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Best Russian Short Stories

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Title: Best Russian Short Stories

Editor: Thomas Seltzer

Contributor: Leonid Andreyev
        M. Artsybashev
        Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
        Fyodor Dostoyevsky
        V. M. Garshin
        Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol
        Maksim Gorky
        Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko
        A. I. Kuprin
        I. N. Potapenko
        Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
        Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov
        S. T. Semenov
        Fyodor Sologub
        graf Leo Tolstoy
        Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev


        
Release date: September 11, 2004 [eBook #13437]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13437

Credits: Produced by David Starner, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreaders Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEST RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES ***

[Illustration: ANTON P. CHEKHOV, RUSSIA'S GREATEST SHORT-STORY WRITER]


BEST RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES


Compiled and Edited by THOMAS SELTZER




CONTENTS



INTRODUCTION

THE QUEEN OF SPADES _A.S. Pushkin_

THE CLOAK _N.V. Gogol_

THE DISTRICT DOCTOR _I.S. Turgenev_

THE CHRISTMAS TREE AND THE WEDDING _F.M. Dostoyevsky_

GOD SEES THE TRUTH, BUT WAITS _L.N. Tolstoy_

HOW A MUZHIK FED TWO OFFICIALS _M.Y. Saltykov_

THE SHADES, A PHANTASY _V.G. Korolenko_

THE SIGNAL _V.N. Garshin_

THE DARLING _A.P. Chekhov_

THE BET _A.P. Chekhov_

VANKA _A.P. Chekhov_

HIDE AND SEEK _F.K. Sologub_

DETHRONED _I.N. Potapenko_

THE SERVANT _S.T. Semyonov_

ONE AUTUMN NIGHT _M. Gorky_

HER LOVER _M. Gorky_

LAZARUS _L.N. Andreyev_

THE REVOLUTIONIST _M.P. Artzybashev_

THE OUTRAGE _A.I. Kuprin_




INTRODUCTION


Conceive the joy of a lover of nature who, leaving the art galleries,
wanders out among the trees and wild flowers and birds that the
pictures of the galleries have sentimentalised. It is some such joy
that the man who truly loves the noblest in letters feels when tasting
for the first time the simple delights of Russian literature. French
and English and German authors, too, occasionally, offer works of
lofty, simple naturalness; but the very keynote to the whole of
Russian literature is simplicity, naturalness, veraciousness.

Another essentially Russian trait is the quite unaffected conception
that the lowly are on a plane of equality with the so-called upper
classes. When the Englishman Dickens wrote with his profound pity and
understanding of the poor, there was yet a bit; of remoteness,
perhaps, even, a bit of caricature, in his treatment of them. He
showed their sufferings to the rest of the world with a "Behold how
the other half lives!" The Russian writes of the poor, as it were,
from within, as one of them, with no eye to theatrical effect upon the
well-to-do. There is no insistence upon peculiar virtues or vices. The
poor are portrayed just as they are, as human beings like the rest of
us. A democratic spirit is reflected, breathing a broad humanity, a
true universality, an unstudied generosity that proceed not from the
intellectual conviction that to understand all is to forgive all, but
from an instinctive feeling that no man has the right to set himself
up as a judge over another, that one can only observe and record.

In 1834 two short stories appeared, _The Queen of Spades_, by Pushkin,
and _The Cloak_, by Gogol. The first was a finishing-off of the old,
outgoing style of romanticism, the other was the beginning of the new,
the characteristically Russian style. We read Pushkin's _Queen of
Spades_, the first story in the volume, and the likelihood is we shall
enjoy it greatly. "But why is it Russian?" we ask. The answer is, "It
is not Russian." It might have been printed in an American magazine
over the name of John Brown. But, now, take the very next story in the
volume, _The Cloak_. "Ah," you exclaim, "a genuine Russian story,
Surely. You cannot palm it off on me over the name of Jones or Smith."
Why? Because _The Cloak_ for the first time strikes that truly Russian
note of deep sympathy with the disinherited. It is not yet wholly free
from artificiality, and so is not yet typical of the purely realistic
fiction that reached its perfected development in Turgenev and
Tolstoy.

Though Pushkin heads the list of those writers who made the literature
of their country world-famous, he was still a romanticist, in the
universal literary fashion of his day. However, he already gave strong
indication of the peculiarly Russian genius for naturalness or
realism, and was a true Russian in his simplicity of style. In no
sense an innovator, but taking the cue for his poetry from Byron and
for his prose from the romanticism current at that period, he was not
in advance of his age. He had a revolutionary streak in his nature, as
his _Ode to Liberty_ and other bits of verse and his intimacy with the
Decembrist rebels show. But his youthful fire soon died down, and he
found it possible to accommodate himself to the life of a Russian high
functionary and courtier under the severe despot Nicholas I, though,
to be sure, he always hated that life. For all his flirting with
revolutionarism, he never displayed great originality or depth of
thought. He was simply an extraordinarily gifted author, a perfect
versifier, a wondrous lyrist, and a delicious raconteur, endowed with
a grace, ease and power of expression that delighted even the exacting
artistic sense of Turgenev. To him aptly applies the dictum of
Socrates: "Not by wisdom do the poets write poetry, but by a sort of
genius and inspiration." I do not mean to convey that as a thinker
Pushkin is to be despised. Nevertheless, it is true that he would
occupy a lower position in literature did his reputation depend upon
his contributions to thought and not upon his value as an artist.

"We are all descended from Gogol's _Cloak_," said a Russian writer.
And Dostoyevsky's novel, _Poor People_, which appeared ten years
later, is, in a way, merely an extension of Gogol's shorter tale. In
Dostoyevsky, indeed, the passion for the common people and the
all-embracing, all-penetrating pity for suffering humanity reach their
climax. He was a profound psychologist and delved deeply into the
human soul, especially in its abnormal and diseased aspects. Between
scenes of heart-rending, abject poverty, injustice, and wrong, and the
torments of mental pathology, he managed almost to exhaust the whole
range of human woe. And he analysed this misery with an intensity of
feeling and a painstaking regard for the most harrowing details that
are quite upsetting to normally constituted nerves. Yet all the
horrors must be forgiven him because of the motive inspiring them--an
overpowering love and the desire to induce an equal love in others. It
is not horror for horror's sake, not a literary _tour de force_, as in
Poe, but horror for a high purpose, for purification through
suffering, which was one of the articles of Dostoyevsky's faith.

Following as a corollary from the love and pity for mankind that make
a leading element in Russian literature, is a passionate search for
the means of improving the lot of humanity, a fervent attachment to
social ideas and ideals. A Russian author is more ardently devoted to
a cause than an American short-story writer to a plot. This, in turn,
is but a reflection of the spirit of the Russian people, especially of
the intellectuals. The Russians take literature perhaps more seriously
than any other nation. To them books are not a mere diversion. They
demand that fiction and poetry be a true mirror of life and be of
service to life. A Russian author, to achieve the highest recognition,
must be a thinker also. He need not necessarily be a finished artist.
Everything is subordinated to two main requirements--humanitarian
ideals and fidelity to life. This is the secret of the marvellous
simplicity of Russian-literary art. Before the supreme function of
literature, the Russian writer stands awed and humbled. He knows he
cannot cover up poverty of thought, poverty of spirit and lack of
sincerity by rhetorical tricks or verbal cleverness. And if he
possesses the two essential requirements, the simplest language will
suffice.

