Haggart awakens, stretches himself and says, without opening his eyes:

“Fire.”

“Here it is.”

“Something to drink.”

“Here it is! A fine wind, Noni. I looked out of the window, and the sea splashed into my eyes. It is high tide now and the water-dust flies up to the tower. I feel lonesome, Noni. I want to speak to you. Don’t be angry!”

“It’s cold.”

“Soon the fire will burn better. I don’t understand your actions. Don’t be angry, Noni, but I don’t understand your actions! I am afraid that you have lost your mind.”

“Did you drink again?”

“I did.”

“Give me some.”

He drinks from the mouth of the bottle lying on the floor, his eyes wandering over the crooked mutilated walls, whose every projection and crack is now lighted by the bright flame in the fireplace. He is not quite sure yet whether he is awake, or whether it is all a dream. With each strong gust of wind the flame is hurled from the fireplace, and then the entire tower seems to dance⁠—the last shadows melt and rush off into the open door.

“Don’t drink it all at once, Noni! Not all at once!” says the sailor and gently takes the bottle away from him. Haggart seats himself and clasps his head with both hands.

“I have a headache. What is that cry? Was there a shipwreck?”

“No, Noni. It is the wind playing roguishly.”

“Khorre!”

“Captain.”

“Give me the bottle.”

He drinks a little more and sets the bottle on the table. Then he paces the room, straightening his shoulders and his chest, and looks out of the window. Khorre looks over his shoulder and whispers:

“Not a single light. It is dark and deserted. Those who had to die have died already, and the cautious cowards are sitting on the solid earth.”

Haggart turns around and says, wiping his face:

“When I am intoxicated, I hear voices and singing. Does that happen to you, too, Khorre? Who is that singing now?”

“The wind is singing, Noni⁠—only the wind.”

“No, but who else? It seems to me a human being is singing, a woman is singing, and others are laughing and shouting something. Is that all nothing but the wind?”

“Only the wind.”

“Why does the wind deceive me?” says Haggart haughtily.

“It feels lonesome, Noni, just as I do, and it laughs at the human beings. Have you heard the wind lying like this and mocking in the open sea? There it tells the truth, but here⁠—it frightens the people on shore and mocks them. The wind does not like cowards. You know it.”

Haggart says morosely:

“I heard their organist playing not long ago in church. He lies.”

“They are all liars.”

“No!” exclaims Haggart angrily. “Not all. There are some who tell the truth there, too. I shall cut your ears off if you will slander honest people. Do you hear?”

“Yes.”

They are silent; they listen to the wild music of the sea. The wind has evidently grown mad. Having taken into its embrace a multitude of instruments with which human beings produce their music⁠—harps, reed-pipes, priceless violins, heavy drums and brass trumpets⁠—it breaks them all, together with a wave, against the sharp rocks. It dashes them and bursts into laughter⁠—only thus does the wind understand music⁠—each time in the death of an instrument, each time in the breaking of strings, in the snapping of the clanging brass. Thus does the mad musician understand music. Haggart heaves a deep sigh and with some amazement, like a man just awakened from sleep, looks around on all sides. Then he commands shortly:

“Give me my pipe.”

“Here it is.”

Both commence to smoke.

“Don’t be angry, Noni,” says the sailor. “You have become so angry that one can’t come near you at all. May I chat with you?”

“There are some who do tell the truth there, too,” says Haggart sternly, emitting rings of smoke.

“How shall I say it you, Noni?” answers the sailor cautiously but stubbornly. “There are no truthful people there. It has been so ever since the deluge. At that time all the honest people went out to sea, and only the cowards and liars remained upon the solid earth.”

Haggart is silent for a minute; then he takes the pipe from his mouth and laughs gaily.

“Have you invented it yourself?”

“I think so,” says Khorre modestly.

“Clever! And it was worth teaching you sacred history for that! Were you taught by a priest?”

“Yes. In prison. At that time I was as innocent as a dove. That’s also from sacred scriptures, Noni. That’s what they always say there.”

“He was a fool! It was not necessary to teach you, but to hang you,” says Haggart, adding morosely: “Don’t talk nonsense, sailor. Hand me a bottle.”

They drink. Khorre stamps his foot against the stone floor and asks:

“Do you like this motionless floor?”

“I should have liked to have the deck of a ship dancing under my feet.”

“Noni!” exclaims the sailor enthusiastically. “Noni! Now I hear real words! Let us go away from here. I cannot live like this. I am drowning in gin. I don’t understand your actions at all, Noni! You have lost your mind. Reveal yourself to me, my boy. I was your nurse. I nursed you, Noni, when your father brought you on board ship. I remember how the city was burning then and we were putting out to sea, and I didn’t know what to do with you; you whined like a little pig in the cook’s room. I even wanted to throw you overboard⁠—you annoyed me so much. Ah, Noni, it is all so touching that I can’t bear to recall it. I must have a drink. Take a drink, too, my boy, but not all at once, not all at once!”

They drink. Haggart paces the room heavily and slowly, like a man who is imprisoned in a dungeon but does not want to escape.

“I feel sad,” he says, without looking at Khorre. Khorre, as though understanding, shakes his head in assent.

“Sad? I understand. Since then?”

“Ever since then.”

“Ever since we drowned those people? They cried so loudly.”

“I did not hear their cry. But this I heard⁠—something snapped in my heart, Khorre. Always sadness, everywhere sadness! Let me drink!”

He drinks.

“He who cried⁠—am I perhaps afraid of him, Khorre? That would be fine! Tears were trickling from his eyes; he wept like one who is unfortunate. Why did he do that? Perhaps he came from a land where the people had never heard of death⁠—what do you think, sailor?”

“I don’t remember him, Noni. You speak so much about him, while I don’t remember him.”

“He was a fool,” says Haggart. “He spoilt his death for himself, and spoilt me my life. I curse him, Khorre. May he be cursed. But that doesn’t matter, Khorre⁠—no!”

Silence.

“They have good gin on this coast,” says Khorre. “He’ll pass easily, Noni. If you have cursed him there will be no delay; he’ll slip into hell like an oyster.”

Haggart shakes his head:

“No, Khorre, no! I am sad. Ah, sailor, why have I stopped here, where I hear the sea? I should go away, far away on land, where the people don’t know the sea at all, where the people have never heard about the sea⁠—a thousand miles away, five thousand miles away!”

“There is no such land.”

“There is, Khorre. Let us drink and laugh, Khorre. That organist lies. Sing something for me, Khorre⁠—you sing well. In your hoarse voice I hear the creaking of ropes. Your refrain is like a sail that is torn by the storm. Sing, sailor!”

Khorre nods his head gloomily.

“No, I will not sing.”

“Then I shall force you to pray as they prayed!”

“You will not force me to pray, either. You are the Captain, and you may kill me, and here is your revolver. It is loaded, Noni. And now I am going to speak the truth, Captain! Khorre, the boatswain, speaks to you in the name of the entire crew.”

Haggart says:

“Drop this performance, Khorre. There is no crew here. You’d better drink something.”

He drinks.

“But the crew is waiting for you, you know it. Captain, is it your intention to return to the ship and assume command again?”

“No.”

“Captain, is it perhaps your intention to go to the people on the coast and live with them?”

“No.”

“I can’t understand your actions, Noni. What do you intend to do, Captain?”

Haggart drinks silently.

“Not all at once, Noni, not at once. Captain, do you intend to stay in this hole and wait until the police dogs come from the city? Then they will hang us, and not upon a mast, but simply on one of their foolish trees.”

“Yes. The wind is getting stronger. Do you hear, Khorre? The wind is getting stronger!”

“And the gold which we have buried here?” He points below, with his finger.

“The gold? Take it and go with it wherever you like.”

The sailor says angrily:

“You are a bad man, Noni. You have only set foot on earth a little while ago, and you already have the thoughts of a traitor. That’s what the earth is doing!”

“Be silent, Khorre. I am listening. Our sailors are singing. Do you hear? No, that’s the wine rushing to my head. I’ll be drunk soon. Give me another bottle.”

“Perhaps you will go to the priest? He would absolve your sins.”

“Silence!” roars Haggart, clutching at his revolver.

Silence. The storm is increasing. Haggart paces the room in agitation, striking against the walls. He mutters something abruptly. Suddenly he seizes the sail and tears it down furiously, admitting the salty wind. The illumination lamp is extinguished and the flame in the fireplace tosses about wildly⁠—like Haggart.

“Why did you lock out the wind? It’s better now. Come here.”

“You were the terror of the seas!” says the sailor.

“Yes, I was the terror of the seas.”

“You were the terror of the coasts! Your famous name resounded like the surf over all the coasts, wherever people live. They saw you in their dreams. When they thought of the ocean, they thought of you. When they heard the storm, they heard you, Noni!”

“I burnt their cities. The deck of my ship is shaking under my feet, Khorre. The deck is shaking under me!”

He laughs wildly, as if losing his senses.

“You sank their ships. You sent to the bottom the Englishman who was chasing you.”

“He had ten guns more than I.”

“And you burnt and drowned him. Do you remember, Noni, how the wind laughed then? The night was as black as this night, but you made day of it, Noni. We were rocked by a sea of fire.”

Haggart stands pale-faced, his eyes closed. Suddenly he shouts commandingly:

“Boatswain!”

“Yes,” Khorre jumps up.

“Whistle for everybody to go up on deck.”

“Yes.”

The boatswain’s shrill whistle pierces sharply into the open body of the storm. Everything comes to life, and it looks as though they were upon the deck of a ship. The waves are crying with human voices. In semi-oblivion, Haggart is commanding passionately and angrily:

“To the shrouds!⁠—The studding sails! Be ready, forepart! Aim at the ropes; I don’t want to sink them all at once. Starboard the helm, sail by the wind. Be ready now. Ah, fire! Ah, you are already burning! Board it now! Get the hooks ready.”

And Khorre tosses about violently, performing the mad instructions.

“Yes, yes.”

“Be braver, boys. Don’t be afraid of tears! Eh, who is crying there? Don’t dare cry when you are dying. I’ll dry your mean eyes upon the fire. Fire! Fire everywhere! Khorre⁠—sailor! I am dying. They have poured molten tar into my chest. Oh, how it burns!”

“Don’t give way, Noni. Don’t give way. Recall your father. Strike them on the head, Noni!”

“I can’t, Khorre. My strength is failing. Where is my power?”

“Strike them on the head, Noni. Strike them on the head!”

“Take a knife, Khorre, and cut out my heart. There is no ship, Khorre⁠—there is nothing. Cut out my heart, comrade⁠—throw out the traitor from my breast.”

“I want to play some more, Noni. Strike them on the head!”

“There is no ship, Khorre, there is nothing⁠—it is all a lie. I want to drink.”

He takes a bottle and laughs:

“Look, sailor⁠—here the wind and the storm and you and I are locked. It is all a deception, Khorre!”

“I want to play.”

“Here my sorrow is locked. Look! In the green glass it seems like water, but it isn’t water. Let us drink, Khorre⁠—there on the bottom I see my laughter and your song. There is no ship⁠—there is nothing! Who is coming?”

He seizes his revolver. The fire in the fireplace is burning faintly; the shadows are tossing about⁠—but two of these shadows are darker than the others and they are walking. Khorre shouts:

“Halt!”

A man’s voice, heavy and deep, answers:

“Hush! Put down your weapons. I am the abbot of this place.”

“Fire, Noni, fire! They have come for you.”

“I have come to help you. Put down your knife, fool, or I will break every bone in your body without a knife. Coward, are you frightened by a woman and a priest?”

Haggart puts down his revolver and says ironically:

“A woman and a priest! Is there anything still more terrible? Pardon my sailor, Mr. abbot, he is drunk, and when he is drunk he is very reckless and he may kill you. Khorre, don’t turn your knife.”

“He has come after you, Noni.”

“I have come to warn you; the tower may fall. Go away from here!” says the abbot.

“Why are you hiding yourself, girl? I remember your name; your name is Mariet,” says Haggart.

“I am not hiding. I also remember your name⁠—it is Haggart,” replies Mariet.

“Was it you who brought him here?”

“I.”

“I have told you that they are all traitors, Noni,” says Khorre.

“Silence!”

“It is very cold here. I will throw some wood into the fireplace. May I do it?” asks Mariet.

“Do it,” answers Haggart.

“The tower will fall down before long,” says the abbot. “Part of the wall has caved in already; it is all hollow underneath. Do you hear?”

He stamps his foot on the stone floor.

“Where will the tower fall?”

“Into the sea, I suppose! The castle is splitting the rocks.”

Haggart laughs:

“Do you hear, Khorre? This place is not as motionless as it seemed to you⁠—while it cannot move, it can fall. How many people have you brought along with you, priest, and where have you hidden them?”

“Only two of us came, my father and I,” says Mariet.

“You are rude to a priest. I don’t like that,” says the abbot.

“You have come here uninvited. I don’t like that either,” says Haggart.

“Why did you lead me here, Mariet? Come,” says the abbot.

Haggart speaks ironically:

“And you leave us here to die? That is unChristian, Christian.”

“Although I am a priest, I am a poor Christian, and the Lord knows it,” says the abbot angrily. “I have no desire to save such a rude scamp. Let us go, Mariet.”

“Captain?” asks Khorre.

“Be silent, Khorre,” says Haggart. “So that’s the way you speak, abbot; so you are not a liar?”

“Come with me and you shall see.”

“Where shall I go with you?”

“To my house.”

“To your house? Do you hear, Khorre? To the priest! But do you know whom you are calling to your house?”

“No, I don’t know. But I see that you are young and strong. I see that although your face is gloomy, it is handsome, and I think that you could be as good a workman as others.”

“A workman? Khorre, do you hear what the priest says?”

Both laugh. The abbot says angrily:

“You are both drunk.”

“Yes, a little! But if I were sober I would have laughed still more,” answers Haggart.

“Don’t laugh, Haggart,” says Mariet.

Haggart replies angrily:

“I don’t like the tongues of false priests, Mariet⁠—they are coated with truth on top, like a lure for flies. Take him away, and you, girl, go away, too! I have forgotten your name!”

He sits down and stares ahead sternly. His eyebrows move close together, and his hand is pressed down heavily by his lowered head, by his strong chin.

“He does not know you, father! Tell him about yourself. You speak so well. If you wish it, he will believe you, father. Haggart!”

Haggart maintains silence.

“Noni! Captain!”

Silence. Khorre whispers mysteriously:

“He feels sad. Girl, tell the priest that he feels sad.”

“Khorre,” begins Mariet. Haggart looks around quickly.

“What about Khorre? Why don’t you like him, Mariet? We are so much like each other.”

“He is like you?” says the woman with contempt. “No, Haggart! But here is what he did: He gave gin to little Noni again today. He moistened his finger and gave it to him. He will kill him, father.”

Haggart laughs:

“Is that so bad? He did the same to me.”

“And he dipped him in cold water. The boy is very weak,” says Mariet morosely.

