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The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories

by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov · English · Gutenberg #13409 · 390,749 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories

Author: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Translator: Constance Garnett


        
Release date: September 9, 2004 [eBook #13409]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HORSE-STEALERS AND OTHER STORIES ***

THE TALES OF CHEKHOV

VOLUME 10

THE HORSE STEALERS AND OTHER STORIES

BY

ANTON TCHEKHOV

Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT




CONTENTS


THE HORSE-STEALERS
WARD NO. 6
THE PETCHENYEG
A DEAD BODY
A HAPPY ENDING
THE LOOKING-GLASS
OLD AGE
DARKNESS
THE BEGGAR
A STORY WITHOUT A TITLE
IN TROUBLE
FROST
A SLANDER
MINDS IN FERMENT
GONE ASTRAY
AN AVENGER
THE JEUNE PREMIER
A DEFENCELESS CREATURE
AN ENIGMATIC NATURE
A HAPPY MAN
A TROUBLESOME VISITOR
AN ACTOR'S END




THE HORSE-STEALERS

A HOSPITAL assistant, called Yergunov, an empty-headed fellow, known
throughout the district as a great braggart and drunkard, was
returning one evening in Christmas week from the hamlet of Ryepino,
where he had been to make some purchases for the hospital. That he
might get home in good time and not be late, the doctor had lent
him his very best horse.

At first it had been a still day, but at eight o'clock a violent
snow-storm came on, and when he was only about four miles from home
Yergunov completely lost his way.

He did not know how to drive, he did not know the road, and he drove
on at random, hoping that the horse would find the way of itself.
Two hours passed; the horse was exhausted, he himself was chilled,
and already began to fancy that he was not going home, but back
towards Ryepino. But at last above the uproar of the storm he heard
the far-away barking of a dog, and a murky red blur came into sight
ahead of him: little by little, the outlines of a high gate could
be discerned, then a long fence on which there were nails with their
points uppermost, and beyond the fence there stood the slanting
crane of a well. The wind drove away the mist of snow from before
the eyes, and where there had been a red blur, there sprang up a
small, squat little house with a steep thatched roof. Of the three
little windows one, covered on the inside with something red, was
lighted up.

What sort of place was it? Yergunov remembered that to the right
of the road, three and a half or four miles from the hospital, there
was Andrey Tchirikov's tavern. He remembered, too, that this
Tchirikov, who had been lately killed by some sledge-drivers, had
left a wife and a daughter called Lyubka, who had come to the
hospital two years before as a patient. The inn had a bad reputation,
and to visit it late in the evening, and especially with someone
else's horse, was not free from risk. But there was no help for it.
Yergunov fumbled in his knapsack for his revolver, and, coughing
sternly, tapped at the window-frame with his whip.

"Hey! who is within?" he cried. "Hey, granny! let me come in and
get warm!"

With a hoarse bark a black dog rolled like a ball under the horse's
feet, then another white one, then another black one--there must
have been a dozen of them. Yergunov looked to see which was the
biggest, swung his whip and lashed at it with all his might. A
small, long-legged puppy turned its sharp muzzle upwards and set
up a shrill, piercing howl.

Yergunov stood for a long while at the window, tapping. But at last
the hoar-frost on the trees near the house glowed red, and a muffled
female figure appeared with a lantern in her hands.

"Let me in to get warm, granny," said Yergunov. "I was driving to
the hospital, and I have lost my way. It's such weather, God preserve
us. Don't be afraid; we are your own people, granny."

"All my own people are at home, and we didn't invite strangers,"
said the figure grimly. "And what are you knocking for? The gate
is not locked."

Yergunov drove into the yard and stopped at the steps.

"Bid your labourer take my horse out, granny," said he.

"I am not granny."

And indeed she was not a granny. While she was putting out the
lantern the light fell on her face, and Yergunov saw black eyebrows,
and recognized Lyubka.

"There are no labourers about now," she said as she went into the
house. "Some are drunk and asleep, and some have been gone to Ryepino
since the morning. It's a holiday. . . ."

As he fastened his horse up in the shed, Yergunov heard a neigh,
and distinguished in the darkness another horse, and felt on it a
Cossack saddle. So there must be someone else in the house besides
the woman and her daughter. For greater security Yergunov unsaddled
his horse, and when he went into the house, took with him both his
purchases and his saddle.

The first room into which he went was large and very hot, and smelt
of freshly washed floors. A short, lean peasant of about forty,
with a small, fair beard, wearing a dark blue shirt, was sitting
at the table under the holy images. It was Kalashnikov, an arrant
scoundrel and horse-stealer, whose father and uncle kept a tavern
in Bogalyovka, and disposed of the stolen horses where they could.
He too had been to the hospital more than once, not for medical
treatment, but to see the doctor about horses--to ask whether he
had not one for sale, and whether his honour would not like to swop
his bay mare for a dun-coloured gelding. Now his head was pomaded
and a silver ear-ring glittered in his ear, and altogether he had
a holiday air. Frowning and dropping his lower lip, he was looking
intently at a big dog's-eared picture-book. Another peasant lay
stretched on the floor near the stove; his head, his shoulders, and
his chest were covered with a sheepskin--he was probably asleep;
beside his new boots, with shining bits of metal on the heels, there
were two dark pools of melted snow.

Seeing the hospital assistant, Kalashnikov greeted him.

"Yes, it is weather," said Yergunov, rubbing his chilled knees with
his open hands. "The snow is up to one's neck; I am soaked to the
skin, I can tell you. And I believe my revolver is, too. . . ."

He took out his revolver, looked it all over, and put it back in
his knapsack. But the revolver made no impression at all; the peasant
went on looking at the book.

"Yes, it is weather. . . . I lost my way, and if it had not been
for the dogs here, I do believe it would have been my death. There
would have been a nice to-do. And where are the women?"

"The old woman has gone to Ryepino, and the girl is getting supper
ready . . ." answered Kalashnikov.

Silence followed. Yergunov, shivering and gasping, breathed on his
hands, huddled up, and made a show of being very cold and exhausted.
The still angry dogs could be heard howling outside. It was dreary.

"You come from Bogalyovka, don't you?" he asked the peasant sternly.

"Yes, from Bogalyovka."

And to while away the time Yergunov began to think about Bogalyovka.
It was a big village and it lay in a deep ravine, so that when one
drove along the highroad on a moonlight night, and looked down into
the dark ravine and then up at the sky, it seemed as though the
moon were hanging over a bottomless abyss and it were the end of
the world. The path going down was steep, winding, and so narrow
that when one drove down to Bogalyovka on account of some epidemic
or to vaccinate the people, one had to shout at the top of one's
voice, or whistle all the way, for if one met a cart coming up one
could not pass. The peasants of Bogalyovka had the reputation of
being good gardeners and horse-stealers. They had well-stocked
gardens. In spring the whole village was buried in white cherry-blossom,
and in the summer they sold cherries at three kopecks a pail. One
could pay three kopecks and pick as one liked. Their women were
handsome and looked well fed, they were fond of finery, and never
did anything even on working-days, but spent all their time sitting
on the ledge in front of their houses and searching in each other's
heads.

But at last there was the sound of footsteps. Lyubka, a girl of
twenty, with bare feet and a red dress, came into the room. . . .
She looked sideways at Yergunov and walked twice from one end of
the room to the other. She did not move simply, but with tiny steps,
thrusting forward her bosom; evidently she enjoyed padding about
with her bare feet on the freshly washed floor, and had taken off
her shoes on purpose.

Kalashnikov laughed at something and beckoned her with his finger.
She went up to the table, and he showed her a picture of the Prophet
Elijah, who, driving three horses abreast, was dashing up to the
sky. Lyubka put her elbow on the table; her plait fell across her
shoulder--a long chestnut plait tied with red ribbon at the
end--and it almost touched the floor. She, too, smiled.

"A splendid, wonderful picture," said Kalashnikov. "Wonderful," he
repeated, and motioned with his hand as though he wanted to take
the reins instead of Elijah.

The wind howled in the stove; something growled and squeaked as
though a big dog had strangled a rat.

"Ugh! the unclean spirits are abroad!" said Lyubka.

"That's the wind," said Kalashnikov; and after a pause he raised
his eyes to Yergunov and asked:

"And what is your learned opinion, Osip Vassilyitch--are there
devils in this world or not?"

"What's one to say, brother?" said Yergunov, and he shrugged one
shoulder. "If one reasons from science, of course there are no
devils, for it's a superstition; but if one looks at it simply, as
you and I do now, there are devils, to put it shortly. . . . I have
seen a great deal in my life. . . . When I finished my studies I
served as medical assistant in the army in a regiment of the dragoons,
and I have been in the war, of course. I have a medal and a decoration
from the Red Cross, but after the treaty of San Stefano I returned
to Russia and went into the service of the Zemstvo. And in consequence
of my enormous circulation about the world, I may say I have seen
more than many another has dreamed of. It has happened to me to see
devils, too; that is, not devils with horns and a tail--that is
all nonsense--but just, to speak precisely, something of the
sort."

"Where?" asked Kalashnikov.

"In various places. There is no need to go far. Last year I met him
here--speak of him not at night--near this very inn. I was
driving, I remember, to Golyshino; I was going there to vaccinate.
Of course, as usual, I had the racing droshky and a horse, and all
the necessary paraphernalia, and, what's more, I had a watch and
all the rest of it, so I was on my guard as I drove along, for fear
of some mischance. There are lots of tramps of all sorts. I came
up to the Zmeinoy Ravine--damnation take it--and was just going
down it, when all at once somebody comes up to me--such a fellow!
Black hair, black eyes, and his whole face looked smutted with soot
. . . . He comes straight up to the horse and takes hold of the left
rein: 'Stop!' He looked at the horse, then at me, then dropped the
reins, and without saying a bad word, 'Where are you going?' says
he. And he showed his teeth in a grin, and his eyes were spiteful-looking.

"'Ah,' thought I, 'you are a queer customer!' 'I am going to
vaccinate for the smallpox,' said I. 'And what is that to you?'
'Well, if that's so,' says he, 'vaccinate me. He bared his arm and
thrust it under my nose. Of course, I did not bandy words with him;
I just vaccinated him to get rid of him. Afterwards I looked at my
lancet and it had gone rusty."

The peasant who was asleep near the stove suddenly turned over and
flung off the sheepskin; to his great surprise, Yergunov recognized
the stranger he had met that day at Zmeinoy Ravine. This peasant's
hair, beard, and eyes were black as soot; his face was swarthy;
and, to add to the effect, there was a black spot the size of a
lentil on his right cheek. He looked mockingly at the hospital
assistant and said:

"I did take hold of the left rein--that was so; but about the
smallpox you are lying, sir. And there was not a word said about
the smallpox between us."

Yergunov was disconcerted.

"I'm not talking about you," he said. "Lie down, since you are lying
down."

The dark-skinned peasant had never been to the hospital, and Yergunov
did not know who he was or where he came from; and now, looking at
him, he made up his mind that the man must be a gypsy. The peasant
got up and, stretching and yawning loudly, went up to Lyubka and
Kalashnikov, and sat down beside them, and he, too, began looking
at the book. His sleepy face softened and a look of envy came into
it.

"Look, Merik," Lyubka said to him; "get me such horses and I will
drive to heaven."

"Sinners can't drive to heaven," said Kalashnikov. "That's for
holiness."

Then Lyubka laid the table and brought in a big piece of fat bacon,
salted cucumbers, a wooden platter of boiled meat cut up into little
pieces, then a frying-pan, in which there were sausages and cabbage
spluttering. A cut-glass decanter of vodka, which diffused a smell
of orange-peel all over the room when it was poured out, was put
on the table also.

Yergunov was annoyed that Kalashnikov and the dark fellow Merik
talked together and took no notice of him at all, behaving exactly
as though he were not in the room. And he wanted to talk to them,
to brag, to drink, to have a good meal, and if possible to have a
little fun with Lyubka, who sat down near him half a dozen times
while they were at supper, and, as though by accident, brushed
against him with her handsome shoulders and passed her hands over
her broad hips. She was a healthy, active girl, always laughing and
never still: she would sit down, then get up, and when she was
sitting down she would keep turning first her face and then her
back to her neighbour, like a fidgety child, and never failed to
brush against him with her elbows or her knees.

And he was displeased, too, that the peasants drank only a glass
each and no more, and it was awkward for him to drink alone. But
he could not refrain from taking a second glass, all the same, then
a third, and he ate all the sausage. He brought himself to flatter
the peasants, that they might accept him as one of the party instead
of holding him at arm's length.

"You are a fine set of fellows in Bogalyovka!" he said, and wagged
his head.

"In what way fine fellows?" enquired Kalashnikov.

"Why, about horses, for instance. Fine fellows at stealing!"

"H'm! fine fellows, you call them. Nothing but thieves and drunkards."

"They have had their day, but it is over," said Merik, after a
pause. "But now they have only Filya left, and he is blind."

"Yes, there is no one but Filya," said Kalashnikov, with a sigh.
"Reckon it up, he must be seventy; the German settlers knocked out
one of his eyes, and he does not see well with the other. It is
cataract. In old days the police officer would shout as soon as he
saw him: 'Hey, you Shamil!' and all the peasants called him
that--he was Shamil all over the place; and now his only name is
One-eyed Filya. But he was a fine fellow! Lyuba's father, Andrey
Grigoritch, and he stole one night into Rozhnovo--there were
cavalry regiments stationed there--and carried off nine of the
soldiers' horses, the very best of them. They weren't frightened
of the sentry, and in the morning they sold all the horses for
twenty roubles to the gypsy Afonka. Yes! But nowadays a man contrives
to carry off a horse whose rider is drunk or asleep, and has no
fear of God, but will take the very boots from a drunkard, and then
slinks off and goes away a hundred and fifty miles with a horse,
and haggles at the market, haggles like a Jew, till the policeman
catches him, the fool. There is no fun in it; it is simply a disgrace!
A paltry set of people, I must say."

"What about Merik?" asked Lyubka.

"Merik is not one of us," said Kalashnikov. "He is a Harkov man
from Mizhiritch. But that he is a bold fellow, that's the truth;
there's no gainsaying that he is a fine fellow."

Lyubka looked slily and gleefully at Merik, and said:

"It wasn't for nothing they dipped him in a hole in the ice."

"How was that?" asked Yergunov.

"It was like this . . ." said Merik, and he laughed. "Filya carried
off three horses from the Samoylenka tenants, and they pitched upon
me. There were ten of the tenants at Samoylenka, and with their
labourers there were thirty altogether, and all of them Molokans
. . . . So one of them says to me at the market: 'Come and have a
look, Merik; we have brought some new horses from the fair.' I was
interested, of course. I went up to them, and the whole lot of them,
thirty men, tied my hands behind me and led me to the river. 'We'll
show you fine horses,' they said. One hole in the ice was there
already; they cut another beside it seven feet away. Then, to be
sure, they took a cord and put a noose under my armpits, and tied
a crooked stick to the other end, long enough to reach both holes.
They thrust the stick in and dragged it through. I went plop into
the ice-hole just as I was, in my fur coat and my high boots, while
they stood and shoved me, one with his foot and one with his stick,
then dragged me under the ice and pulled me out of the other hole."

Lyubka shuddered and shrugged.

"At first I was in a fever from the cold," Merik went on, "but when
they pulled me out I was helpless, and lay in the snow, and the
Molokans stood round and hit me with sticks on my knees and my
elbows. It hurt fearfully. They beat me and they went away . . .
and everything on me was frozen, my clothes were covered with ice.
I got up, but I couldn't move. Thank God, a woman drove by and gave
me a lift."

Meanwhile Yergunov had drunk five or six glasses of vodka; his heart
felt lighter, and he longed to tell some extraordinary, wonderful
story too, and to show that he, too, was a bold fellow and not
afraid of anything.

"I'll tell you what happened to us in Penza Province . . ." he
began.

Either because he had drunk a great deal and was a little tipsy,
or perhaps because he had twice been detected in a lie, the peasants
took not the slightest notice of him, and even left off answering
his questions. What was worse, they permitted themselves a frankness
in his presence that made him feel uncomfortable and cold all over,
and that meant that they took no notice of him.

Kalashnikov had the dignified manners of a sedate and sensible man;
he spoke weightily, and made the sign of the cross over his mouth
every time he yawned, and no one could have supposed that this was
a thief, a heartless thief who had stripped poor creatures, who had
already been twice in prison, and who had been sentenced by the
commune to exile in Siberia, and had been bought off by his father
and uncle, who were as great thieves and rogues as he was. Merik
gave himself the airs of a bravo. He saw that Lyubka and Kalashnikov
were admiring him, and looked upon himself as a very fine fellow,
and put his arms akimbo, squared his chest, or stretched so that
the bench creaked under him. . . .

After supper Kalashnikov prayed to the holy image without getting
up from his seat, and shook hands with Merik; the latter prayed
too, and shook Kalashnikov's hand. Lyubka cleared away the supper,
shook out on the table some peppermint biscuits, dried nuts, and
pumpkin seeds, and placed two bottles of sweet wine.

"The kingdom of heaven and peace everlasting to Andrey Grigoritch,"
said Kalashnikov, clinking glasses with Merik. "When he was alive
we used to gather together here or at his brother Martin's,
and--my word! my word! what men, what talks! Remarkable conversations!
Martin used to be here, and Filya, and Fyodor Stukotey. . . . It
was all done in style, it was all in keeping. . . . And what fun
we had! We did have fun, we did have fun!"

Lyubka went out and soon afterwards came back wearing a green
kerchief and beads.

"Look, Merik, what Kalashnikov brought me to-day," she said.

She looked at herself in the looking-glass, and tossed her head
several times to make the beads jingle. And then she opened a chest
and began taking out, first, a cotton dress with red and blue flowers
on it, and then a red one with flounces which rustled and crackled
like paper, then a new kerchief, dark blue, shot with many
colours--and all these things she showed and flung up her hands, laughing
as though astonished that she had such treasures.

Kalashnikov tuned the balalaika and began playing it, but Yergunov
could not make out what sort of song he was singing, and whether
it was gay or melancholy, because at one moment it was so mournful
he wanted to cry, and at the next it would be merry. Merik suddenly
jumped up and began tapping with his heels on the same spot, then,
brandishing his arms, he moved on his heels from the table to the
stove, from the stove to the chest, then he bounded up as though
he had been stung, clicked the heels of his boots together in the
air, and began going round and round in a crouching position. Lyubka
waved both her arms, uttered a desperate shriek, and followed him.
At first she moved sideways, like a snake, as though she wanted to
steal up to someone and strike him from behind. She tapped rapidly
with her bare heels as Merik had done with the heels of his boots,
then she turned round and round like a top and crouched down, and
her red dress was blown out like a bell. Merik, looking angrily at
her, and showing his teeth in a grin, flew towards her in the same
crouching posture as though he wanted to crush her with his terrible
legs, while she jumped up, flung back her head, and waving her arms
as a big bird does its wings, floated across the room scarcely
touching the floor. . . .

"What a flame of a girl!" thought Yergunov, sitting on the chest,
and from there watching the dance. "What fire! Give up everything
for her, and it would be too little . . . ."

And he regretted that he was a hospital assistant, and not a simple
peasant, that he wore a reefer coat and a chain with a gilt key on
it instead of a blue shirt with a cord tied round the waist. Then
he could boldly have sung, danced, flung both arms round Lyubka as
Merik did. . . .

The sharp tapping, shouts, and whoops set the crockery ringing in
the cupboard and the flame of the candle dancing.

The thread broke and the beads were scattered all over the floor,
the green kerchief slipped off, and Lyubka was transformed into a
red cloud flitting by and flashing black eyes, and it seemed as
though in another second Merik's arms and legs would drop off.

But finally Merik stamped for the last time, and stood still as
though turned to stone. Exhausted and almost breathless, Lyubka
sank on to his bosom and leaned against him as against a post, and
he put his arms round her, and looking into her eyes, said tenderly
and caressingly, as though in jest:

"I'll find out where your old mother's money is hidden, I'll murder
her and cut your little throat for you, and after that I will set
fire to the inn. . . . People will think you have perished in the
fire, and with your money I shall go to Kuban. I'll keep droves of
horses and flocks of sheep. . . ."

Lyubka made no answer, but only looked at him with a guilty air,
and asked:

"And is it nice in Kuban, Merik?"

He said nothing, but went to the chest, sat down, and sank into
thought; most likely he was dreaming of Kuban.

"It's time for me to be going," said Kalashnikov, getting up. "Filya
must be waiting for me. Goodbye, Lyuba."

Yergunov went out into the yard to see that Kalashnikov did not go
off with his horse. The snowstorm still persisted. White clouds
were floating about the yard, their long tails clinging to the rough
grass and the bushes, while on the other side of the fence in the
open country huge giants in white robes with wide sleeves were
whirling round and falling to the ground, and getting up again to
wave their arms and fight. And the wind, the wind! The bare birches
and cherry-trees, unable to endure its rude caresses, bowed low
down to the ground and wailed: "God, for what sin hast Thou bound
us to the earth and will not let us go free?"