These qualities are exemplified at their best by Turgenev and Tolstoy.
They both had a strong social consciousness; they both grappled with
the problems of human welfare; they were both artists in the larger
sense, that is, in their truthful representation of life. Turgenev was
an artist also in the narrower sense--in a keen appreciation Of form.
Thoroughly Occidental in his tastes, he sought the regeneration of
Russia in radical progress along the lines of European democracy.
Tolstoy, on the other hand, sought the salvation of mankind in a
return to the primitive life and primitive Christian religion.

The very first work of importance by Turgenev, _A Sportsman's
Sketches_, dealt with the question of serfdom, and it wielded
tremendous influence in bringing about its abolition. Almost every
succeeding book of his, from _Rudin_ through _Fathers and Sons_ to
_Virgin Soil_, presented vivid pictures of contemporary Russian
society, with its problems, the clash of ideas between the old and the
new generations, and the struggles, the aspirations and the thoughts
that engrossed the advanced youth of Russia; so that his collected
works form a remarkable literary record of the successive movements of
Russian society in a period of preparation, fraught with epochal
significance, which culminated in the overthrow of Czarism and the
inauguration of a new and true democracy, marking the beginning,
perhaps, of a radical transformation the world over.

"The greatest writer of Russia." That is Turgenev's estimate of
Tolstoy. "A second Shakespeare!" was Flaubert's enthusiastic outburst.
The Frenchman's comparison is not wholly illuminating. The one point
of resemblance between the two authors is simply in the tremendous
magnitude of their genius. Each is a Colossus. Each creates a whole
world of characters, from kings and princes and ladies to servants and
maids and peasants. But how vastly divergent the angle of approach!
Anna Karenina may have all the subtle womanly charm of an Olivia or a
Portia, but how different her trials. Shakespeare could not have
treated Anna's problems at all. Anna could not have appeared in his
pages except as a sinning Gertrude, the mother of Hamlet. Shakespeare
had all the prejudices of his age. He accepted the world as it is with
its absurd moralities, its conventions and institutions and social
classes. A gravedigger is naturally inferior to a lord, and if he is
to be presented at all, he must come on as a clown. The people are
always a mob, the rabble. Tolstoy, is the revolutionist, the
iconoclast. He has the completest independence of mind. He utterly
refuses to accept established opinions just because they are
established. He probes into the right and wrong of things. His is a
broad, generous universal democracy, his is a comprehensive sympathy,
his an absolute incapacity to evaluate human beings according to
station, rank or profession, or any standard but that of spiritual
worth. In all this he was a complete contrast to Shakespeare. Each of
the two men was like a creature of a higher world, possessed of
supernatural endowments. Their omniscience of all things human, their
insight into the hiddenmost springs of men's actions appear
miraculous. But Shakespeare makes the impression of detachment from
his works. The works do not reveal the man; while in Tolstoy the
greatness of the man blends with the greatness of the genius. Tolstoy
was no mere oracle uttering profundities he wot not of. As the social,
religious and moral tracts that he wrote in the latter period of his
life are instinct with a literary beauty of which he never could
divest himself, and which gave an artistic value even to his sermons,
so his earlier novels show a profound concern for the welfare of
society, a broad, humanitarian spirit, a bigness of soul that included
prince and pauper alike.

Is this extravagant praise? Then let me echo William Dean Howells: "I
know very well that I do not speak of Tolstoy's books in measured
terms; I cannot."

The Russian writers so far considered have made valuable contributions
to the short story; but, with the exception of Pushkin, whose
reputation rests chiefly upon his poetry, their best work, generally,
was in the field of the long novel. It was the novel that gave Russian
literature its pre-eminence. It could not have been otherwise, since
Russia is young as a literary nation, and did not come of age until
the period at which the novel was almost the only form of literature
that counted. If, therefore, Russia was to gain distinction in the
world of letters, it could be only through the novel. Of the measure
of her success there is perhaps no better testimony than the words of
Matthew Arnold, a critic certainly not given to overstatement. "The
Russian novel," he wrote in 1887, "has now the vogue, and deserves to
have it... The Russian novelist is master of a spell to which the
secret of human nature--both what is external and internal, gesture
and manner no less than thought and feeling--willingly make themselves
known... In that form of imaginative literature, which in our day is
the most popular and the most possible, the Russians at the present
moment seem to me to hold the field."

With the strict censorship imposed on Russian writers, many of them
who might perhaps have contented themselves with expressing their
opinions in essays, were driven to conceal their meaning under the
guise of satire or allegory; which gave rise to a peculiar genre of
literature, a sort of editorial or essay done into fiction, in which
the satirist Saltykov, a contemporary of Turgenev and Dostoyevsky, who
wrote under the pseudonym of Shchedrin, achieved the greatest success
and popularity.

It was not however, until the concluding quarter of the last century
that writers like Korolenko and Garshin arose, who devoted themselves
chiefly to the cultivation of the short story. With Anton Chekhov the
short story assumed a position of importance alongside the larger
works of the great Russian masters. Gorky and Andreyev made the short
story do the same service for the active revolutionary period in the
last decade of the nineteenth century down to its temporary defeat in
1906 that Turgenev rendered in his series of larger novels for the
period of preparation. But very different was the voice of Gorky, the
man sprung from the people, the embodiment of all the accumulated
wrath and indignation of centuries of social wrong and oppression,
from the gentlemanly tones of the cultured artist Turgenev. Like a
mighty hammer his blows fell upon the decaying fabric of the old
society. His was no longer a feeble, despairing protest. With the
strength and confidence of victory he made onslaught upon onslaught on
the old institutions until they shook and almost tumbled. And when
reaction celebrated its short-lived triumph and gloom settled again
upon his country and most of his co-fighters withdrew from the battle
in despair, some returning to the old-time Russian mood of
hopelessness, passivity and apathy, and some even backsliding into
wild orgies of literary debauchery, Gorky never wavered, never lost
his faith and hope, never for a moment was untrue to his principles.
Now, with the revolution victorious, he has come into his right, one
of the most respected, beloved and picturesque figures in the Russian
democracy.

Kuprin, the most facile and talented short-story writer next to
Chekhov, has, on the whole, kept well to the best literary traditions
of Russia, though he has frequently wandered off to extravagant sex
themes, for which he seems to display as great a fondness as
Artzybashev. Semyonov is a unique character in Russian literature, a
peasant who had scarcely mastered the most elementary mechanics of
writing when he penned his first story. But that story pleased
Tolstoy, who befriended and encouraged him. His tales deal altogether
with peasant life in country and city, and have a lifelikeness, an
artlessness, a simplicity striking even in a Russian author.

There is a small group of writers detached from the main current of
Russian literature who worship at the shrine of beauty and mysticism.
Of these Sologub has attained the highest reputation.