“I don’t like to hear you speak of weakness. Our boy must be strong. Khorre! Three days without gin.”

He shows him three fingers.

“Who should be without gin? The boy or I?” asks Khorre gloomily.

“You!” replies Haggart furiously. “Begone!”

The sailor sullenly gathers his belongings⁠—the pouch, the pipe, and the flask⁠—and wabbling, goes off. But he does not go far⁠—he sits down upon a neighbouring rock. Haggart and his wife look at him.

III

The work is ended. Having lost its gloss, the last neglected fish lies on the ground; even the children are too lazy to pick it up; and an indifferent, satiated foot treads it into the mud. A quiet, fatigued conversation goes on, mingled with gay and peaceful laughter.

“What kind of a prayer is our abbot going to say today? It is already time for him to come.”

“And do you think it is so easy to compose a good prayer? He is thinking.”

“Selly’s basket broke and the fish were falling out. We laughed so much! It seems so funny to me even now!”

Laughter. Two fishermen look at the sail in the distance.

“All my life I have seen large ships sailing past us. Where are they going? They disappear beyond the horizon, and I go off to sleep; and I sleep, while they are forever going, going. Where are they going? Do you know?”

“To America.”

“I should like to go with them. When they speak of America my heart begins to ring. Did you say America on purpose, or is that the truth?”

Several old women are whispering:

“Wild Gart is angry again at his sailor. Have you noticed it?”

“The sailor is displeased. Look, how wan his face is.”

“Yes, he looks like the evil one when he is compelled to listen to a psalm. But I don’t like Wild Gart, either. No. Where did he come from?”

They resume their whispers. Haggart complains softly:

“Why have you the same name, Mariet, for everybody? It should not be so in a truthful land.”

Mariet speaks with restrained force, pressing both hands to her breast:

“I love you so dearly, Gart; when you go out to sea, I set my teeth together and do not open them until you come back. When you are away, I eat nothing and drink nothing; when you are away, I am silent, and the women laugh: ‘Mute Mariet!’ But I would be insane if I spoke when I am alone.”

Haggart⁠—Here you are again compelling me to smile. You must not, Mariet⁠—I am forever smiling.

Mariet⁠—I love you so dearly, Gart. Every hour of the day and the night I am thinking only of what I could still give to you, Gart. Have I not given you everything? But that is so little⁠—everything! There is but one thing I want to do⁠—to keep on giving to you, giving! When the sun sets, I present you the sunset; when the sun rises, I present you the sunrise⁠—take it, Gart! And are not all the storms yours? Ah, Haggart, how I love you!

Haggart⁠—I am going to toss little Noni so high today that I will toss him up to the clouds. Do you want me to do it? Let us laugh, dear little sister Mariet. You are exactly like myself. When you stand that way, it seems to me that I am standing there⁠—I have to rub my eyes. Let us laugh! Some day I may suddenly mix things up⁠—I may wake up and say to you: “Good morning, Haggart!”

Mariet⁠—Good morning, Mariet.

Haggart⁠—I will call you Haggart. Isn’t that a good idea?

Mariet⁠—And I will call you Mariet.

Haggart⁠—Yes⁠—no. You had better call me Haggart, too.

“You don’t want me to call you Mariet?” asks Mariet sadly.

The abbot and old Dan appear. The abbot says in a loud, deep voice:

“Here I am. Here I am bringing you a prayer, children. I have just composed it; it has even made me feel hot. Dan, why doesn’t the boy ring the bell? Oh, yes, he is ringing. The fool⁠—he isn’t swinging the right rope, but that doesn’t matter; that’s good enough, too. Isn’t it, Mariet?”

Two thin but merry bells are ringing.

Mariet is silent and Haggart answers for her:

“That’s good enough. But what are the bells saying, abbot?”

The fishermen who have gathered about them are already prepared to laugh⁠—the same undying jest is always repeated.

“Will you tell no one about it?” says the abbot, in a deep voice, slyly winking his eye. “Pope’s a rogue! Pope’s a rogue!”

The fishermen laugh merrily.

“This man,” roars the abbot, pointing at Haggart, “is my favourite man! He has given me a grandson, and I wrote the Pope about it in Latin. But that wasn’t so hard; isn’t that true, Mariet? But he knows how to look at the water. He foretells a storm as if he himself caused it. Gart, do you produce the storm yourself? Where does the wind come from? You are the wind yourself.”

All laugh approval. An old fisherman says:

“That’s true, father. Ever since he has been here, we have never been caught in a storm.”

“Of course it is true, if I say it. ‘Pope’s a rogue! Pope’s a rogue!’ ”

Old Dan walks over to Khorre and says something to him. Khorre nods his head negatively. The abbot, singing “Pope’s a rogue,” goes around the crowd, throws out brief remarks, and claps some people on the shoulder in a friendly manner.

“Hello, Katerina, you are getting stout. Oho! Are you all ready? And Thomas is missing again⁠—this is the second time he has stayed away from prayer. Anna, you are rather sad⁠—that isn’t good. One must live merrily, one must live merrily! I think that it is jolly even in hell, but in a different way. It is two years since you have stopped growing, Philipp. That isn’t good.”

Philipp answers gruffly:

“Grass also stops growing if a stone falls upon it.”

“What is still worse than that⁠—worms begin to breed under the rock.”

Mariet says softly, sadly and entreatingly:

“Don’t you want me to call you Mariet?”

Haggart answers obstinately and sternly:

“I don’t. If my name will be Mariet, I shall never kill that man. He disturbs my life. Make me a present of his life, Mariet. He kissed you.”

“How can I present you that which is not mine? His life belongs to God and to himself.”

“That is not true. He kissed you; do I not see the burns upon your lips? Let me kill him, and you will feel as joyful and carefree as a seagull. Say ‘yes,’ Mariet.”

“No; you shouldn’t do it, Gart. It will be painful to you.”

Haggart looks at her and speaks with deep irony.

“Is that it? Well, then, it is not true that you give me anything. You don’t know how to give, woman.”

“I am your wife.”

“No! A man has no wife when another man, and not his wife, grinds his knife. My knife is dull, Mariet!”

Mariet looks at him with horror and sorrow.

“What did you say, Haggart? Wake up; it is a terrible dream, Haggart! It is I⁠—look at me. Open your eyes wider, wider, until you see me well. Do you see me, Gart?”

Haggart slowly rubs his brow.

“I don’t know. It is true I love you, Mariet. But how incomprehensible your land is⁠—in your land a man sees dreams even when he is not asleep. Perhaps I am smiling already. Look, Mariet.”

The abbot stops in front of Khorre.

“Ah, old friend, how do you do? You are smiling already. Look, Mariet.”

“I don’t want to work,” ejaculates the sailor sternly.

“You want your own way? This man,” roars the abbot, pointing at Khorre, “thinks that he is an atheist. But he is simply a fool; he does not understand that he is also praying to God⁠—but he is doing it the wrong way, like a crab. Even a fish prays to God, my children; I have seen it myself. When you will be in hell, old man, give my regards to the Pope. Well, children, come closer, and don’t gnash your teeth. I am going to start at once. Eh, you, Mathias⁠—you needn’t put out the fire in your pipe; isn’t it the same to God what smoke it is, incense or tobacco, if it is only well meant. Why do you shake your head, woman?”

Woman⁠—His tobacco is contraband.

Young fisherman⁠—God wouldn’t bother with such trifles. The abbot thinks a while:

“No; hold on. I think contraband tobacco is not quite so good. That’s an inferior grade. Look here; you better drop your pipe meanwhile, Mathias; I’ll think the matter over later. Now, silence, perfect silence. Let God take a look at us first.”

All stand silent and serious. Only a few have lowered their heads. Most of the people are looking ahead with wide-open, motionless eyes, as though they really saw God in the blue of the sky, in the boundless, radiant, distant surface of the sea. The sea is approaching with a caressing murmur; high tide has set in.

“My God and the God of all these people! Don’t judge us for praying, not in Latin but in our own language, which our mothers have taught us. Our God! Save us from all kinds of terrors, from unknown sea monsters; protect us against storms and hurricanes, against tempests and gales. Give us calm weather and a kind wind, a clear sun and peaceful waves. And another thing, O Lord! we ask You; don’t allow the devil, to come close to our bedside when we are asleep. In our sleep we are defenceless, O Lord! and the devil terrifies us, tortures us to convulsions, torments us to the very blood of our heart. And there is another thing, O Lord! Old Rikke, whom You know, is beginning to extinguish Your light in his eyes and he can make nets no longer⁠—”

Rikke frequently shakes his head in assent.

“I can’t, I can’t!”

“Prolong, then, O Lord! Your bright day and bid the night wait. Am I right, Rikke?”

“Yes.”

“And here is still another, the last request, O Lord. I shall not ask any more: The tears do not dry up in the eyes of our old women crying for those who have perished. Take their memory away, O Lord, and give them strong forgetfulness. There are still other trifles, O Lord, but let the others pray whose turn has come before You. Amen.”

Silence. Old Dan tugs the abbot by the sleeve, and whispers something in his ear.

Abbot⁠—Dan is asking me to pray for those who perished at sea.

The women exclaim in plaintive chorus:

“For those who perished at sea! For those who died at sea!”

Some of them kneel. The abbot looks tenderly at their bowed heads, exhausted with waiting and fear, and says:

“No priest should pray for those who died at sea⁠—these women should pray. Make it so, O Lord, that they should not weep so much!”

Silence. The incoming tide roars more loudly⁠—the ocean is carrying to the earth its noise, its secrets, its bitter, briny taste of unexplored depths.

Soft voices say:

“The sea is coming.”

“High tide has started.”

“The sea is coming.”

Mariet kisses her father’s hand.

“Woman!” says the priest tenderly. “Listen, Gart, isn’t it strange that this⁠—a woman”⁠—he strokes his daughter tenderly with his finger on her pure forehead⁠—“should be born of me, a man?”

Haggart smiles.

“And is it not strange that this should have become a wife to me, a man?” He embraces Mariet, bending her frail shoulders.

“Let us go to eat, Gart, my son. Whoever she may be, I know one thing well. She has prepared for you and me an excellent dinner.”

The people disperse quickly. Mariet says confusedly and cheerfully:

“I’ll run first.”

“Run, run,” answers the abbot. “Gart, my son, call the atheist to dinner. I’ll hit him with a spoon on the forehead; an atheist understands a sermon best of all if you hit him with a spoon.”

He waits and mutters:

“The boy has commenced to ring the bells again. He does it for himself, the rogue. If we did not lock the steeple, they would pray there from morning until night.”

Haggart goes over to Khorre, near whom Dan is sitting.

“Khorre! Let us go to eat⁠—the priest called you.”

“I don’t want to go, Noni.”

“So? What are you going to do here on shore?”

“I will think, Noni, think. I have so much to think to be able to understand at least something.”

Haggart turns around silently. The abbot calls from the distance:

“He is not coming? Well, then, let him stay there. And Dan⁠—never call Dan, my son”⁠—says the priest in his deep whisper, “he eats at night like a rat. Mariet purposely puts something away for him in the closet for the night; when she looks for it in the morning, it is gone. Just think of it, no one ever hears when he takes it. Does he fly?”

Both go off. Only the two old men, seated in a friendly manner on two neighbouring rocks, remain on the deserted shore. And the old men resemble each other so closely, and whatever they may say to each other, the whiteness of their hair, the deep lines of their wrinkles, make them kin.

The tide is coming.

“They have all gone away,” mutters Khorre. “Thus will they cook hot soup on the wrecks of our ship, too. Eh, Dan! Do you know he ordered me to drink no gin for three days. Let the old dog croak! Isn’t that so, Noni?”

“Of those who died at sea⁠ ⁠… Those who died at sea,” mutters Dan. “A son taken from his father, a son from his father. The father said go, and the son perished in the sea. Oi, oi, oi!”

“What are you prating there, old man? I say, he ordered me to drink no gin. Soon he will order, like that King of yours, that the sea be lashed with chains.”

“Oho! With chains.”

“Your king was a fool. Was he married, your king?”

“The sea is coming, coming!” mutters Dan. “It brings along its noise, its secret, its deception. Oh, how the sea deceives man. Those who died at sea⁠—yes, yes, yes. Those who died at sea.”

“Yes, the sea is coming. And you don’t like it?” asks Khorre, rejoicing maliciously. “Well, don’t you like it? I don’t like your music. Do you hear, Dan? I hate your music!”

“Oho! And why do you come to hear it? I know that you and Gart stood by the wall and listened.”

Khorre says sternly:

“It was he who got me out of bed.”

“He will get you out of bed again.”

“No!” roars Khorre furiously. “I will get up myself at night. Do you hear, Dan? I will get up at night and break your music.”

“And I will spit into your sea.”

“Try,” says the sailor distrustfully. “How will you spit?”

“This way,” and Dan, exasperated, spits in the direction of the sea. The frightened Khorre, in confusion, says hoarsely:

“Oh, what sort of man are you? You spat! Eh, Dan, look out; it will be bad for you⁠—you yourself are talking about those who died at sea.”

Dan shouts, frightened:

“Who speaks of those that perished at sea? You, you dog!”

He goes away, grumbling and coughing, swinging his hand and stooping. Khorre is left alone before the entire vastness of the sea and the sky.

“He is gone. Then I am going to look at you, O sea, until my eyes will burst of thirst!”

The ocean, approaching, is roaring.

IV

At the very edge of the water, upon a narrow landing on the rocky shore, stands a man⁠—a small, dark, motionless dot. Behind him is the cold, almost vertical slope of granite, and before his eyes the ocean is rocking heavily and dully in the impenetrable darkness. Its mighty approach is felt in the open voice of the waves which are rising from the depths. Even sniffing sounds are heard⁠—it is as though a drove of monsters, playing, were splashing, snorting, lying down on their backs, and panting contentedly, deriving their monstrous pleasures.

The ocean smells of the strong odour of the depths, of decaying seaweeds, of its grass. The sea is calm today and, as always, alone.

And there is but one little light in the black space of water and night⁠—the distant lighthouse of the Holy Cross.

The rattle of cobblestones is heard from under a cautious step: Haggart is coming down to the sea along a steep path. He pauses, silent with restraint, breathing deeply after the strain of passing the dangerous slope, and goes forward. He is now at the edge⁠—he straightens himself and looks for a long time at him who had long before taken his strange but customary place at the very edge of the deep. He makes a few steps forward and greets him irresolutely and gently⁠—Haggart greets him even timidly:

“Good evening, stranger. Have you been here long?”

A sad, soft, and grave voice answers:

“Good evening, Haggart. Yes, I have been here long.”

“You are watching?”

“I am watching and listening.”

“Will you allow me to stand near you and look in the same direction you are looking? I am afraid that I am disturbing you by my uninvited presence⁠—for when I came you were already here⁠—but I am so fond of this spot. This place is isolated, and the sea is near, and the earth behind is silent; and here my eyes open. Like a night-owl, I see better in the dark; the light of day dazzles me. You know, I have grown up on the sea, sir.”