"Wo!" said Kalashnikov sternly, and he got on his horse; one half
of the gate was opened, and by it lay a high snowdrift. "Well, get
on!" shouted Kalashnikov. His little short-legged nag set off, and
sank up to its stomach in the drift at once. Kalashnikov was white
all over with the snow, and soon vanished from sight with his horse.

When Yergunov went back into the room, Lyubka was creeping about
the floor picking up her beads; Merik was not there.

"A splendid girl!" thought Yergunov, as he lay down on the bench
and put his coat under his head. "Oh, if only Merik were not here."
Lyubka excited him as she crept about the floor by the bench, and
he thought that if Merik had not been there he would certainly have
got up and embraced her, and then one would see what would happen.
It was true she was only a girl, but not likely to be chaste; and
even if she were--need one stand on ceremony in a den of thieves?
Lyubka collected her beads and went out. The candle burnt down and
the flame caught the paper in the candlestick. Yergunov laid his
revolver and matches beside him, and put out the candle. The light
before the holy images flickered so much that it hurt his eyes, and
patches of light danced on the ceiling, on the floor, and on the
cupboard, and among them he had visions of Lyubka, buxom, full-bosomed:
now she was turning round like a top, now she was exhausted and
breathless. . . .

"Oh, if the devils would carry off that Merik," he thought.

The little lamp gave a last flicker, spluttered, and went out.
Someone, it must have been Merik, came into the room and sat down
on the bench. He puffed at his pipe, and for an instant lighted up
a dark cheek with a patch on it. Yergunov's throat was irritated
by the horrible fumes of the tobacco smoke.

"What filthy tobacco you have got--damnation take it!" said
Yergunov. "It makes me positively sick."

"I mix my tobacco with the flowers of the oats," answered Merik
after a pause. "It is better for the chest."

He smoked, spat, and went out again. Half an hour passed, and all
at once there was the gleam of a light in the passage. Merik appeared
in a coat and cap, then Lyubka with a candle in her hand.

"Do stay, Merik," said Lyubka in an imploring voice.

"No, Lyuba, don't keep me."

"Listen, Merik," said Lyubka, and her voice grew soft and tender.
"I know you will find mother's money, and will do for her and for
me, and will go to Kuban and love other girls; but God be with you.
I only ask you one thing, sweetheart: do stay!"

"No, I want some fun . . ." said Merik, fastening his belt.

"But you have nothing to go on. . . . You came on foot; what are
you going on?"

Merik bent down to Lyubka and whispered something in her ear; she
looked towards the door and laughed through her tears.

"He is asleep, the puffed-up devil . . ." she said.

Merik embraced her, kissed her vigorously, and went out. Yergunov
thrust his revolver into his pocket, jumped up, and ran after him.

"Get out of the way!" he said to Lyubka, who hurriedly bolted the
door of the entry and stood across the threshold. "Let me pass! Why
are you standing here?"

"What do you want to go out for?"

"To have a look at my horse."

Lyubka gazed up at him with a sly and caressing look.

"Why look at it? You had better look at me . . . ." she said, then
she bent down and touched with her finger the gilt watch-key that
hung on his chain.

"Let me pass, or he will go off on my horse," said Yergunov. "Let
me go, you devil!" he shouted, and giving her an angry blow on the
shoulder, he pressed his chest against her with all his might to
push her away from the door, but she kept tight hold of the bolt,
and was like iron.

"Let me go!" he shouted, exhausted; "he will go off with it, I tell
you."

"Why should he? He won't." Breathing hard and rubbing her shoulder,
which hurt, she looked up at him again, flushed a little and laughed.
"Don't go away, dear heart," she said; "I am dull alone."

Yergunov looked into her eyes, hesitated, and put his arms round
her; she did not resist.

"Come, no nonsense; let me go," he begged her. She did not speak.

"I heard you just now," he said, "telling Merik that you love him."

"I dare say. . . . My heart knows who it is I love."

She put her finger on the key again, and said softly: "Give me
that."

Yergunov unfastened the key and gave it to her. She suddenly craned
her neck and listened with a grave face, and her expression struck
Yergunov as cold and cunning; he thought of his horse, and now
easily pushed her aside and ran out into the yard. In the shed a
sleepy pig was grunting with lazy regularity and a cow was knocking
her horn. Yergunov lighted a match and saw the pig, and the cow,
and the dogs, which rushed at him on all sides at seeing the light,
but there was no trace of the horse. Shouting and waving his arms
at the dogs, stumbling over the drifts and sticking in the snow,
he ran out at the gate and fell to gazing into the darkness. He
strained his eyes to the utmost, and saw only the snow flying and
the snowflakes distinctly forming into all sorts of shapes; at one
moment the white, laughing face of a corpse would peep out of the
darkness, at the next a white horse would gallop by with an Amazon
in a muslin dress upon it, at the next a string of white swans would
fly overhead. . . . Shaking with anger and cold, and not knowing
what to do, Yergunov fired his revolver at the dogs, and did not
hit one of them; then he rushed back to the house.

When he went into the entry he distinctly heard someone scurry out
of the room and bang the door. It was dark in the room. Yergunov
pushed against the door; it was locked. Then, lighting match after
match, he rushed back into the entry, from there into the kitchen,
and from the kitchen into a little room where all the walls were
hung with petticoats and dresses, where there was a smell of
cornflowers and fennel, and a bedstead with a perfect mountain of
pillows, standing in the corner by the stove; this must have been
the old mother's room. From there he passed into another little
room, and here he saw Lyubka. She was lying on a chest, covered
with a gay-coloured patchwork cotton quilt, pretending to be asleep.
A little ikon-lamp was burning in the corner above the pillow.

"Where is my horse?" Yergunov asked.

Lyubka did not stir.

"Where is my horse, I am asking you?" Yergunov repeated still more
sternly, and he tore the quilt off her. "I am asking you, she-devil!"
he shouted.

She jumped up on her knees, and with one hand holding her shift and
with the other trying to clutch the quilt, huddled against the wall
. . . . She looked at Yergunov with repulsion and terror in her eyes,
and, like a wild beast in a trap, kept cunning watch on his faintest
movement.

"Tell me where my horse is, or I'll knock the life out of you,"
shouted Yergunov.

"Get away, dirty brute!" she said in a hoarse voice.

Yergunov seized her by the shift near the neck and tore it. And
then he could not restrain himself, and with all his might embraced
the girl. But hissing with fury, she slipped out of his arms, and
freeing one hand--the other was tangled in the torn shift--hit
him a blow with her fist on the skull.

His head was dizzy with the pain, there was a ringing and rattling
in his ears, he staggered back, and at that moment received another
blow--this time on the temple. Reeling and clutching at the
doorposts, that he might not fall, he made his way to the room where
his things were, and lay down on the bench; then after lying for a
little time, took the matchbox out of his pocket and began lighting
match after match for no object: he lit it, blew it out, and threw
it under the table, and went on till all the matches were gone.

Meanwhile the air began to turn blue outside, the cocks began to
crow, but his head still ached, and there was an uproar in his ears
as though he were sitting under a railway bridge and hearing the
trains passing over his head. He got, somehow, into his coat and
cap; the saddle and the bundle of his purchases he could not find,
his knapsack was empty: it was not for nothing that someone had
scurried out of the room when he came in from the yard.

He took a poker from the kitchen to keep off the dogs, and went out
into the yard, leaving the door open. The snow-storm had subsided
and it was calm outside. . . . When he went out at the gate, the
white plain looked dead, and there was not a single bird in the
morning sky. On both sides of the road and in the distance there
were bluish patches of young copse.

Yergunov began thinking how he would be greeted at the hospital and
what the doctor would say to him; it was absolutely necessary to
think of that, and to prepare beforehand to answer questions he
would be asked, but this thought grew blurred and slipped away. He
walked along thinking of nothing but Lyubka, of the peasants with
whom he had passed the night; he remembered how, after Lyubka struck
him the second time, she had bent down to the floor for the quilt,
and how her loose hair had fallen on the floor. His mind was in a
maze, and he wondered why there were in the world doctors, hospital
assistants, merchants, clerks, and peasants instead of simple free
men? There are, to be sure, free birds, free beasts, a free Merik,
and they are not afraid of anyone, and don't need anyone! And whose
idea was it, who had decreed that one must get up in the morning,
dine at midday, go to bed in the evening; that a doctor takes
precedence of a hospital assistant; that one must live in rooms and
love only one's wife? And why not the contrary--dine at night and
sleep in the day? Ah, to jump on a horse without enquiring whose
it is, to ride races with the wind like a devil, over fields and
forests and ravines, to make love to girls, to mock at
everyone . . . .

Yergunov thrust the poker into the snow, pressed his forehead to
the cold white trunk of a birch-tree, and sank into thought; and
his grey, monotonous life, his wages, his subordinate position, the
dispensary, the everlasting to-do with the bottles and blisters,
struck him as contemptible, sickening.

"Who says it's a sin to enjoy oneself?" he asked himself with
vexation. "Those who say that have never lived in freedom like Merik
and Kalashnikov, and have never loved Lyubka; they have been beggars
all their lives, have lived without any pleasure, and have only
loved their wives, who are like frogs."

And he thought about himself that he had not hitherto been a thief,
a swindler, or even a brigand, simply because he could not, or had
not yet met with a suitable opportunity.

----

A year and a half passed. In spring, after Easter, Yergunov, who
had long before been dismissed from the hospital and was hanging
about without a job, came out of the tavern in Ryepino and sauntered
aimlessly along the street.

He went out into the open country. Here there was the scent of
spring, and a warm caressing wind was blowing. The calm, starry
night looked down from the sky on the earth. My God, how infinite
the depth of the sky, and with what fathomless immensity it stretched
over the world! The world is created well enough, only why and with
what right do people, thought Yergunov, divide their fellows into
the sober and the drunken, the employed and the dismissed, and so
on. Why do the sober and well fed sleep comfortably in their homes
while the drunken and the hungry must wander about the country
without a refuge? Why was it that if anyone had not a job and did
not get a salary he had to go hungry, without clothes and boots?
Whose idea was it? Why was it the birds and the wild beasts in the
woods did not have jobs and get salaries, but lived as they pleased?

Far away in the sky a beautiful crimson glow lay quivering, stretched
wide over the horizon. Yergunov stopped, and for a long time he
gazed at it, and kept wondering why was it that if he had carried
off someone else's samovar the day before and sold it for drink in
the taverns it would be a sin? Why was it?

Two carts drove by on the road; in one of them there was a woman
asleep, in the other sat an old man without a cap on.

"Grandfather, where is that fire?" asked Yergunov.

"Andrey Tchirikov's inn," answered the old man.

And Yergunov recalled what had happened to him eighteen months
before in the winter, in that very inn, and how Merik had boasted;
and he imagined the old woman and Lyubka, with their throats cut,
burning, and he envied Merik. And when he walked back to the tavern,
looking at the houses of the rich publicans, cattle-dealers, and
blacksmiths, he reflected how nice it would be to steal by night
into some rich man's house!


WARD NO. 6

I

In the hospital yard there stands a small lodge surrounded by a
perfect forest of burdocks, nettles, and wild hemp. Its roof is
rusty, the chimney is tumbling down, the steps at the front-door
are rotting away and overgrown with grass, and there are only traces
left of the stucco. The front of the lodge faces the hospital; at
the back it looks out into the open country, from which it is
separated by the grey hospital fence with nails on it. These nails,
with their points upwards, and the fence, and the lodge itself,
have that peculiar, desolate, God-forsaken look which is only found
in our hospital and prison buildings.

If you are not afraid of being stung by the nettles, come by the
narrow footpath that leads to the lodge, and let us see what is
going on inside. Opening the first door, we walk into the entry.
Here along the walls and by the stove every sort of hospital rubbish
lies littered about. Mattresses, old tattered dressing-gowns,
trousers, blue striped shirts, boots and shoes no good for
anything--all these remnants are piled up in heaps, mixed up and crumpled,
mouldering and giving out a sickly smell.

The porter, Nikita, an old soldier wearing rusty good-conduct
stripes, is always lying on the litter with a pipe between his
teeth. He has a grim, surly, battered-looking face, overhanging
eyebrows which give him the expression of a sheep-dog of the steppes,
and a red nose; he is short and looks thin and scraggy, but he is
of imposing deportment and his fists are vigorous. He belongs to
the class of simple-hearted, practical, and dull-witted people,
prompt in carrying out orders, who like discipline better than
anything in the world, and so are convinced that it is their duty
to beat people. He showers blows on the face, on the chest, on the
back, on whatever comes first, and is convinced that there would
be no order in the place if he did not.

Next you come into a big, spacious room which fills up the whole
lodge except for the entry. Here the walls are painted a dirty blue,
the ceiling is as sooty as in a hut without a chimney--it is
evident that in the winter the stove smokes and the room is full
of fumes. The windows are disfigured by iron gratings on the inside.
The wooden floor is grey and full of splinters. There is a stench
of sour cabbage, of smouldering wicks, of bugs, and of ammonia, and
for the first minute this stench gives you the impression of having
walked into a menagerie.

There are bedsteads screwed to the floor. Men in blue hospital
dressing-gowns, and wearing nightcaps in the old style, are sitting
and lying on them. These are the lunatics.

There are five of them in all here. Only one is of the upper class,
the rest are all artisans. The one nearest the door--a tall, lean
workman with shining red whiskers and tear-stained eyes--sits
with his head propped on his hand, staring at the same point. Day
and night he grieves, shaking his head, sighing and smiling bitterly.
He takes a part in conversation and usually makes no answer to
questions; he eats and drinks mechanically when food is offered
him. From his agonizing, throbbing cough, his thinness, and the
flush on his cheeks, one may judge that he is in the first stage
of consumption. Next to him is a little, alert, very lively old
man, with a pointed beard and curly black hair like a negro's. By
day he walks up and down the ward from window to window, or sits
on his bed, cross-legged like a Turk, and, ceaselessly as a bullfinch
whistles, softly sings and titters. He shows his childish gaiety
and lively character at night also when he gets up to say his
prayers--that is, to beat himself on the chest with his fists, and to
scratch with his fingers at the door. This is the Jew Moiseika, an
imbecile, who went crazy twenty years ago when his hat factory was
burnt down.

And of all the inhabitants of Ward No. 6, he is the only one who
is allowed to go out of the lodge, and even out of the yard into
the street. He has enjoyed this privilege for years, probably because
he is an old inhabitant of the hospital--a quiet, harmless imbecile,
the buffoon of the town, where people are used to seeing him
surrounded by boys and dogs. In his wretched gown, in his absurd
night-cap, and in slippers, sometimes with bare legs and even without
trousers, he walks about the streets, stopping at the gates and
little shops, and begging for a copper. In one place they will give
him some kvass, in another some bread, in another a copper, so that
he generally goes back to the ward feeling rich and well fed.
Everything that he brings back Nikita takes from him for his own
benefit. The soldier does this roughly, angrily turning the Jew's
pockets inside out, and calling God to witness that he will not let
him go into the street again, and that breach of the regulations
is worse to him than anything in the world.

Moiseika likes to make himself useful. He gives his companions
water, and covers them up when they are asleep; he promises each
of them to bring him back a kopeck, and to make him a new cap; he
feeds with a spoon his neighbour on the left, who is paralyzed. He
acts in this way, not from compassion nor from any considerations
of a humane kind, but through imitation, unconsciously dominated
by Gromov, his neighbour on the right hand.

Ivan Dmitritch Gromov, a man of thirty-three, who is a gentleman
by birth, and has been a court usher and provincial secretary,
suffers from the mania of persecution. He either lies curled up in
bed, or walks from corner to corner as though for exercise; he very
rarely sits down. He is always excited, agitated, and overwrought
by a sort of vague, undefined expectation. The faintest rustle in
the entry or shout in the yard is enough to make him raise his head
and begin listening: whether they are coming for him, whether they
are looking for him. And at such times his face expresses the utmost
uneasiness and repulsion.

I like his broad face with its high cheek-bones, always pale and
unhappy, and reflecting, as though in a mirror, a soul tormented
by conflict and long-continued terror. His grimaces are strange and
abnormal, but the delicate lines traced on his face by profound,
genuine suffering show intelligence and sense, and there is a warm
and healthy light in his eyes. I like the man himself, courteous,
anxious to be of use, and extraordinarily gentle to everyone except
Nikita. When anyone drops a button or a spoon, he jumps up from his
bed quickly and picks it up; every day he says good-morning to his
companions, and when he goes to bed he wishes them good-night.

Besides his continually overwrought condition and his grimaces, his
madness shows itself in the following way also. Sometimes in the
evenings he wraps himself in his dressing-gown, and, trembling all
over, with his teeth chattering, begins walking rapidly from corner
to corner and between the bedsteads. It seems as though he is in a
violent fever. From the way he suddenly stops and glances at his
companions, it can be seen that he is longing to say something very
important, but, apparently reflecting that they would not listen,
or would not understand him, he shakes his head impatiently and
goes on pacing up and down. But soon the desire to speak gets the
upper hand of every consideration, and he will let himself go and
speak fervently and passionately. His talk is disordered and feverish
like delirium, disconnected, and not always intelligible, but, on
the other hand, something extremely fine may be felt in it, both
in the words and the voice. When he talks you recognize in him the
lunatic and the man. It is difficult to reproduce on paper his
insane talk. He speaks of the baseness of mankind, of violence
trampling on justice, of the glorious life which will one day be
upon earth, of the window-gratings, which remind him every minute
of the stupidity and cruelty of oppressors. It makes a disorderly,
incoherent potpourri of themes old but not yet out of date.

II

Some twelve or fifteen years ago an official called Gromov, a highly
respectable and prosperous person, was living in his own house in
the principal street of the town. He had two sons, Sergey and Ivan.
When Sergey was a student in his fourth year he was taken ill with
galloping consumption and died, and his death was, as it were, the
first of a whole series of calamities which suddenly showered on
the Gromov family. Within a week of Sergey's funeral the old father
was put on trial for fraud and misappropriation, and he died of
typhoid in the prison hospital soon afterwards. The house, with all
their belongings, was sold by auction, and Ivan Dmitritch and his
mother were left entirely without means.

Hitherto in his father's lifetime, Ivan Dmitritch, who was studying
in the University of Petersburg, had received an allowance of sixty
or seventy roubles a month, and had had no conception of poverty;
now he had to make an abrupt change in his life. He had to spend
his time from morning to night giving lessons for next to nothing,
to work at copying, and with all that to go hungry, as all his
earnings were sent to keep his mother. Ivan Dmitritch could not
stand such a life; he lost heart and strength, and, giving up the
university, went home.

Here, through interest, he obtained the post of teacher in the
district school, but could not get on with his colleagues, was not
liked by the boys, and soon gave up the post. His mother died. He
was for six months without work, living on nothing but bread and
water; then he became a court usher. He kept this post until he was
dismissed owing to his illness.

He had never even in his young student days given the impression
of being perfectly healthy. He had always been pale, thin, and given
to catching cold; he ate little and slept badly. A single glass of
wine went to his head and made him hysterical. He always had a
craving for society, but, owing to his irritable temperament and
suspiciousness, he never became very intimate with anyone, and had
no friends. He always spoke with contempt of his fellow-townsmen,
saying that their coarse ignorance and sleepy animal existence
seemed to him loathsome and horrible. He spoke in a loud tenor,
with heat, and invariably either with scorn and indignation, or
with wonder and enthusiasm, and always with perfect sincerity.
Whatever one talked to him about he always brought it round to the
same subject: that life was dull and stifling in the town; that the
townspeople had no lofty interests, but lived a dingy, meaningless
life, diversified by violence, coarse profligacy, and hypocrisy;
that scoundrels were well fed and clothed, while honest men lived
from hand to mouth; that they needed schools, a progressive local
paper, a theatre, public lectures, the co-ordination of the
intellectual elements; that society must see its failings and be
horrified. In his criticisms of people he laid on the colours thick,
using only black and white, and no fine shades; mankind was divided
for him into honest men and scoundrels: there was nothing in between.
He always spoke with passion and enthusiasm of women and of love,
but he had never been in love.

In spite of the severity of his judgments and his nervousness, he
was liked, and behind his back was spoken of affectionately as
Vanya. His innate refinement and readiness to be of service, his
good breeding, his moral purity, and his shabby coat, his frail
appearance and family misfortunes, aroused a kind, warm, sorrowful
feeling. Moreover, he was well educated and well read; according
to the townspeople's notions, he knew everything, and was in their
eyes something like a walking encyclopedia.

He had read a great deal. He would sit at the club, nervously pulling
at his beard and looking through the magazines and books; and from
his face one could see that he was not reading, but devouring the
pages without giving himself time to digest what he read. It must
be supposed that reading was one of his morbid habits, as he fell
upon anything that came into his hands with equal avidity, even
last year's newspapers and calendars. At home he always read lying
down.