Rich as Russia has become in the short story, Anton Chekhov still
stands out as the supreme master, one of the greatest short-story
writers of the world. He was born in Taganarok, in the Ukraine, in
1860, the son of a peasant serf who succeeded in buying his freedom.
Anton Chekhov studied medicine, but devoted himself largely to
writing, in which, he acknowledged, his scientific training was of
great service. Though he lived only forty-four years, dying of
tuberculosis in 1904, his collected works consist of sixteen
fair-sized volumes of short stories, and several dramas besides. A few
volumes of his works have already appeared in English translation.

Critics, among them Tolstoy, have often compared Chekhov to
Maupassant. I find it hard to discover the resemblance. Maupassant
holds a supreme position as a short-story writer; so does Chekhov. But
there, it seems to me, the likeness ends.

The chill wind that blows from the atmosphere created by the
Frenchman's objective artistry is by the Russian commingled with the
warm breath of a great human sympathy. Maupassant never tells where
his sympathies lie, and you don't know; you only guess. Chekhov does
not tell you where his sympathies lie, either, but you know all the
same; you don't have to guess. And yet Chekhov is as objective as
Maupassant. In the chronicling of facts, conditions, and situations,
in the reproduction of characters, he is scrupulously true, hard, and
inexorable. But without obtruding his personality, he somehow manages
to let you know that he is always present, always at hand. If you
laugh, he is there to laugh with you; if you cry, he is there to shed
a tear with you; if you are horrified, he is horrified, too. It is a
subtle art by which he contrives to make one feel the nearness of
himself for all his objectiveness, so subtle that it defies analysis.
And yet it constitutes one of the great charms of his tales.

Chekhov's works show an astounding resourcefulness and versatility.
There is no monotony, no repetition. Neither in incident nor in
character are any two stories alike. The range of Chekhov's knowledge
of men and things seems to be unlimited, and he is extravagant in the
use of it. Some great idea which many a writer would consider
sufficient to expand into a whole novel he disposes of in a story of a
few pages. Take, for example, _Vanka_, apparently but a mere episode
in the childhood of a nine-year-old boy; while it is really the
tragedy of a whole life in its tempting glimpses into a past
environment and ominous forebodings of the future--all contracted into
the space of four or five pages. Chekhov is lavish with his
inventiveness. Apparently, it cost him no effort to invent.

I have used the word inventiveness for lack of a better name. It
expresses but lamely the peculiar faculty that distinguishes Chekhov.
Chekhov does not really invent. He reveals. He reveals things that no
author before him has revealed. It is as though he possessed a special
organ which enabled him to see, hear and feel things of which we other
mortals did not even dream the existence. Yet when he lays them bare
we know that they are not fictitious, not invented, but as real as the
ordinary familiar facts of life. This faculty of his playing on all
conceivable objects, all conceivable emotions, no matter how
microscopic, endows them with life and a soul. By virtue of this power
_The Steppe_, an uneventful record of peasants travelling day after
day through flat, monotonous fields, becomes instinct with dramatic
interest, and its 125 pages seem all too short. And by virtue of the
same attribute we follow with breathless suspense the minute
description of the declining days of a great scientist, who feels his
physical and mental faculties gradually ebbing away. _A Tiresome
Story_, Chekhov calls it; and so it would be without the vitality
conjured into it by the magic touch of this strange genius.

Divination is perhaps a better term than invention. Chekhov divines
the most secret impulses of the soul, scents out what is buried in the
subconscious, and brings it up to the surface. Most writers are
specialists. They know certain strata of society, and when they
venture beyond, their step becomes uncertain. Chekhov's material is
only delimited by humanity. He is equally at home everywhere. The
peasant, the labourer, the merchant, the priest, the professional man,
the scholar, the military officer, and the government functionary,
Gentile or Jew, man, woman, or child--Chekhov is intimate with all of
them. His characters are sharply defined individuals, not types. In
almost all his stories, however short, the men and women and children
who play a part in them come out as clear, distinct personalities.
Ariadne is as vivid a character as Lilly, the heroine of Sudermann's
_Song of Songs_; yet _Ariadne_ is but a single story in a volume of
stories. Who that has read _The Darling_ can ever forget her--the
woman who had no separate existence of her own, but thought the
thoughts, felt the feelings, and spoke the words of the men she loved?
And when there was no man to love any more, she was utterly crushed
until she found a child to take care of and to love; and then she sank
her personality in the boy as she had sunk it before in her husbands
and lover, became a mere reflection of him, and was happy again.

In the compilation of this volume I have been guided by the desire to
give the largest possible representation to the prominent authors of
the Russian short story, and to present specimens characteristic of
each. At the same time the element of interest has been kept in mind;
and in a few instances, as in the case of Korolenko, the selection of
the story was made with a view to its intrinsic merit and striking
qualities rather than as typifying the writer's art. It was, of
course, impossible in the space of one book to exhaust all that is
best. But to my knowledge, the present volume is the most
comprehensive anthology of the Russian short story in the English
language, and gives a fair notion of the achievement in that field.
All who enjoy good reading, I have no reason to doubt, will get
pleasure from it, and if, in addition, it will prove of assistance to
American students of Russian literature, I shall feel that the task
has been doubly worth the while.

Korolenko's _Shades_ and Andreyev's _Lazarus_ first appeared in
_Current Opinion_, and Artzybashev's _The Revolutionist_ in the
_Metropolitan Magazine_. I take pleasure in thanking Mr. Edward J.
Wheeler, editor of _Current Opinion_, and Mr. Carl Hovey, editor of
the _Metropolitan Magazine_, for permission to reprint them.

[Signature: Thomas Seltzer]



"Everything is subordinated to two main requirements--humanitarian
ideals and fidelity to life. This is the secret of the marvellous
simplicity of Russian literary art."--THOMAS SELTZER.




BEST RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES




THE QUEEN OF SPADES


BY ALEXSANDR S. PUSHKIN



I


There was a card party at the rooms of Narumov of the Horse Guards.
The long winter night passed away imperceptibly, and it was five
o'clock in the morning before the company sat down to supper. Those
who had won, ate with a good appetite; the others sat staring absently
at their empty plates. When the champagne appeared, however, the
conversation became more animated, and all took a part in it.

"And how did you fare, Surin?" asked the host.

"Oh, I lost, as usual. I must confess that I am unlucky: I play
mirandole, I always keep cool, I never allow anything to put me out,
and yet I always lose!"

"And you did not once allow yourself to be tempted to back the red?...
Your firmness astonishes me."

"But what do you think of Hermann?" said one of the guests, pointing
to a young Engineer: "he has never had a card in his hand in his life,
he has never in his life laid a wager, and yet he sits here till five
o'clock in the morning watching our play."

"Play interests me very much," said Hermann: "but I am not in the
position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the
superfluous."

"Hermann is a German: he is economical--that is all!" observed Tomsky.
"But if there is one person that I cannot understand, it is my
grandmother, the Countess Anna Fedotovna."

"How so?" inquired the guests.

"I cannot understand," continued Tomsky, "how it is that my
grandmother does not punt."

"What is there remarkable about an old lady of eighty not punting?"
said Narumov.

"Then you do not know the reason why?"

"No, really; haven't the faintest idea."