“No, you are not disturbing me, Haggart. But am I not disturbing you? Then I shall go away.”

“You are so polite, sir,” mutters Haggart.

“But I also love this spot,” continues the sad, grave voice. “I, too, like to feel that the cold and peaceful granite is behind me. You have grown up on the sea, Haggart⁠—tell me, what is that faint light on the right?”

“That is the lighthouse of the Holy Cross.”

“Aha! The lighthouse of the Holy Cross. I didn’t know that. But can such a faint light help in time of a storm? I look and it always seems to me that the light is going out. I suppose it isn’t so.”

Haggart, agitated but restrained, says:

“You frighten me, sir. Why do you ask me what you know better than I do? You want to tempt me⁠—you know everything.”

There is not a trace of a smile in the mournful voice⁠—nothing but sadness.

“No, I know little. I know even less than you do, for I know more. Pardon my rather complicated phrase, Haggart, but the tongue responds with so much difficulty not only to our feeling, but also to our thought.”

“You are polite,” mutters Haggart agitated. “You are polite and always calm. You are always sad and you have a thin hand with rings upon it, and you speak like a very important personage. Who are you, sir?”

“I am he whom you called⁠—the one who is always sad.”

“When I come, you are already here; when I go away, you remain. Why do you never want to go with me, sir?”

“There is one way for you, Haggart, and another for me.”

“I see you only at night. I know all the people around this settlement, and there is no one who looks like you. Sometimes I think that you are the owner of that old castle where I lived. If that is so I must tell you the castle was destroyed by the storm.”

“I don’t know of whom you speak.”

“I don’t understand how you know my name, Haggart. But I don’t want to deceive you. Although my wife Mariet calls me so, I invented that name myself. I have another name⁠—my real name⁠—of which no one has ever heard here.”

“I know your other name also, Haggart. I know your third name, too, which even you do not know. But it is hardly worth speaking of this. You had better look into this dark sea and tell me about your life. Is it true that it is so joyous? They say that you are forever smiling. They say that you are the bravest and most handsome fisherman on the coast. And they also say that you love your wife Mariet very dearly.”

“O sir!” exclaims Haggart with restraint, “my life is so sad that you could not find an image like it in this dark deep. O sir! my sufferings are so deep that you could not find a more terrible place in this dark abyss.”

“What is the cause of your sorrow and your sufferings, Haggart?”

“Life, sir. Here your noble and sad eyes look in the same direction my eyes look⁠—into this terrible, dark distance. Tell me, then, what is stirring there? What is resting and waiting there, what is silent there, what is screaming and singing and complaining there in its own voices? What are the voices that agitate me and fill my soul with phantoms of sorrow, and yet say nothing? And whence comes this night? And whence comes my sorrow? Are you sighing, sir, or is it the sigh of the ocean blending with your voice? My hearing is beginning to fail me, my master, my dear master.”

The sad voice replies:

“It is my sigh, Haggart. My great sorrow is responding to your sorrow. You see at night like an owl, Haggart; then look at my thin hands and at my rings. Are they not pale? And look at my face⁠—is it not pale? Is it not pale⁠—is it not pale? Oh, Haggart, my dear Haggart.”

They grieve silently. The heavy ocean is splashing, tossing about, spitting and snorting and sniffing peacefully. The sea is calm tonight and alone, as always.

“Tell Haggart⁠—” says the sad voice.

“Very well. I will tell Haggart.”

“Tell Haggart that I love him.”

Silence⁠—and then a faint, plaintive reproach resounds softly:

“If your voice were not so grave, sir, I would have thought that you were laughing at me. Am I not Haggart that I should tell something to Haggart? But no⁠—I sense a different meaning in your words, and you frighten me again. And when Haggart is afraid, it is real terror. Very well, I will tell Haggart everything you have said.”

“Adjust my cloak; my shoulder is cold. But it always seems to me that the light over there is going out. You called it the lighthouse of the Holy Cross, if I am not mistaken?”

“Yes, it is called so here.”

“Aha! It is called so here.”

Silence.

“Must I go now?” asks Haggart.

“Yes, go.”

“And you will remain here?”

“I will remain here.”

Haggart retreats several steps.

“Goodbye, sir.”

“Goodbye, Haggart.”

Again the cobblestones rattle under his cautious steps; without looking back, Haggart climbs the steep rocks.

Of what great sorrow speaks this night?

V

“Your hands are in blood, Haggart. Whom have you killed, Haggart?”

“Silence, Khorre, I killed that man. Be silent and listen⁠—he will commence to play soon. I stood here and listened, but suddenly my heart sank, and I cannot stay here alone.”

“Don’t confuse my mind, Noni; don’t tempt me. I will run away from here. At night, when I am already fast asleep, you swoop down on me like a demon, grab me by the neck, and drag me over here⁠—I can’t understand anything. Tell me, my boy, is it necessary to hide the body?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Why didn’t you throw it into the sea?”

“Silence! What are you prating about? I have nothing to throw into the sea.”

“But your hands are in blood.”

“Silence, Khorre! He will commence soon. Be silent and listen⁠—I say to you⁠—Are you a friend to me or not, Khorre?”

He drags him closer to the dark window of the church. Khorre mutters:

“How dark it is. If you raised me out of bed for this accursed music⁠—”

“Yes, yes; for this accursed music.”

“Then you have disturbed my honest sleep in vain; I want no music, Noni.”

“So! Was I perhaps to run through the street, knock at the windows and shout: ‘Eh, who is there; where’s a living soul? Come and help Haggart, stand up with him against the cannons.’ ”

“You are confusing things, Noni. Drink some gin, my boy. What cannons?”

“Silence, sailor.”

He drags him away from the window.

“Oh, you shake me like a squall!”

“Silence! I think he looked at us from the window; something white flashed behind the window pane. You may laugh. Khorre⁠—if he came out now I would scream like a woman.”

He laughs softly.

“Are you speaking of Dan? I don’t understand anything, Noni.”

“But is that Dan? Of course it is not Dan⁠—it is someone else. Give me your hand, sailor.”

“I think that you simply drank too much, like that time⁠—remember, in the castle? And your hand is quivering. But then the game was different⁠—”

“Tss!”

Khorre lowers his voice:

“But your hand is really in blood. Oh, you are breaking my fingers!”

Haggart threatens:

“If you don’t keep still, dog, I’ll break every bone of your body! I’ll pull every vein out of your body, if you don’t keep still, you dog!”

Silence. The distant breakers are softly groaning, as if complaining⁠—the sea has gone far away from the black earth. And the night is silent. It came no one knows whence and spread over the earth; it spread over the earth and is silent; it is silent, waiting for something. And ferocious mists have swung themselves to meet it⁠—the sea breathed phantoms, driving to the earth a herd of headless submissive giants. A heavy fog is coming.

“Why doesn’t he light a lamp?” asks Khorre sternly but submissively.

“He needs no light.”

“Perhaps there is no one there any longer.”

“Yes, he’s there.”

“A fog is coming. How quiet it is! There’s something wrong in the air⁠—what do you think, Noni?”

“Tss!”

The first soft sounds of the organ resound. Someone is sitting alone in the dark and is speaking to God in an incomprehensible language about the most important things. And however faint the sounds⁠—suddenly the silence vanishes, the night trembles and stares into the dark church with all its myriads of phantom eyes. An agitated voice whispers:

“Listen! He always begins that way. He gets a hold of your soul at once! Where does he get the power? He gets a hold of your heart!”

“I don’t like it.”

“Listen! Now he makes believe he is Haggart, Khorre! Little Haggart in his mother’s lap. Look, all hands are filled with golden rays; little Haggart is playing with golden rays. Look!”

“I don’t see it, Noni. Leave my hand alone, it hurts.”

“Now he makes believe he is Haggart! Listen!”

The oppressive chords resound faintly. Haggart moans softly.

“What is it, Noni? Do you feel any pain?”

“Yes. Do you understand of what he speaks?”

“No.”

“He speaks of the most important⁠—of the most vital, Khorre⁠—if we could only understand it⁠—I want to understand it. Listen, Khorre, listen! Why does he make believe that he is Haggart? It is not my soul. My soul does not know this.”

“What, Noni?”

“I don’t know. What terrible dreams there are in this land! Listen. There! Now he will cry and he will say: ‘It is Haggart crying.’ He will call God and will say: ‘Haggart is calling.’ He lies⁠—Haggart did not call, Haggart does not know God.”

He moans again, trying to restrain himself.

“Do you feel any pain?”

“Yes⁠—Be silent.”

Haggart exclaims in a muffled voice:

“Oh, Khorre!”

“What is it, Noni?”

“Why don’t you tell him that it isn’t Haggart? It is a lie!” whispers Haggart rapidly. “He thinks that he knows, but he does not know anything. He is a small, wretched old man with red eyes, like those of a rabbit, and tomorrow death will mow him down. Ha! He is dealing in diamonds, he throws them from one hand to the other like an old miser, and he himself is dying of hunger. It is a fraud, Khorre, a fraud. Let us shout loudly, Khorre, we are alone here.”

He shouts, turning to the thundering organ:

“Eh, musician! Even a fly cannot rise on your wings, even the smallest fly cannot rise on your wings. Eh, musician! Let me have your torn hat and I will throw a penny into it; your lie is worth no more. What are you prating there about God, you rabbit’s eyes? Be silent, I am shamed to listen to you. I swear, I am ashamed to listen to you! Don’t you believe me? You are still calling? Whither?”

“Strike them on the head, Noni.”

“Be silent, you dog! But what a terrible land! What are they doing here with the human heart? What terrible dreams there are in this land?”

He stops speaking. The organ sings solemnly.

“Why did you stop speaking, Noni?” asks the sailor with alarm.

“I am listening. It is good music, Khorre. Have I said anything?”

“You even shouted, Noni, and you forced me to shout with you.”

“That is not true. I have been silent all the time. Do you know, I haven’t even opened my mouth once! You must have been dreaming, Khorre. Perhaps you are thinking that you are near the church? You are simply sleeping in your bed, sailor. It is a dream.”

Khorre is terrified.

“Drink some gin, Noni.”

“I don’t need it. I drank something else already.”

“Your hands?”

“Be silent, Khorre. Don’t you see that everything is silent and is listening, and you alone are talking? The musician may feel offended!”

He laughs quietly. Brass trumpets are roaring harmoniously about the triumphant conciliation between man and God. The fog is growing thicker.

A loud stamping of feet⁠—someone runs through the deserted street in agitation.

“Noni!” whispers the sailor. “Who ran by?”

“I hear.”

“Noni! Another one is running. Something is wrong.”

Frightened people are running about in the middle of the night⁠—the echo of the night doubles the sound of their footsteps, increasing their terror tenfold, and it seems as if the entire village, terror-stricken, is running away somewhere. Rocking, dancing silently, as upon waves, a lantern floats by.

“They have found him, Khorre. They have found the man I killed, sailor! I did not throw him into the sea; I brought him and set his head up against the door of his house. They have found him.”

Another lantern floats by, swinging from side to side. As if hearing the alarm, the organ breaks off at a high chord. An instant of silence, emptiness of dread waiting, and then a woman’s sob of despair fills it up to the brim.

The mist is growing thicker.

VI

The flame in the oil-lamp is dying out, having a smell of burning. It is near sunrise. A large, clean, fisherman’s hut. A skilfully made little ship is fastened to the ceiling, and even the sails are set. Involuntarily this little ship has somehow become the centre of attraction and all those who speak, who are silent and who listen, look at it, study each familiar sail. Behind the dark curtain lies the body of Philipp⁠—this hut belonged to him.

The people are waiting for Haggart⁠—some have gone out to search for him. On the benches along the walls, the old fishermen have seated themselves, their hands folded on their knees; some of them seem to be slumbering; others are smoking their pipes. They speak meditatively and cautiously, as though eager to utter no unnecessary words. Whenever a belated fisherman comes in, he looks first at the curtain, then he silently squeezes himself into the crowd, and those who have no place on the bench apparently feel embarrassed.

The abbot paces the room heavily, his hands folded on his back, his head lowered; when anyone is in his way, he quietly pushes him aside with his hand. He is silent and knits his brows convulsively. Occasionally he glances at the door or at the window and listens.

The only woman present there is Mariet. She is sitting by the table and constantly watching her father with her burning eyes. She shudders slightly at each loud word, at the sound of the door as it opens, at the noise of distant footsteps.

At night a fog came from the sea and covered the earth. And such perfect quiet reigns now that long-drawn tolling is heard in the distant lighthouse of the Holy Cross. Warning is thus given to the ships that have lost their way in the fog.

Someone in the corner says:

“Judging from the blow, it was not one of our people that killed him. Our people can’t strike like that. He stuck the knife here, then slashed over there, and almost cut his head off.”

“You can’t do that with a dull knife!”

“No. You can’t do it with a weak hand. I saw a murdered sailor on the wharf one day⁠—he was cut up just like this.”

Silence.

“And where is his mother?” asks someone, nodding at the curtain.

“Selly is taking care of her. Selly took her to her house.”

An old fisherman quietly asks his neighbour:

“Who told you?”

“Francina woke me. Who told you, Marle?”

“Someone knocked on my window.”

“Who knocked on your window?”

“I don’t know.”

Silence.

“How is it you don’t know? Who was the first to see?”

“Someone passed by and noticed him.”

“None of us passed by. There was nobody among us who passed by.”

A fisherman seated at the other end, says:

“There was nobody among us who passed by. Tell us, Thomas.”

Thomas takes out his pipe:

“I am a neighbour of Philipp’s, of that man there⁠—” he points at the curtain. “Yes, yes, you all know that I am his neighbour. And if anybody does not know it⁠—I’ll say it again, as in a court of justice: I am his neighbour⁠—I live right next to him⁠—” he turns to the window.

An elderly fisherman enters and forces himself silently into the line.

“Well, Tibo?” asks the abbot, stopping.

“Nothing.”

“Haven’t you found Haggart?”

“No. It is so foggy that they are afraid of losing themselves. They walk and call each other; some of them hold each other by the hand. Even a lantern can’t be seen ten feet away.”

The abbot lowers his head and resumes his pacing. The old fisherman speaks, without addressing anyone in particular.

“There are many ships now staring helplessly in the sea.”

“I walked like a blind man,” says Tibo. “I heard the Holy Cross ringing. But it seems as if it changed its place. The sound comes from the left side.”

“The fog is deceitful.”

Old Desfoso says:

“This never happened here. Since Dugamel broke Jack’s head with a shaft. That was thirty⁠—forty years ago.”

“What did you say, Desfoso?” the abbot stops.

“I say, since Dugamel broke Jack’s head⁠—”

“Yes, yes!” says the abbot, and resumes pacing the room.

“Then Dugamel threw himself into the sea from a rock and was dashed to death⁠—that’s how it happened. He threw himself down.”

Mariet shudders and looks at the speaker with hatred. Silence.

“What did you say, Thomas?”