III

One autumn morning Ivan Dmitritch, turning up the collar of his
greatcoat and splashing through the mud, made his way by side-streets
and back lanes to see some artisan, and to collect some payment
that was owing. He was in a gloomy mood, as he always was in the
morning. In one of the side-streets he was met by two convicts in
fetters and four soldiers with rifles in charge of them. Ivan
Dmitritch had very often met convicts before, and they had always
excited feelings of compassion and discomfort in him; but now this
meeting made a peculiar, strange impression on him. It suddenly
seemed to him for some reason that he, too, might be put into fetters
and led through the mud to prison like that. After visiting the
artisan, on the way home he met near the post office a police
superintendent of his acquaintance, who greeted him and walked a
few paces along the street with him, and for some reason this seemed
to him suspicious. At home he could not get the convicts or the
soldiers with their rifles out of his head all day, and an unaccountable
inward agitation prevented him from reading or concentrating his
mind. In the evening he did not light his lamp, and at night he
could not sleep, but kept thinking that he might be arrested, put
into fetters, and thrown into prison. He did not know of any harm
he had done, and could be certain that he would never be guilty of
murder, arson, or theft in the future either; but was it not easy
to commit a crime by accident, unconsciously, and was not false
witness always possible, and, indeed, miscarriage of justice? It
was not without good reason that the agelong experience of the
simple people teaches that beggary and prison are ills none can be
safe from. A judicial mistake is very possible as legal proceedings
are conducted nowadays, and there is nothing to be wondered at in
it. People who have an official, professional relation to other
men's sufferings--for instance, judges, police officers,
doctors--in course of time, through habit, grow so callous that they
cannot, even if they wish it, take any but a formal attitude to
their clients; in this respect they are not different from the
peasant who slaughters sheep and calves in the back-yard, and does
not notice the blood. With this formal, soulless attitude to human
personality the judge needs but one thing--time--in order to
deprive an innocent man of all rights of property, and to condemn
him to penal servitude. Only the time spent on performing certain
formalities for which the judge is paid his salary, and then--it
is all over. Then you may look in vain for justice and protection
in this dirty, wretched little town a hundred and fifty miles from
a railway station! And, indeed, is it not absurd even to think of
justice when every kind of violence is accepted by society as a
rational and consistent necessity, and every act of mercy--for
instance, a verdict of acquittal--calls forth a perfect outburst
of dissatisfied and revengeful feeling?

In the morning Ivan Dmitritch got up from his bed in a state of
horror, with cold perspiration on his forehead, completely convinced
that he might be arrested any minute. Since his gloomy thoughts of
yesterday had haunted him so long, he thought, it must be that there
was some truth in them. They could not, indeed, have come into his
mind without any grounds whatever.

A policeman walking slowly passed by the windows: that was not for
nothing. Here were two men standing still and silent near the house.
Why were they silent? And agonizing days and nights followed for
Ivan Dmitritch. Everyone who passed by the windows or came into the
yard seemed to him a spy or a detective. At midday the chief of the
police usually drove down the street with a pair of horses; he was
going from his estate near the town to the police department; but
Ivan Dmitritch fancied every time that he was driving especially
quickly, and that he had a peculiar expression: it was evident that
he was in haste to announce that there was a very important criminal
in the town. Ivan Dmitritch started at every ring at the bell and
knock at the gate, and was agitated whenever he came upon anyone
new at his landlady's; when he met police officers and gendarmes
he smiled and began whistling so as to seem unconcerned. He could
not sleep for whole nights in succession expecting to be arrested,
but he snored loudly and sighed as though in deep sleep, that his
landlady might think he was asleep; for if he could not sleep it
meant that he was tormented by the stings of conscience--what a
piece of evidence! Facts and common sense persuaded him that all
these terrors were nonsense and morbidity, that if one looked at
the matter more broadly there was nothing really terrible in arrest
and imprisonment--so long as the conscience is at ease; but the
more sensibly and logically he reasoned, the more acute and agonizing
his mental distress became. It might be compared with the story of
a hermit who tried to cut a dwelling-place for himself in a virgin
forest; the more zealously he worked with his axe, the thicker the
forest grew. In the end Ivan Dmitritch, seeing it was useless, gave
up reasoning altogether, and abandoned himself entirely to despair
and terror.

He began to avoid people and to seek solitude. His official work
had been distasteful to him before: now it became unbearable to
him. He was afraid they would somehow get him into trouble, would
put a bribe in his pocket unnoticed and then denounce him, or that
he would accidentally make a mistake in official papers that would
appear to be fraudulent, or would lose other people's money. It is
strange that his imagination had never at other times been so agile
and inventive as now, when every day he thought of thousands of
different reasons for being seriously anxious over his freedom and
honour; but, on the other hand, his interest in the outer world,
in books in particular, grew sensibly fainter, and his memory began
to fail him.

In the spring when the snow melted there were found in the ravine
near the cemetery two half-decomposed corpses--the bodies of an
old woman and a boy bearing the traces of death by violence. Nothing
was talked of but these bodies and their unknown murderers. That
people might not think he had been guilty of the crime, Ivan Dmitritch
walked about the streets, smiling, and when he met acquaintances
he turned pale, flushed, and began declaring that there was no
greater crime than the murder of the weak and defenceless. But this
duplicity soon exhausted him, and after some reflection he decided
that in his position the best thing to do was to hide in his
landlady's cellar. He sat in the cellar all day and then all night,
then another day, was fearfully cold, and waiting till dusk, stole
secretly like a thief back to his room. He stood in the middle of
the room till daybreak, listening without stirring. Very early in
the morning, before sunrise, some workmen came into the house. Ivan
Dmitritch knew perfectly well that they had come to mend the stove
in the kitchen, but terror told him that they were police officers
disguised as workmen. He slipped stealthily out of the flat, and,
overcome by terror, ran along the street without his cap and coat.
Dogs raced after him barking, a peasant shouted somewhere behind
him, the wind whistled in his ears, and it seemed to Ivan Dmitritch
that the force and violence of the whole world was massed together
behind his back and was chasing after him.

He was stopped and brought home, and his landlady sent for a doctor.
Doctor Andrey Yefimitch, of whom we shall have more to say hereafter,
prescribed cold compresses on his head and laurel drops, shook his
head, and went away, telling the landlady he should not come again,
as one should not interfere with people who are going out of their
minds. As he had not the means to live at home and be nursed, Ivan
Dmitritch was soon sent to the hospital, and was there put into the
ward for venereal patients. He could not sleep at night, was full
of whims and fancies, and disturbed the patients, and was soon
afterwards, by Andrey Yefimitch's orders, transferred to Ward No.
6.

Within a year Ivan Dmitritch was completely forgotten in the town,
and his books, heaped up by his landlady in a sledge in the shed,
were pulled to pieces by boys.

IV

Ivan Dmitritch's neighbour on the left hand is, as I have said
already, the Jew Moiseika; his neighbour on the right hand is a
peasant so rolling in fat that he is almost spherical, with a blankly
stupid face, utterly devoid of thought. This is a motionless,
gluttonous, unclean animal who has long ago lost all powers of
thought or feeling. An acrid, stifling stench always comes from
him.

Nikita, who has to clean up after him, beats him terribly with all
his might, not sparing his fists; and what is dreadful is not his
being beaten--that one can get used to--but the fact that this
stupefied creature does not respond to the blows with a sound or a
movement, nor by a look in the eyes, but only sways a little like
a heavy barrel.

The fifth and last inhabitant of Ward No. 6 is a man of the artisan
class who had once been a sorter in the post office, a thinnish,
fair little man with a good-natured but rather sly face. To judge
from the clear, cheerful look in his calm and intelligent eyes, he
has some pleasant idea in his mind, and has some very important and
agreeable secret. He has under his pillow and under his mattress
something that he never shows anyone, not from fear of its being
taken from him and stolen, but from modesty. Sometimes he goes to
the window, and turning his back to his companions, puts something
on his breast, and bending his head, looks at it; if you go up to
him at such a moment, he is overcome with confusion and snatches
something off his breast. But it is not difficult to guess his
secret.

"Congratulate me," he often says to Ivan Dmitritch; "I have been
presented with the Stanislav order of the second degree with the
star. The second degree with the star is only given to foreigners,
but for some reason they want to make an exception for me," he says
with a smile, shrugging his shoulders in perplexity. "That I must
confess I did not expect."

"I don't understand anything about that," Ivan Dmitritch replies
morosely.

"But do you know what I shall attain to sooner or later?" the former
sorter persists, screwing up his eyes slyly. "I shall certainly get
the Swedish 'Polar Star.' That's an order it is worth working for,
a white cross with a black ribbon. It's very beautiful."

Probably in no other place is life so monotonous as in this ward.
In the morning the patients, except the paralytic and the fat
peasant, wash in the entry at a big tab and wipe themselves with
the skirts of their dressing-gowns; after that they drink tea out
of tin mugs which Nikita brings them out of the main building.
Everyone is allowed one mugful. At midday they have soup made out
of sour cabbage and boiled grain, in the evening their supper
consists of grain left from dinner. In the intervals they lie down,
sleep, look out of window, and walk from one corner to the other.
And so every day. Even the former sorter always talks of the same
orders.

Fresh faces are rarely seen in Ward No. 6. The doctor has not taken
in any new mental cases for a long time, and the people who are
fond of visiting lunatic asylums are few in this world. Once every
two months Semyon Lazaritch, the barber, appears in the ward. How
he cuts the patients' hair, and how Nikita helps him to do it, and
what a trepidation the lunatics are always thrown into by the arrival
of the drunken, smiling barber, we will not describe.

No one even looks into the ward except the barber. The patients are
condemned to see day after day no one but Nikita.

A rather strange rumour has, however, been circulating in the
hospital of late.

It is rumoured that the doctor has begun to visit Ward No. 6.

V

A strange rumour!

Dr. Andrey Yefimitch Ragin is a strange man in his way. They say
that when he was young he was very religious, and prepared himself
for a clerical career, and that when he had finished his studies
at the high school in 1863 he intended to enter a theological
academy, but that his father, a surgeon and doctor of medicine,
jeered at him and declared point-blank that he would disown him if
he became a priest. How far this is true I don't know, but Andrey
Yefimitch himself has more than once confessed that he has never
had a natural bent for medicine or science in general.

However that may have been, when he finished his studies in the
medical faculty he did not enter the priesthood. He showed no special
devoutness, and was no more like a priest at the beginning of his
medical career than he is now.

His exterior is heavy--coarse like a peasant's, his face, his
beard, his flat hair, and his coarse, clumsy figure, suggest an
overfed, intemperate, and harsh innkeeper on the highroad. His face
is surly-looking and covered with blue veins, his eyes are little
and his nose is red. With his height and broad shoulders he has
huge hands and feet; one would think that a blow from his fist would
knock the life out of anyone, but his step is soft, and his walk
is cautious and insinuating; when he meets anyone in a narrow passage
he is always the first to stop and make way, and to say, not in a
bass, as one would expect, but in a high, soft tenor: "I beg your
pardon!" He has a little swelling on his neck which prevents him
from wearing stiff starched collars, and so he always goes about
in soft linen or cotton shirts. Altogether he does not dress like
a doctor. He wears the same suit for ten years, and the new clothes,
which he usually buys at a Jewish shop, look as shabby and crumpled
on him as his old ones; he sees patients and dines and pays visits
all in the same coat; but this is not due to niggardliness, but to
complete carelessness about his appearance.

When Andrey Yefimitch came to the town to take up his duties the
"institution founded to the glory of God" was in a terrible condition.
One could hardly breathe for the stench in the wards, in the passages,
and in the courtyards of the hospital. The hospital servants, the
nurses, and their children slept in the wards together with the
patients. They complained that there was no living for beetles,
bugs, and mice. The surgical wards were never free from erysipelas.
There were only two scalpels and not one thermometer in the whole
hospital; potatoes were kept in the baths. The superintendent, the
housekeeper, and the medical assistant robbed the patients, and of
the old doctor, Andrey Yefimitch's predecessor, people declared
that he secretly sold the hospital alcohol, and that he kept a
regular harem consisting of nurses and female patients. These
disorderly proceedings were perfectly well known in the town, and
were even exaggerated, but people took them calmly; some justified
them on the ground that there were only peasants and working men
in the hospital, who could not be dissatisfied, since they were
much worse off at home than in the hospital--they couldn't be fed
on woodcocks! Others said in excuse that the town alone, without
help from the Zemstvo, was not equal to maintaining a good hospital;
thank God for having one at all, even a poor one. And the newly
formed Zemstvo did not open infirmaries either in the town or the
neighbourhood, relying on the fact that the town already had its
hospital.

After looking over the hospital Andrey Yefimitch came to the
conclusion that it was an immoral institution and extremely prejudicial
to the health of the townspeople. In his opinion the most sensible
thing that could be done was to let out the patients and close the
hospital. But he reflected that his will alone was not enough to
do this, and that it would be useless; if physical and moral impurity
were driven out of one place, they would only move to another; one
must wait for it to wither away of itself. Besides, if people open
a hospital and put up with having it, it must be because they need
it; superstition and all the nastiness and abominations of daily
life were necessary, since in process of time they worked out to
something sensible, just as manure turns into black earth. There
was nothing on earth so good that it had not something nasty about
its first origin.

When Andrey Yefimitch undertook his duties he was apparently not
greatly concerned about the irregularities at the hospital. He only
asked the attendants and nurses not to sleep in the wards, and had
two cupboards of instruments put up; the superintendent, the
housekeeper, the medical assistant, and the erysipelas remained
unchanged.

Andrey Yefimitch loved intelligence and honesty intensely, but he
had no strength of will nor belief in his right to organize an
intelligent and honest life about him. He was absolutely unable to
give orders, to forbid things, and to insist. It seemed as though
he had taken a vow never to raise his voice and never to make use
of the imperative. It was difficult for him to say "Fetch" or
"Bring"; when he wanted his meals he would cough hesitatingly and
say to the cook, "How about tea?. . ." or "How about dinner? . . ."
To dismiss the superintendent or to tell him to leave off stealing,
or to abolish the unnecessary parasitic post altogether, was
absolutely beyond his powers. When Andrey Yefimitch was deceived
or flattered, or accounts he knew to be cooked were brought him to
sign, he would turn as red as a crab and feel guilty, but yet he
would sign the accounts. When the patients complained to him of
being hungry or of the roughness of the nurses, he would be confused
and mutter guiltily: "Very well, very well, I will go into it later
. . . . Most likely there is some misunderstanding. . ."

At first Andrey Yefimitch worked very zealously. He saw patients
every day from morning till dinner-time, performed operations, and
even attended confinements. The ladies said of him that he was
attentive and clever at diagnosing diseases, especially those of
women and children. But in process of time the work unmistakably
wearied him by its monotony and obvious uselessness. To-day one
sees thirty patients, and to-morrow they have increased to thirty-five,
the next day forty, and so on from day to day, from year to year,
while the mortality in the town did not decrease and the patients
did not leave off coming. To be any real help to forty patients
between morning and dinner was not physically possible, so it could
but lead to deception. If twelve thousand patients were seen in a
year it meant, if one looked at it simply, that twelve thousand men
were deceived. To put those who were seriously ill into wards, and
to treat them according to the principles of science, was impossible,
too, because though there were principles there was no science; if
he were to put aside philosophy and pedantically follow the rules
as other doctors did, the things above all necessary were cleanliness
and ventilation instead of dirt, wholesome nourishment instead of
broth made of stinking, sour cabbage, and good assistants instead
of thieves; and, indeed, why hinder people dying if death is the
normal and legitimate end of everyone? What is gained if some
shop-keeper or clerk lives an extra five or ten years? If the aim
of medicine is by drugs to alleviate suffering, the question forces
itself on one: why alleviate it? In the first place, they say that
suffering leads man to perfection; and in the second, if mankind
really learns to alleviate its sufferings with pills and drops, it
will completely abandon religion and philosophy, in which it has
hitherto found not merely protection from all sorts of trouble, but
even happiness. Pushkin suffered terrible agonies before his death,
poor Heine lay paralyzed for several years; why, then, should not
some Andrey Yefimitch or Matryona Savishna be ill, since their lives
had nothing of importance in them, and would have been entirely
empty and like the life of an amoeba except for suffering?

Oppressed by such reflections, Andrey Yefimitch relaxed his efforts
and gave up visiting the hospital every day.

VI

His life was passed like this. As a rule he got up at eight o'clock
in the morning, dressed, and drank his tea. Then he sat down in his
study to read, or went to the hospital. At the hospital the
out-patients were sitting in the dark, narrow little corridor waiting
to be seen by the doctor. The nurses and the attendants, tramping
with their boots over the brick floors, ran by them; gaunt-looking
patients in dressing-gowns passed; dead bodies and vessels full of
filth were carried by; the children were crying, and there was a
cold draught. Andrey Yefimitch knew that such surroundings were
torture to feverish, consumptive, and impressionable patients; but
what could be done? In the consulting-room he was met by his
assistant, Sergey Sergeyitch--a fat little man with a plump,
well-washed shaven face, with soft, smooth manners, wearing a new
loosely cut suit, and looking more like a senator than a medical
assistant. He had an immense practice in the town, wore a white
tie, and considered himself more proficient than the doctor, who
had no practice. In the corner of the consulting-room there stood
a large ikon in a shrine with a heavy lamp in front of it, and near
it a candle-stand with a white cover on it. On the walls hung
portraits of bishops, a view of the Svyatogorsky Monastery, and
wreaths of dried cornflowers. Sergey Sergeyitch was religious, and
liked solemnity and decorum. The ikon had been put up at his expense;
at his instructions some one of the patients read the hymns of
praise in the consulting-room on Sundays, and after the reading
Sergey Sergeyitch himself went through the wards with a censer and
burned incense.

There were a great many patients, but the time was short, and so
the work was confined to the asking of a few brief questions and
the administration of some drugs, such as castor-oil or volatile
ointment. Andrey Yefimitch would sit with his cheek resting in his
hand, lost in thought and asking questions mechanically. Sergey
Sergeyitch sat down too, rubbing his hands, and from time to time
putting in his word.

"We suffer pain and poverty," he would say, "because we do not pray
to the merciful God as we should. Yes!"

Andrey Yefimitch never performed any operation when he was seeing
patients; he had long ago given up doing so, and the sight of blood
upset him. When he had to open a child's mouth in order to look at
its throat, and the child cried and tried to defend itself with its
little hands, the noise in his ears made his head go round and
brought tears to his eyes. He would make haste to prescribe a drug,
and motion to the woman to take the child away.

He was soon wearied by the timidity of the patients and their
incoherence, by the proximity of the pious Sergey Sergeyitch, by
the portraits on the walls, and by his own questions which he had
asked over and over again for twenty years. And he would go away
after seeing five or six patients. The rest would be seen by his
assistant in his absence.

With the agreeable thought that, thank God, he had no private
practice now, and that no one would interrupt him, Andrey Yefimitch
sat down to the table immediately on reaching home and took up a
book. He read a great deal and always with enjoyment. Half his
salary went on buying books, and of the six rooms that made up his
abode three were heaped up with books and old magazines. He liked
best of all works on history and philosophy; the only medical
publication to which he subscribed was _The Doctor_, of which he
always read the last pages first. He would always go on reading for
several hours without a break and without being weary. He did not
read as rapidly and impulsively as Ivan Dmitritch had done in the
past, but slowly and with concentration, often pausing over a passage
which he liked or did not find intelligible. Near the books there
always stood a decanter of vodka, and a salted cucumber or a pickled
apple lay beside it, not on a plate, but on the baize table-cloth.
Every half-hour he would pour himself out a glass of vodka and drink
it without taking his eyes off the book. Then without looking at
it he would feel for the cucumber and bite off a bit.

At three o'clock he would go cautiously to the kitchen door; cough,
and say, "Daryushka, what about dinner? . ."

After his dinner--a rather poor and untidily served one--Andrey
Yefimitch would walk up and down his rooms with his arms folded,
thinking. The clock would strike four, then five, and still he would
be walking up and down thinking. Occasionally the kitchen door would
creak, and the red and sleepy face of Daryushka would appear.

"Andrey Yefimitch, isn't it time for you to have your beer?" she
would ask anxiously.

"No, it's not time yet . . ." he would answer. "I'll wait a little
. . . . I'll wait a little. . ."

Towards the evening the postmaster, Mihail Averyanitch, the only
man in town whose society did not bore Andrey Yefimitch, would come
in. Mihail Averyanitch had once been a very rich landowner, and had
served in the calvary, but had come to ruin, and was forced by
poverty to take a job in the post office late in life. He had a
hale and hearty appearance, luxuriant grey whiskers, the manners
of a well-bred man, and a loud, pleasant voice. He was good-natured
and emotional, but hot-tempered. When anyone in the post office
made a protest, expressed disagreement, or even began to argue,
Mihail Averyanitch would turn crimson, shake all over, and shout
in a voice of thunder, "Hold your tongue!" so that the post office
had long enjoyed the reputation of an institution which it was
terrible to visit. Mihail Averyanitch liked and respected Andrey
Yefimitch for his culture and the loftiness of his soul; he treated
the other inhabitants of the town superciliously, as though they
were his subordinates.

"Here I am," he would say, going in to Andrey Yefimitch. "Good
evening, my dear fellow! I'll be bound, you are getting sick of me,
aren't you?"

"On the contrary, I am delighted," said the doctor. "I am always
glad to see you."

The friends would sit on the sofa in the study and for some time
would smoke in silence.

"Daryushka, what about the beer?" Andrey Yefimitch would say.

They would drink their first bottle still in silence, the doctor
brooding and Mihail Averyanitch with a gay and animated face, like
a man who has something very interesting to tell. The doctor was
always the one to begin the conversation.