"Oh! then listen. About sixty years ago, my grandmother went to Paris,
where she created quite a sensation. People used to run after her to
catch a glimpse of the 'Muscovite Venus.' Richelieu made love to her,
and my grandmother maintains that he almost blew out his brains in
consequence of her cruelty. At that time ladies used to play at faro.
On one occasion at the Court, she lost a very considerable sum to the
Duke of Orleans. On returning home, my grandmother removed the patches
from her face, took off her hoops, informed my grandfather of her loss
at the gaming-table, and ordered him to pay the money. My deceased
grandfather, as far as I remember, was a sort of house-steward to my
grandmother. He dreaded her like fire; but, on hearing of such a heavy
loss, he almost went out of his mind; he calculated the various sums
she had lost, and pointed out to her that in six months she had spent
half a million francs, that neither their Moscow nor Saratov estates
were in Paris, and finally refused point blank to pay the debt. My
grandmother gave him a box on the ear and slept by herself as a sign
of her displeasure. The next day she sent for her husband, hoping that
this domestic punishment had produced an effect upon him, but she
found him inflexible. For the first time in her life, she entered into
reasonings and explanations with him, thinking to be able to convince
him by pointing out to him that there are debts and debts, and that
there is a great difference between a Prince and a coachmaker. But it
was all in vain, my grandfather still remained obdurate. But the
matter did not rest there. My grandmother did not know what to do. She
had shortly before become acquainted with a very remarkable man. You
have heard of Count St. Germain, about whom so many marvellous stories
are told. You know that he represented himself as the Wandering Jew,
as the discoverer of the elixir of life, of the philosopher's stone,
and so forth. Some laughed at him as a charlatan; but Casanova, in his
memoirs, says that he was a spy. But be that as it may, St. Germain,
in spite of the mystery surrounding him, was a very fascinating
person, and was much sought after in the best circles of society. Even
to this day my grandmother retains an affectionate recollection of
him, and becomes quite angry if any one speaks disrespectfully of him.
My grandmother knew that St. Germain had large sums of money at his
disposal. She resolved to have recourse to him, and she wrote a letter
to him asking him to come to her without delay. The queer old man
immediately waited upon her and found her overwhelmed with grief. She
described to him in the blackest colours the barbarity of her husband,
and ended by declaring that her whole hope depended upon his
friendship and amiability.

"St. Germain reflected.

"'I could advance you the sum you want,' said he; 'but I know that you
would not rest easy until you had paid me back, and I should not like
to bring fresh troubles upon you. But there is another way of getting
out of your difficulty: you can win back your money.'

"'But, my dear Count,' replied my grandmother, 'I tell you that I
haven't any money left.'

"'Money is not necessary,' replied St. Germain: 'be pleased to listen
to me.'

"Then he revealed to her a secret, for which each of us would give a
good deal..."

The young officers listened with increased attention. Tomsky lit his
pipe, puffed away for a moment and then continued:

"That same evening my grandmother went to Versailles to the _jeu de la
reine_. The Duke of Orleans kept the bank; my grandmother excused
herself in an off-hand manner for not having yet paid her debt, by
inventing some little story, and then began to play against him. She
chose three cards and played them one after the other: all three won
_sonika_, [Said of a card when it wins or loses in the quickest
possible time.] and my grandmother recovered every farthing that she
had lost."

"Mere chance!" said one of the guests.

"A tale!" observed Hermann.

"Perhaps they were marked cards!" said a third.

"I do not think so," replied Tomsky gravely.

"What!" said Narumov, "you have a grandmother who knows how to hit
upon three lucky cards in succession, and you have never yet succeeded
in getting the secret of it out of her?"

"That's the deuce of it!" replied Tomsky: "she had four sons, one of
whom was my father; all four were determined gamblers, and yet not to
one of them did she ever reveal her secret, although it would not have
been a bad thing either for them or for me. But this is what I heard
from my uncle, Count Ivan Ilyich, and he assured me, on his honour,
that it was true. The late Chaplitzky--the same who died in poverty
after having squandered millions--once lost, in his youth, about three
hundred thousand roubles--to Zorich, if I remember rightly. He was in
despair. My grandmother, who was always very severe upon the
extravagance of young men, took pity, however, upon Chaplitzky. She
gave him three cards, telling him to play them one after the other, at
the same time exacting from him a solemn promise that he would never
play at cards again as long as he lived. Chaplitzky then went to his
victorious opponent, and they began a fresh game. On the first card he
staked fifty thousand rubles and won _sonika_; he doubled the stake
and won again, till at last, by pursuing the same tactics, he won back
more than he had lost ...

"But it is time to go to bed: it is a quarter to six already."

And indeed it was already beginning to dawn: the young men emptied
their glasses and then took leave of each other.



II


The old Countess A---- was seated in her dressing-room in front of her
looking-glass. Three waiting maids stood around her. One held a small
pot of rouge, another a box of hair-pins, and the third a tall can
with bright red ribbons. The Countess had no longer the slightest
pretensions to beauty, but she still preserved the habits of her
youth, dressed in strict accordance with the fashion of seventy years
before, and made as long and as careful a toilette as she would have
done sixty years previously. Near the window, at an embroidery frame,
sat a young lady, her ward.

"Good morning, grandmamma," said a young officer, entering the room.
"_Bonjour, Mademoiselle Lise_. Grandmamma, I want to ask you
something."

"What is it, Paul?"

"I want you to let me introduce one of my friends to you, and to allow
me to bring him to the ball on Friday."

"Bring him direct to the ball and introduce him to me there. Were you
at B----'s yesterday?"

"Yes; everything went off very pleasantly, and dancing was kept up
until five o'clock. How charming Yeletzkaya was!"

"But, my dear, what is there charming about her? Isn't she like her
grandmother, the Princess Daria Petrovna? By the way, she must be very
old, the Princess Daria Petrovna."

"How do you mean, old?" cried Tomsky thoughtlessly; "she died seven
years ago."

The young lady raised her head and made a sign to the young officer.
He then remembered that the old Countess was never to be informed of
the death of any of her contemporaries, and he bit his lips. But the
old Countess heard the news with the greatest indifference.

"Dead!" said she; "and I did not know it. We were appointed maids of
honour at the same time, and when we were presented to the Empress..."

And the Countess for the hundredth time related to her grandson one of
her anecdotes.

"Come, Paul," said she, when she had finished her story, "help me to
get up. Lizanka, where is my snuff-box?"

And the Countess with her three maids went behind a screen to finish
her toilette. Tomsky was left alone with the young lady.

"Who is the gentleman you wish to introduce to the Countess?" asked
Lizaveta Ivanovna in a whisper.

"Narumov. Do you know him?"

"No. Is he a soldier or a civilian?"

"A soldier."

"Is he in the Engineers?"

"No, in the Cavalry. What made you think that he was in the
Engineers?"

The young lady smiled, but made no reply.

"Paul," cried the Countess from behind the screen, "send me some new
novel, only pray don't let it be one of the present day style."

"What do you mean, grandmother?"

"That is, a novel, in which the hero strangles neither his father nor
his mother, and in which there are no drowned bodies. I have a great
horror of drowned persons."

"There are no such novels nowadays. Would you like a Russian one?"

"Are there any Russian novels? Send me one, my dear, pray send me
one!"

"Good-bye, grandmother: I am in a hurry... Good-bye, Lizaveta
Ivanovna. What made you think that Narumov was in the Engineers?"