Thomas takes his pipe out of his mouth.

“Nothing. I only said that someone knocked at my window.”

“You don’t know who?”

“No. And you will never know. I came out, I looked⁠—and there Philipp was sitting at his door. I wasn’t surprised⁠—Philipp often roamed about at night ever since⁠—”

He stops irresolutely. Mariet asks harshly:

“Since when? You said ‘since.’ ”

Silence. Desfoso replies frankly and heavily:

“Since your Haggart came. Go ahead, Thomas, tell us about it.”

“So I said to him: ‘Why did you knock, Philipp? Do you want anything?’ But he was silent.”

“And he was silent?”

“He was silent. ‘If you don’t want anything, you had better go to sleep, my friend,’ said I. But he was silent. Then I looked at him⁠—his throat was cut open.”

Mariet shudders and looks at the speaker with aversion. Silence. Another fisherman enters, looks at the curtain and silently forces his way into the crowd. Women’s voices are heard behind the door; the abbot stops.

“Eh, Lebon! Chase the women away,” he says. “Tell them, there is nothing for them to do here.”

Lebon goes out.

“Wait,” the abbot stops. “Ask how the mother is feeling; Selly is taking care of her.”

Desfoso says:

“You say, chase away the women, abbot? And your daughter? She is here.”

The abbot looks at Mariet. She says:

“I am not going away from here.”

Silence. The abbot paces the room again; he looks at the little ship fastened to the ceiling and asks:

“Who made it?”

All look at the little ship.

“He,” answers Desfoso. “He made it when he wanted to go to America as a sailor. He was always asking me how a three-masted brig is fitted out.”

They look at the ship again, at its perfect little sails⁠—at the little rags. Lebon returns.

“I don’t know how to tell you about it, abbot. The women say that Haggart and his sailor are being led over here. The women are afraid.”

Mariet shudders and looks at the door; the abbot pauses.

“Oho, it is daybreak already, the fog is turning blue!” says one fisherman to another, but his voice breaks off.

“Yes. Low tide has started,” replies the other dully.

Silence. Then uneven footsteps resound. Several young fishermen with excited faces bring in Haggart, who is bound, and push Khorre in after him, also bound. Haggart is calm; as soon as the sailor was bound, something wildly free appeared in his movements, in his manners, in the sharpness of his swift glances.

One of the men who brought Haggart says to the abbot in a low voice:

“He was near the church. Ten times we passed by and saw no one, until he called: ‘Aren’t you looking for me?’ It is so foggy, father.”

The abbot shakes his head silently and sits down. Mariet smiles to her husband with her pale lips, but he does not look at her. Like all the others, he has fixed his eyes in amazement on the toy ship.

“Hello, Haggart,” says the abbot.

“Hello, father.”

“You call me father?”

“Yes, you.”

“You are mistaken, Haggart. I am not your father.”

The fishermen exchanged glances contentedly.

“Well, then. Hello, abbot,” says Haggart with indifference, and resumes examining the little ship. Khorre mutters:

“That’s the way, be firm, Noni.”

“Who made this toy?” asks Haggart, but no one replies.

“Hello, Gart!” says Mariet, smiling. “It is I, your wife, Mariet. Let me untie your hands.”

With a smile, pretending that she does not notice the stains of blood, she unfastens the ropes. All look at her in silence. Haggart also looks at her bent, alarmed head.

“Thank you,” he says, straightening his hands.

“It would be a good thing to untie my hands, too,” said Khorre, but there is no answer.

Abbot⁠—Haggart, did you kill Philipp?

Haggart⁠—I.

Abbot⁠—Do you mean to say⁠—eh, you, Haggart⁠—that you yourself killed him with your own hands? Perhaps you said to the sailor: “Sailor, go and kill Philipp,” and he did it, for he loves you and respects you as his superior? Perhaps it happened that way! Tell me, Haggart. I called you my son, Haggart.

Haggart⁠—No, I did not order the sailor to do it. I killed Philipp with my own hand.

Silence.

Khorre⁠—Noni! Tell them to unfasten my hands and give me back my pipe.

“Don’t be in a hurry,” roars the priest. “Be bound awhile, drunkard! You had better be afraid of an untied rope⁠—it may be formed into a noose.”

But obeying a certain swift movement or glance of Haggart, Mariet walks over to the sailor and opens the knots of the rope. And again all look in silence upon her bent, alarmed head. Then they turn their eyes upon Haggart. Just as they looked at the little ship before, so they now look at him. And he, too, has forgotten about the toy. As if aroused from sleep, he surveys the fishermen, and stares long at the dark curtain.

Abbot⁠—Haggart, I am asking you. Who carried Philipp’s body?

Haggart⁠—I. I brought it and put it near the door, his head against the door, his face against the sea. It was hard to set him that way, he was always falling down. But I did it.

Abbot⁠—Why did you do it?

Haggart⁠—I don’t know exactly. I heard that Philipp has a mother, an old woman, and I thought this might please them better⁠—both him and his mother.

Abbot⁠—With restraint. You are laughing at us?

Haggart⁠—No. What makes you think I am laughing? I am just as serious as you are. Did he⁠—did Philipp make this little ship?

No one answers. Mariet, rising and bending over to Haggart across the table, says:

“Didn’t you say this, Haggart: ‘My poor boy, I killed you because I had to kill you, and now I am going to take you to your mother, my dear boy’?”

“These are very sad words. Who told them to you, Mariet?” asks Haggart, surprised.

“I heard them. And didn’t you say further: ‘Mother, I have brought you your son, and put him down at your door⁠—take your boy, mother’?”

Haggart maintains silence.

“I don’t know,” roars the abbot bitterly. “I don’t know; people don’t kill here, and we don’t know how it is done. Perhaps that is as it should be⁠—to kill and then bring the murdered man to his mother’s threshold. What are you gaping at, you scarecrow?”

Khorre replies rudely:

“According to my opinion, he should have thrown him into the sea. Your Haggart is out of his mind; I have said it long ago.”

Suddenly old Desfoso shouts amid the loud approval of the others:

“Hold your tongue! We will send him to the city, but we will hang you like a cat ourselves, even if you did not kill him.”

“Silence, old man, silence!” the abbot stops him, while Khorre looks over their heads with silent contempt. “Haggart, I am asking you, why did you take Philipp’s life? He needed his life just as you need yours.”

“He was Mariet’s betrothed⁠—and⁠—”

“Well?”

“And⁠—I don’t want to speak. Why didn’t you ask me before, when he was alive? Now I have killed him.”

“But”⁠—says the abbot, and there is a note of entreaty in his heavy voice. “But it may be that you are already repenting, Haggart? You are a splendid man, Gart. I know you; when you are sober you cannot hurt even a fly. Perhaps you were intoxicated⁠—that happens with young people⁠—and Philipp may have said something to you, and you⁠—”

“No.”

“No? Well, then, let it be no. Am I not right, children? But perhaps something strange came over you⁠—it happens with people⁠—suddenly a red mist will get into a man’s head, the beast will begin to howl in his breast, and⁠—In such cases one word is enough⁠—”

“No, Philipp did not say anything to me. He passed along the road, when I jumped out from behind a large rock and stuck a knife into his throat. He had no time even to be scared. But if you like⁠—” Haggart surveys the fishermen with his eyes irresolutely⁠—“I feel a little sorry for him. That is, just a little. Did he make this toy?”

The abbot lowers his head sternly. And Desfoso shouts again, amidst sobs of approval from the others:

“No! Abbot, you better ask him what he was doing at the church. Dan saw them from the window. Wouldn’t you tell us what you and your accursed sailor were doing at the church? What were you doing there? Speak.”

Haggart looks at the speaker steadfastly and says slowly:

“I talked with the devil.”

A muffled rumbling follows. The abbot jumps from his place and roars furiously:

“Then let him sit on your neck! Eh, Pierre, Jules, tie him down as fast as you can until morning. And the other one, too. And in the morning⁠—in the morning, take him away to the city, to the Judges. I don’t know their accursed city laws”⁠—cries the abbot in despair⁠—“but they will hang you, Haggart! You will dangle on a rope, Haggart!”

Khorre rudely pushes aside the young fisherman who comes over to him with a rope, and says to Desfoso in a low voice:

“It’s an important matter, old man. Go away for a minute⁠—he oughtn’t to hear it,” he nods at Haggart.

“I don’t trust you.”

“You needn’t. That’s nothing. Noni, there is a little matter here. Come, come, and don’t be afraid. I have no knife.”

The people step aside and whisper. Haggart is silently waiting to be bound, but no one comes over to him. All shudder when Mariet suddenly commences to speak:

“Perhaps you think that all this is just, father? Why, then, don’t you ask me about it? I am his wife. Don’t you believe that I am his wife? Then I will bring little Noni here. Do you want me to bring little Noni? He is sleeping, but I will wake him up. Once in his life he may wake up at night in order to say that this man whom you want to hang in the city is his father.”

“Don’t!” says Haggart.

“Very well,” replies Mariet obediently. “He commands and I must obey⁠—he is my husband. Let little Noni sleep. But I am not sleeping, I am here. Why, then, didn’t you ask me: ‘Mariet, how was it possible that your husband, Haggart, should kill Philipp’?”

Silence. Desfoso, who has returned and who is agitated, decides:

“Let her speak. She is his wife.”

“You will not believe, Desfoso,” says Mariet, turning to the old fisherman with a tender and mournful smile. “Desfoso, you will not believe what strange and peculiar creatures we women are!”

Turning to all the people with the same smile, she continues:

“You will not believe what queer desires, what cunning, malicious little thoughts we women have. It was I who persuaded my husband to kill Philipp. Yes, yes⁠—he did not want to do it, but I urged him; I cried so much and threatened him, so he consented. Men always give in⁠—isn’t that true, Desfoso?”

Haggart looks at his wife in a state of great perplexity, his eyebrows brought close to each other. Mariet continues, without looking at him, still smiling as before:

“You will ask me, why I wanted Philipp’s death? Yes, yes, you will ask this question, I know it. He never did me any harm, that poor Philipp, isn’t that true? Then I will tell you: He was my betrothed. I don’t know whether you will be able to understand me. You, old Desfoso⁠—you would not kill the girl you kissed one day? Of course not. But we women are such strange creatures⁠—you can’t even imagine what strange, suspicious, peculiar creatures we are. Philipp was my betrothed, and he kissed me⁠—”

She wipes her mouth and continues, laughing:

“Here I am wiping my mouth even now. You have all seen how I wiped my mouth. I am wiping away Philipp’s kisses. You are laughing. But ask your wife, Desfoso⁠—does she want the life of the man who kissed her before you? Ask all women who love⁠—even the old women! We never grow old in love. We are born so, we women.”

Haggart almost believes her. Advancing a step forward, he asks:

“You urged me? Perhaps it is true, Mariet⁠—I don’t remember.”

Mariet laughs.

“Do you hear? He has forgotten. Go on, Gart. You may say that it was your own idea? That’s the way you men are⁠—you forget everything. Will you say perhaps that I⁠—”

“Mariet!” Haggart interrupts her threateningly.

Mariet, turning pale, looking sorrowfully at his terrible eyes which are now steadfastly fixed upon her, continues, still smiling:

“Go on, Gart! Will you say perhaps that I⁠—Will you say perhaps that I dissuaded you? That would be funny⁠—”

Haggart⁠—No, I will not say that. You lie, Mariet! Even I, Haggart⁠—just think of it, people⁠—even I believed her, so cleverly does this woman lie.

Mariet⁠—Go⁠—on⁠—Haggart.

Haggart⁠—You are laughing? Abbot, I don’t want to be the husband of your daughter⁠—she lies.

Abbot⁠—You are worse than the devil, Gart! That’s what I say⁠—You are worse than the devil, Gart!

Haggart⁠—You are all foolish people! I don’t understand you; I don’t know now what to do with you. Shall I laugh? Shall I be angry? Shall I cry? You want to let me go⁠—why, then, don’t you let me go? You are sorry for Philipp. Well, then, kill me⁠—I have told you that it was I who killed the boy. Am I disputing? But you are making grimaces like monkeys that have found bananas⁠—or have you such a game in your land? Then I don’t want to play it. And you, abbot, you are like a juggler in the marketplace. In one hand you have truth and in the other hand you have truth, and you are forever performing tricks. And now she is lying⁠—she lies so well that my heart contracts with belief. Oh, she is doing it well!

And he laughs bitterly.

Mariet⁠—Forgive me, Gart.

Haggart⁠—When I wanted to kill him, she hung on my hand like a rock, and now she says that she killed him. She steals from me this murder; she does not know that one has to earn that, too! Oh, there are queer people in your land!

“I wanted to deceive them, not you, Gart. I wanted to save you,” says Mariet.

Haggart replies:

“My father taught me: ‘Eh, Noni, beware! There is one truth and one law for all⁠—for the sun, for the wind, for the waves, for the beasts⁠—and only for man there is another truth. Beware of this truth of man, Noni!’ so said my father. Perhaps this is your truth? Then I am not afraid of it, but I feel very sad and very embittered. Mariet, if you sharpened my knife and said: ‘Go and kill that man’⁠—it may be that I would not have cared to kill him. ‘What is the use of cutting down a withered tree?’⁠—I would have said. But now⁠—farewell, Mariet! Well, bind me and take me to the city.”

He waits haughtily, but no one approaches him. Mariet has lowered her head upon her hands, her shoulders are twitching. The abbot is also absorbed in thought, his large head lowered. Desfoso is carrying on a heated conversation in whispers with the fishermen. Khorre steps forward and speaks, glancing at Haggart askance:

“I had a little talk with them, Noni⁠—they are all right, they are good fellows, Noni. Only the priest⁠—but he is a good man, too⁠—am I right, Noni? Don’t look so crossly at me, or I’ll mix up the whole thing! You see, kind people, it’s this way: this man, Haggart, and I have saved up a little sum of money, a little barrel of gold. We don’t need it, Noni, do we? Perhaps you will take it for yourselves? What do you think? Shall we give them the gold, Noni? You see, here I’ve entangled myself already.”

He winks slyly at Mariet, who has now lifted her head.

“What are you prating there, you scarecrow?” asks the abbot.

Khorre continues:

“Here it goes, Noni; I am straightening it out little by little! But where have we buried it, the barrel? Do you remember, Noni? I have forgotten. They say it’s from the gin, kind people; they say that one’s memory fails from too much gin. I am a drunkard, that’s true.”

“If you are not inventing⁠—then you had better choke yourself with your gold, you dog!” says the abbot.

Haggart⁠—Khorre!

Khorre⁠—Yes.

Haggart⁠—Tomorrow you will get a hundred lashes. Abbot, order a hundred lashes for him!

Abbot⁠—With pleasure, my son. With pleasure.

The movements of the fishermen are just as slow and languid, but there is something new in their increased puffing and pulling at their pipes, in the light quiver of their tanned hands. Some of them arise and look out of the window with feigned indifference.

“The fog is rising!” says one, looking out of the window. “Do you hear what I said about the fog?”