"What a pity," he would say quietly and slowly, not looking his
friend in the face (he never looked anyone in the face)--"what a
great pity it is that there are no people in our town who are capable
of carrying on intelligent and interesting conversation, or care
to do so. It is an immense privation for us. Even the educated class
do not rise above vulgarity; the level of their development, I
assure you, is not a bit higher than that of the lower orders."

"Perfectly true. I agree."

"You know, of course," the doctor went on quietly and deliberately,
"that everything in this world is insignificant and uninteresting
except the higher spiritual manifestations of the human mind.
Intellect draws a sharp line between the animals and man, suggests
the divinity of the latter, and to some extent even takes the place
of the immortality which does not exist. Consequently the intellect
is the only possible source of enjoyment. We see and hear of no
trace of intellect about us, so we are deprived of enjoyment. We
have books, it is true, but that is not at all the same as living
talk and converse. If you will allow me to make a not quite apt
comparison: books are the printed score, while talk is the singing."

"Perfectly true."

A silence would follow. Daryushka would come out of the kitchen and
with an expression of blank dejection would stand in the doorway
to listen, with her face propped on her fist.

"Eh!" Mihail Averyanitch would sigh. "To expect intelligence of
this generation!"

And he would describe how wholesome, entertaining, and interesting
life had been in the past. How intelligent the educated class in
Russia used to be, and what lofty ideas it had of honour and
friendship; how they used to lend money without an IOU, and it was
thought a disgrace not to give a helping hand to a comrade in need;
and what campaigns, what adventures, what skirmishes, what comrades,
what women! And the Caucasus, what a marvellous country! The wife
of a battalion commander, a queer woman, used to put on an officer's
uniform and drive off into the mountains in the evening, alone,
without a guide. It was said that she had a love affair with some
princeling in the native village.

"Queen of Heaven, Holy Mother..." Daryushka would sigh.

"And how we drank! And how we ate! And what desperate liberals we
were!"

Andrey Yefimitch would listen without hearing; he was musing as he
sipped his beer.

"I often dream of intellectual people and conversation with them,"
he said suddenly, interrupting Mihail Averyanitch. "My father gave
me an excellent education, but under the influence of the ideas of
the sixties made me become a doctor. I believe if I had not obeyed
him then, by now I should have been in the very centre of the
intellectual movement. Most likely I should have become a member
of some university. Of course, intellect, too, is transient and not
eternal, but you know why I cherish a partiality for it. Life is a
vexatious trap; when a thinking man reaches maturity and attains
to full consciousness he cannot help feeling that he is in a trap
from which there is no escape. Indeed, he is summoned without his
choice by fortuitous circumstances from non-existence into life
. . . what for? He tries to find out the meaning and object of his
existence; he is told nothing, or he is told absurdities; he knocks
and it is not opened to him; death comes to him--also without his
choice. And so, just as in prison men held together by common
misfortune feel more at ease when they are together, so one does
not notice the trap in life when people with a bent for analysis
and generalization meet together and pass their time in the interchange
of proud and free ideas. In that sense the intellect is the source
of an enjoyment nothing can replace."

"Perfectly true."

Not looking his friend in the face, Andrey Yefimitch would go on,
quietly and with pauses, talking about intellectual people and
conversation with them, and Mihail Averyanitch would listen attentively
and agree: "Perfectly true."

"And you do not believe in the immortality of the soul?" he would
ask suddenly.

"No, honoured Mihail Averyanitch; I do not believe it, and have no
grounds for believing it."

"I must own I doubt it too. And yet I have a feeling as though I
should never die. Oh, I think to myself: 'Old fogey, it is time you
were dead!' But there is a little voice in my soul says: 'Don't
believe it; you won't die.'"

Soon after nine o'clock Mihail Averyanitch would go away. As he put
on his fur coat in the entry he would say with a sigh:

"What a wilderness fate has carried us to, though, really! What's
most vexatious of all is to have to die here. Ech! . ."

VII

After seeing his friend out Andrey Yefimitch would sit down at the
table and begin reading again. The stillness of the evening, and
afterwards of the night, was not broken by a single sound, and it
seemed as though time were standing still and brooding with the
doctor over the book, and as though there were nothing in existence
but the books and the lamp with the green shade. The doctor's coarse
peasant-like face was gradually lighted up by a smile of delight
and enthusiasm over the progress of the human intellect. Oh, why
is not man immortal? he thought. What is the good of the brain
centres and convolutions, what is the good of sight, speech,
self-consciousness, genius, if it is all destined to depart into
the soil, and in the end to grow cold together with the earth's
crust, and then for millions of years to fly with the earth round
the sun with no meaning and no object? To do that there was no need
at all to draw man with his lofty, almost godlike intellect out of
non-existence, and then, as though in mockery, to turn him into
clay. The transmutation of substances! But what cowardice to comfort
oneself with that cheap substitute for immortality! The unconscious
processes that take place in nature are lower even than the stupidity
of man, since in stupidity there is, anyway, consciousness and will,
while in those processes there is absolutely nothing. Only the
coward who has more fear of death than dignity can comfort himself
with the fact that his body will in time live again in the grass,
in the stones, in the toad. To find one's immortality in the
transmutation of substances is as strange as to prophesy a brilliant
future for the case after a precious violin has been broken and
become useless.

When the clock struck, Andrey Yefimitch would sink back into his
chair and close his eyes to think a little. And under the influence
of the fine ideas of which he had been reading he would, unawares,
recall his past and his present. The past was hateful--better not
to think of it. And it was the same in the present as in the past.
He knew that at the very time when his thoughts were floating
together with the cooling earth round the sun, in the main building
beside his abode people were suffering in sickness and physical
impurity: someone perhaps could not sleep and was making war upon
the insects, someone was being infected by erysipelas, or moaning
over too tight a bandage; perhaps the patients were playing cards
with the nurses and drinking vodka. According to the yearly return,
twelve thousand people had been deceived; the whole hospital rested
as it had done twenty years ago on thieving, filth, scandals, gossip,
on gross quackery, and, as before, it was an immoral institution
extremely injurious to the health of the inhabitants. He knew that
Nikita knocked the patients about behind the barred windows of Ward
No. 6, and that Moiseika went about the town every day begging alms.

On the other hand, he knew very well that a magical change had taken
place in medicine during the last twenty-five years. When he was
studying at the university he had fancied that medicine would soon
be overtaken by the fate of alchemy and metaphysics; but now when
he was reading at night the science of medicine touched him and
excited his wonder, and even enthusiasm. What unexpected brilliance,
what a revolution! Thanks to the antiseptic system operations were
performed such as the great Pirogov had considered impossible even
_in spe_. Ordinary Zemstvo doctors were venturing to perform the
resection of the kneecap; of abdominal operations only one per cent.
was fatal; while stone was considered such a trifle that they did
not even write about it. A radical cure for syphilis had been
discovered. And the theory of heredity, hypnotism, the discoveries
of Pasteur and of Koch, hygiene based on statistics, and the work
of Zemstvo doctors!

Psychiatry with its modern classification of mental diseases, methods
of diagnosis, and treatment, was a perfect Elborus in comparison
with what had been in the past. They no longer poured cold water
on the heads of lunatics nor put strait-waistcoats upon them; they
treated them with humanity, and even, so it was stated in the papers,
got up balls and entertainments for them. Andrey Yefimitch knew
that with modern tastes and views such an abomination as Ward No.
6 was possible only a hundred and fifty miles from a railway in a
little town where the mayor and all the town council were half-illiterate
tradesmen who looked upon the doctor as an oracle who must be
believed without any criticism even if he had poured molten lead
into their mouths; in any other place the public and the newspapers
would long ago have torn this little Bastille to pieces.

"But, after all, what of it?" Andrey Yefimitch would ask himself,
opening his eyes. "There is the antiseptic system, there is Koch,
there is Pasteur, but the essential reality is not altered a bit;
ill-health and mortality are still the same. They get up balls and
entertainments for the mad, but still they don't let them go free;
so it's all nonsense and vanity, and there is no difference in
reality between the best Vienna clinic and my hospital." But
depression and a feeling akin to envy prevented him from feeling
indifferent; it must have been owing to exhaustion. His heavy head
sank on to the book, he put his hands under his face to make it
softer, and thought: "I serve in a pernicious institution and receive
a salary from people whom I am deceiving. I am not honest, but then,
I of myself am nothing, I am only part of an inevitable social evil:
all local officials are pernicious and receive their salary for
doing nothing. . . . And so for my dishonesty it is not I who am
to blame, but the times.... If I had been born two hundred years
later I should have been different. . ."

When it struck three he would put out his lamp and go into his
bedroom; he was not sleepy.

VIII

Two years before, the Zemstvo in a liberal mood had decided to allow
three hundred roubles a year to pay for additional medical service
in the town till the Zemstvo hospital should be opened, and the
district doctor, Yevgeny Fyodoritch Hobotov, was invited to the
town to assist Andrey Yefimitch. He was a very young man--not yet
thirty--tall and dark, with broad cheek-bones and little eyes;
his forefathers had probably come from one of the many alien races
of Russia. He arrived in the town without a farthing, with a small
portmanteau, and a plain young woman whom he called his cook. This
woman had a baby at the breast. Yevgeny Fyodoritch used to go about
in a cap with a peak, and in high boots, and in the winter wore a
sheepskin. He made great friends with Sergey Sergeyitch, the medical
assistant, and with the treasurer, but held aloof from the other
officials, and for some reason called them aristocrats. He had only
one book in his lodgings, "The Latest Prescriptions of the Vienna
Clinic for 1881." When he went to a patient he always took this
book with him. He played billiards in the evening at the club: he
did not like cards. He was very fond of using in conversation such
expressions as "endless bobbery," "canting soft soap," "shut up
with your finicking. . ."

He visited the hospital twice a week, made the round of the wards,
and saw out-patients. The complete absence of antiseptic treatment
and the cupping roused his indignation, but he did not introduce
any new system, being afraid of offending Andrey Yefimitch. He
regarded his colleague as a sly old rascal, suspected him of being
a man of large means, and secretly envied him. He would have been
very glad to have his post.

IX

On a spring evening towards the end of March, when there was no
snow left on the ground and the starlings were singing in the
hospital garden, the doctor went out to see his friend the postmaster
as far as the gate. At that very moment the Jew Moiseika, returning
with his booty, came into the yard. He had no cap on, and his bare
feet were thrust into goloshes; in his hand he had a little bag of
coppers.

"Give me a kopeck!" he said to the doctor, smiling, and shivering
with cold. Andrey Yefimitch, who could never refuse anyone anything,
gave him a ten-kopeck piece.

"How bad that is!" he thought, looking at the Jew's bare feet with
their thin red ankles. "Why, it's wet."

And stirred by a feeling akin both to pity and disgust, he went
into the lodge behind the Jew, looking now at his bald head, now
at his ankles. As the doctor went in, Nikita jumped up from his
heap of litter and stood at attention.

"Good-day, Nikita," Andrey Yefimitch said mildly. "That Jew should
be provided with boots or something, he will catch cold."

"Certainly, your honour. I'll inform the superintendent."

"Please do; ask him in my name. Tell him that I asked."

The door into the ward was open. Ivan Dmitritch, lying propped on
his elbow on the bed, listened in alarm to the unfamiliar voice,
and suddenly recognized the doctor. He trembled all over with anger,
jumped up, and with a red and wrathful face, with his eyes starting
out of his head, ran out into the middle of the road.

"The doctor has come!" he shouted, and broke into a laugh. "At last!
Gentlemen, I congratulate you. The doctor is honouring us with a
visit! Cursed reptile!" he shrieked, and stamped in a frenzy such
as had never been seen in the ward before. "Kill the reptile! No,
killing's too good. Drown him in the midden-pit!"

Andrey Yefimitch, hearing this, looked into the ward from the entry
and asked gently: "What for?"

"What for?" shouted Ivan Dmitritch, going up to him with a menacing
air and convulsively wrapping himself in his dressing-gown. "What
for? Thief!" he said with a look of repulsion, moving his lips as
though he would spit at him. "Quack! hangman!"

"Calm yourself," said Andrey Yefimitch, smiling guiltily. "I assure
you I have never stolen anything; and as to the rest, most likely
you greatly exaggerate. I see you are angry with me. Calm yourself,
I beg, if you can, and tell me coolly what are you angry for?"

"What are you keeping me here for?"

"Because you are ill."

"Yes, I am ill. But you know dozens, hundreds of madmen are walking
about in freedom because your ignorance is incapable of distinguishing
them from the sane. Why am I and these poor wretches to be shut up
here like scapegoats for all the rest? You, your assistant, the
superintendent, and all your hospital rabble, are immeasurably
inferior to every one of us morally; why then are we shut up and
you not? Where's the logic of it?"

"Morality and logic don't come in, it all depends on chance. If
anyone is shut up he has to stay, and if anyone is not shut up he
can walk about, that's all. There is neither morality nor logic in
my being a doctor and your being a mental patient, there is nothing
but idle chance."

"That twaddle I don't understand. . ." Ivan Dmitritch brought out
in a hollow voice, and he sat down on his bed.

Moiseika, whom Nikita did not venture to search in the presence of
the doctor, laid out on his bed pieces of bread, bits of paper, and
little bones, and, still shivering with cold, began rapidly in a
singsong voice saying something in Yiddish. He most likely imagined
that he had opened a shop.

"Let me out," said Ivan Dmitritch, and his voice quivered.

"I cannot."

"But why, why?"

"Because it is not in my power. Think, what use will it be to you
if I do let you out? Go. The townspeople or the police will detain
you or bring you back."

"Yes, yes, that's true," said Ivan Dmitritch, and he rubbed his
forehead. "It's awful! But what am I to do, what?"

Andrey Yefimitch liked Ivan Dmitritch's voice and his intelligent
young face with its grimaces. He longed to be kind to the young man
and soothe him; he sat down on the bed beside him, thought, and
said:

"You ask me what to do. The very best thing in your position would
be to run away. But, unhappily, that is useless. You would be taken
up. When society protects itself from the criminal, mentally deranged,
or otherwise inconvenient people, it is invincible. There is only
one thing left for you: to resign yourself to the thought that your
presence here is inevitable."

"It is no use to anyone."

"So long as prisons and madhouses exist someone must be shut up in
them. If not you, I. If not I, some third person. Wait till in the
distant future prisons and madhouses no longer exist, and there
will be neither bars on the windows nor hospital gowns. Of course,
that time will come sooner or later."

Ivan Dmitritch smiled ironically.

"You are jesting," he said, screwing up his eyes. "Such gentlemen
as you and your assistant Nikita have nothing to do with the future,
but you may be sure, sir, better days will come! I may express
myself cheaply, you may laugh, but the dawn of a new life is at
hand; truth and justice will triumph, and--our turn will come! I
shall not live to see it, I shall perish, but some people's
great-grandsons will see it. I greet them with all my heart and
rejoice, rejoice with them! Onward! God be your help, friends!"

With shining eyes Ivan Dmitritch got up, and stretching his hands
towards the window, went on with emotion in his voice:

"From behind these bars I bless you! Hurrah for truth and justice!
I rejoice!"

"I see no particular reason to rejoice," said Andrey Yefimitch, who
thought Ivan Dmitritch's movement theatrical, though he was delighted
by it. "Prisons and madhouses there will not be, and truth, as you
have just expressed it, will triumph; but the reality of things,
you know, will not change, the laws of nature will still remain the
same. People will suffer pain, grow old, and die just as they do
now. However magnificent a dawn lighted up your life, you would yet
in the end be nailed up in a coffin and thrown into a hole."

"And immortality?"

"Oh, come, now!"

"You don't believe in it, but I do. Somebody in Dostoevsky or
Voltaire said that if there had not been a God men would have
invented him. And I firmly believe that if there is no immortality
the great intellect of man will sooner or later invent it."

"Well said," observed Andrey Yefimitch, smiling with pleasure; its
a good thing you have faith. With such a belief one may live happily
even shut up within walls. You have studied somewhere, I presume?"

"Yes, I have been at the university, but did not complete my studies."

"You are a reflecting and a thoughtful man. In any surroundings you
can find tranquillity in yourself. Free and deep thinking which
strives for the comprehension of life, and complete contempt for
the foolish bustle of the world--those are two blessings beyond
any that man has ever known. And you can possess them even though
you lived behind threefold bars. Diogenes lived in a tub, yet he
was happier than all the kings of the earth."

"Your Diogenes was a blockhead," said Ivan Dmitritch morosely. "Why
do you talk to me about Diogenes and some foolish comprehension of
life?" he cried, growing suddenly angry and leaping up. "I love
life; I love it passionately. I have the mania of persecution, a
continual agonizing terror; but I have moments when I am overwhelmed
by the thirst for life, and then I am afraid of going mad. I want
dreadfully to live, dreadfully!"

He walked up and down the ward in agitation, and said, dropping his
voice:

"When I dream I am haunted by phantoms. People come to me, I hear
voices and music, and I fancy I am walking through woods or by the
seashore, and I long so passionately for movement, for interests
. . . . Come, tell me, what news is there?" asked Ivan Dmitritch;
"what's happening?"

"Do you wish to know about the town or in general?"

"Well, tell me first about the town, and then in general."

"Well, in the town it is appallingly dull. . . . There's no one to
say a word to, no one to listen to. There are no new people. A young
doctor called Hobotov has come here recently."

"He had come in my time. Well, he is a low cad, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is a man of no culture. It's strange, you know. . . .
Judging by every sign, there is no intellectual stagnation in our
capital cities; there is a movement--so there must be real people
there too; but for some reason they always send us such men as I
would rather not see. It's an unlucky town!"

"Yes, it is an unlucky town," sighed Ivan Dmitritch, and he laughed.
"And how are things in general? What are they writing in the papers
and reviews?"

It was by now dark in the ward. The doctor got up, and, standing,
began to describe what was being written abroad and in Russia, and
the tendency of thought that could be noticed now. Ivan Dmitritch
listened attentively and put questions, but suddenly, as though
recalling something terrible, clutched at his head and lay down on
the bed with his back to the doctor.

"What's the matter?" asked Andrey Yefimitch.

"You will not hear another word from me," said Ivan Dmitritch rudely.
"Leave me alone."

"Why so?"

"I tell you, leave me alone. Why the devil do you persist?"

Andrey Yefimitch shrugged his shoulders, heaved a sigh, and went
out. As he crossed the entry he said: "You might clear up here,
Nikita . . . there's an awfully stuffy smell."

"Certainly, your honour."

"What an agreeable young man!" thought Andrey Yefimitch, going back
to his flat. "In all the years I have been living here I do believe
he is the first I have met with whom one can talk. He is capable
of reasoning and is interested in just the right things."

While he was reading, and afterwards, while he was going to bed,
he kept thinking about Ivan Dmitritch, and when he woke next morning
he remembered that he had the day before made the acquaintance of
an intelligent and interesting man, and determined to visit him
again as soon as possible.

X

Ivan Dmitritch was lying in the same position as on the previous
day, with his head clutched in both hands and his legs drawn up.
His face was not visible.

"Good-day, my friend," said Andrey Yefimitch. "You are not asleep,
are you?"

"In the first place, I am not your friend," Ivan Dmitritch articulated
into the pillow; "and in the second, your efforts are useless; you
will not get one word out of me."

"Strange," muttered Andrey Yefimitch in confusion. "Yesterday we
talked peacefully, but suddenly for some reason you took offence
and broke off all at once. . . . Probably I expressed myself
awkwardly, or perhaps gave utterance to some idea which did not fit
in with your convictions. . . ."

"Yes, a likely idea!" said Ivan Dmitritch, sitting up and looking
at the doctor with irony and uneasiness. His eyes were red. "You
can go and spy and probe somewhere else, it's no use your doing it
here. I knew yesterday what you had come for."

"A strange fancy," laughed the doctor. "So you suppose me to be a
spy?"

"Yes, I do. . . . A spy or a doctor who has been charged to test
me--it's all the same ----"

"Oh excuse me, what a queer fellow you are really!"

The doctor sat down on the stool near the bed and shook his head
reproachfully.

"But let us suppose you are right," he said, "let us suppose that
I am treacherously trying to trap you into saying something so as
to betray you to the police. You would be arrested and then tried.
But would you be any worse off being tried and in prison than you
are here? If you are banished to a settlement, or even sent to penal
servitude, would it be worse than being shut up in this ward? I
imagine it would be no worse. . . . What, then, are you afraid of?"

These words evidently had an effect on Ivan Dmitritch. He sat down
quietly.

It was between four and five in the afternoon--the time when
Andrey Yefimitch usually walked up and down his rooms, and Daryushka
asked whether it was not time for his beer. It was a still, bright
day.

"I came out for a walk after dinner, and here I have come, as you
see," said the doctor. "It is quite spring."

"What month is it? March?" asked Ivan Dmitritch.

"Yes, the end of March."

"Is it very muddy?"

"No, not very. There are already paths in the garden."

"It would be nice now to drive in an open carriage somewhere into
the country," said Ivan Dmitritch, rubbing his red eyes as though
he were just awake, "then to come home to a warm, snug study, and
. . . and to have a decent doctor to cure one's headache. . . .
It's so long since I have lived like a human being. It's disgusting
here! Insufferably disgusting!"