And Tomsky left the boudoir.

Lizaveta Ivanovna was left alone: she laid aside her work and began to
look out of the window. A few moments afterwards, at a corner house on
the other side of the street, a young officer appeared. A deep blush
covered her cheeks; she took up her work again and bent her head down
over the frame. At the same moment the Countess returned completely
dressed.

"Order the carriage, Lizaveta," said she; "we will go out for a
drive."

Lizaveta arose from the frame and began to arrange her work.

"What is the matter with you, my child, are you deaf?" cried the
Countess. "Order the carriage to be got ready at once."

"I will do so this moment," replied the young lady, hastening into the
ante-room.

A servant entered and gave the Countess some books from Prince Paul
Aleksandrovich.

"Tell him that I am much obliged to him," said the Countess.
"Lizaveta! Lizaveta! Where are you running to?"

"I am going to dress."

"There is plenty of time, my dear. Sit down here. Open the first
volume and read to me aloud."

Her companion took the book and read a few lines.

"Louder," said the Countess. "What is the matter with you, my child?
Have you lost your voice? Wait--give me that footstool--a little
nearer--that will do."

Lizaveta read two more pages. The Countess yawned.

"Put the book down," said she: "what a lot of nonsense! Send it back
to Prince Paul with my thanks... But where is the carriage?"

"The carriage is ready," said Lizaveta, looking out into the street.

"How is it that you are not dressed?" said the Countess: "I must
always wait for you. It is intolerable, my dear!"

Liza hastened to her room. She had not been there two minutes, before
the Countess began to ring with all her might. The three waiting-maids
came running in at one door and the valet at another.

"How is it that you cannot hear me when I ring for you?" said the
Countess. "Tell Lizaveta Ivanovna that I am waiting for her."

Lizaveta returned with her hat and cloak on.

"At last you are here!" said the Countess. "But why such an elaborate
toilette? Whom do you intend to captivate? What sort of weather is it?
It seems rather windy."

"No, your Ladyship, it is very calm," replied the valet.

"You never think of what you are talking about. Open the window. So it
is: windy and bitterly cold. Unharness the horses. Lizaveta, we won't
go out--there was no need for you to deck yourself like that."

"What a life is mine!" thought Lizaveta Ivanovna.

And, in truth, Lizaveta Ivanovna was a very unfortunate creature. "The
bread of the stranger is bitter," says Dante, "and his staircase hard
to climb." But who can know what the bitterness of dependence is so
well as the poor companion of an old lady of quality? The Countess
A---- had by no means a bad heart, but she was capricious, like a
woman who had been spoilt by the world, as well as being avaricious
and egotistical, like all old people who have seen their best days,
and whose thoughts are with the past and not the present. She
participated in all the vanities of the great world, went to balls,
where she sat in a corner, painted and dressed in old-fashioned style,
like a deformed but indispensable ornament of the ball-room; all the
guests on entering approached her and made a profound bow, as if in
accordance with a set ceremony, but after that nobody took any further
notice of her. She received the whole town at her house, and observed
the strictest etiquette, although she could no longer recognise the
faces of people. Her numerous domestics, growing fat and old in her
ante-chamber and servants' hall, did just as they liked, and vied with
each other in robbing the aged Countess in the most bare-faced manner.
Lizaveta Ivanovna was the martyr of the household. She made tea, and
was reproached with using too much sugar; she read novels aloud to the
Countess, and the faults of the author were visited upon her head; she
accompanied the Countess in her walks, and was held answerable for the
weather or the state of the pavement. A salary was attached to the
post, but she very rarely received it, although she was expected to
dress like everybody else, that is to say, like very few indeed. In
society she played the most pitiable role. Everybody knew her, and
nobody paid her any attention. At balls she danced only when a partner
was wanted, and ladies would only take hold of her arm when it was
necessary to lead her out of the room to attend to their dresses. She
was very self-conscious, and felt her position keenly, and she looked
about her with impatience for a deliverer to come to her rescue; but
the young men, calculating in their giddiness, honoured her with but
very little attention, although Lizaveta Ivanovna was a hundred times
prettier than the bare-faced and cold-hearted marriageable girls
around whom they hovered. Many a time did she quietly slink away from
the glittering but wearisome drawing-room, to go and cry in her own
poor little room, in which stood a screen, a chest of drawers, a
looking-glass and a painted bedstead, and where a tallow candle burnt
feebly in a copper candle-stick.

One morning--this was about two days after the evening party described
at the beginning of this story, and a week previous to the scene at
which we have just assisted--Lizaveta Ivanovna was seated near the
window at her embroidery frame, when, happening to look out into the
street, she caught sight of a young Engineer officer, standing
motionless with his eyes fixed upon her window. She lowered her head
and went on again with her work. About five minutes afterwards she
looked out again--the young officer was still standing in the same
place. Not being in the habit of coquetting with passing officers, she
did not continue to gaze out into the street, but went on sewing for a
couple of hours, without raising her head. Dinner was announced. She
rose up and began to put her embroidery away, but glancing casually
out of the window, she perceived the officer again. This seemed to her
very strange. After dinner she went to the window with a certain
feeling of uneasiness, but the officer was no longer there--and she
thought no more about him.

A couple of days afterwards, just as she was stepping into the
carriage with the Countess, she saw him again. He was standing close
behind the door, with his face half-concealed by his fur collar, but
his dark eyes sparkled beneath his cap. Lizaveta felt alarmed, though
she knew not why, and she trembled as she seated herself in the
carriage.

On returning home, she hastened to the window--the officer was
standing in his accustomed place, with his eyes fixed upon her. She
drew back, a prey to curiosity and agitated by a feeling which was
quite new to her.

From that time forward not a day passed without the young officer
making his appearance under the window at the customary hour, and
between him and her there was established a sort of mute acquaintance.
Sitting in her place at work, she used to feel his approach; and
raising her head, she would look at him longer and longer each day.
The young man seemed to be very grateful to her: she saw with the
sharp eye of youth, how a sudden flush covered his pale cheeks each
time that their glances met. After about a week she commenced to smile
at him...

When Tomsky asked permission of his grandmother the Countess to
present one of his friends to her, the young girl's heart beat
violently. But hearing that Narumov was not an Engineer, she regretted
that by her thoughtless question, she had betrayed her secret to the
volatile Tomsky.

Hermann was the son of a German who had become a naturalised Russian,
and from whom he had inherited a small capital. Being firmly convinced
of the necessity of preserving his independence, Hermann did not touch
his private income, but lived on his pay, without allowing himself the
slightest luxury. Moreover, he was reserved and ambitious, and his
companions rarely had an opportunity of making merry at the expense of
his extreme parsimony. He had strong passions and an ardent
imagination, but his firmness of disposition preserved him from the
ordinary errors of young men. Thus, though a gamester at heart, he
never touched a card, for he considered his position did not allow
him--as he said--"to risk the necessary in the hope of winning the
superfluous," yet he would sit for nights together at the card table
and follow with feverish anxiety the different turns of the game.