“It’s time to go to sleep. I say, it’s time to go to sleep!”

Desfoso comes forward and speaks cautiously:

“That isn’t quite so, abbot. It seems you didn’t say exactly what you ought to say, abbot. They seem to think differently. I don’t say anything for myself⁠—I am simply talking about them. What do you say, Thomas?”

Thomas⁠—We ought to go to sleep, I say. Isn’t it true that it is time to go to sleep?

Mariet Softly.⁠—Sit down, Gart. You are tired tonight. You don’t answer?

An old fisherman says:

“There used to be a custom in our land, I heard, that a murderer was to pay a fine for the man he killed. Have you heard about it, Desfoso?”

Another voice is heard:

“Philipp is dead. Philipp is dead already, do you hear, neighbour? Who is going to support his mother?”

“I haven’t enough even for my own! And the fog is rising, neighbour.”

“Abbot, did you hear us say: ‘Gart is a bad man; Gart is a good-for-nothing, a city trickster?’ No, we said: ‘This thing has never happened here before,’ ” says Desfoso.

Then a determined voice remarks:

“Gart is a good man! Wild Gart is a good man!”

Desfoso⁠—If you looked around, abbot, you couldn’t find a single, strong boat here. I haven’t enough tar for mine. And the church⁠—is that the way a good church ought to look? I am not saying it myself, but it comes out that way⁠—it can’t be helped, abbot.

Haggart turns to Mariet and says:

“Do you hear, woman?”

“I do.”

“Why don’t you spit into their faces?”

“I can’t. I love you, Haggart. Are there only ten Commandments of God? No, there is still another: ‘I love you, Haggart.’ ”

“What sad dreams there are in your land.”

The abbot rises and walks over to the fishermen.

“Well, what did you say about the church, old man? You said something interesting about the church, or was I mistaken?”

He casts a swift glance at Mariet and Haggart.

“It isn’t the church alone, abbot. There are four of us old men: Legran, Stoffle, Puasar, Kornu, and seven old women. Do I say that we are not going to feed them? Of course, we will, but don’t be angry, father⁠—it is hard! You know it yourself, abbot⁠—old age is no fun.”

“I am an old man, too!” begins old Rikke, lisping, but suddenly he flings his hat angrily to the ground. “Yes, I am an old man. I don’t want any more, that’s all! I worked, and now I don’t want to work. That’s all! I don’t want to work.”

He goes out, swinging his hand. All look sympathetically at his stooping back, at his white tufts of hair. And then they look again at Desfoso, at his mouth, from which their words come out. A voice says:

“There, Rikke doesn’t want to work any more.”

All laugh softly and forcedly.

“Suppose we send Gart to the city⁠—what then?” Desfoso goes on, without looking at Haggart. “Well, the city people will hang him⁠—and then what? The result will be that a man will be gone, a fisherman will be gone⁠—you will lose a son, and Mariet will lose her husband, and the little boy his father. Is there any joy in that?”

“That’s right, that’s right!” nods the abbot, approvingly. “But what a mind you have, Desfoso!”

“Do you pay attention to them, Abbot?” asked Haggart.

“Yes, I do, Haggart. And it wouldn’t do you any harm to pay attention to them. The devil is prouder than you, and yet he is only the devil, and nothing more.”

Desfoso affirms:

“What’s the use of pride? Pride isn’t necessary.”

He turns to Haggart, his eyes still lowered; then he lifts his eyes and asks:

“Gart! But you don’t need to kill anybody else. Excepting Philipp, you don’t feel like killing anybody else, do you?”

“No.”

“Only Philipp, and no more? Do you hear? Only Philipp, and no more. And another question⁠—Gart, don’t you want to send away this man, Khorre? We would like you to do it. Who knows him? People say that all this trouble comes through him.”

Several voices are heard:

“Through him. Send him away, Gart! It will be better for him!”

The abbot upholds them.

“True!”

“You, too, priest!” says Khorre, gruffly. Haggart looks with a faint smile at his angry, bristled face, and says:

“I rather feel like sending him away. Let him go.”

“Well, then, Abbot,” says Desfoso, turning around, “we have decided, in accordance with our conscience⁠—to take the money. Do I speak properly?”

One voice answers for all:

“Yes.”

Desfoso⁠—Well, sailor, where is the money?

Khorre⁠—Captain?

Haggart⁠—Give it to them.

Khorre Rudely.⁠—“Then give me back my knife and my pipe first! Who is the eldest among you⁠—you? Listen, then: Take crowbars and shovels and go to the castle. Do you know the tower, the accursed tower that fell? Go over there⁠—”

He bends down and draws a map on the floor with his crooked finger. All bend down and look attentively; only the abbot gazes sternly out of the window, behind which the heavy fog is still grey. Haggart whispers in a fit of rage:

“Mariet, it would have been better if you had killed me as I killed Philipp. And now my father is calling me. Where will be the end of my sorrow, Mariet? Where the end of the world is. And where is the end of the world? Do you want to take my sorrow, Mariet?”

“I do, Haggart.”

“No, you are a woman.”

“Why do you torture me, Gart? What have I done that you should torture me so? I love you.”

“You lied.”

“My tongue lied. I love you.”

“A serpent has a double tongue, but ask the serpent what it wants⁠—and it will tell you the truth. It is your heart that lied. Was it not you, girl, that I met that time on the road? And you said: ‘Good evening.’ How you have deceived me!”

Desfoso asks loudly:

“Well, abbot? You are coming along with us, aren’t you, father. Otherwise something wrong might come out of it. Do I speak properly?”

The abbot replies merrily:

“Of course, of course, children. I am going with you. Without me, you will think of the church. I have just been thinking of the church⁠—of the kind of church you need. Oh, it’s hard to get along with you, people!”

The fishermen go out very slowly⁠—they are purposely lingering.

“The sea is coming,” says one. “I can hear it.”

“Yes, yes, the sea is coming! Did you understand what he said?”

The few who remained are more hasty in their movements. Some of them politely bid Haggart farewell.

“Goodbye, Gart.”

“I am thinking, Haggart, what kind of a church we need. This one will not do, it seems. They prayed here a hundred years; now it is no good, they say. Well, then, it is necessary to have a new one, a better one. But what shall it be?”

“ ‘Pope’s a rogue, Pope’s a rogue.’ But, then, I am a rogue, too. Don’t you think, Gart, that I am also something of a rogue? One moment, children, I am with you.”

There is some crowding in the doorway. The abbot follows the last man with his eyes and roars angrily:

“Eh, you, Haggart, murderer! What are you smiling at? You have no right to despise them like that. They are my children. They have worked⁠—have you seen their hands, their backs? If you haven’t noticed that, you are a fool! They are tired. They want to rest. Let them rest, even at the cost of the blood of the one you killed. I’ll give them each a little, and the rest I will throw out into the sea. Do you hear, Haggart?”

“I hear, priest.”

The abbot exclaims, raising his arms:

“O Lord! Why have you made a heart that can have pity on both the murdered and the murderer! Gart, go home. Take him home, Mariet, and wash his hands!”

“To whom do you lie, priest?” asks Haggart, slowly. “To God or to the devil? To yourself or to the people? Or to everybody?”

He laughs bitterly.

“Eh, Gart! You are drunk with blood.”

“And with what are you drunk?”

They face each other. Mariet cries angrily, placing herself between them:

“May a thunder strike you down, both of you, that’s what I am praying to God. May a thunder strike you down! What are you doing with my heart? You are tearing it with your teeth like greedy dogs. You didn’t drink enough blood, Gart, drink mine, then! You will never have enough, Gart, isn’t that true?”

“Now, now,” says the abbot, calming them. “Take him home, Mariet. Go home, Gart, and sleep more.”

Mariet comes forward, goes to the door and pauses there.

“Gart! I am going to little Noni.”

“Go.”

“Are you coming along with me?”

“Yes⁠—no⁠—later.”

“I am going to little Noni. What shall I tell him about his father when he wakes up?”

Haggart is silent. Khorre comes back and stops irresolutely at the threshold. Mariet casts at him a glance full of contempt and then goes out. Silence.

“Khorre!”

“Yes.”

“Gin!”

“Here it is, Noni. Drink it, my boy, but not all at once, not all at once, Noni.”

Haggart drinks; he examines the room with a smile.

“Nobody. Did you see him, Khorre? He is there, behind the curtain. Just think of it, sailor⁠—here we are again with him alone.”

“Go home, Noni!”

“Right away. Give me some gin.”

He drinks.

“And they? They have gone?”

“They ran, Noni. Go home, my boy! They ran off like goats. I was laughing so much, Noni.”

Both laugh.

“Take down that toy, Khorre. Yes, yes, a little ship. He made it, Khorre.”

They examine the toy.

“Look how skilfully the jib was made, Khorre. Good boy, Philipp! But the halyards are bad, look. No, Philipp! You never saw how real ships are fitted out⁠—real ships which rove over the ocean, tearing its grey waves. Was it with this toy that you wanted to quench your little thirst⁠—fool?”

He throws down the little ship and rises:

“Khorre! Boatswain!”

“Yes.”

“Call them! I assume command again, Khorre!”

The sailor turns pale and shouts enthusiastically:

“Noni! Captain! My knees are trembling. I will not be able to reach them and I will fall on the way.”

“You will reach them! We must also take our money away from these people⁠—what do you think, Khorre? We have played a little, and now it is enough⁠—what do you think, Khorre?”

He laughs. The sailor looks at him, his hands folded as in prayer, and he weeps.

VII

“These are your comrades, Haggart? I am so glad to see them. You said, Gart, yes⁠—you said that their faces were entirely different from the faces of our people, and that is true. Oh, how true it is! Our people have handsome faces, too⁠—don’t think our fishermen are ugly, but they haven’t these deep, terrible scars. I like them very much, I assure you, Gart. I suppose you are a friend of Haggart’s⁠—you have such stern, fine eyes? But you are silent? Why are they silent, Haggart; did you forbid them to speak? And why are you silent yourself, Haggart? Haggart!”

Illuminated by the light of torches, Haggart stands and listens to the rapid, agitated speech. The metal of the guns and the uniforms vibrates and flashes; the light is also playing on the faces of those who have surrounded Haggart in a close circle⁠—these are his nearest, his friends. And in the distance there is a different game⁠—there a large ship is dancing silently, casting its light upon the black waves, and the black water plays with them, pleating them like a braid, extinguishing them and kindling them again.

A noisy conversation and the splashing of the waters⁠—and the dreadful silence of kindred human lips that are sealed.

“I am listening to you, Mariet,” says Haggart at last. “What do you want, Mariet? It is impossible that someone should have offended you. I ordered them not to touch your house.”

“Oh, no, Haggart, no! No one has offended me!” exclaimed Mariet cheerfully. “But don’t you like me to hold little Noni in my arms? Then I will put him down here among the rocks. Here he will be warm and comfortable as in his cradle. That’s the way! Don’t be afraid of waking him, Gart; he sleeps soundly and will not hear anything. You may shout, sing, fire a pistol⁠—the boy sleeps soundly.”

“What do you want, Mariet? I did not call you here, and I am not pleased that you have come.”

“Of course, you did not call me here, Haggart; of course, you didn’t. But when the fire was started, I thought: ‘Now it will light the way for me to walk. Now I will not stumble.’ And I went. Your friends will not be offended, Haggart, if I will ask them to step aside for awhile? I have something to tell you, Gart. Of course, I should have done that before, I understand, Gart; but I only just recalled it now. It was so light to walk!”

Haggart says sternly:

“Step aside, Flerio, and you all⁠—step aside with him.”

They all step aside.

“What is it that you have recalled, Mariet? Speak! I am going away forever from your mournful land, where one dreams such painful dreams, where even the rocks dream of sorrow. And I have forgotten everything.”

Gently and submissively, seeking protection and kindness, the woman presses close to his hand.

“O, Haggart! O, my dear Haggart! They are not offended because I asked them so rudely to step aside, are they? O, my dear Haggart! The galloons of your uniform scratched my cheek, but it is so pleasant. Do you know, I never liked it when you wore the clothes of our fishermen⁠—it was not becoming to you, Haggart. But I am talking nonsense, and you are getting angry, Gart. Forgive me!”

“Don’t kneel. Get up.”

“It was only for a moment. Here, I got up. You ask me what I want? This is what I want: Take me with you, Haggart! Me and little Noni, Haggart!”

Haggart retreats.

“You say that, Mariet? You say that I should take you along? Perhaps you are laughing, woman? Or am I dreaming again?”

“Yes, I say that: Take me with you. Is this your ship? How large and beautiful it is, and it has black sails, I know it. Take me on your ship, Haggart. I know, you will say: ‘We have no women on the ship,’ but I will be the woman: I will be your soul. Haggart, I will be your song, your thoughts, Haggart! And if it must be so, let Khorre give gin to little Noni⁠—he is a strong boy.”

“Eh, Mariet?” says Haggart sternly. “Do you perhaps want me to believe you again? Eh, Mariet? Don’t talk of that which you do not know, woman. Are the rocks perhaps casting a spell over me and turning my head? Do you hear the noise, and something like voices? That is the sea, waiting for me. Don’t hold my soul. Let it go, Mariet.”

“Don’t speak, Haggart! I know everything. It was not as though I came along a fiery road, it was not as though I saw blood today. Be silent, Haggart! I have seen something more terrible, Haggart! Oh, if you could only understand me! I have seen cowardly people who ran without defending themselves. I have seen clutching, greedy fingers, crooked like those of birds, like those of birds, Haggart! And out of these fingers, which were forced open, gold was taken. And suddenly I saw a man sobbing. Think of it, Haggart! They were taking gold from him, and he was sobbing.”

She laughs bitterly. Haggart advances a step toward her and puts his heavy hand upon her shoulder:

“Yes, yes, Mariet. Speak on, girl, let the sea wait.”

Mariet removes his hand and continues:

“ ‘No,’ I thought. ‘These are not my brethren at all!’ I thought and laughed. And father shouted to the cowards: ‘Take shafts and strike them.’ But they were running. Father is such a splendid man.”

“Father is a splendid man,” Haggart affirms cheerfully.

“Such a splendid man! And then one sailor bent down close to Noni⁠—perhaps he did not want to do any harm to him, but he bent down to him too closely, so, I fired at him from your pistol. Is it nothing that I fired at our sailor?”

Haggart laughs:

“He had a comical face! You killed him, Mariet.”

“No. I don’t know how to shoot. And it was he who told me where you were. O Haggart, O brother!”

She sobs, and then she speaks angrily with a shade of a serpentine hiss in her voice:

“I hate them! They were not tortured enough; I would have tortured them still more, still more. Oh, what cowardly rascals they are! Listen, Haggart, I was always afraid of your power⁠—to me there was always something terrible and incomprehensible in your power. ‘Where is his God?’ I wondered, and I was terrified. Even this morning I was afraid, but now that this night came, this terror has fled, and I came running to you over the fiery road: I am going with you, Haggart. Take me, Haggart, I will be the soul of your ship!”