After his excitement of the previous day he was exhausted and
listless, and spoke unwillingly. His fingers twitched, and from his
face it could be seen that he had a splitting headache.

"There is no real difference between a warm, snug study and this
ward," said Andrey Yefimitch. "A man's peace and contentment do not
lie outside a man, but in himself."

"What do you mean?"

"The ordinary man looks for good and evil in external
things--that is, in carriages, in studies--but a thinking man looks for
it in himself."

"You should go and preach that philosophy in Greece, where it's
warm and fragrant with the scent of pomegranates, but here it is
not suited to the climate. With whom was it I was talking of Diogenes?
Was it with you?"

"Yes, with me yesterday."

"Diogenes did not need a study or a warm habitation; it's hot there
without. You can lie in your tub and eat oranges and olives. But
bring him to Russia to live: he'd be begging to be let indoors in
May, let alone December. He'd be doubled up with the cold."

"No. One can be insensible to cold as to every other pain. Marcus
Aurelius says: 'A pain is a vivid idea of pain; make an effort of
will to change that idea, dismiss it, cease to complain, and the
pain will disappear.' That is true. The wise man, or simply the
reflecting, thoughtful man, is distinguished precisely by his
contempt for suffering; he is always contented and surprised at
nothing."

"Then I am an idiot, since I suffer and am discontented and surprised
at the baseness of mankind."

"You are wrong in that; if you will reflect more on the subject you
will understand how insignificant is all that external world that
agitates us. One must strive for the comprehension of life, and in
that is true happiness."

"Comprehension . . ." repeated Ivan Dmitritch frowning. "External,
internal. . . . Excuse me, but I don't understand it. I only know,"
he said, getting up and looking angrily at the doctor--"I only
know that God has created me of warm blood and nerves, yes, indeed!
If organic tissue is capable of life it must react to every stimulus.
And I do! To pain I respond with tears and outcries, to baseness
with indignation, to filth with loathing. To my mind, that is just
what is called life. The lower the organism, the less sensitive it
is, and the more feebly it reacts to stimulus; and the higher it
is, the more responsively and vigorously it reacts to reality. How
is it you don't know that? A doctor, and not know such trifles! To
despise suffering, to be always contented, and to be surprised at
nothing, one must reach this condition"--and Ivan Dmitritch pointed
to the peasant who was a mass of fat--"or to harden oneself by
suffering to such a point that one loses all sensibility to
it--that is, in other words, to cease to live. You must excuse me, I
am not a sage or a philosopher," Ivan Dmitritch continued with
irritation, "and I don't understand anything about it. I am not
capable of reasoning."

"On the contrary, your reasoning is excellent."

"The Stoics, whom you are parodying, were remarkable people, but
their doctrine crystallized two thousand years ago and has not
advanced, and will not advance, an inch forward, since it is not
practical or living. It had a success only with the minority which
spends its life in savouring all sorts of theories and ruminating
over them; the majority did not understand it. A doctrine which
advocates indifference to wealth and to the comforts of life, and
a contempt for suffering and death, is quite unintelligible to the
vast majority of men, since that majority has never known wealth
or the comforts of life; and to despise suffering would mean to it
despising life itself, since the whole existence of man is made up
of the sensations of hunger, cold, injury, and a Hamlet-like dread
of death. The whole of life lies in these sensations; one may be
oppressed by it, one may hate it, but one cannot despise it. Yes,
so, I repeat, the doctrine of the Stoics can never have a future;
from the beginning of time up to to-day you see continually increasing
the struggle, the sensibility to pain, the capacity of responding
to stimulus."

Ivan Dmitritch suddenly lost the thread of his thoughts, stopped,
and rubbed his forehead with vexation.

"I meant to say something important, but I have lost it," he said.
"What was I saying? Oh, yes! This is what I mean: one of the Stoics
sold himself into slavery to redeem his neighbour, so, you see,
even a Stoic did react to stimulus, since, for such a generous act
as the destruction of oneself for the sake of one's neighbour, he
must have had a soul capable of pity and indignation. Here in prison
I have forgotten everything I have learned, or else I could have
recalled something else. Take Christ, for instance: Christ responded
to reality by weeping, smiling, being sorrowful and moved to wrath,
even overcome by misery. He did not go to meet His sufferings with
a smile, He did not despise death, but prayed in the Garden of
Gethsemane that this cup might pass Him by."

Ivan Dmitritch laughed and sat down.

"Granted that a man's peace and contentment lie not outside but in
himself," he said, "granted that one must despise suffering and not
be surprised at anything, yet on what ground do you preach the
theory? Are you a sage? A philosopher?"

"No, I am not a philosopher, but everyone ought to preach it because
it is reasonable."

"No, I want to know how it is that you consider yourself competent
to judge of 'comprehension,' contempt for suffering, and so on.
Have you ever suffered? Have you any idea of suffering? Allow me
to ask you, were you ever thrashed in your childhood?"

"No, my parents had an aversion for corporal punishment."

"My father used to flog me cruelly; my father was a harsh, sickly
Government clerk with a long nose and a yellow neck. But let us
talk of you. No one has laid a finger on you all your life, no one
has scared you nor beaten you; you are as strong as a bull. You
grew up under your father's wing and studied at his expense, and
then you dropped at once into a sinecure. For more than twenty years
you have lived rent free with heating, lighting, and service all
provided, and had the right to work how you pleased and as much as
you pleased, even to do nothing. You were naturally a flabby, lazy
man, and so you have tried to arrange your life so that nothing
should disturb you or make you move. You have handed over your work
to the assistant and the rest of the rabble while you sit in peace
and warmth, save money, read, amuse yourself with reflections, with
all sorts of lofty nonsense, and" (Ivan Dmitritch looked at the
doctor's red nose) "with boozing; in fact, you have seen nothing
of life, you know absolutely nothing of it, and are only theoretically
acquainted with reality; you despise suffering and are surprised
at nothing for a very simple reason: vanity of vanities, the external
and the internal, contempt for life, for suffering and for death,
comprehension, true happiness--that's the philosophy that suits
the Russian sluggard best. You see a peasant beating his wife, for
instance. Why interfere? Let him beat her, they will both die sooner
or later, anyway; and, besides, he who beats injures by his blows,
not the person he is beating, but himself. To get drunk is stupid
and unseemly, but if you drink you die, and if you don't drink you
die. A peasant woman comes with toothache . . . well, what of it?
Pain is the idea of pain, and besides 'there is no living in this
world without illness; we shall all die, and so, go away, woman,
don't hinder me from thinking and drinking vodka.' A young man asks
advice, what he is to do, how he is to live; anyone else would think
before answering, but you have got the answer ready: strive for
'comprehension' or for true happiness. And what is that fantastic
'true happiness'? There's no answer, of course. We are kept here
behind barred windows, tortured, left to rot; but that is very good
and reasonable, because there is no difference at all between this
ward and a warm, snug study. A convenient philosophy. You can do
nothing, and your conscience is clear, and you feel you are wise
. . . . No, sir, it is not philosophy, it's not thinking, it's not
breadth of vision, but laziness, fakirism, drowsy stupefaction.
Yes," cried Ivan Dmitritch, getting angry again, "you despise
suffering, but I'll be bound if you pinch your finger in the door
you will howl at the top of your voice."

"And perhaps I shouldn't howl," said Andrey Yefimitch, with a gentle
smile.

"Oh, I dare say! Well, if you had a stroke of paralysis, or supposing
some fool or bully took advantage of his position and rank to insult
you in public, and if you knew he could do it with impunity, then
you would understand what it means to put people off with comprehension
and true happiness."

"That's original," said Andrey Yefimitch, laughing with pleasure
and rubbing his hands. "I am agreeably struck by your inclination
for drawing generalizations, and the sketch of my character you
have just drawn is simply brilliant. I must confess that talking
to you gives me great pleasure. Well, I've listened to you, and now
you must graciously listen to me."

XI

The conversation went on for about an hour longer, and apparently
made a deep impression on Andrey Yefimitch. He began going to the
ward every day. He went there in the mornings and after dinner, and
often the dusk of evening found him in conversation with Ivan
Dmitritch. At first Ivan Dmitritch held aloof from him, suspected
him of evil designs, and openly expressed his hostility. But
afterwards he got used to him, and his abrupt manner changed to one
of condescending irony.

Soon it was all over the hospital that the doctor, Andrey Yefimitch,
had taken to visiting Ward No. 6. No one--neither Sergey Sergevitch,
nor Nikita, nor the nurses--could conceive why he went there, why
he stayed there for hours together, what he was talking about, and
why he did not write prescriptions. His actions seemed strange.
Often Mihail Averyanitch did not find him at home, which had never
happened in the past, and Daryushka was greatly perturbed, for the
doctor drank his beer now at no definite time, and sometimes was
even late for dinner.

One day--it was at the end of June--Dr. Hobotov went to see
Andrey Yefimitch about something. Not finding him at home, he
proceeded to look for him in the yard; there he was told that the
old doctor had gone to see the mental patients. Going into the lodge
and stopping in the entry, Hobotov heard the following conversation:

"We shall never agree, and you will not succeed in converting me
to your faith," Ivan Dmitritch was saying irritably; "you are utterly
ignorant of reality, and you have never known suffering, but have
only like a leech fed beside the sufferings of others, while I have
been in continual suffering from the day of my birth till to-day.
For that reason, I tell you frankly, I consider myself superior to
you and more competent in every respect. It's not for you to teach
me."

"I have absolutely no ambition to convert you to my faith," said
Andrey Yefimitch gently, and with regret that the other refused to
understand him. "And that is not what matters, my friend; what
matters is not that you have suffered and I have not. Joy and
suffering are passing; let us leave them, never mind them. What
matters is that you and I think; we see in each other people who
are capable of thinking and reasoning, and that is a common bond
between us however different our views. If you knew, my friend, how
sick I am of the universal senselessness, ineptitude, stupidity,
and with what delight I always talk with you! You are an intelligent
man, and I enjoyed your company."

Hobotov opened the door an inch and glanced into the ward; Ivan
Dmitritch in his night-cap and the doctor Andrey Yefimitch were
sitting side by side on the bed. The madman was grimacing, twitching,
and convulsively wrapping himself in his gown, while the doctor sat
motionless with bowed head, and his face was red and look helpless
and sorrowful. Hobotov shrugged his shoulders, grinned, and glanced
at Nikita. Nikita shrugged his shoulders too.

Next day Hobotov went to the lodge, accompanied by the assistant.
Both stood in the entry and listened.

"I fancy our old man has gone clean off his chump!" said Hobotov
as he came out of the lodge.

"Lord have mercy upon us sinners!" sighed the decorous Sergey
Sergeyitch, scrupulously avoiding the puddles that he might not
muddy his polished boots. "I must own, honoured Yevgeny Fyodoritch,
I have been expecting it for a long time."

XII

After this Andrey Yefimitch began to notice a mysterious air in all
around him. The attendants, the nurses, and the patients looked at
him inquisitively when they met him, and then whispered together.
The superintendent's little daughter Masha, whom he liked to meet
in the hospital garden, for some reason ran away from him now when
he went up with a smile to stroke her on the head. The postmaster
no longer said, "Perfectly true," as he listened to him, but in
unaccountable confusion muttered, "Yes, yes, yes . . ." and looked
at him with a grieved and thoughtful expression; for some reason
he took to advising his friend to give up vodka and beer, but as a
man of delicate feeling he did not say this directly, but hinted
it, telling him first about the commanding officer of his battalion,
an excellent man, and then about the priest of the regiment, a
capital fellow, both of whom drank and fell ill, but on giving up
drinking completely regained their health. On two or three occasions
Andrey Yefimitch was visited by his colleague Hobotov, who also
advised him to give up spirituous liquors, and for no apparent
reason recommended him to take bromide.

In August Andrey Yefimitch got a letter from the mayor of the town
asking him to come on very important business. On arriving at the
town hall at the time fixed, Andrey Yefimitch found there the
military commander, the superintendent of the district school, a
member of the town council, Hobotov, and a plump, fair gentleman
who was introduced to him as a doctor. This doctor, with a Polish
surname difficult to pronounce, lived at a pedigree stud-farm twenty
miles away, and was now on a visit to the town.

"There's something that concerns you," said the member of the town
council, addressing Andrey Yefimitch after they had all greeted one
another and sat down to the table. "Here Yevgeny Fyodoritch says
that there is not room for the dispensary in the main building, and
that it ought to be transferred to one of the lodges. That's of no
consequence--of course it can be transferred, but the point is
that the lodge wants doing up."

"Yes, it would have to be done up," said Andrey Yefimitch after a
moment's thought. "If the corner lodge, for instance, were fitted
up as a dispensary, I imagine it would cost at least five hundred
roubles. An unproductive expenditure!"

Everyone was silent for a space.

"I had the honour of submitting to you ten years ago," Andrey
Yefimitch went on in a low voice, "that the hospital in its present
form is a luxury for the town beyond its means. It was built in the
forties, but things were different then. The town spends too much
on unnecessary buildings and superfluous staff. I believe with a
different system two model hospitals might be maintained for the
same money."

"Well, let us have a different system, then!" the member of the
town council said briskly.

"I have already had the honour of submitting to you that the medical
department should be transferred to the supervision of the Zemstvo."

"Yes, transfer the money to the Zemstvo and they will steal it,"
laughed the fair-haired doctor.

"That's what it always comes to," the member of the council assented,
and he also laughed.

Andrey Yefimitch looked with apathetic, lustreless eyes at the
fair-haired doctor and said: "One should be just."

Again there was silence. Tea was brought in. The military commander,
for some reason much embarrassed, touched Andrey Yefimitch's hand
across the table and said: "You have quite forgotten us, doctor.
But of course you are a hermit: you don't play cards and don't like
women. You would be dull with fellows like us."

They all began saying how boring it was for a decent person to live
in such a town. No theatre, no music, and at the last dance at the
club there had been about twenty ladies and only two gentlemen. The
young men did not dance, but spent all the time crowding round the
refreshment bar or playing cards.

Not looking at anyone and speaking slowly in a low voice, Andrey
Yefimitch began saying what a pity, what a terrible pity it was
that the townspeople should waste their vital energy, their hearts,
and their minds on cards and gossip, and should have neither the
power nor the inclination to spend their time in interesting
conversation and reading, and should refuse to take advantage of
the enjoyments of the mind. The mind alone was interesting and
worthy of attention, all the rest was low and petty. Hobotov listened
to his colleague attentively and suddenly asked:

"Andrey Yefimitch, what day of the month is it?"

Having received an answer, the fair-haired doctor and he, in the
tone of examiners conscious of their lack of skill, began asking
Andrey Yefimitch what was the day of the week, how many days there
were in the year, and whether it was true that there was a remarkable
prophet living in Ward No. 6.

In response to the last question Andrey Yefimitch turned rather red
and said: "Yes, he is mentally deranged, but he is an interesting
young man."

They asked him no other questions.

When he was putting on his overcoat in the entry, the military
commander laid a hand on his shoulder and said with a sigh:

"It's time for us old fellows to rest!"

As he came out of the hall, Andrey Yefimitch understood that it had
been a committee appointed to enquire into his mental condition.
He recalled the questions that had been asked him, flushed crimson,
and for some reason, for the first time in his life, felt bitterly
grieved for medical science.

"My God. . ." he thought, remembering how these doctors had just
examined him; "why, they have only lately been hearing lectures on
mental pathology; they had passed an examination--what's the
explanation of this crass ignorance? They have not a conception of
mental pathology!"

And for the first time in his life he felt insulted and moved to
anger.

In the evening of the same day Mihail Averyanitch came to see him.
The postmaster went up to him without waiting to greet him, took
him by both hands, and said in an agitated voice:

"My dear fellow, my dear friend, show me that you believe in my
genuine affection and look on me as your friend!" And preventing
Andrey Yefimitch from speaking, he went on, growing excited: "I
love you for your culture and nobility of soul. Listen to me, my
dear fellow. The rules of their profession compel the doctors to
conceal the truth from you, but I blurt out the plain truth like a
soldier. You are not well! Excuse me, my dear fellow, but it is the
truth; everyone about you has been noticing it for a long time. Dr.
Yevgeny Fyodoritch has just told me that it is essential for you
to rest and distract your mind for the sake of your health. Perfectly
true! Excellent! In a day or two I am taking a holiday and am going
away for a sniff of a different atmosphere. Show that you are a
friend to me, let us go together! Let us go for a jaunt as in the
good old days."

"I feel perfectly well," said Andrey Yefimitch after a moment's
thought. "I can't go away. Allow me to show you my friendship in
some other way."

To go off with no object, without his books, without his Daryushka,
without his beer, to break abruptly through the routine of life,
established for twenty years--the idea for the first minute struck
him as wild and fantastic, but he remembered the conversation at
the Zemstvo committee and the depressing feelings with which he had
returned home, and the thought of a brief absence from the town in
which stupid people looked on him as a madman was pleasant to him.

"And where precisely do you intend to go?" he asked.

"To Moscow, to Petersburg, to Warsaw. . . . I spent the five happiest
years of my life in Warsaw. What a marvellous town! Let us go, my
dear fellow!"

XIII

A week later it was suggested to Andrey Yefimitch that he should
have a rest--that is, send in his resignation--a suggestion he
received with indifference, and a week later still, Mihail Averyanitch
and he were sitting in a posting carriage driving to the nearest
railway station. The days were cool and bright, with a blue sky and
a transparent distance. They were two days driving the hundred and
fifty miles to the railway station, and stayed two nights on the
way. When at the posting station the glasses given them for their
tea had not been properly washed, or the drivers were slow in
harnessing the horses, Mihail Averyanitch would turn crimson, and
quivering all over would shout:

"Hold your tongue! Don't argue!"

And in the carriage he talked without ceasing for a moment, describing
his campaigns in the Caucasus and in Poland. What adventures he had
had, what meetings! He talked loudly and opened his eyes so wide
with wonder that he might well be thought to be lying. Moreover,
as he talked he breathed in Andrey Yefimitch's face and laughed
into his ear. This bothered the doctor and prevented him from
thinking or concentrating his mind.

In the train they travelled, from motives of economy, third-class
in a non-smoking compartment. Half the passengers were decent people.
Mihail Averyanitch soon made friends with everyone, and moving from
one seat to another, kept saying loudly that they ought not to
travel by these appalling lines. It was a regular swindle! A very
different thing riding on a good horse: one could do over seventy
miles a day and feel fresh and well after it. And our bad harvests
were due to the draining of the Pinsk marshes; altogether, the way
things were done was dreadful. He got excited, talked loudly, and
would not let others speak. This endless chatter to the accompaniment
of loud laughter and expressive gestures wearied Andrey Yefimitch.

"Which of us is the madman?" he thought with vexation. "I, who try
not to disturb my fellow-passengers in any way, or this egoist who
thinks that he is cleverer and more interesting than anyone here,
and so will leave no one in peace?"

In Moscow Mihail Averyanitch put on a military coat without epaulettes
and trousers with red braid on them. He wore a military cap and
overcoat in the street, and soldiers saluted him. It seemed to
Andrey Yefimitch, now, that his companion was a man who had flung
away all that was good and kept only what was bad of all the
characteristics of a country gentleman that he had once possessed.
He liked to be waited on even when it was quite unnecessary. The
matches would be lying before him on the table, and he would see
them and shout to the waiter to give him the matches; he did not
hesitate to appear before a maidservant in nothing but his underclothes;
he used the familiar mode of address to all footmen indiscriminately,
even old men, and when he was angry called them fools and blockheads.
This, Andrey Yefimitch thought, was like a gentleman, but disgusting.

First of all Mihail Averyanitch led his friend to the Iversky
Madonna. He prayed fervently, shedding tears and bowing down to the
earth, and when he had finished, heaved a deep sigh and said:

"Even though one does not believe it makes one somehow easier when
one prays a little. Kiss the ikon, my dear fellow."

Andrey Yefimitch was embarrassed and he kissed the image, while
Mihail Averyanitch pursed up his lips and prayed in a whisper, and
again tears came into his eyes. Then they went to the Kremlin and
looked there at the Tsar-cannon and the Tsar-bell, and even touched
them with their fingers, admired the view over the river, visited
St. Saviour's and the Rumyantsev museum.

They dined at Tyestov's. Mihail Averyanitch looked a long time at
the menu, stroking his whiskers, and said in the tone of a gourmand
accustomed to dine in restaurants:

"We shall see what you give us to eat to-day, angel!"

XIV

The doctor walked about, looked at things, ate and drank, but he
had all the while one feeling: annoyance with Mihail Averyanitch.
He longed to have a rest from his friend, to get away from him, to
hide himself, while the friend thought it was his duty not to let
the doctor move a step away from him, and to provide him with as
many distractions as possible. When there was nothing to look at
he entertained him with conversation. For two days Andrey Yefimitch
endured it, but on the third he announced to his friend that he was
ill and wanted to stay at home for the whole day; his friend replied
that in that case he would stay too--that really he needed rest,
for he was run off his legs already. Andrey Yefimitch lay on the
sofa, with his face to the back, and clenching his teeth, listened
to his friend, who assured him with heat that sooner or later France
would certainly thrash Germany, that there were a great many
scoundrels in Moscow, and that it was impossible to judge of a
horse's quality by its outward appearance. The doctor began to have
a buzzing in his ears and palpitations of the heart, but out of
delicacy could not bring himself to beg his friend to go away or
hold his tongue. Fortunately Mihail Averyanitch grew weary of sitting
in the hotel room, and after dinner he went out for a walk.