The story of the three cards had produced a powerful impression upon
his imagination, and all night long he could think of nothing else.
"If," he thought to himself the following evening, as he walked along
the streets of St. Petersburg, "if the old Countess would but reveal
her secret to me! if she would only tell me the names of the three
winning cards. Why should I not try my fortune? I must get introduced
to her and win her favour--become her lover... But all that will take
time, and she is eighty-seven years old: she might be dead in a week,
in a couple of days even!... But the story itself: can it really be
true?... No! Economy, temperance and industry: those are my three
winning cards; by means of them I shall be able to double my
capital--increase it sevenfold, and procure for myself ease and
independence."

Musing in this manner, he walked on until he found himself in one of
the principal streets of St. Petersburg, in front of a house of
antiquated architecture. The street was blocked with equipages;
carriages one after the other drew up in front of the brilliantly
illuminated doorway. At one moment there stepped out on to the
pavement the well-shaped little foot of some young beauty, at another
the heavy boot of a cavalry officer, and then the silk stockings and
shoes of a member of the diplomatic world. Furs and cloaks passed in
rapid succession before the gigantic porter at the entrance.

Hermann stopped. "Whose house is this?" he asked of the watchman at
the corner.

"The Countess A----'s," replied the watchman.

Hermann started. The strange story of the three cards again presented
itself to his imagination. He began walking up and down before the
house, thinking of its owner and her strange secret. Returning late to
his modest lodging, he could not go to sleep for a long time, and when
at last he did doze off, he could dream of nothing but cards, green
tables, piles of banknotes and heaps of ducats. He played one card
after the other, winning uninterruptedly, and then he gathered up the
gold and filled his pockets with the notes. When he woke up late the
next morning, he sighed over the loss of his imaginary wealth, and
then sallying out into the town, he found himself once more in front
of the Countess's residence. Some unknown power seemed to have
attracted him thither. He stopped and looked up at the windows. At one
of these he saw a head with luxuriant black hair, which was bent down
probably over some book or an embroidery frame. The head was raised.
Hermann saw a fresh complexion and a pair of dark eyes. That moment
decided his fate.



III


Lizaveta Ivanovna had scarcely taken off her hat and cloak, when the
Countess sent for her and again ordered her to get the carriage ready.
The vehicle drew up before the door, and they prepared to take their
seats. Just at the moment when two footmen were assisting the old lady
to enter the carriage, Lizaveta saw her Engineer standing close beside
the wheel; he grasped her hand; alarm caused her to lose her presence
of mind, and the young man disappeared--but not before he had left a
letter between her fingers. She concealed it in her glove, and during
the whole of the drive she neither saw nor heard anything. It was the
custom of the Countess, when out for an airing in her carriage, to be
constantly asking such questions as: "Who was that person that met us
just now? What is the name of this bridge? What is written on that
signboard?" On this occasion, however, Lizaveta returned such vague
and absurd answers, that the Countess became angry with her.

"What is the matter with you, my dear?" she exclaimed. "Have you taken
leave of your senses, or what is it? Do you not hear me or understand
what I say?... Heaven be thanked, I am still in my right mind and
speak plainly enough!"

Lizaveta Ivanovna did not hear her. On returning home she ran to her
room, and drew the letter out of her glove: it was not sealed.
Lizaveta read it. The letter contained a declaration of love; it was
tender, respectful, and copied word for word from a German novel. But
Lizaveta did not know anything of the German language, and she was
quite delighted.

For all that, the letter caused her to feel exceedingly uneasy. For
the first time in her life she was entering into secret and
confidential relations with a young man. His boldness alarmed her. She
reproached herself for her imprudent behaviour, and knew not what to
do. Should she cease to sit at the window and, by assuming an
appearance of indifference towards him, put a check upon the young
officer's desire for further acquaintance with her? Should she send
his letter back to him, or should she answer him in a cold and decided
manner? There was nobody to whom she could turn in her perplexity, for
she had neither female friend nor adviser... At length she resolved to
reply to him.

She sat down at her little writing-table, took pen and paper, and
began to think. Several times she began her letter, and then tore it
up: the way she had expressed herself seemed to her either too
inviting or too cold and decisive. At last she succeeded in writing a
few lines with which she felt satisfied.

"I am convinced," she wrote, "that your intentions are honourable, and
that you do not wish to offend me by any imprudent behaviour, but our
acquaintance must not begin in such a manner. I return you your
letter, and I hope that I shall never have any cause to complain of
this undeserved slight."

The next day, as soon as Hermann made his appearance, Lizaveta rose
from her embroidery, went into the drawing-room, opened the ventilator
and threw the letter into the street, trusting that the young officer
would have the perception to pick it up.

Hermann hastened forward, picked it up and then repaired to a
confectioner's shop. Breaking the seal of the envelope, he found
inside it his own letter and Lizaveta's reply. He had expected this,
and he returned home, his mind deeply occupied with his intrigue.

Three days afterwards, a bright-eyed young girl from a milliner's
establishment brought Lizaveta a letter. Lizaveta opened it with great
uneasiness, fearing that it was a demand for money, when suddenly she
recognised Hermann's hand-writing.

"You have made a mistake, my dear," said she: "this letter is not for
me."

"Oh, yes, it is for you," replied the girl, smiling very knowingly.
"Have the goodness to read it."

Lizaveta glanced at the letter. Hermann requested an interview.

"It cannot be," she cried, alarmed at the audacious request, and the
manner in which it was made. "This letter is certainly not for me."

And she tore it into fragments.

"If the letter was not for you, why have you torn it up?" said the
girl. "I should have given it back to the person who sent it."

"Be good enough, my dear," said Lizaveta, disconcerted by this remark,
"not to bring me any more letters for the future, and tell the person
who sent you that he ought to be ashamed..."

But Hermann was not the man to be thus put off. Every day Lizaveta
received from him a letter, sent now in this way, now in that. They
were no longer translated from the German. Hermann wrote them under
the inspiration of passion, and spoke in his own language, and they
bore full testimony to the inflexibility of his desire and the
disordered condition of his uncontrollable imagination. Lizaveta no
longer thought of sending them back to him: she became intoxicated
with them and began to reply to them, and little by little her answers
became longer and more affectionate. At last she threw out of the
window to him the following letter:

"This evening there is going to be a ball at the Embassy. The Countess
will be there. We shall remain until two o'clock. You have now an
opportunity of seeing me alone. As soon as the Countess is gone, the
servants will very probably go out, and there will be nobody left but
the Swiss, but he usually goes to sleep in his lodge. Come about
half-past eleven. Walk straight upstairs. If you meet anybody in the
ante-room, ask if the Countess is at home. You will be told 'No,' in
which case there will be nothing left for you to do but to go away
again. But it is most probable that you will meet nobody. The
maidservants will all be together in one room. On leaving the
ante-room, turn to the left, and walk straight on until you reach the
Countess's bedroom. In the bedroom, behind a screen, you will find two
doors: the one on the right leads to a cabinet, which the Countess
never enters; the one on the left leads to a corridor, at the end of
which is a little winding staircase; this leads to my room."

Hermann trembled like a tiger, as he waited for the appointed time to
arrive. At ten o'clock in the evening he was already in front of the
Countess's house. The weather was terrible; the wind blew with great
violence; the sleety snow fell in large flakes; the lamps emitted a
feeble light, the streets were deserted; from time to time a sledge,
drawn by a sorry-looking hack, passed by, on the look-out for a
belated passenger. Hermann was enveloped in a thick overcoat, and felt
neither wind nor snow.