“I am the soul of my ship, Mariet. But you will be the song of my liberated soul, Mariet. You shall be the song of my ship, Mariet! Do you know where we are going? We are going to look for the end of the world, for unknown lands, for unknown monsters. And at night Father Ocean will sing to us, Mariet!”

“Embrace me, Haggart. Ah, Haggart, he is not a God who makes cowards of human beings. We shall go to look for a new God.”

Haggart whispers stormily:

“I lied when I said that I have forgotten everything⁠—I learned this in your land. I love you, Mariet, as I love fire. Eh, Flerio, comrade!” He shouts cheerfully: “Eh, Flerio, comrade! Have you prepared a salute?”

“I have, Captain. The shores will tremble when our cannons speak.”

“Eh, Flerio, comrade! Don’t gnash your teeth, without biting⁠—no one will believe you. Did you put in cannon balls⁠—round, cast-iron, good cannon balls? Give them wings, comrade⁠—let them fly like blackbirds on land and sea.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Haggart laughs:

“I love to think how the cannon ball flies, Mariet. I love to watch its invisible flight. If someone comes in its way⁠—let him! Fate itself strikes down like that. What is an aim? Only fools need an aim, while the devil, closing his eyes, throws stones⁠—the wise game is merrier this way. But you are silent! What are you thinking of, Mariet?”

“I am thinking of them. I am forever thinking of them.”

“Are you sorry for them?” Haggart frowns.

“Yes, I am sorry for them. But my pity is my hatred, Haggart. I hate them, and I would kill them, more and more!”

“I feel like flying faster⁠—my soul is so free. Let us jest, Mariet! Here is a riddle, guess it: For whom will the cannons roar soon? You think, for me? No. For you? no, no, not for you, Mariet! For little Noni, for him⁠—for little Noni who is boarding the ship tonight. Let him wake up from this thunder. How our little Noni will be surprised! And now be quiet, quiet⁠—don’t disturb his sleep⁠—don’t spoil little Noni’s awakening.”

The sound of voices is heard⁠—a crowd is approaching.

“Where is the captain?”

“Here. Halt, the captain is here!”

“It’s all done. They can be crammed into a basket like herrings.”

“Our boatswain is a brave fellow! A jolly man.”

Khorre, intoxicated and jolly, shouts:

“Not so loud, devils! Don’t you see that the captain is here? They scream like seagulls over a dead dolphin.”

Mariet steps aside a little distance, where little Noni is sleeping.

Khorre⁠—Here we are, Captain. No losses, Captain. And how we laughed, Noni.

Haggart⁠—You got drunk rather early. Come to the point.

Khorre⁠—Very well. The thing is done, Captain. We’ve picked up all our money⁠—not worse than the imperial tax collectors. I could not tell which was ours, so I picked up all the money. But if they have buried some of the gold, forgive us, Captain⁠—we are not peasants to plough the ground.

Laughter. Haggart also laughs.

“Let them sow, we shall reap.”

“Golden words, Noni. Eh, Tommy, listen to what the Captain is saying. And another thing: Whether you will be angry or not⁠—I have broken the music. I have scattered it in small pieces. Show your pipe, Tetyu! Do you see, Noni, I didn’t do it at once, no. I told him to play a jig, and he said that he couldn’t do it. Then he lost his mind and ran away. They all lost their minds there, Captain. Eh, Tommy, show your beard. An old woman tore half of his beard out, Captain⁠—now he is a disgrace to look upon. Eh, Tommy! He has hidden himself, he’s ashamed to show his face, Captain. And there’s another thing: The priest is coming here.”

Mariet exclaims:

“Father!”

Khorre, astonished, asks:

“Are you here? If she came to complain, I must report to you, Captain⁠—the priest almost killed one of our sailors. And she, too. I ordered the men to bind the priest⁠—”

“Silence.”

“I don’t understand your actions, Noni⁠—”

Haggart, restraining his rage, exclaims:

“I shall have you put in irons! Silence!”

With ever-growing rage:

“You dare talk back to me, riffraff! You⁠—”

Mariet cautions him:

“Gart! They have brought father here.”

Several sailors bring in the abbot, bound. His clothes are in disorder, his face is agitated and pale. He looks at Mariet with some amazement, and lowers his eyes. Then he heaves a sigh.

“Untie him!” says Mariet. Haggart corrects her restrainedly:

“Only I command here, Mariet. Khorre, untie him.”

Khorre unfastens the knots. Silence.

Abbot⁠—Hello, Haggart.

“Hello, abbot.”

“You have arranged a fine night, Haggart!”

Haggart speaks with restraint:

“It is unpleasant for me to see you. Why did you come here? Go home, priest, no one will touch you. Keep on fishing⁠—and what else were you doing? Oh, yes⁠—make your own prayers. We are going out to the ocean; your daughter, you know, is also going with me. Do you see the ship? That is mine. It’s a pity that you don’t know about ships⁠—you would have laughed for joy at the sight of such a beautiful ship! Why is he silent, Mariet? You had better tell him.”

Abbot⁠—Prayers? In what language? Have you, perhaps, discovered a new language in which prayers reach God? Oh, Haggart, Haggart!

He weeps, covering his face with his hands. Haggart, alarmed, asks:

“You are crying, abbot?”

“Look, Gart, he is crying. Father never cried. I am afraid, Gart.”

The abbot stops crying. Heaving a deep sigh, he says:

“I don’t know what they call you: Haggart or devil or something else⁠—I have come to you with a request. Do you hear, robber, with a request? Tell your crew not to gnash their teeth like that⁠—I don’t like it.”

Haggart replies morosely:

“Go home, priest! Mariet will stay with me.”

“Let her stay with you. I don’t need her, and if you need her, take her. Take her, Haggart. But⁠—”

He kneels before him. A murmur of astonishment. Mariet, frightened, advances a step to her father.

“Father! You are kneeling?”

Abbot⁠—Robber! Give us back the money. You will rob more for yourself, but give this money to us. You are young yet, you will rob some more yet⁠—

Haggart⁠—You are insane! There’s a man⁠—he will drive the devil himself to despair! Listen, priest, I am shouting to you: You have simply lost your mind!

The abbot, still kneeling, continues:

“Perhaps, I have⁠—by God, I don’t know. Robber, dearest, what is this to you? Give us this money. I feel sorry for them, for the scoundrels! They rejoiced so much, the scoundrels. They blossomed forth like an old blackthorn which has nothing but thorns and a ragged bark. They are sinners. But am I imploring God for their sake? I am imploring you. Robber, dearest⁠—”

Mariet looks now at Haggart, now at the priest. Haggart is hesitating. The abbot keeps muttering:

“Robber, do you want me to call you son? Well, then⁠—son⁠—it makes no difference now⁠—I will never see you again. It’s all the same! Like an old blackthorn, they bloomed⁠—oh, Lord, those scoundrels, those old scoundrels!”

“No,” Haggart replied sternly.

“Then you are the devil, that’s who you are. You are the devil,” mutters the abbot, rising heavily from the ground. Haggart shows his teeth, enraged.

“Do you wish to sell your soul to the devil? Yes? Eh, abbot⁠—don’t you know yet that the devil always pays with spurious money? Let me have a torch, sailor!”

He seizes a torch and lifts it high over his head⁠—he covers his terrible face with fire and smoke.

“Look, here I am! Do you see? Now ask me, if you dare!”

He flings the torch away. What does the abbot dream in this land full of monstrous dreams? Terrified, his heavy frame trembling, helplessly pushing the people aside with his hands, he retreats. He turns around. Now he sees the glitter of the metal, the dark and terrible faces; he hears the angry splashing of the waters⁠—and he covers his head with his hands and walks off quickly. Then Khorre jumps up and strikes him with a knife in his back.

“Why have you done it?”⁠—the abbot clutches the hand that struck him down.

“Just so⁠—for nothing!”

The abbot falls to the ground and dies.

“Why have you done it?” cries Mariet.

“Why have you done it?” roars Haggart.

And a strange voice, coming from some unknown depths, answers with Khorre’s lips:

“You commanded me to do it.”

Haggart looks around and sees the stern, dark faces, the quivering glitter of the metal, the motionless body; he hears the mysterious, merry dashing of the waves. And he clasps his head in a fit of terror.

“Who commanded? It was the roaring of the sea. I did not want to kill him⁠—no, no!”

Sombre voices answer:

“You commanded. We heard it. You commanded.”

Haggart listens, his head thrown back. Suddenly he bursts into loud laughter:

“Oh, devils, devils! Do you think that I have two ears in order that you may lie in each one? Go down on your knees, rascal!”

He hurls Khorre to the ground.

“String him up with a rope! I would have crushed your venomous head myself⁠—but let them do it. Oh, devils, devils! String him up with a rope.”

Khorre whines harshly:

“Me, Captain! I was your nurse, Noni.”

“Silence! Rascal!”

“I? Noni! Your nurse? You squealed like a little pig in the cook’s room. Have you forgotten it, Noni?” mutters the sailor plaintively.

“Eh,” shouts Haggart to the stern crowd. “Take him!”

Several men advance to him. Khorre rises.

“If you do it to me, to your own nurse⁠—then you have recovered, Noni! Eh, obey the captain! Take me! I’ll make you cry enough, Tommy! You are always the mischief-maker!”

Grim laughter. Several sailors surround Khorre as Haggart watches them sternly. A dissatisfied voice says:

“There is no place where to hang him here. There isn’t a single tree around.”

“Let us wait till we get aboard ship! Let him die honestly on the mast.”

“I know of a tree around here, but I won’t tell you,” roars Khorre hoarsely. “Look for it yourself! Well, you have astonished me, Noni. How you shouted, ‘String him up with a rope!’ Exactly like your father⁠—he almost hanged me, too. Goodbye, Noni, now I understand your actions. Eh, gin! and then⁠—on the rope!”

Khorre goes off. No one dares approach Haggart; still enraged, he paces back and forth with long strides. He pauses, glances at the body and paces again. Then he calls:

“Flerio! Did you hear me give orders to kill this man?”

“No, Captain.”

“You may go.”

He paces back and forth again, and then calls:

“Flerio! Have you ever heard the sea lying?”

“No.”

“If they can’t find a tree, order them to choke him with their hands.”

He paces back and forth again. Mariet is laughing quietly.

“Who is laughing?” asks Haggart in fury.

“I,” answers Mariet. “I am thinking of how they are hanging him and I am laughing. O, Haggart, O, my noble Haggart! Your wrath is the wrath of God, do you know it? No. You are strange, you are dear, you are terrible, Haggart, but I am not afraid of you. Give me your hand, Haggart, press it firmly, firmly. Here is a powerful hand!”

“Flerio, my friend, did you hear what he said? He says the sea never lies.”

“You are powerful and you are just⁠—I was insane when I feared your power, Gart. May I shout to the sea: ‘Haggart, the Just’?”

“That is not true. Be silent, Mariet, you are intoxicated with blood. I don’t know what justice is.”

“Who, then, knows it? You, you, Haggart! You are God’s justice, Haggart. Is it true that he was your nurse? Oh, I know what it means to be a nurse; a nurse feeds you, teaches you to walk⁠—you love a nurse as your mother. Isn’t that true, Gart⁠—you love a nurse as a mother? And yet⁠—‘string him up with a rope, Khorre’!”

She laughs quietly.

A loud, ringing laughter resounds from the side where Khorre was led away. Haggart stops, perplexed.

“What is it?”

“The devil is meeting his soul there,” says Mariet.

“No. Let go of my hand! Eh, who’s there?”

A crowd is coming. They are laughing and grinning, showing their teeth. But noticing the captain, they become serious. The people are repeating one and the same name:

“Khorre! Khorre! Khorre!”

And then Khorre himself appears, dishevelled, crushed, but happy⁠—the rope has broken. Knitting his brow, Haggart is waiting in silence.

“The rope broke, Noni,” mutters Khorre hoarsely, modestly, yet with dignity. “There are the ends! Eh, you there, keep quiet! There is nothing to laugh at⁠—they started to hang me, and the rope broke, Noni.”

Haggart looks at his old, drunken, frightened, and happy face, and he laughs like a madman. And the sailors respond with roaring laughter. The reflected lights are dancing more merrily upon the waves⁠—as if they are also laughing with the people.

“Just look at him, Mariet, what a face he has,” Haggart is almost choking with laughter. “Are you happy? Speak⁠—are you happy? Look, Mariet, what a happy face he has! The rope broke⁠—that’s very strong⁠—it is stronger even than what I said: ‘String him up with a rope.’ Who said it? Don’t you know, Khorre? You are out of your wits, and you don’t know anything⁠—well, never mind, you needn’t know. Eh, give him gin! I am glad, very glad that you are not altogether through with your gin. Drink, Khorre!”

Voices shout:

“Gin!”

“Eh, the boatswain wants a drink! Gin!”

Khorre drinks it with dignity, amid laughter and shouts of approval. Suddenly all the noise dies down and a sombre silence reigns⁠—a woman’s strange voice drowns the noise⁠—so strange and unfamiliar, as if it were not Mariet’s voice at all, but another voice speaking with her lips:

“Haggart! You have pardoned him, Haggart?”

Some of the people look at the body; those standing near it step aside. Haggart asks, surprised:

“Whose voice is that? Is that yours, Mariet? How strange! I did not recognise your voice.”

“You have pardoned him, Haggart?”

“You have heard⁠—the rope broke⁠—”

“Tell me, did you pardon the murderer? I want to hear your voice, Haggart.”

A threatening voice is heard from among the crowd:

“The rope broke. Who is talking there? The rope broke.”

“Silence!” exclaims Haggart, but there is no longer the same commanding tone in his voice. “Take them all away! Boatswain! Whistle for everybody to go aboard. The time is up! Flerio! Get the boats ready.”

“Yes, yes.”

Khorre whistles. The sailors disperse unwillingly, and the same threatening voice sounds somewhere from the darkness:

“I thought at first it was the dead man who started to speak. But I would have answered him too: ‘Lie there! The rope broke.’ ”

Another voice replies:

“Don’t grumble. Khorre has stronger defenders than you are.”

“What are you prating about, devils?” says Khorre. “Silence! Is that you, Tommy? I know you, you are always the mischief-maker⁠—”

“Come on, Mariet!” says Haggart. “Give me little Noni, I want to carry him to the boat myself. Come on, Mariet.”

“Where, Haggart?”

“Eh, Mariet! The dreams are ended. I don’t like your voice, woman⁠—when did you find time to change it? What a land of jugglers! I have never seen such a land before!”

“Eh, Haggart! The dreams are ended. I don’t like your voice, either⁠—little Haggart! But it may be that I am still sleeping⁠—then wake me. Haggart, swear that it was you who said it: ‘The rope broke.’ Swear that my eyes have not grown blind and that they see Khorre alive. Swear that this is your hand, Haggart!”

Silence. The voice of the sea is growing louder⁠—there is the splash and the call and the promise of a stern caress.