As soon as he was alone Andrey Yefimitch abandoned himself to a
feeling of relief. How pleasant to lie motionless on the sofa and
to know that one is alone in the room! Real happiness is impossible
without solitude. The fallen angel betrayed God probably because
he longed for solitude, of which the angels know nothing. Andrey
Yefimitch wanted to think about what he had seen and heard during
the last few days, but he could not get Mihail Averyanitch out of
his head.

"Why, he has taken a holiday and come with me out of friendship,
out of generosity," thought the doctor with vexation; "nothing could
be worse than this friendly supervision. I suppose he is good-natured
and generous and a lively fellow, but he is a bore. An insufferable
bore. In the same way there are people who never say anything but
what is clever and good, yet one feels that they are dull-witted
people."

For the following days Andrey Yefimitch declared himself ill and
would not leave the hotel room; he lay with his face to the back
of the sofa, and suffered agonies of weariness when his friend
entertained him with conversation, or rested when his friend was
absent. He was vexed with himself for having come, and with his
friend, who grew every day more talkative and more free-and-easy;
he could not succeed in attuning his thoughts to a serious and lofty
level.

"This is what I get from the real life Ivan Dmitritch talked about,"
he thought, angry at his own pettiness. "It's of no consequence,
though. . . . I shall go home, and everything will go on as
before . . . ."

It was the same thing in Petersburg too; for whole days together
he did not leave the hotel room, but lay on the sofa and only got
up to drink beer.

Mihail Averyanitch was all haste to get to Warsaw.

"My dear man, what should I go there for?" said Andrey Yefimitch
in an imploring voice. "You go alone and let me get home! I entreat
you!"

"On no account," protested Mihail Averyanitch. "It's a marvellous
town."

Andrey Yefimitch had not the strength of will to insist on his own
way, and much against his inclination went to Warsaw. There he did
not leave the hotel room, but lay on the sofa, furious with himself,
with his friend, and with the waiters, who obstinately refused to
understand Russian; while Mihail Averyanitch, healthy, hearty, and
full of spirits as usual, went about the town from morning to night,
looking for his old acquaintances. Several times he did not return
home at night. After one night spent in some unknown haunt he
returned home early in the morning, in a violently excited condition,
with a red face and tousled hair. For a long time he walked up and
down the rooms muttering something to himself, then stopped and
said:

"Honour before everything."

After walking up and down a little longer he clutched his head in
both hands and pronounced in a tragic voice: "Yes, honour before
everything! Accursed be the moment when the idea first entered my
head to visit this Babylon! My dear friend," he added, addressing
the doctor, "you may despise me, I have played and lost; lend me
five hundred roubles!"

Andrey Yefimitch counted out five hundred roubles and gave them to
his friend without a word. The latter, still crimson with shame and
anger, incoherently articulated some useless vow, put on his cap,
and went out. Returning two hours later he flopped into an easy-chair,
heaved a loud sigh, and said:

"My honour is saved. Let us go, my friend; I do not care to remain
another hour in this accursed town. Scoundrels! Austrian spies!"

By the time the friends were back in their own town it was November,
and deep snow was lying in the streets. Dr. Hobotov had Andrey
Yefimitch's post; he was still living in his old lodgings, waiting
for Andrey Yefimitch to arrive and clear out of the hospital
apartments. The plain woman whom he called his cook was already
established in one of the lodges.

Fresh scandals about the hospital were going the round of the town.
It was said that the plain woman had quarrelled with the superintendent,
and that the latter had crawled on his knees before her begging
forgiveness. On the very first day he arrived Andrey Yefimitch had
to look out for lodgings.

"My friend," the postmaster said to him timidly, "excuse an indiscreet
question: what means have you at your disposal?"

Andrey Yefimitch, without a word, counted out his money and said:
"Eighty-six roubles."

"I don't mean that," Mihail Averyanitch brought out in confusion,
misunderstanding him; "I mean, what have you to live on?"

"I tell you, eighty-six roubles . . . I have nothing else."

Mihail Averyanitch looked upon the doctor as an honourable man, yet
he suspected that he had accumulated a fortune of at least twenty
thousand. Now learning that Andrey Yefimitch was a beggar, that he
had nothing to live on he was for some reason suddenly moved to
tears and embraced his friend.

XV

Andrey Yefimitch now lodged in a little house with three windows.
There were only three rooms besides the kitchen in the little house.
The doctor lived in two of them which looked into the street, while
Daryushka and the landlady with her three children lived in the
third room and the kitchen. Sometimes the landlady's lover, a drunken
peasant who was rowdy and reduced the children and Daryushka to
terror, would come for the night. When he arrived and established
himself in the kitchen and demanded vodka, they all felt very
uncomfortable, and the doctor would be moved by pity to take the
crying children into his room and let them lie on his floor, and
this gave him great satisfaction.

He got up as before at eight o'clock, and after his morning tea sat
down to read his old books and magazines: he had no money for new
ones. Either because the books were old, or perhaps because of the
change in his surroundings, reading exhausted him, and did not grip
his attention as before. That he might not spend his time in idleness
he made a detailed catalogue of his books and gummed little labels
on their backs, and this mechanical, tedious work seemed to him
more interesting than reading. The monotonous, tedious work lulled
his thoughts to sleep in some unaccountable way, and the time passed
quickly while he thought of nothing. Even sitting in the kitchen,
peeling potatoes with Daryushka or picking over the buckwheat grain,
seemed to him interesting. On Saturdays and Sundays he went to
church. Standing near the wall and half closing his eyes, he listened
to the singing and thought of his father, of his mother, of the
university, of the religions of the world; he felt calm and melancholy,
and as he went out of the church afterwards he regretted that the
service was so soon over. He went twice to the hospital to talk to
Ivan Dmitritch. But on both occasions Ivan Dmitritch was unusually
excited and ill-humoured; he bade the doctor leave him in peace,
as he had long been sick of empty chatter, and declared, to make
up for all his sufferings, he asked from the damned scoundrels only
one favour--solitary confinement. Surely they would not refuse
him even that? On both occasions when Andrey Yefimitch was taking
leave of him and wishing him good-night, he answered rudely and
said:

"Go to hell!"

And Andrey Yefimitch did not know now whether to go to him for the
third time or not. He longed to go.

In old days Andrey Yefimitch used to walk about his rooms and think
in the interval after dinner, but now from dinner-time till evening
tea he lay on the sofa with his face to the back and gave himself
up to trivial thoughts which he could not struggle against. He was
mortified that after more than twenty years of service he had been
given neither a pension nor any assistance. It is true that he had
not done his work honestly, but, then, all who are in the Service
get a pension without distinction whether they are honest or not.
Contemporary justice lies precisely in the bestowal of grades,
orders, and pensions, not for moral qualities or capacities, but
for service whatever it may have been like. Why was he alone to be
an exception? He had no money at all. He was ashamed to pass by the
shop and look at the woman who owned it. He owed thirty-two roubles
for beer already. There was money owing to the landlady also.
Daryushka sold old clothes and books on the sly, and told lies to
the landlady, saying that the doctor was just going to receive a
large sum of money.

He was angry with himself for having wasted on travelling the
thousand roubles he had saved up. How useful that thousand roubles
would have been now! He was vexed that people would not leave him
in peace. Hobotov thought it his duty to look in on his sick colleague
from time to time. Everything about him was revolting to Andrey
Yefimitch--his well-fed face and vulgar, condescending tone, and
his use of the word "colleague," and his high top-boots; the most
revolting thing was that he thought it was his duty to treat Andrey
Yefimitch, and thought that he really was treating him. On every
visit he brought a bottle of bromide and rhubarb pills.

Mihail Averyanitch, too, thought it his duty to visit his friend
and entertain him. Every time he went in to Andrey Yefimitch with
an affectation of ease, laughed constrainedly, and began assuring
him that he was looking very well to-day, and that, thank God, he
was on the highroad to recovery, and from this it might be concluded
that he looked on his friend's condition as hopeless. He had not
yet repaid his Warsaw debt, and was overwhelmed by shame; he was
constrained, and so tried to laugh louder and talk more amusingly.
His anecdotes and descriptions seemed endless now, and were an agony
both to Andrey Yefimitch and himself.

In his presence Andrey Yefimitch usually lay on the sofa with his
face to the wall, and listened with his teeth clenched; his soul
was oppressed with rankling disgust, and after every visit from his
friend he felt as though this disgust had risen higher, and was
mounting into his throat.

To stifle petty thoughts he made haste to reflect that he himself,
and Hobotov, and Mihail Averyanitch, would all sooner or later
perish without leaving any trace on the world. If one imagined some
spirit flying by the earthly globe in space in a million years he
would see nothing but clay and bare rocks. Everything--culture
and the moral law--would pass away and not even a burdock would
grow out of them. Of what consequence was shame in the presence of
a shopkeeper, of what consequence was the insignificant Hobotov or
the wearisome friendship of Mihail Averyanitch? It was all trivial
and nonsensical.

But such reflections did not help him now. Scarcely had he imagined
the earthly globe in a million years, when Hobotov in his high
top-boots or Mihail Averyanitch with his forced laugh would appear
from behind a bare rock, and he even heard the shamefaced whisper:
"The Warsaw debt. . . . I will repay it in a day or two, my dear
fellow, without fail. . . ."

XVI

One day Mihail Averyanitch came after dinner when Andrey Yefimitch
was lying on the sofa. It so happened that Hobotov arrived at the
same time with his bromide. Andrey Yefimitch got up heavily and sat
down, leaning both arms on the sofa.

"You have a much better colour to-day than you had yesterday, my
dear man," began Mihail Averyanitch. "Yes, you look jolly. Upon my
soul, you do!"

"It's high time you were well, dear colleague," said Hobotov,
yawning. "I'll be bound, you are sick of this bobbery."

"And we shall recover," said Mihail Averyanitch cheerfully. "We
shall live another hundred years! To be sure!"

"Not a hundred years, but another twenty," Hobotov said reassuringly.
"It's all right, all right, colleague; don't lose heart. . . . Don't
go piling it on!"

"We'll show what we can do," laughed Mihail Averyanitch, and he
slapped his friend on the knee. "We'll show them yet! Next summer,
please God, we shall be off to the Caucasus, and we will ride all
over it on horseback--trot, trot, trot! And when we are back from
the Caucasus I shouldn't wonder if we will all dance at the wedding."
Mihail Averyanitch gave a sly wink. "We'll marry you, my dear boy,
we'll marry you. . . ."

Andrey Yefimitch felt suddenly that the rising disgust had mounted
to his throat, his heart began beating violently.

"That's vulgar," he said, getting up quickly and walking away to
the window. "Don't you understand that you are talking vulgar
nonsense?"

He meant to go on softly and politely, but against his will he
suddenly clenched his fists and raised them above his head.

"Leave me alone," he shouted in a voice unlike his own, blushing
crimson and shaking all over. "Go away, both of you!"

Mihail Averyanitch and Hobotov got up and stared at him first with
amazement and then with alarm.

"Go away, both!" Andrey Yefimitch went on shouting. "Stupid people!
Foolish people! I don't want either your friendship or your medicines,
stupid man! Vulgar! Nasty!"

Hobotov and Mihail Averyanitch, looking at each other in bewilderment,
staggered to the door and went out. Andrey Yefimitch snatched up
the bottle of bromide and flung it after them; the bottle broke
with a crash on the door-frame.

"Go to the devil!" he shouted in a tearful voice, running out into
the passage. "To the devil!"

When his guests were gone Andrey Yefimitch lay down on the sofa,
trembling as though in a fever, and went on for a long while
repeating: "Stupid people! Foolish people!"

When he was calmer, what occurred to him first of all was the thought
that poor Mihail Averyanitch must be feeling fearfully ashamed and
depressed now, and that it was all dreadful. Nothing like this had
ever happened to him before. Where was his intelligence and his
tact? Where was his comprehension of things and his philosophical
indifference?

The doctor could not sleep all night for shame and vexation with
himself, and at ten o'clock next morning he went to the post office
and apologized to the postmaster.

"We won't think again of what has happened," Mihail Averyanitch,
greatly touched, said with a sigh, warmly pressing his hand. "Let
bygones be bygones. Lyubavkin," he suddenly shouted so loud that
all the postmen and other persons present started, "hand a chair;
and you wait," he shouted to a peasant woman who was stretching out
a registered letter to him through the grating. "Don't you see that
I am busy? We will not remember the past," he went on, affectionately
addressing Andrey Yefimitch; "sit down, I beg you, my dear fellow."

For a minute he stroked his knees in silence, and then said:

"I have never had a thought of taking offence. Illness is no joke,
I understand. Your attack frightened the doctor and me yesterday,
and we had a long talk about you afterwards. My dear friend, why
won't you treat your illness seriously? You can't go on like this
. . . . Excuse me speaking openly as a friend," whispered Mihail
Averyanitch. "You live in the most unfavourable surroundings, in a
crowd, in uncleanliness, no one to look after you, no money for
proper treatment. . . . My dear friend, the doctor and I implore
you with all our hearts, listen to our advice: go into the hospital!
There you will have wholesome food and attendance and treatment.
Though, between ourselves, Yevgeny Fyodoritch is _mauvais ton_, yet
he does understand his work, you can fully rely upon him. He has
promised me he will look after you."

Andrey Yefimitch was touched by the postmaster's genuine sympathy
and the tears which suddenly glittered on his cheeks.

"My honoured friend, don't believe it!" he whispered, laying his
hand on his heart; "don't believe them. It's all a sham. My illness
is only that in twenty years I have only found one intelligent man
in the whole town, and he is mad. I am not ill at all, it's simply
that I have got into an enchanted circle which there is no getting
out of. I don't care; I am ready for anything."

"Go into the hospital, my dear fellow."

"I don't care if it were into the pit."

"Give me your word, my dear man, that you will obey Yevgeny Fyodoritch
in everything."

"Certainly I will give you my word. But I repeat, my honoured friend,
I have got into an enchanted circle. Now everything, even the genuine
sympathy of my friends, leads to the same thing--to my ruin. I
am going to my ruin, and I have the manliness to recognize it."

"My dear fellow, you will recover."

"What's the use of saying that?" said Andrey Yefimitch, with
irritation. "There are few men who at the end of their lives do not
experience what I am experiencing now. When you are told that you
have something such as diseased kidneys or enlarged heart, and you
begin being treated for it, or are told you are mad or a
criminal--that is, in fact, when people suddenly turn their attention to
you--you may be sure you have got into an enchanted circle from
which you will not escape. You will try to escape and make things
worse. You had better give in, for no human efforts can save you.
So it seems to me."

Meanwhile the public was crowding at the grating. That he might not
be in their way, Andrey Yefimitch got up and began to take leave.
Mihail Averyanitch made him promise on his honour once more, and
escorted him to the outer door.

Towards evening on the same day Hobotov, in his sheepskin and his
high top-boots, suddenly made his appearance, and said to Andrey
Yefimitch in a tone as though nothing had happened the day before:

"I have come on business, colleague. I have come to ask you whether
you would not join me in a consultation. Eh?"

Thinking that Hobotov wanted to distract his mind with an outing,
or perhaps really to enable him to earn something, Andrey Yefimitch
put on his coat and hat, and went out with him into the street. He
was glad of the opportunity to smooth over his fault of the previous
day and to be reconciled, and in his heart thanked Hobotov, who did
not even allude to yesterday's scene and was evidently sparing him.
One would never have expected such delicacy from this uncultured
man.

"Where is your invalid?" asked Andrey Yefimitch.

"In the hospital. . . . I have long wanted to show him to you. A
very interesting case."

They went into the hospital yard, and going round the main building,
turned towards the lodge where the mental cases were kept, and all
this, for some reason, in silence. When they went into the lodge
Nikita as usual jumped up and stood at attention.

"One of the patients here has a lung complication." Hobotov said
in an undertone, going into the yard with Andrey Yefimitch. "You
wait here, I'll be back directly. I am going for a stethoscope."

And he went away.

XVII

It was getting dusk. Ivan Dmitritch was lying on his bed with his
face thrust unto his pillow; the paralytic was sitting motionless,
crying quietly and moving his lips. The fat peasant and the former
sorter were asleep. It was quiet.

Andrey Yefimitch sat down on Ivan Dmitritch's bed and waited. But
half an hour passed, and instead of Hobotov, Nikita came into the
ward with a dressing-gown, some underlinen, and a pair of slippers
in a heap on his arm.

"Please change your things, your honour," he said softly. "Here is
your bed; come this way," he added, pointing to an empty bedstead
which had obviously recently been brought into the ward. "It's all
right; please God, you will recover."

Andrey Yefimitch understood it all. Without saying a word he crossed
to the bed to which Nikita pointed and sat down; seeing that Nikita
was standing waiting, he undressed entirely and he felt ashamed.
Then he put on the hospital clothes; the drawers were very short,
the shirt was long, and the dressing-gown smelt of smoked fish.

"Please God, you will recover," repeated Nikita, and he gathered
up Andrey Yefimitch's clothes into his arms, went out, and shut the
door after him.

"No matter . . ." thought Andrey Yefimitch, wrapping himself in his
dressing-gown in a shamefaced way and feeling that he looked like
a convict in his new costume. "It's no matter. . . . It does not
matter whether it's a dress-coat or a uniform or this dressing-gown."

But how about his watch? And the notebook that was in the side-pocket?
And his cigarettes? Where had Nikita taken his clothes? Now perhaps
to the day of his death he would not put on trousers, a waistcoat,
and high boots. It was all somehow strange and even incomprehensible
at first. Andrey Yefimitch was even now convinced that there was
no difference between his landlady's house and Ward No. 6, that
everything in this world was nonsense and vanity of vanities. And
yet his hands were trembling, his feet were cold, and he was filled
with dread at the thought that soon Ivan Dmitritch would get up and
see that he was in a dressing-gown. He got up and walked across the
room and sat down again.

Here he had been sitting already half an hour, an hour, and he was
miserably sick of it: was it really possible to live here a day, a
week, and even years like these people? Why, he had been sitting
here, had walked about and sat down again; he could get up and look
out of window and walk from corner to corner again, and then what?
Sit so all the time, like a post, and think? No, that was scarcely
possible.

Andrey Yefimitch lay down, but at once got up, wiped the cold sweat
from his brow with his sleeve and felt that his whole face smelt
of smoked fish. He walked about again.

"It's some misunderstanding . . ." he said, turning out the palms
of his hands in perplexity. "It must be cleared up. There is a
misunderstanding."

Meanwhile Ivan Dmitritch woke up; he sat up and propped his cheeks
on his fists. He spat. Then he glanced lazily at the doctor, and
apparently for the first minute did not understand; but soon his
sleepy face grew malicious and mocking.

"Aha! so they have put you in here, too, old fellow?" he said in a
voice husky from sleepiness, screwing up one eye. "Very glad to see
you. You sucked the blood of others, and now they will suck yours.
Excellent!"

"It's a misunderstanding . . ." Andrey Yefimitch brought out,
frightened by Ivan Dmitritch's words; he shrugged his shoulders and
repeated: "It's some misunderstanding."

Ivan Dmitritch spat again and lay down.

"Cursed life," he grumbled, "and what's bitter and insulting, this
life will not end in compensation for our sufferings, it will not
end with apotheosis as it would in an opera, but with death; peasants
will come and drag one's dead body by the arms and the legs to the
cellar. Ugh! Well, it does not matter. . . . We shall have our good
time in the other world. . . . I shall come here as a ghost from
the other world and frighten these reptiles. I'll turn their hair
grey."

Moiseika returned, and, seeing the doctor, held out his hand.

"Give me one little kopeck," he said.

XVIII

Andrey Yefimitch walked away to the window and looked out into the
open country. It was getting dark, and on the horizon to the right
a cold crimson moon was mounting upwards. Not far from the hospital
fence, not much more than two hundred yards away, stood a tall white
house shut in by a stone wall. This was the prison.

"So this is real life," thought Andrey Yefimitch, and he felt
frightened.

The moon and the prison, and the nails on the fence, and the far-away
flames at the bone-charring factory were all terrible. Behind him
there was the sound of a sigh. Andrey Yefimitch looked round and
saw a man with glittering stars and orders on his breast, who was
smiling and slyly winking. And this, too, seemed terrible.

Andrey Yefimitch assured himself that there was nothing special
about the moon or the prison, that even sane persons wear orders,
and that everything in time will decay and turn to earth, but he
was suddenly overcome with desire; he clutched at the grating with
both hands and shook it with all his might. The strong grating did
not yield.

Then that it might not be so dreadful he went to Ivan Dmitritch's
bed and sat down.

"I have lost heart, my dear fellow," he muttered, trembling and
wiping away the cold sweat, "I have lost heart."

"You should be philosophical," said Ivan Dmitritch ironically.