At last the Countess's carriage drew up. Hermann saw two footmen carry
out in their arms the bent form of the old lady, wrapped in sable fur,
and immediately behind her, clad in a warm mantle, and with her head
ornamented with a wreath of fresh flowers, followed Lizaveta. The door
was closed. The carriage rolled away heavily through the yielding
snow. The porter shut the street-door; the windows became dark.

Hermann began walking up and down near the deserted house; at length
he stopped under a lamp, and glanced at his watch: it was twenty
minutes past eleven. He remained standing under the lamp, his eyes
fixed upon the watch, impatiently waiting for the remaining minutes to
pass. At half-past eleven precisely, Hermann ascended the steps of the
house, and made his way into the brightly-illuminated vestibule. The
porter was not there. Hermann hastily ascended the staircase, opened
the door of the ante-room and saw a footman sitting asleep in an
antique chair by the side of a lamp. With a light firm step Hermann
passed by him. The drawing-room and dining-room were in darkness, but
a feeble reflection penetrated thither from the lamp in the ante-room.

Hermann reached the Countess's bedroom. Before a shrine, which was
full of old images, a golden lamp was burning. Faded stuffed chairs
and divans with soft cushions stood in melancholy symmetry around the
room, the walls of which were hung with China silk. On one side of the
room hung two portraits painted in Paris by Madame Lebrun. One of
these represented a stout, red-faced man of about forty years of age
in a bright-green uniform and with a star upon his breast; the
other--a beautiful young woman, with an aquiline nose, forehead curls
and a rose in her powdered hair. In the corners stood porcelain
shepherds and shepherdesses, dining-room clocks from the workshop of
the celebrated Lefroy, bandboxes, roulettes, fans and the various
playthings for the amusement of ladies that were in vogue at the end
of the last century, when Montgolfier's balloons and Mesmer's
magnetism were the rage. Hermann stepped behind the screen. At the
back of it stood a little iron bedstead; on the right was the door
which led to the cabinet; on the left--the other which led to the
corridor. He opened the latter, and saw the little winding staircase
which led to the room of the poor companion... But he retraced his
steps and entered the dark cabinet.

The time passed slowly. All was still. The clock in the drawing-room
struck twelve; the strokes echoed through the room one after the
other, and everything was quiet again. Hermann stood leaning against
the cold stove. He was calm; his heart beat regularly, like that of a
man resolved upon a dangerous but inevitable undertaking. One o'clock
in the morning struck; then two; and he heard the distant noise of
carriage-wheels. An involuntary agitation took possession of him. The
carriage drew near and stopped. He heard the sound of the
carriage-steps being let down. All was bustle within the house. The
servants were running hither and thither, there was a confusion of
voices, and the rooms were lit up. Three antiquated chamber-maids
entered the bedroom, and they were shortly afterwards followed by the
Countess who, more dead than alive, sank into a Voltaire armchair.
Hermann peeped through a chink. Lizaveta Ivanovna passed close by him,
and he heard her hurried steps as she hastened up the little spiral
staircase. For a moment his heart was assailed by something like a
pricking of conscience, but the emotion was only transitory, and his
heart became petrified as before.

The Countess began to undress before her looking-glass. Her
rose-bedecked cap was taken off, and then her powdered wig was removed
from off her white and closely-cut hair. Hairpins fell in showers
around her. Her yellow satin dress, brocaded with silver, fell down at
her swollen feet.

Hermann was a witness of the repugnant mysteries of her toilette; at
last the Countess was in her night-cap and dressing-gown, and in this
costume, more suitable to her age, she appeared less hideous and
deformed.

Like all old people in general, the Countess suffered from
sleeplessness. Having undressed, she seated herself at the window in a
Voltaire armchair and dismissed her maids. The candles were taken
away, and once more the room was left with only one lamp burning in
it. The Countess sat there looking quite yellow, mumbling with her
flaccid lips and swaying to and fro. Her dull eyes expressed complete
vacancy of mind, and, looking at her, one would have thought that the
rocking of her body was not a voluntary action of her own, but was
produced by the action of some concealed galvanic mechanism.

Suddenly the death-like face assumed an inexplicable expression. The
lips ceased to tremble, the eyes became animated: before the Countess
stood an unknown man.

"Do not be alarmed, for Heaven's sake, do not be alarmed!" said he in
a low but distinct voice. "I have no intention of doing you any harm,
I have only come to ask a favour of you."

The old woman looked at him in silence, as if she had not heard what
he had said. Hermann thought that she was deaf, and bending down
towards her ear, he repeated what he had said. The aged Countess
remained silent as before.

"You can insure the happiness of my life," continued Hermann, "and it
will cost you nothing. I know that you can name three cards in
order--"

Hermann stopped. The Countess appeared now to understand what he
wanted; she seemed as if seeking for words to reply.

"It was a joke," she replied at last: "I assure you it was only a
joke."

"There is no joking about the matter," replied Hermann angrily.
"Remember Chaplitzky, whom you helped to win."

The Countess became visibly uneasy. Her features expressed strong
emotion, but they quickly resumed their former immobility.

"Can you not name me these three winning cards?" continued Hermann.

The Countess remained silent; Hermann continued:

"For whom are you preserving your secret? For your grandsons? They are
rich enough without it; they do not know the worth of money. Your
cards would be of no use to a spendthrift. He who cannot preserve his
paternal inheritance, will die in want, even though he had a demon at
his service. I am not a man of that sort; I know the value of money.
Your three cards will not be thrown away upon me. Come!"...

He paused and tremblingly awaited her reply. The Countess remained
silent; Hermann fell upon his knees.

"If your heart has ever known the feeling of love," said he, "if you
remember its rapture, if you have ever smiled at the cry of your
new-born child, if any human feeling has ever entered into your
breast, I entreat you by the feelings of a wife, a lover, a mother, by
all that is most sacred in life, not to reject my prayer. Reveal to me
your secret. Of what use is it to you?... May be it is connected with
some terrible sin with the loss of eternal salvation, with some
bargain with the devil... Reflect,--you are old; you have not long to
live--I am ready to take your sins upon my soul. Only reveal to me
your secret. Remember that the happiness of a man is in your hands,
that not only I, but my children, and grandchildren will bless your
memory and reverence you as a saint..."

The old Countess answered not a word.

Hermann rose to his feet.

"You old hag!" he exclaimed, grinding his teeth, "then I will make you
answer!"

With these words he drew a pistol from his pocket.

At the sight of the pistol, the Countess for the second time exhibited
strong emotion. She shook her head and raised her hands as if to
protect herself from the shot... then she fell backwards and remained
motionless.

"Come, an end to this childish nonsense!" said Hermann, taking hold of
her hand. "I ask you for the last time: will you tell me the names of
your three cards, or will you not?"

The Countess made no reply. Hermann perceived that she was dead!