“I swear.”

Silence. Khorre and Flerio come up to Haggart.

“All’s ready, Captain,” says Flerio.

“They are waiting, Noni. Go quicker! They want to feast tonight, Noni! But I must tell you, Noni, that they⁠—”

Haggart⁠—Did you say something, Flerio? Yes, yes, everything is ready. I am coming. I think I am not quite through yet with land. This is such a remarkable land, Flerio; the dreams here drive their claws into a man like thorns, and they hold him. One has to tear his clothing, and perhaps his body as well. What did you say, Mariet?

Mariet⁠—Don’t you want to kiss little Noni? You shall never kiss him again.

“No, I don’t want to.”

Silence.

“You will go alone.”

“Yes, I will go alone.”

“Did you ever cry, Haggart?”

“No.”

“Who is crying now? I hear someone crying bitterly.”

“That is not true⁠—it is the roaring of the sea.”

“Oh, Haggart! Of what great sorrow does that voice speak?”

“Be silent, Mariet. It is the roaring of the sea.”

Silence.

“Is everything ended now, Haggart?”

“Everything is ended, Mariet.”

Mariet, imploring, says:

“Gart! Only one motion of the hand! Right here⁠—against the heart⁠—Gart!”

“No. Leave me alone.”

“Only one motion of the hand! Here is your knife. Have pity on me, kill me with your hand. Only one motion of your hand, Gart!”

“Let go. Give me my knife.”

“Gart, I bless you! One motion of your hand, Gart!”

Haggart tears himself away, pushing the woman aside:

“No! Don’t you know that it is just as hard to make one motion of the hand as it is for the sun to come down from the sky? Goodbye, Mariet!”

“You are going away?”

“Yes, I am going away. I am going away, Mariet. That’s how it sounds.”

“I shall curse you, Haggart. Do you know! I shall curse you, Haggart. And little Noni will curse you, Haggart⁠—Haggart!”

Haggart exclaims cheerfully and harshly:

“Eh, Khorre. You, Flerio, my old friend. Come here, give me your hand⁠—Oh, what a powerful hand it is! Why do you pull me by the sleeve, Khorre? You have such a funny face. I can almost see how the rope snapped, and you came down like a sack. Flerio, old friend, I feel like saying something funny, but I have forgotten how to say it. How do they say it? Remind me, Flerio. What do you want, sailor?”

Khorre whispers to him hoarsely:

“Noni, be on your guard. The rope broke because they used a rotten rope intentionally. They are betraying you! Be on your guard, Noni. Strike them on the head, Noni.”

Haggart bursts out laughing.

“Now you have said something funny. And I? Listen, Flerio, old friend. This woman who stands and looks⁠—No, that will not be funny!”

He advances a step.

“Khorre, do you remember how well this man prayed? Why was he killed? He prayed so well. But there is one prayer he did not know⁠—this one⁠—‘To you I bring my great eternal sorrow; I am going to you, Father Ocean!’ ”

And a distant voice, sad and grave, replies:

“Oh, Haggart, my dear Haggart.”

But who knows⁠—perhaps it was the roaring of the waves. Many sad and strange dreams come to man on earth.

“All aboard!” exclaims Haggart cheerily, and goes off without looking around. Below, a gay noise of voices and laughter resounds. The cobblestones are rattling under the firm footsteps⁠—Haggart is going away.

“Haggart!”

He goes, without turning around.

“Haggart!”

He has gone away.

Loud shouting is heard⁠—the sailors are greeting Haggart. They drink and go off into the darkness. On the shore, the torches which were cast aside are burning low, illumining the body, and a woman is rushing about. She runs swiftly from one spot to another, bending down over the steep rocks. Insane Dan comes crawling out.

“Is that you, Dan? Do you hear, they are singing, Dan? Haggart has gone away.”

“I was waiting for them to go. Here is another one. I am gathering the pipes of my organ. Here is another one.”

“Be accursed, Dan!”

“Oho? And you, too, Mariet, be accursed!”

Mariet clasps the child in her arms and lifts him high. Then she calls wildly:

“Haggart, turn around! Turn around, Haggart! Noni is calling you. He wants to curse you, Haggart. Turn around! Look, Noni, look⁠—that is your father. Remember him, Noni. And when you grow up, go out on every sea and find him, Noni. And when you find him⁠—hang your father high on a mast, my little one.”

The thundering salute drowns her cry. Haggart has boarded his ship. The night grows darker and the dashing of the waves fainter⁠—the ocean is moving away with the tide. The great desert of the sky is mute and the night grows darker and the dashing of the waves ever fainter.

I

His name was Yura.

He was six years old, and the world was to him enormous, alive and bewitchingly mysterious. He knew the sky quite well. He knew its deep azure by day, and the white-breasted, half silvery, half golden clouds slowly floating by. He often watched them as he lay on his back upon the grass or upon the roof. But he did not know the stars so well, for he went to bed early. He knew well and remembered only one star⁠—the green, bright and very attentive star that rises in the pale sky just before you go to bed, and that seemed to be the only star so large in the whole sky.

But best of all, he knew the earth in the yard, in the street and in the garden, with all its inexhaustible wealth of stones, of velvety grass, of hot sand and of that wonderfully varied, mysterious and delightful dust which grown people did not notice at all from the height of their enormous size. And in falling asleep, as the last bright image of the passing day, he took along to his dreams a bit of hot, rubbed off stone bathed in sunshine or a thick layer of tenderly tickling, burning dust.

When he went with his mother to the centre of the city along the large streets, he remembered best of all, upon his return, the wide, flat stones upon which his steps and his feet seemed terribly small, like two little boats. And even the multitude of revolving wheels and horses’ heads did not impress themselves so clearly upon his memory as this new and unusually interesting appearance of the ground.

Everything was enormous to him⁠—the fences, the dogs and the people⁠—but that did not at all surprise or frighten him; that only made everything particularly interesting; that transformed life into an uninterrupted miracle. According to his measures, various objects seemed to him as follows:

His father⁠—ten yards tall.

His mother⁠—three yards.

The neighbour’s angry dog⁠—thirty yards.

Their own dog⁠—ten yards, like papa.

Their house of one story was very, very tall⁠—a mile.

The distance between one side of the street and the other⁠—two miles.

Their garden and the trees in their garden seemed immense, infinitely tall.

The city⁠—a million⁠—just how much he did not know.

And everything else appeared to him in the same way. He knew many people, large and small, but he knew and appreciated better the little ones with whom he could speak of everything. The grown people behaved so foolishly and asked such absurd, dull questions about things that everybody knew, that it was necessary for him also to make believe that he was foolish. He had to lisp and give nonsensical answers; and, of course, he felt like running away from them as soon as possible. But there were over him and around him and within him two entirely extraordinary persons, at once big and small, wise and foolish, at once his own and strangers⁠—his father and mother.

They must have been very good people, otherwise they could not have been his father and mother; at any rate, they were charming and unlike other people. He could say with certainty that his father was very great, terribly wise, that he possessed immense power, which made him a person to be feared somewhat, and it was interesting to talk with him about unusual things, placing his hand in father’s large, strong, warm hand for safety’s sake.

Mamma was not so large, and sometimes she was even very small; she was very kind hearted, she kissed tenderly; she understood very well how he felt when he had a pain in his little stomach, and only with her could he relieve his heart when he grew tired of life, of his games or when he was the victim of some cruel injustice. And if it was unpleasant to cry in father’s presence, and even dangerous to be capricious, his tears had an unusually pleasant taste in mother’s presence and filled his soul with a peculiar serene sadness, which he could find neither in his games nor in laughter, nor even in the reading of the most terrible fairy tales.

It should be added that mamma was a beautiful woman and that everybody was in love with her. That was good, for he felt proud of it, but that was also bad⁠—for he feared that she might be taken away. And every time one of the men, one of those enormous, invariably inimical men who were busy with themselves, looked at mamma fixedly for a long time, Yura felt bored and uneasy. He felt like stationing himself between him and mamma, and no matter where he went to attend to his own affairs, something was drawing him back.

Sometimes mamma would utter a bad, terrifying phrase:

“Why are you forever staying around here? Go and play in your own room.”

There was nothing left for him to do but to go away. He would take a book along or he would sit down to draw, but that did not always help him. Sometimes mamma would praise him for reading but sometimes she would say again:

“You had better go to your own room, Yurochka. You see, you’ve spilt water on the tablecloth again; you always do some mischief with your drawing.”

And then she would reproach him for being perverse. But he felt worst of all when a dangerous and suspicious guest would come when Yura had to go to bed. But when he lay down in his bed a sense of easiness came over him and he felt as though all was ended; the lights went out, life stopped; everything slept.

In all such cases with suspicious men Yura felt vaguely but very strongly that he was replacing father in some way. And that made him somewhat like a grown man⁠—he was in a bad frame of mind, like a grown person, but, therefore, he was unusually calculating, wise and serious. Of course, he said nothing about this to anyone, for no one would understand him; but, by the manner in which he caressed father when he arrived and sat down on his knees patronisingly, one could see in the boy a man who fulfilled his duty to the end. At times father could not understand him and would simply send him away to play or to sleep⁠—Yura never felt offended and went away with a feeling of great satisfaction. He did not feel the need of being understood; he even feared it. At times he would not tell under any circumstances why he was crying; at times he would make believe that he was absent minded, that he heard nothing, that he was occupied with his own affairs, but he heard and understood.

And he had a terrible secret. He had noticed that these extraordinary and charming people, father and mother, were sometimes unhappy and were hiding this from everybody. Therefore he was also concealing his discovery, and gave everybody the impression that all was well. Many times he found mamma crying somewhere in a corner in the drawing room, or in the bedroom⁠—his own room was next to her bedroom⁠—and one night, very late, almost at dawn, he heard the terribly loud and angry voice of father and the weeping voice of mother. He lay a long time, holding his breath, but then he was so terrified by that unusual conversation in the middle of the night that he could not restrain himself and he asked his nurse in a soft voice:

“What are they saying?”

And the nurse answered quickly in a whisper:

“Sleep, sleep. They are not saying anything.”

“I am coming over to your bed.”

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Such a big boy!”

“I am coming over to your bed.”

Thus, terribly afraid lest they should be heard, they spoke in whispers and argued in the dark; and the end was that Yura moved over to nurse’s bed, upon her rough, but cosy and warm blanket.

In the morning papa and mamma were very cheerful and Yura pretended that he believed them and it seemed that he really did believe them. But that same evening, and perhaps it was another evening, he noticed his father crying. It happened in the following way: He was passing his father’s study, and the door was half open; he heard a noise and he looked in quietly⁠—father lay face downward upon his couch and cried aloud. There was no one else in the room. Yura went away, turned about in his room and came back⁠—the door was still half open, no one but father was in the room, and he was still sobbing. If he cried quietly, Yura could understand it, but he sobbed loudly, he moaned in a heavy voice and his teeth were gnashing terribly. He lay there, covering the entire couch, hiding his head under his broad shoulders, sniffing heavily⁠—and that was beyond his understanding. And on the table, on the large table covered with pencils, papers and a wealth of other things, stood the lamp burning with a red flame, and smoking⁠—a flat, greyish black strip of smoke was coming out and bending in all directions.

Suddenly father heaved a loud sigh and stirred. Yura walked away quietly. And then all was the same as ever. No one would have learned of this; but the image of the enormous, mysterious and charming man who was his father and who was crying remained in Yura’s memory as something dreadful and extremely serious. And, if there were things of which he did not feel like speaking, it was absolutely necessary to say nothing of this, as though it were something sacred and terrible, and in that silence he must love father all the more. But he must love so that father should not notice it, and he must give the impression that it is very jolly to live on earth.

And Yura succeeded in accomplishing all this. Father did not notice that he loved him in a special manner; and it was really jolly to live on earth, so there was no need for him to make believe. The threads of his soul stretched themselves to all⁠—to the sun, to the knife and the cane he was peeling; to the beautiful and enigmatic distance which he saw from the top of the iron roof; and it was hard for him to separate himself from all that was not himself. When the grass had a strong and fragrant odour it seemed to him that it was he who had such a fragrant odour, and when he lay down in his bed, however strange it may seem, together with him in his little bed lay down the enormous yard, the street, the slant threads of the rain and the muddy pools and the whole, enormous, live, fascinating, mysterious world. Thus all fell asleep with him and thus all awakened with him, and together with him they all opened their eyes. And there was one striking fact, worthy of the profoundest reflection⁠—if he placed a stick somewhere in the garden in the evening it was there also in the morning; and the knuckle-bones which he hid in a box in the barn remained there, although it was dark and he went to his room for the night. Because of this he felt a natural need for hiding under his pillow all that was most valuable to him. Since things stood or lay there alone, they might also disappear of their accord, he reasoned. And in general it was so wonderful and pleasant that the nurse and the house and the sun existed not only yesterday, but every day; he felt like laughing and singing aloud when he awoke.

When people asked him what his name was he answered promptly:

“Yura.”

But some people were not satisfied with this alone, and they wanted to know his full name⁠—and then he replied with a certain effort:

“Yura Mikhailovich.”

And after a moment’s thought he added:

“Yura Mikhailovich Pushkarev.”

II

An unusual day arrived. It was mother’s birthday. Guests were expected in the evening; military music was to play, and in the garden and upon the terrace parti-coloured lanterns were to burn, and Yura need not go to bed at 9 o’clock but could stay up as late as he liked.

Yura got up when all were still sleeping. He dressed himself and jumped out quickly with the expectation of miracles. But he was unpleasantly surprised⁠—the rooms were in the same disorder as usual in the morning; the cook and the chambermaid were still sleeping and the door was closed with a hook⁠—it was hard to believe that the people would stir and commence to run about, and that the rooms would assume a holiday appearance, and he feared for the fate of the festival. It was still worse in the garden. The paths were not swept and there was not a single lantern there. He grew very uneasy. Fortunately, Yevmen, the coachman, was washing the carriage behind the barn in the back yard and though he had done this frequently before, and though there was nothing unusual about his appearance, Yura clearly felt something of the holiday in the decisive way in which the coachman splashed the water from the bucket with his sinewy arms, on which the sleeves of his red blouse were rolled up to his elbows. Yevmen only glanced askance at Yura, and suddenly Yura seemed to have noticed for the first time his broad, black, wavy beard and thought respectfully that Yevmen was a very worthy man. He said:

“Good morning, Yevmen.”

Then all moved very rapidly. Suddenly the janitor appeared and started to sweep the paths, suddenly the window in the kitchen was thrown open and women’s voices were heard chattering; suddenly the chambermaid rushed out with a little rug and started to beat it with a stick, as though it were a dog. All commenced to stir; and the events, starting simultaneously in different places, rushed with such mad swiftness that it was impossible to catch up with them. While the nurse was giving Yura his tea, people were beginning to hang up the wires for the lanterns in the garden, and while the wires were being stretched in the garden, the furniture was rearranged completely in the drawing room, and while the furniture was rearranged in the drawing room, Yevmen, the coachman, harnessed the horse and drove out of the yard with a certain special, mysterious mission.