"My God, my God. . . . Yes, yes. . . . You were pleased to say once
that there was no philosophy in Russia, but that all people, even
the paltriest, talk philosophy. But you know the philosophizing of
the paltriest does not harm anyone," said Andrey Yefimitch in a
tone as if he wanted to cry and complain. "Why, then, that malignant
laugh, my friend, and how can these paltry creatures help philosophizing
if they are not satisfied? For an intelligent, educated man, made
in God's image, proud and loving freedom, to have no alternative
but to be a doctor in a filthy, stupid, wretched little town, and
to spend his whole life among bottles, leeches, mustard plasters!
Quackery, narrowness, vulgarity! Oh, my God!"

"You are talking nonsense. If you don't like being a doctor you
should have gone in for being a statesman."

"I could not, I could not do anything. We are weak, my dear friend
. . . . I used to be indifferent. I reasoned boldly and soundly, but
at the first coarse touch of life upon me I have lost heart. . . .
Prostration. . . . . We are weak, we are poor creatures . . . and
you, too, my dear friend, you are intelligent, generous, you drew
in good impulses with your mother's milk, but you had hardly entered
upon life when you were exhausted and fell ill. . . . Weak, weak!"

Andrey Yefimitch was all the while at the approach of evening
tormented by another persistent sensation besides terror and the
feeling of resentment. At last he realized that he was longing for
a smoke and for beer.

"I am going out, my friend," he said. "I will tell them to bring a
light; I can't put up with this. . . . I am not equal to it. . . ."

Andrey Yefimitch went to the door and opened it, but at once Nikita
jumped up and barred his way.

"Where are you going? You can't, you can't!" he said. "It's bedtime."

"But I'm only going out for a minute to walk about the yard," said
Andrey Yefimitch.

"You can't, you can't; it's forbidden. You know that yourself."

"But what difference will it make to anyone if I do go out?" asked
Andrey Yefimitch, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't understand.
Nikita, I must go out!" he said in a trembling voice. "I must."

"Don't be disorderly, it's not right," Nikita said peremptorily.

"This is beyond everything," Ivan Dmitritch cried suddenly, and he
jumped up. "What right has he not to let you out? How dare they
keep us here? I believe it is clearly laid down in the law that no
one can be deprived of freedom without trial! It's an outrage! It's
tyranny!"

"Of course it's tyranny," said Andrey Yefimitch, encouraged by Ivan
Dmitritch's outburst. "I must go out, I want to. He has no right!
Open, I tell you."

"Do you hear, you dull-witted brute?" cried Ivan Dmitritch, and he
banged on the door with his fist. "Open the door, or I will break
it open! Torturer!"

"Open the door," cried Andrey Yefimitch, trembling all over; "I
insist!"

"Talk away!" Nikita answered through the door, "talk away. . . ."

"Anyhow, go and call Yevgeny Fyodoritch! Say that I beg him to come
for a minute!"

"His honour will come of himself to-morrow."

"They will never let us out," Ivan Dmitritch was going on meanwhile.
"They will leave us to rot here! Oh, Lord, can there really be no
hell in the next world, and will these wretches be forgiven? Where
is justice? Open the door, you wretch! I am choking!" he cried in
a hoarse voice, and flung himself upon the door. "I'll dash out my
brains, murderers!"

Nikita opened the door quickly, and roughly with both his hands and
his knee shoved Andrey Yefimitch back, then swung his arm and punched
him in the face with his fist. It seemed to Andrey Yefimitch as
though a huge salt wave enveloped him from his head downwards and
dragged him to the bed; there really was a salt taste in his mouth:
most likely the blood was running from his teeth. He waved his arms
as though he were trying to swim out and clutched at a bedstead,
and at the same moment felt Nikita hit him twice on the back.

Ivan Dmitritch gave a loud scream. He must have been beaten too.

Then all was still, the faint moonlight came through the grating,
and a shadow like a net lay on the floor. It was terrible. Andrey
Yefimitch lay and held his breath: he was expecting with horror to
be struck again. He felt as though someone had taken a sickle,
thrust it into him, and turned it round several times in his breast
and bowels. He bit the pillow from pain and clenched his teeth, and
all at once through the chaos in his brain there flashed the terrible
unbearable thought that these people, who seemed now like black
shadows in the moonlight, had to endure such pain day by day for
years. How could it have happened that for more than twenty years
he had not known it and had refused to know it? He knew nothing of
pain, had no conception of it, so he was not to blame, but his
conscience, as inexorable and as rough as Nikita, made him turn
cold from the crown of his head to his heels. He leaped up, tried
to cry out with all his might, and to run in haste to kill Nikita,
and then Hobotov, the superintendent and the assistant, and then
himself; but no sound came from his chest, and his legs would not
obey him. Gasping for breath, he tore at the dressing-gown and the
shirt on his breast, rent them, and fell senseless on the bed.

XIX

Next morning his head ached, there was a droning in his ears and a
feeling of utter weakness all over. He was not ashamed at recalling
his weakness the day before. He had been cowardly, had even been
afraid of the moon, had openly expressed thoughts and feelings such
as he had not expected in himself before; for instance, the thought
that the paltry people who philosophized were really dissatisfied.
But now nothing mattered to him.

He ate nothing; he drank nothing. He lay motionless and silent.

"It is all the same to me," he thought when they asked him questions.
"I am not going to answer. . . . It's all the same to me."

After dinner Mihail Averyanitch brought him a quarter pound of tea
and a pound of fruit pastilles. Daryushka came too and stood for a
whole hour by the bed with an expression of dull grief on her face.
Dr. Hobotov visited him. He brought a bottle of bromide and told
Nikita to fumigate the ward with something.

Towards evening Andrey Yefimitch died of an apoplectic stroke. At
first he had a violent shivering fit and a feeling of sickness;
something revolting as it seemed, penetrating through his whole
body, even to his finger-tips, strained from his stomach to his
head and flooded his eyes and ears. There was a greenness before
his eyes. Andrey Yefimitch understood that his end had come, and
remembered that Ivan Dmitritch, Mihail Averyanitch, and millions
of people believed in immortality. And what if it really existed?
But he did not want immortality--and he thought of it only for
one instant. A herd of deer, extraordinarily beautiful and graceful,
of which he had been reading the day before, ran by him; then a
peasant woman stretched out her hand to him with a registered letter
. . . . Mihail Averyanitch said something, then it all vanished, and
Andrey Yefimitch sank into oblivion for ever.

The hospital porters came, took him by his arms and legs, and carried
him away to the chapel.

There he lay on the table, with open eyes, and the moon shed its
light upon him at night. In the morning Sergey Sergeyitch came,
prayed piously before the crucifix, and closed his former chief's
eyes.

Next day Andrey Yefimitch was buried. Mihail Averyanitch and Daryushka
were the only people at the funeral.


THE PETCHENYEG

IVAN ABRAMITCH ZHMUHIN, a retired Cossack officer, who had once
served in the Caucasus, but now lived on his own farm, and who had
once been young, strong, and vigorous, but now was old, dried up,
and bent, with shaggy eyebrows and a greenish-grey moustache, was
returning from the town to his farm one hot summer's day. In the
town he had confessed and received absolution, and had made his
will at the notary's (a fortnight before he had had a slight stroke),
and now all the while he was in the railway carriage he was haunted
by melancholy, serious thoughts of approaching death, of the vanity
of vanities, of the transitoriness of all things earthly. At the
station of Provalye--there is such a one on the Donetz line--a
fair-haired, plump, middle-aged gentleman with a shabby portfolio
stepped into the carriage and sat down opposite. They got into
conversation.

"Yes," said Ivan Abramitch, looking pensively out of window, "it
is never too late to marry. I myself married when I was forty-eight;
I was told it was late, but it has turned out that it was not late
or early, but simply that it would have been better not to marry
at all. Everyone is soon tired of his wife, but not everyone tells
the truth, because, you know, people are ashamed of an unhappy home
life and conceal it. It's 'Manya this' and 'Manya that' with many
a man by his wife's side, but if he had his way he'd put that Manya
in a sack and drop her in the water. It's dull with one's wife,
it's mere foolishness. And it's no better with one's children, I
make bold to assure you. I have two of them, the rascals. There's
nowhere for them to be taught out here in the steppe; I haven't the
money to send them to school in Novo Tcherkask, and they live here
like young wolves. Next thing they will be murdering someone on the
highroad."

The fair-haired gentleman listened attentively, answered questions
briefly in a low voice, and was apparently a gentleman of gentle
and modest disposition. He mentioned that he was a lawyer, and that
he was going to the village Dyuevka on business.

"Why, merciful heavens, that is six miles from me!" said Zhmuhin
in a tone of voice as though someone were disputing with him. "But
excuse me, you won't find horses at the station now. To my mind,
the very best thing you can do, you know, is to come straight to
me, stay the night, you know, and in the morning drive over with
my horses."

The lawyer thought a moment and accepted the invitation.

When they reached the station the sun was already low over the
steppe. They said nothing all the way from the station to the farm:
the jolting prevented conversation. The trap bounded up and down,
squeaked, and seemed to be sobbing, and the lawyer, who was sitting
very uncomfortably, stared before him, miserably hoping to see the
farm. After they had driven five or six miles there came into view
in the distance a low-pitched house and a yard enclosed by a fence
made of dark, flat stones standing on end; the roof was green, the
stucco was peeling off, and the windows were little narrow slits
like screwed-up eyes. The farm stood in the full sunshine, and there
was no sign either of water or trees anywhere round. Among the
neighbouring landowners and the peasants it was known as the
Petchenyegs' farm. Many years before, a land surveyor, who was
passing through the neighbourhood and put up at the farm, spent the
whole night talking to Ivan Abramitch, was not favourably impressed,
and as he was driving away in the morning said to him grimly:

"You are a Petchenyeg,* my good sir!"

* The Petchenyegs were a tribe of wild Mongolian nomads who made
frequent inroads upon the Russians in the tenth and eleventh
centuries.--_Translator's Note._

From this came the nickname, the Petchenyegs' farm, which stuck to
the place even more when Zhmuhin's boys grew up and began to make
raids on the orchards and kitchen-gardens. Ivan Abramitch was called
"You Know," as he usually talked a very great deal and frequently
made use of that expression.

In the yard near a barn Zhmuhin's sons were standing, one a young
man of nineteen, the other a younger lad, both barefoot and bareheaded.
Just at the moment when the trap drove into the yard the younger
one flung high up a hen which, cackling, described an arc in the
air; the elder shot at it with a gun and the hen fell dead on the
earth.

"Those are my boys learning to shoot birds flying," said Zhmuhin.

In the entry the travellers were met by a little thin woman with a
pale face, still young and beautiful; from her dress she might have
been taken for a servant.

"And this, allow me to introduce her," said Zhmuhin, "is the mother
of my young cubs. Come, Lyubov Osipovna," he said, addressing her,
"you must be spry, mother, and get something for our guest. Let us
have supper. Look sharp!"

The house consisted of two parts: in one was the parlour and beside
it old Zhmuhin's bedroom, both stuffy rooms with low ceilings and
multitudes of flies and wasps, and in the other was the kitchen in
which the cooking and washing was done and the labourers had their
meals; here geese and turkey-hens were sitting on their eggs under
the benches, and here were the beds of Lyubov Osipovna and her two
sons. The furniture in the parlour was unpainted and evidently
roughly made by a carpenter; guns, game-bags, and whips were hanging
on the walls, and all this old rubbish was covered with the rust
of years and looked grey with dust. There was not one picture; in
the corner was a dingy board which had at one time been an ikon.

A young Little Russian woman laid the table and handed ham, then
beetroot soup. The visitor refused vodka and ate only bread and
cucumbers.

"How about ham?" asked Zhmuhin.

"Thank you, I don't eat it," answered the visitor, "I don't eat
meat at all."

"Why is that?"

"I am a vegetarian. Killing animals is against my principles."

Zhmuhin thought a minute and then said slowly with a sigh:

"Yes . . . to be sure. . . . I saw a man who did not eat meat in
town, too. It's a new religion they've got now. Well, it's good.
We can't go on always shooting and slaughtering, you know; we must
give it up some day and leave even the beasts in peace. It's a sin
to kill, it's a sin, there is no denying it. Sometimes one kills a
hare and wounds him in the leg, and he cries like a child. . . .
So it must hurt him!"

"Of course it hurts him; animals suffer just like human beings."

"That's true," Zhmuhin assented. "I understand that very well," he
went on, musing, "only there is this one thing I don't understand:
suppose, you know, everyone gave up eating meat, what would become
of the domestic animals--fowls and geese, for instance?"

"Fowls and geese would live in freedom like wild birds."

"Now I understand. To be sure, crows and jackdaws get on all right
without us. Yes. . . . Fowls and geese and hares and sheep, all
will live in freedom, rejoicing, you know, and praising God; and
they will not fear us, peace and concord will come. Only there is
one thing, you know, I can't understand," Zhmuhin went on, glancing
at the ham. "How will it be with the pigs? What is to be done with
them?"

"They will be like all the rest--that is, they will live in
freedom."

"Ah! Yes. But allow me to say, if they were not slaughtered they
would multiply, you know, and then good-bye to the kitchen-gardens
and the meadows. Why, a pig, if you let it free and don't look after
it, will ruin everything in a day. A pig is a pig, and it is not
for nothing it is called a pig. . . ."

They finished supper. Zhmuhin got up from the table and for a long
while walked up and down the room, talking and talking. . . . He
was fond of talking of something important or serious and was fond
of meditating, and in his old age he had a longing to reach some
haven, to be reassured, that he might not be so frightened of dying.
He had a longing for meekness, spiritual calm, and confidence in
himself, such as this guest of theirs had, who had satisfied his
hunger on cucumbers and bread, and believed that doing so made him
more perfect; he was sitting on a chest, plump and healthy, keeping
silent and patiently enduring his boredom, and in the dusk when one
glanced at him from the entry he looked like a big round stone which
one could not move from its place. If a man has something to lay
hold of in life he is all right.

Zhmuhin went through the entry to the porch, and then he could be
heard sighing and saying reflectively to himself: "Yes. . . . To
be sure. . . . " By now it was dark, and here and there stars could
be seen in the sky. They had not yet lighted up indoors. Someone
came into the parlour as noiselessly as a shadow and stood still
near the door. It was Lyubov Osipovna, Zhmuhin's wife.

"Are you from the town?" she asked timidly, not looking at her
visitor.

"Yes, I live in the town."

"Perhaps you are something in the learned way, sir; be so kind as
to advise us. We ought to send in a petition."

"To whom?" asked the visitor.

"We have two sons, kind gentleman, and they ought to have been sent
to school long ago, but we never see anyone and have no one to
advise us. And I know nothing. For if they are not taught they will
have to serve in the army as common Cossacks. It's not right, sir!
They can't read and write, they are worse than peasants, and Ivan
Abramitch himself can't stand them and won't let them indoors. But
they are not to blame. The younger one, at any rate, ought to be
sent to school, it is such a pity!" she said slowly, and there was
a quiver in her voice; and it seemed incredible that a woman so
small and so youthful could have grown-up children. "Oh, it's such
a pity!"

"You don't know anything about it, mother, and it is not your
affair," said Zhmuhin, appearing in the doorway. "Don't pester our
guest with your wild talk. Go away, mother!"

Lyubov Osipovna went out, and in the entry repeated once more in a
thin little voice: "Oh, it's such a pity!"

A bed was made up for the visitor on the sofa in the parlour, and
that it might not be dark for him they lighted the lamp before the
ikon. Zhmuhin went to bed in his own room. And as he lay there he
thought of his soul, of his age, of his recent stroke which had so
frightened him and made him think of death. He was fond of
philosophizing when he was in quietness by himself, and then he
fancied that he was a very earnest, deep thinker, and that nothing
in this world interested him but serious questions. And now he kept
thinking and he longed to pitch upon some one significant thought
unlike others, which would be a guide to him in life, and he wanted
to think out principles of some sort for himself so as to make his
life as deep and earnest as he imagined that he felt himself to be.
It would be a good thing for an old man like him to abstain altogether
from meat, from superfluities of all sorts. The time when men give
up killing each other and animals would come sooner or later, it
could not but be so, and he imagined that time to himself and clearly
pictured himself living in peace with all the animals, and suddenly
he thought again of the pigs, and everything was in a tangle in his
brain.

"It's a queer business, Lord have mercy upon us," he muttered,
sighing heavily. "Are you asleep?" he asked.

"No."

Zhmuhin got out of bed and stopped in the doorway with nothing but
his shirt on, displaying to his guest his sinewy legs, that looked
as dry as sticks.

"Nowadays, you know," he began, "all sorts of telegraphs, telephones,
and marvels of all kinds, in fact, have come in, but people are no
better than they were. They say that in our day, thirty or forty
years ago, men were coarse and cruel; but isn't it just the same
now? We certainly did not stand on ceremony in our day. I remember
in the Caucasus when we were stationed by a little river with nothing
to do for four whole months--I was an under-officer at that
time--something queer happened, quite in the style of a novel. Just
on the banks of that river, you know, where our division was encamped,
a wretched prince whom we had killed not long before was buried.
And at night, you know, the princess used to come to his grave and
weep. She would wail and wail, and moan and moan, and make us so
depressed we couldn't sleep, and that's the fact. We couldn't sleep
one night, we couldn't sleep a second; well, we got sick of it. And
from a common-sense point of view you really can't go without your
sleep for the devil knows what (excuse the expression). We took
that princess and gave her a good thrashing, and she gave up coming.
There's an instance for you. Nowadays, of course, there is not the
same class of people, and they are not given to thrashing and they
live in cleaner style, and there is more learning, but, you know,
the soul is just the same: there is no change. Now, look here,
there's a landowner living here among us; he has mines, you know;
all sorts of tramps without passports who don't know where to go
work for him. On Saturdays he has to settle up with the workmen,
but he doesn't care to pay them, you know, he grudges the money.
So he's got hold of a foreman who is a tramp too, though he does
wear a hat. 'Don't you pay them anything,' he says, 'not a kopeck;
they'll beat you, and let them beat you,' says he, 'but you put up
with it, and I'll pay you ten roubles every Saturday for it.' So
on the Saturday evening the workmen come to settle up in the usual
way; the foreman says to them: 'Nothing!' Well, word for word, as
the master said, they begin swearing and using their fists. . . .
They beat him and they kick him . . . you know, they are a set of
men brutalized by hunger--they beat him till he is senseless, and
then they go each on his way. The master gives orders for cold water
to be poured on the foreman, then flings ten roubles in his face.
And he takes it and is pleased too, for indeed he'd be ready to be
hanged for three roubles, let alone ten. Yes . . . and on Monday a
new gang of workmen arrive; they work, for they have nowhere to go
. . . . On Saturday it is the same story over again."

The visitor turned over on the other side with his face to the back
of the sofa and muttered something.

"And here's another instance," Zhmuhin went on. "We had the Siberian
plague here, you know--the cattle die off like flies, I can tell
you--and the veterinary surgeons came here, and strict orders
were given that the dead cattle were to be buried at a distance
deep in the earth, that lime was to be thrown over them, and so on,
you know, on scientific principles. My horse died too. I buried it
with every precaution, and threw over three hundredweight of lime
over it. And what do you think? My fine fellows--my precious sons,
I mean--dug it up, skinned it, and sold the hide for three roubles;
there's an instance for you. So people have grown no better, and
however you feed a wolf he will always look towards the forest;
there it is. It gives one something to think about, eh? How do you
look at it?"

On one side a flash of lightning gleamed through a chink in the
window-blinds. There was the stifling feeling of a storm coming,
the gnats were biting, and Zhmuhin, as he lay in his bedroom
meditating, sighed and groaned and said to himself: "Yes, to be
sure ----" and there was no possibility of getting to sleep. Somewhere
far, far away there was a growl of thunder.

"Are you asleep?"

"No," answered the visitor.

Zhmuhin got up, and thudding with his heels walked through the
parlour and the entry to the kitchen to get a drink of water.

"The worst thing in the world, you know, is stupidity," he said a
little later, coming back with a dipper. "My Lyubov Osipovna is on
her knees saying her prayers. She prays every night, you know, and
bows down to the ground, first that her children may be sent to
school; she is afraid her boys will go into the army as simple
Cossacks, and that they will be whacked across their backs with
sabres. But for teaching one must have money, and where is one to
get it? You may break the floor beating your head against it, but
if you haven't got it you haven't. And the other reason she prays
is because, you know, every woman imagines there is no one in the
world as unhappy as she is. I am a plain-spoken man, and I don't
want to conceal anything from you. She comes of a poor family, a
village priest's daughter. I married her when she was seventeen,
and they accepted my offer chiefly because they hadn't enough to
eat; it was nothing but poverty and misery, while I have anyway
land, you see--a farm--and after all I am an officer; it was a
step up for her to marry me, you know. On the very first day when
she was married she cried, and she has been crying ever since, all
these twenty years; she has got a watery eye. And she's always
sitting and thinking, and what do you suppose she is thinking about?
What can a woman think about? Why, nothing. I must own I don't
consider a woman a human being."

The visitor got up abruptly and sat on the bed.

"Excuse me, I feel stifled," he said; "I will go outside."