Yura succeeded in concentrating himself for some time with the greatest difficulty. Together with father he was hanging up the lanterns. And father was charming; he laughed, jested, put Yura on the ladder; he himself climbed the thin, creaking rungs of the ladder, and finally both fell down together with the ladder upon the grass, but they were not hurt. Yura jumped up, while father remained lying on the grass, hands thrown back under his head, looking with half-closed eyes at the shining, infinite azure of the sky. Thus lying on the grass, with a serious expression on his face, apparently not in the mood for play, father looked very much like Gulliver longing for his land of giants. Yura recalled something unpleasant; but to cheer his father up he sat down astride upon his knees and said:

“Do you remember, father, when I was a little boy I used to sit down on your knees and you used to shake me like a horse?”

But before he had time to finish he lay with his nose on the grass; he was lifted in the air and thrown down with force⁠—father had thrown him high up with his knees, according to his old habit. Yura felt offended; but father, entirely ignoring his anger, began to tickle him under his armpits, so that Yura had to laugh against his will; and then father picked him up like a little pig by the legs and carried him to the terrace. And mamma was frightened.

“What are you doing? The blood will rush to his head!”

After which Yura found himself standing on his legs, red faced, dishevelled, feeling very miserable and terribly happy at the same time.

The day was rushing fast, like a cat that is chased by a dog. Like forerunners of the coming great festival, certain messengers appeared with notes, wonderfully tasty cakes were brought, the dressmaker came and locked herself in with mamma in the bedroom; then two gentlemen arrived, then another gentleman, then a lady⁠—evidently the entire city was in a state of agitation. Yura examined the messengers as though they were strange people from another world, and walked before them with an air of importance as the son of the lady whose birthday was to be celebrated; he met the gentlemen, he escorted the cakes, and toward midday he was so exhausted that he suddenly started to despise life. He quarrelled with the nurse and lay down in his bed face downward in order to have his revenge on her; but he fell asleep immediately. He awoke with the same feeling of hatred for life and a desire for revenge, but after having looked at things with his eyes, which he washed with cold water, he felt that both the world and life were so fascinating that they were even funny.

When they dressed Yura in a red silk rustling blouse, and he thus clearly became part of the festival, and he found on the terrace a long, snow white table glittering with glass dishes, he again commenced to spin about in the whirlpool of the onrushing events.

“The musicians have arrived! The musicians have arrived!” he cried, looking for father or mother, or for anyone who would treat the arrival of the musicians with proper seriousness. Father and mother were sitting in the garden⁠—in the arbour which was thickly surrounded with wild grapes⁠—maintaining silence; the beautiful head of mother lay on father’s shoulder; although father embraced her, he seemed very serious, and he showed no enthusiasm when he was told of the arrival of the musicians. Both treated their arrival with inexplicable indifference, which called forth a feeling of sadness in Yura. But mamma stirred and said:

“Let me go. I must go.”

“Remember,” said father, referring to something Yura did not understand but which resounded in his heart with a light, gnawing alarm.

“Stop. Aren’t you ashamed?” mother laughed, and this laughter made Yura feel still more alarmed, especially since father did not laugh but maintained the same serious and mournful appearance of Gulliver pining for his native land.⁠ ⁠…

But soon all this was forgotten, for the wonderful festival had begun in all its glory, mystery and grandeur. The guests came fast, and there was no longer any place at the white table, which had been deserted but a while before. Voices resounded, and laughter and merry jests, and the music began to play. And on the deserted paths of the garden where but a while ago Yura had wandered alone, imagining himself a prince in quest of the sleeping princess, now appeared people with cigarettes and with loud free speech. Yura met the first guests at the front entrance; he looked at each one carefully, and he made the acquaintance and even the friendship of some of them on the way from the corridor to the table.

Thus he managed to become friendly with the officer, whose name was Mitenka⁠—a grown man whose name was Mitenka⁠—he said so himself. Mitenka had a heavy leather sword, which was as cold as a snake, which could not be taken out⁠—but Mitenka lied; the sword was only fastened at the handle with a silver cord, but it could be taken out very nicely; and Yura felt vexed because the stupid Mitenka instead of carrying his sword, as he always did, placed it in a corner in the hallway as a cane. But even in the corner the sword stood out alone⁠—one could see at once that it was a sword. Another thing that displeased Yura was that another officer came with Mitenka, an officer whom Yura knew and whose name was also Yura Mikhailovich. Yura thought that the officer must have been named so for fun. That wrong Yura Mikhailovich had visited them several times; he even came once on horseback; but most of the time he came just before little Yura had to go to bed. And little Yura went to bed, while the unreal Yura Mikhailovich remained with mamma, and that caused him to feel alarmed and sad; he was afraid that mamma might be deceived. He paid no attention to the real Yura Mikhailovich: and now, walking beside Mitenka, he did not seem to realise his guilt; he adjusted his moustaches and maintained silence. He kissed mamma’s hand, and that seemed repulsive to little Yura; but the stupid Mitenka also kissed mamma’s hand, and thereby set everything aright.

But soon the guests arrived in such numbers, and there was such a variety of them, as if they had fallen straight from the sky. And some of them seemed to have fallen near the table, while others seemed to have fallen into the garden. Suddenly several students and ladies appeared in the path. The ladies were ordinary, but the students had holes cut at the left side of their white coats⁠—for their swords. But they did not bring their swords along, no doubt because of their pride⁠—they were all very proud. And the ladies rushed over to Yura and began to kiss him. Then the most beautiful of the ladies, whose name was Ninochka, took Yura to the swing and swung him until she threw him down. He hurt his left leg near the knee very painfully and even stained his little white pants in that spot, but of course he did not cry, and somehow his pain had quickly disappeared somewhere. At this time father was leading an important-looking bald-headed old man in the garden, and he asked Yurochka,

“Did you get hurt?”

But as the old man also smiled and also spoke, Yurochka did not kiss father and did not even answer him; but suddenly he seemed to have lost his mind⁠—he commenced to squeal for joy and to run around. If he had a bell as large as the whole city he would have rung that bell; but as he had no such bell he climbed the linden tree, which stood near the terrace, and began to show off. The guests below were laughing and mamma was shouting, and suddenly the music began to play, and Yura soon stood in front of the orchestra, spreading his legs apart and, according to his old but long forgotten habit, put his finger into his mouth. The sounds seemed to strike at him all at once; they roared and thundered; they made his legs tingle, and they shook his jaw. They played so loudly that there was nothing but the orchestra on the whole earth⁠—everything else had vanished. The brass ends of some of the trumpets even spread apart and opened wide from the great roaring; Yura thought that it would be interesting to make a military helmet out of such a trumpet.

Suddenly Yura grew sad. The music was still roaring, but now it was somewhere far away, while within him all became quiet, and it was growing ever more and more quiet. Heaving a deep sigh, Yura looked at the sky⁠—it was so high⁠—and with slow footsteps he started out to make the rounds of the holiday, of all its confused boundaries, possibilities and distances. And everywhere he turned out to be too late; he wanted to see how the tables for card playing would be arranged, but the tables were ready and people had been playing cards for a long time when he came up. He touched the chalk and the brush near his father and his father immediately chased him away. What of that, what difference did that make to him? He wanted to see how they would start to dance and he was sure that they would dance in the parlour, but they had already commenced to dance, not in the parlour, but under the linden trees. He wanted to see how they would light the lanterns, but the lanterns had all been lit already, every one of them, to the very last of the last. They lit up of themselves like stars.

Mamma danced best of all.

III

Night arrived in the form of red, green and yellow lanterns. While there were no lanterns, there was no night. And now it lay everywhere. It crawled into the bushes; it covered the entire garden with darkness, as with water, and it covered the sky. Everything looked as beautiful as the very best fairy tale with coloured pictures. At one place the house had disappeared entirely; only the square window made of red light remained. And the chimney of the house was visible and there a certain spark glistened, looked down and seemed to think of its own affairs. What affairs do chimneys have? Various affairs.

Of the people in the garden only their voices remained. As long as someone walked near the lanterns he could be seen; but as soon as he walked away all seemed to melt, melt, melt, and the voice above the ground laughed, talked, floating fearlessly in the darkness. But the officers and the students could be seen even in the dark⁠—a white spot, and above it a small light of a cigarette and a big voice.

And now the most joyous thing commenced for Yura⁠—the fairy tale. The people and the festival and the lanterns remained on earth, while he soared away, transformed into air, melting in the night like a grain of dust. The great mystery of the night became his mystery, and his little heart yearned for still more mystery; in its solitude his heart yearned for the fusion of life and death. That was Yura’s second madness that evening⁠—he became invisible. Although he could enter the kitchen as others did, he climbed with difficulty upon the roof of the cellar over which the kitchen window was flooded with light and he looked in; there people were roasting something, busying themselves, and did not know that he was looking at them⁠—and yet he saw everything! Then he went away and looked at papa’s and mamma’s bedroom; the room was empty; but the beds had already been made for the night and a little image lamp was burning⁠—he saw that. Then he looked into his own room; his own bed was also ready, waiting for him. He passed the room where they were playing cards, also as an invisible being, holding his breath and stepping so lightly, as though he were soaring in the air. Only when he reached the garden, in the dark, he drew a proper breath. Then he resumed his quest. He came over to people who were talking so near him that he could touch them with his hand, and yet they did not know that he was there, and they continued to speak undisturbed. He watched Ninochka for a long time until he learned all her life⁠—he was almost trapped. Ninochka even exclaimed:

“Yurochka, is that you?”

He lay down behind a bush and held his breath. Thus Ninochka was deceived. And she had almost caught him! To make things more mysterious, he started to crawl instead of walk⁠—now the alleys seemed full of danger. Thus a long time went by⁠—according to his own calculations at the time, ten years went by, and he was still hiding and going ever farther away from the people. And thus he went so far that he was seized with dread⁠—between him and the past, when he was walking like everybody else, an abyss was formed over which it seemed to him impossible to cross. Now he would have come out into the light but he was afraid⁠—it was impossible; all was lost. And the music was still playing, and everybody had forgotten him, even mamma. He was alone. There was a breath of cold from the dewy grass; the gooseberry bush scratched him, the darkness could not be pierced with his eyes, and there was no end to it. O Lord!

Without any definite plan, in a state of utter despair, Yura now crawled toward a mysterious, faintly blinking light. Fortunately it turned out to be the same arbour which was covered with wild grapes and in which father and mother had sat that day. He did not recognise it at first! Yes, it was the same arbour. The lights of the lanterns everywhere had gone out, and only two were still burning; a yellow little lantern was still burning brightly, and the other, a yellow one, too, was already beginning to blink. And though there was no wind, that lantern quivered from its own blinking, and everything seemed to quiver slightly. Yura was about to get up to go into the arbour and there begin life anew, with an imperceptible transition from the old, when suddenly he heard voices in the arbour. His mother and the wrong Yura Mikhailovich, the officer, were talking. The right Yura grew petrified in his place; his heart stood still; and his breathing ceased.

Mamma said:

“Stop. You have lost your mind! Somebody may come in here.”

Yura Mikhailovich said:

“And you?”

Mamma said:

“I am twenty-six years old today. I am old!”

Yura Mikhailovich said:

“He does not know anything. Is it possible that he does not know anything? He does not even suspect? Listen, does he shake everybody’s hand so firmly?”

Mamma said:

“What a question! Of course he does! That is⁠—no, not everybody.”

Yura Mikhailovich said:

“I feel sorry for him.”

Mamma said:

“For him?”

And she laughed strangely. Yurochka understood that they were talking of him, of Yurochka⁠—but what did it all mean, O Lord? And why did she laugh?

Yura Mikhailovich said:

“Where are you going? I will not let you go.”

Mamma said:

“You offend me. Let me go! No, you have no right to kiss me. Let me go!”

They became silent. Now Yurochka looked through the leaves and saw that the officer embraced and kissed mamma. Then they spoke of something, but he understood nothing; he heard nothing; he suddenly forgot the meaning of words. And he even forgot the words which he knew and used before. He remembered but one word, “Mamma,” and he whispered it uninterruptedly with his dry lips, but that word sounded so terrible, more terrible than anything. And in order not to exclaim it against his will, Yura covered his mouth with both hands, one upon the other, and thus remained until the officer and mamma went out of the arbour.

When Yura came into the room where the people were playing cards, the serious, bald-headed man was scolding papa for something, brandishing the chalk, talking, shouting, saying that father did not act as he should have acted, that what he had done was impossible, that only bad people did such things, that the old man would never again play with father, and so on. And father was smiling, waving his hands, attempting to say something, but the old man would not let him, and he commenced to shout more loudly. And the old man was a little fellow, while father was big, handsome and tall, and his smile was sad, like that of Gulliver pining for his native land of tall and handsome people.

Of course, he must conceal from him⁠—of course, he must conceal from him that which happened in the arbour, and he must love him, and he felt that he loved him so much. And with a wild cry Yura rushed over to the bald-headed old man and began to beat him with his fists with all his strength.

“Don’t you dare insult him! Don’t you dare insult him!”

O Lord, what has happened! Someone laughed; someone shouted. Father caught Yura in his arms, pressed him closely, causing him pain, and cried:

“Where is mother? Call mother.”

Then Yura was seized with a whirlwind of frantic tears, of desperate sobs and mortal anguish. But through his frantic tears he looked at his father to see whether he had guessed it, and when mother came in he started to shout louder in order to divert any suspicion. But he did not go to her arms; he clung more closely to father, so that father had to carry him into his room. But it seemed that he himself did not want to part with Yura. As soon as he carried him out of the room where the guests were he began to kiss him, and he repeated:

“Oh, my dearest! Oh, my dearest!”

And he said to mamma, who walked behind him:

“Just think of the boy!”

Mamma said:

“That is all due to your whist. You were scolding each other so, that the child was frightened.”

Father began to laugh, and answered:

“Yes, he does scold harshly. But Yura, oh, what a dear boy!”

In his room Yura demanded that father himself undress him. “Now, you are getting cranky,” said father. “I don’t know how to do it; let mamma undress you.”

“But you stay here.”

Mamma had deft fingers and she undressed him quickly, and while she was removing his clothes Yura held father by the hand. He ordered the nurse out of the room; but as father was beginning to grow angry, and he might guess what had happened in the arbour, decided to let him go. But while kissing him he said cunningly:

“He will not scold you any more, will he?”

Papa smiled. Then he laughed, kissed Yura once more and said:

“No, no. And if he does I will throw him across the fence.”

“Please, do,” said Yura. “You can do it. You are so strong.”

“Yes, I am pretty strong. But you had better sleep! Mamma will stay here with you a while.”

Mamma said:

“I will send the nurse in. I must attend to the supper.”

Father shouted:

“There is plenty of time for that! You can stay a while with the child.”

But mamma insisted:

“We have guests! We can’t leave them that way.”