Zhmuhin, still talking about women, drew the bolt in the entry and
they both went out. A full moon was floating in the sky just over
the yard, and in the moonlight the house and barn looked whiter
than by day; and on the grass brilliant streaks of moonlight, white
too, stretched between the black shadows. Far away on the right
could be seen the steppe, above it the stars were softly
glowing--and it was all mysterious, infinitely far away, as though one
were gazing into a deep abyss; while on the left heavy storm-clouds,
black as soot, were piling up one upon another above the steppe;
their edges were lighted up by the moon, and it looked as though
there were mountains there with white snow on their peaks, dark
forests, the sea. There was a flash of lightning, a faint rumble
of thunder, and it seemed as though a battle were being fought in
the mountains.

Quite close to the house a little night-owl screeched monotonously:

"Asleep! asleep!"

"What time is it now?" asked the visitor.

"Just after one."

"How long it is still to dawn!"

They went back to the house and lay down again. It was time to
sleep, and one can usually sleep so splendidly before rain; but the
old man had a hankering after serious, weighty thoughts; he wanted
not simply to think but to meditate, and he meditated how good it
would be, as death was near at hand, for the sake of his soul to
give up the idleness which so imperceptibly swallowed up day after
day, year after year, leaving no trace; to think out for himself
some great exploit--for instance, to walk on foot far, far away,
or to give up meat like this young man. And again he pictured to
himself the time when animals would not be killed, pictured it
clearly and distinctly as though he were living through that time
himself; but suddenly it was all in a tangle again in his head and
all was muddled.

The thunderstorm had passed over, but from the edges of the
storm-clouds came rain softly pattering on the roof. Zhmuhin got
up, stretching and groaning with old age, and looked into the
parlour. Noticing that his visitor was not asleep, he said:

"When we were in the Caucasus, you know, there was a colonel there
who was a vegetarian, too; he didn't eat meat, never went shooting,
and would not let his servants catch fish. Of course, I understand
that every animal ought to live in freedom and enjoy its life; only
I don't understand how a pig can go about where it likes without
being looked after. . . ."

The visitor got up and sat down. His pale, haggard face expressed
weariness and vexation; it was evident that he was exhausted, and
only his gentleness and the delicacy of his soul prevented him from
expressing his vexation in words.

"It's getting light," he said mildly. "Please have the horse brought
round for me."

"Why so? Wait a little and the rain will be over."

"No, I entreat you," said the visitor in horror, with a supplicating
voice; "it is essential for me to go at once."

And he began hurriedly dressing.

By the time the horse was harnessed the sun was rising. It had just
left off raining, the clouds were racing swiftly by, and the patches
of blue were growing bigger and bigger in the sky. The first rays
of the sun were timidly reflected below in the big puddles. The
visitor walked through the entry with his portfolio to get into the
trap, and at that moment Zhmuhin's wife, pale, and it seemed paler
than the day before, with tear-stained eyes, looked at him intently
without blinking, with the naïve expression of a little girl, and
it was evident from her dejected face that she was envying him
his freedom--oh, with what joy she would have gone away from
there!--and she wanted to say something to him, most likely to ask advice
about her children. And what a pitiable figure she was! This was
not a wife, not the head of a house, not even a servant, but more
like a dependent, a poor relation not wanted by anyone, a nonentity
. . . . Her husband, fussing about, talking unceasingly, was seeing
his visitor off, continually running in front of him, while she
huddled up to the wall with a timid, guilty air, waiting for a
convenient minute to speak.

"Please come again another time," the old man kept repeating
incessantly; "what we have we are glad to offer, you know."

The visitor hurriedly got into the trap, evidently with relief, as
though he were afraid every minute that they would detain him. The
trap lurched about as it had the day before, squeaked, and furiously
rattled the pail that was tied on at the back. He glanced round at
Zhmuhin with a peculiar expression; it looked as though he wanted
to call him a Petchenyeg, as the surveyor had once done, or some
such name, but his gentleness got the upper hand. He controlled
himself and said nothing. But in the gateway he suddenly could not
restrain himself; he got up and shouted loudly and angrily:

"You have bored me to death."

And he disappeared through the gate.

Near the barn Zhmuhin's sons were standing; the elder held a gun,
while the younger had in his hands a grey cockerel with a bright
red comb. The younger flung up the cockerel with all his might; the
bird flew upwards higher than the house and turned over in the air
like a pigeon. The elder boy fired and the cockerel fell like a
stone.

The old man, overcome with confusion, not knowing how to explain
the visitor's strange, unexpected shout, went slowly back into the
house. And sitting down at the table he spent a long while meditating
on the intellectual tendencies of the day, on the universal immorality,
on the telegraph, on the telephone, on velocipedes, on how unnecessary
it all was; little by little he regained his composure, then slowly
had a meal, drank five glasses of tea, and lay down for a nap.


A DEAD BODY

A STILL August night. A mist is rising slowly from the fields and
casting an opaque veil over everything within eyesight. Lighted up
by the moon, the mist gives the impression at one moment of a calm,
boundless sea, at the next of an immense white wall. The air is
damp and chilly. Morning is still far off. A step from the bye-road
which runs along the edge of the forest a little fire is gleaming.
A dead body, covered from head to foot with new white linen, is
lying under a young oak-tree. A wooden ikon is lying on its breast.
Beside the corpse almost on the road sits the "watch"--two peasants
performing one of the most disagreeable and uninviting of peasants'
duties. One, a tall young fellow with a scarcely perceptible moustache
and thick black eyebrows, in a tattered sheepskin and bark shoes,
is sitting on the wet grass, his feet stuck out straight in front
of him, and is trying to while away the time with work. He bends
his long neck, and breathing loudly through his nose, makes a spoon
out of a big crooked bit of wood; the other--a little scraggy,
pock-marked peasant with an aged face, a scanty moustache, and a
little goat's beard--sits with his hands dangling loose on his
knees, and without moving gazes listlessly at the light. A small
camp-fire is lazily burning down between them, throwing a red glow
on their faces. There is perfect stillness. The only sounds are the
scrape of the knife on the wood and the crackling of damp sticks
in the fire.

"Don't you go to sleep, Syoma . . ." says the young man.

"I . . . I am not asleep . . ." stammers the goat-beard.

"That's all right. . . . It would be dreadful to sit here alone,
one would be frightened. You might tell me something, Syoma."

"You are a queer fellow, Syomushka! Other people will laugh and
tell a story and sing a song, but you--there is no making you
out. You sit like a scarecrow in the garden and roll your eyes at
the fire. You can't say anything properly . . . when you speak you
seem frightened. I dare say you are fifty, but you have less sense
than a child. Aren't you sorry that you are a simpleton?"

"I am sorry," the goat-beard answers gloomily.

"And we are sorry to see your foolishness, you may be sure. You are
a good-natured, sober peasant, and the only trouble is that you
have no sense in your head. You should have picked up some sense
for yourself if the Lord has afflicted you and given you no
understanding. You must make an effort, Syoma. . . . You should
listen hard when anything good's being said, note it well, and keep
thinking and thinking. . . . If there is any word you don't understand,
you should make an effort and think over in your head in what meaning
the word is used. Do you see? Make an effort! If you don't gain
some sense for yourself you'll be a simpleton and of no account at
all to your dying day."

All at once a long drawn-out, moaning sound is heard in the forest.
Something rustles in the leaves as though torn from the very top
of the tree and falls to the ground. All this is faintly repeated
by the echo. The young man shudders and looks enquiringly at his
companion.

"It's an owl at the little birds," says Syoma, gloomily.

"Why, Syoma, it's time for the birds to fly to the warm countries!"

"To be sure, it is time."

"It is chilly at dawn now. It is co-old. The crane is a chilly
creature, it is tender. Such cold is death to it. I am not a crane,
but I am frozen. . . . Put some more wood on!"

Syoma gets up and disappears in the dark undergrowth. While he is
busy among the bushes, breaking dry twigs, his companion puts his
hand over his eyes and starts at every sound. Syoma brings an armful
of wood and lays it on the fire. The flame irresolutely licks the
black twigs with its little tongues, then suddenly, as though at
the word of command, catches them and throws a crimson light on the
faces, the road, the white linen with its prominences where the
hands and feet of the corpse raise it, the ikon. The "watch" is
silent. The young man bends his neck still lower and sets to work
with still more nervous haste. The goat-beard sits motionless as
before and keeps his eyes fixed on the fire. . . .

"Ye that love not Zion . . . shall be put to shame by the Lord." A
falsetto voice is suddenly heard singing in the stillness of the
night, then slow footsteps are audible, and the dark figure of a
man in a short monkish cassock and a broad-brimmed hat, with a
wallet on his shoulders, comes into sight on the road in the crimson
firelight.

"Thy will be done, O Lord! Holy Mother!" the figure says in a husky
falsetto. "I saw the fire in the outer darkness and my soul leapt
for joy. . . . At first I thought it was men grazing a drove of
horses, then I thought it can't be that, since no horses were to
be seen. 'Aren't they thieves,' I wondered, 'aren't they robbers
lying in wait for a rich Lazarus? Aren't they the gypsy people
offering sacrifices to idols? And my soul leapt for joy. 'Go,
Feodosy, servant of God,' I said to myself, 'and win a martyr's
crown!' And I flew to the fire like a light-winged moth. Now I stand
before you, and from your outer aspect I judge of your souls: you
are not thieves and you are not heathens. Peace be to you!"

"Good-evening."

"Good orthodox people, do you know how to reach the Makuhinsky
Brickyards from here?"

"It's close here. You go straight along the road; when you have
gone a mile and a half there will be Ananova, our village. From the
village, father, you turn to the right by the river-bank, and so
you will get to the brickyards. It's two miles from Ananova."

"God give you health. And why are you sitting here?"

"We are sitting here watching. You see, there is a dead body. . . ."

"What? what body? Holy Mother!"

The pilgrim sees the white linen with the ikon on it, and starts
so violently that his legs give a little skip. This unexpected sight
has an overpowering effect upon him. He huddles together and stands
as though rooted to the spot, with wide-open mouth and staring eyes.
For three minutes he is silent as though he could not believe his
eyes, then begins muttering:

"O Lord! Holy Mother! I was going along not meddling with anyone,
and all at once such an affliction."

"What may you be?" enquires the young man. "Of the clergy?"

"No . . . no. . . . I go from one monastery to another. . . . Do
you know Mi . . . Mihail Polikarpitch, the foreman of the brickyard?
Well, I am his nephew. . . . Thy will be done, O Lord! Why are you
here?"

"We are watching . . . we are told to."

"Yes, yes . . ." mutters the man in the cassock, passing his hand
over his eyes. "And where did the deceased come from?"

"He was a stranger."

"Such is life! But I'll . . . er . . . be getting on, brothers. . . .
I feel flustered. I am more afraid of the dead than of anything,
my dear souls! And only fancy! while this man was alive he wasn't
noticed, while now when he is dead and given over to corruption we
tremble before him as before some famous general or a bishop. . . .
Such is life; was he murdered, or what?"

"The Lord knows! Maybe he was murdered, or maybe he died of himself."

"Yes, yes. . . . Who knows, brothers? Maybe his soul is now tasting
the joys of Paradise."

"His soul is still hovering here, near his body," says the young
man. "It does not depart from the body for three days."

"H'm, yes! . . . How chilly the nights are now! It sets one's teeth
chattering. . . . So then I am to go straight on and on? . . ."

"Till you get to the village, and then you turn to the right by the
river-bank."

"By the river-bank. . . . To be sure. . . . Why am I standing still?
I must go on. Farewell, brothers."

The man in the cassock takes five steps along the road and stops.

"I've forgotten to put a kopeck for the burying," he says. "Good
orthodox friends, can I give the money?"

"You ought to know best, you go the round of the monasteries. If
he died a natural death it would go for the good of his soul; if
it's a suicide it's a sin."

"That's true. . . . And maybe it really was a suicide! So I had
better keep my money. Oh, sins, sins! Give me a thousand roubles
and I would not consent to sit here. . . . Farewell, brothers."

The cassock slowly moves away and stops again.

"I can't make up my mind what I am to do," he mutters. "To stay
here by the fire and wait till daybreak. . . . I am frightened; to
go on is dreadful, too. The dead man will haunt me all the way in
the darkness. . . . The Lord has chastised me indeed! Over three
hundred miles I have come on foot and nothing happened, and now I
am near home and there's trouble. I can't go on. . . ."

"It is dreadful, that is true."

"I am not afraid of wolves, of thieves, or of darkness, but I am
afraid of the dead. I am afraid of them, and that is all about it.
Good orthodox brothers, I entreat you on my knees, see me to the
village."

"We've been told not to go away from the body."

"No one will see, brothers. Upon my soul, no one will see! The Lord
will reward you a hundredfold! Old man, come with me, I beg! Old
man! Why are you silent?"

"He is a bit simple," says the young man.

"You come with me, friend; I will give you five kopecks."

"For five kopecks I might," says the young man, scratching his head,
"but I was told not to. If Syoma here, our simpleton, will stay
alone, I will take you. Syoma, will you stay here alone?"

"I'll stay," the simpleton consents.

"Well, that's all right, then. Come along!" The young man gets up,
and goes with the cassock. A minute later the sound of their steps
and their talk dies away. Syoma shuts his eyes and gently dozes.
The fire begins to grow dim, and a big black shadow falls on the
dead body.


A HAPPY ENDING

LYUBOV GRIGORYEVNA, a substantial, buxom lady of forty who undertook
matchmaking and many other matters of which it is usual to speak
only in whispers, had come to see Stytchkin, the head guard, on a
day when he was off duty. Stytchkin, somewhat embarrassed, but, as
always, grave, practical, and severe, was walking up and down the
room, smoking a cigar and saying:

"Very pleased to make your acquaintance. Semyon Ivanovitch recommended
you on the ground that you may be able to assist me in a delicate
and very important matter affecting the happiness of my life. I
have, Lyubov Grigoryevna, reached the age of fifty-two; that is a
period of life at which very many have already grown-up children.
My position is a secure one. Though my fortune is not large, yet I
am in a position to support a beloved being and children at my side.
I may tell you between ourselves that apart from my salary I have
also money in the bank which my manner of living has enabled me to
save. I am a practical and sober man, I lead a sensible and consistent
life, so that I may hold myself up as an example to many. But one
thing I lack--a domestic hearth of my own and a partner in life,
and I live like a wandering Magyar, moving from place to place
without any satisfaction. I have no one with whom to take counsel,
and when I am ill no one to give me water, and so on. Apart from
that, Lyubov Grigoryevna, a married man has always more weight in
society than a bachelor. . . . I am a man of the educated class,
with money, but if you look at me from a point of view, what am I?
A man with no kith and kin, no better than some Polish priest. And
therefore I should be very desirous to be united in the bonds of
Hymen--that is, to enter into matrimony with some worthy person."

"An excellent thing," said the matchmaker, with a sigh.

"I am a solitary man and in this town I know no one. Where can I
go, and to whom can I apply, since all the people here are strangers
to me? That is why Semyon Ivanovitch advised me to address myself
to a person who is a specialist in this line, and makes the arrangement
of the happiness of others her profession. And therefore I most
earnestly beg you, Lyubov Grigoryevna, to assist me in ordering my
future. You know all the marriageable young ladies in the town, and
it is easy for you to accommodate me."

"I can. . . ."

"A glass of wine, I beg you. . . ."

With an habitual gesture the matchmaker raised her glass to her
mouth and tossed it off without winking.

"I can," she repeated. "And what sort of bride would you like,
Nikolay Nikolayitch?"

"Should I like? The bride fate sends me."

"Well, of course it depends on your fate, but everyone has his own
taste, you know. One likes dark ladies, the other prefers fair
ones."

"You see, Lyubov Grigoryevna," said Stytchkin, sighing sedately,
"I am a practical man and a man of character; for me beauty and
external appearance generally take a secondary place, for, as you
know yourself, beauty is neither bowl nor platter, and a pretty
wife involves a great deal of anxiety. The way I look at it is,
what matters most in a woman is not what is external, but what lies
within--that is, that she should have soul and all the qualities.
A glass of wine, I beg. . . . Of course, it would be very agreeable
that one's wife should be rather plump, but for mutual happiness
it is not of great consequence; what matters is the mind. Properly
speaking, a woman does not need mind either, for if she has brains
she will have too high an opinion of herself, and take all sorts
of ideas into her head. One cannot do without education nowadays,
of course, but education is of different kinds. It would be pleasing
for one's wife to know French and German, to speak various languages,
very pleasing; but what's the use of that if she can't sew on one's
buttons, perhaps? I am a man of the educated class: I am just as
much at home, I may say, with Prince Kanitelin as I am with you
here now. But my habits are simple, and I want a girl who is not
too much a fine lady. Above all, she must have respect for me and
feel that I have made her happiness."

"To be sure."

"Well, now as regards the essential. . . . I do not want a wealthy
bride; I would never condescend to anything so low as to marry for
money. I desire not to be kept by my wife, but to keep her, and
that she may be sensible of it. But I do not want a poor girl either.
Though I am a man of means, and am marrying not from mercenary
motives, but from love, yet I cannot take a poor girl, for, as you
know yourself, prices have gone up so, and there will be children."

"One might find one with a dowry," said the matchmaker.

"A glass of wine, I beg. . . ."

There was a pause of five minutes.

The matchmaker heaved a sigh, took a sidelong glance at the guard,
and asked:

"Well, now, my good sir . . . do you want anything in the bachelor
line? I have some fine bargains. One is a French girl and one is a
Greek. Well worth the money."

The guard thought a moment and said:

"No, I thank you. In view of your favourable disposition, allow me
to enquire now how much you ask for your exertions in regard to a
bride?"

"I don't ask much. Give me twenty-five roubles and the stuff for a
dress, as is usual, and I will say thank you . . . but for the
dowry, that's a different account."

Stytchkin folded his arms over his chest and fell to pondering in
silence. After some thought he heaved a sigh and said:

"That's dear. . . ."

"It's not at all dear, Nikolay Nikolayitch! In old days when there
were lots of weddings one did do it cheaper, but nowadays what are
our earnings? If you make fifty roubles in a month that is not a
fast, you may be thankful. It's not on weddings we make our money,
my good sir."

Stytchkin looked at the matchmaker in amazement and shrugged his
shoulders.

"H'm! . . . Do you call fifty roubles little?" he asked.

"Of course it is little! In old days we sometimes made more than a
hundred."

"H'm! I should never have thought it was possible to earn such a
sum by these jobs. Fifty roubles! It is not every man that earns
as much! Pray drink your wine. . . ."

The matchmaker drained her glass without winking. Stytchkin looked
her over from head to foot in silence, then said:

"Fifty roubles. . . . Why, that is six hundred roubles a year. . . .
Please take some more. . . With such dividends, you know, Lyubov
Grigoryevna, you would have no difficulty in making a match for
yourself. . . ."

"For myself," laughed the matchmaker, "I am an old woman."

"Not at all. . . . You have such a figure, and your face is plump
and fair, and all the rest of it."

The matchmaker was embarrassed. Stytchkin was also embarrassed and
sat down beside her.

"You are still very attractive," said he; "if you met with a
practical, steady, careful husband, with his salary and your earnings
you might even attract him very much, and you'd get on very well
together. . . ."

"Goodness knows what you are saying, Nikolay Nikolayitch."

"Well, I meant no harm. . . ."

A silence followed. Stytchkin began loudly blowing his nose, while
the matchmaker turned crimson, and looking bashfully at him, asked:

"And how much do you get, Nikolay Nikolayitch?"

"I? Seventy-five roubles, besides tips. . . . Apart from that we
make something out of candles and hares."

"You go hunting, then?"

"No. Passengers who travel without tickets are called hares with
us."

Another minute passed in silence. Stytchkin got up and walked about
the room in excitement.

"I don't want a young wife," said he. "I am a middle-aged man, and
I want someone who . . . as it might be like you . . . staid and
settled and a figure something like yours. . . ."

"Goodness knows what you are saying . . ." giggled the matchmaker,
hiding her crimson face in her kerchief.

"There is no need to be long thinking about it. You are after my
own heart, and you suit me in your qualities. I am a practical,
sober man, and if you like me . . . what could be better? Allow me
to make you a proposal!"

The matchmaker dropped a tear, laughed, and, in token of her consent,
clinked glasses with Stytchkin.

"Well," said the happy railway guard, "now allow me to explain to
you the behaviour and manner of life I desire from you. . . . I am
a strict, respectable, practical man. I take a gentlemanly view of
everything. And I desire that my wife should be strict also, and
should understand that to her I am a benefactor and the foremost
person in the world."

He sat down, and, heaving a deep sigh, began expounding to his
bride-elect his views on domestic life and a wife's duties.


THE LOOKING-GLASS

NEW YEAR'S EVE. Nellie, the daughter of a landowner and general, a
young and pretty girl, dreaming day and night of being married, was
sitting in her room, gazing with exhausted, half-closed eyes into
the looking-glass. She was pale, tense, and as motionless as the
looking-glass.

The non-existent but apparent vista of a long, narrow corridor with
endless rows of candles, the reflection of her face, her hands, of
the frame--all this was already clouded in mist and merged into
a boundless grey sea. The sea was undulating, gleaming and now and
then flaring crimson. . . .

Looking at Nellie's motionless eyes and parte

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