IV


Lizaveta Ivanovna was sitting in her room, still in her ball dress,
lost in deep thought. On returning home, she had hastily dismissed the
chambermaid who very reluctantly came forward to assist her, saying
that she would undress herself, and with a trembling heart had gone up
to her own room, expecting to find Hermann there, but yet hoping not
to find him. At the first glance she convinced herself that he was not
there, and she thanked her fate for having prevented him keeping the
appointment. She sat down without undressing, and began to recall to
mind all the circumstances which in so short a time had carried her so
far. It was not three weeks since the time when she first saw the
young officer from the window--and yet she was already in
correspondence with him, and he had succeeded in inducing her to grant
him a nocturnal interview! She knew his name only through his having
written it at the bottom of some of his letters; she had never spoken
to him, had never heard his voice, and had never heard him spoken of
until that evening. But, strange to say, that very evening at the
ball, Tomsky, being piqued with the young Princess Pauline N----, who,
contrary to her usual custom, did not flirt with him, wished to
revenge himself by assuming an air of indifference: he therefore
engaged Lizaveta Ivanovna and danced an endless mazurka with her.
During the whole of the time he kept teasing her about her partiality
for Engineer officers; he assured her that he knew far more than she
imagined, and some of his jests were so happily aimed, that Lizaveta
thought several times that her secret was known to him.

"From whom have you learnt all this?" she asked, smiling.

"From a friend of a person very well known to you," replied Tomsky,
"from a very distinguished man."

"And who is this distinguished man?"

"His name is Hermann."

Lizaveta made no reply; but her hands and feet lost all sense of
feeling.

"This Hermann," continued Tomsky, "is a man of romantic personality.
He has the profile of a Napoleon, and the soul of a Mephistopheles. I
believe that he has at least three crimes upon his conscience... How
pale you have become!"

"I have a headache... But what did this Hermann--or whatever his name
is--tell you?"

"Hermann is very much dissatisfied with his friend: he says that in
his place he would act very differently... I even think that Hermann
himself has designs upon you; at least, he listens very attentively to
all that his friend has to say about you."

"And where has he seen me?"

"In church, perhaps; or on the parade--God alone knows where. It may
have been in your room, while you were asleep, for there is nothing
that he--"

Three ladies approaching him with the question: "_oubli ou regret_?"
interrupted the conversation, which had become so tantalisingly
interesting to Lizaveta.

The lady chosen by Tomsky was the Princess Pauline herself. She
succeeded in effecting a reconciliation with him during the numerous
turns of the dance, after which he conducted her to her chair. On
returning to his place, Tomsky thought no more either of Hermann or
Lizaveta. She longed to renew the interrupted conversation, but the
mazurka came to an end, and shortly afterwards the old Countess took
her departure.

Tomsky's words were nothing more than the customary small talk of the
dance, but they sank deep into the soul of the young dreamer. The
portrait, sketched by Tomsky, coincided with the picture she had
formed within her own mind, and thanks to the latest romances, the
ordinary countenance of her admirer became invested with attributes
capable of alarming her and fascinating her imagination at the same
time. She was now sitting with her bare arms crossed and with her
head, still adorned with flowers, sunk upon her uncovered bosom.
Suddenly the door opened and Hermann entered. She shuddered.

"Where were you?" she asked in a terrified whisper.

"In the old Countess's bedroom," replied Hermann: "I have just left
her. The Countess is dead."

"My God! What do you say?"

"And I am afraid," added Hermann, "that I am the cause of her death."

Lizaveta looked at him, and Tomsky's words found an echo in her soul:
"This man has at least three crimes upon his conscience!" Hermann sat
down by the window near her, and related all that had happened.

Lizaveta listened to him in terror. So all those passionate letters,
those ardent desires, this bold obstinate pursuit--all this was not
love! Money--that was what his soul yearned for! She could not satisfy
his desire and make him happy! The poor girl had been nothing but
the blind tool of a robber, of the murderer of her aged
benefactress!... She wept bitter tears of agonised repentance. Hermann
gazed at her in silence: his heart, too, was a prey to violent
emotion, but neither the tears of the poor girl, nor the wonderful
charm of her beauty, enhanced by her grief, could produce any
impression upon his hardened soul. He felt no pricking of conscience
at the thought of the dead old woman. One thing only grieved him: the
irreparable loss of the secret from which he had expected to obtain
great wealth.

"You are a monster!" said Lizaveta at last.

"I did not wish for her death," replied Hermann: "my pistol was not
loaded."

Both remained silent.

The day began to dawn. Lizaveta extinguished her candle: a pale light
illumined her room. She wiped her tear-stained eyes and raised them
towards Hermann: he was sitting near the window, with his arms crossed
and with a fierce frown upon his forehead. In this attitude he bore a
striking resemblance to the portrait of Napoleon. This resemblance
struck Lizaveta even.

"How shall I get you out of the house?" said she at last. "I thought
of conducting you down the secret staircase, but in that case it would
be necessary to go through the Countess's bedroom, and I am afraid."

"Tell me how to find this secret staircase--I will go alone."

Lizaveta arose, took from her drawer a key, handed it to Hermann and
gave him the necessary instructions. Hermann pressed her cold, limp
hand, kissed her bowed head, and left the room.

He descended the winding staircase, and once more entered the
Countess's bedroom. The dead old lady sat as if petrified; her face
expressed profound tranquillity. Hermann stopped before her, and gazed
long and earnestly at her, as if he wished to convince himself of the
terrible reality; at last he entered the cabinet, felt behind the
tapestry for the door, and then began to descend the dark staircase,
filled with strange emotions. "Down this very staircase," thought he,
"perhaps coming from the very same room, and at this very same hour
sixty years ago, there may have glided, in an embroidered coat, with
his hair dressed _à l'oiseau royal_ and pressing to his heart his
three-cornered hat, some young gallant, who has long been mouldering
in the grave, but the heart of his aged mistress has only to-day
ceased to beat..."

At the bottom of the staircase Hermann found a door, which he opened
with a key, and then traversed a corridor which conducted him into the
street.



V


Three days after the fatal night, at nine o'clock in the morning,
Hermann repaired to the Convent of ----, where the last honours were
to be paid to the mortal remains of the old Countess. Although feeling
no remorse, he could not altogether stifle the voice of conscience,
which said to him: "You are the murderer of the old woman!" In spite
of his entertaining very little religious belief, he was exceedingly
superstitious; and believing that the dead Countess might exercise an
evil influence on his life, he resolved to be present at her obsequies
in order to implore her pardon.

The church was full. It was with difficulty that Hermann made his way
through the crowd of people. The coffin was placed upon a rich
catafalque beneath a velvet baldachin. The deceased Countess lay
within it, with her hands crossed upon her breast, with a lace cap
upon her head and dressed in a white satin robe. Around the catafalque
stood the members of her household: the servants in black _caftans_,
with armorial ribbons upon their shoulders, and candles in their
hands; the relatives--children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren--in deep mourning.

Nobody wept; tears would have been _une affectation_. The Countess was
so old, that her death could have surprised nobody, and her relatives
had long looked upon her as being out of the world. A famous preacher
pronounced the funeral sermon. In simple and touching words he
described the peaceful passing away of the righteous, who had passed
long years in calm preparation for a Christian end. "The angel of
death found her," said the orator, "engaged in pious meditation and
waiting for the midnight bridegroom."

The service concluded amidst profound silence. The relatives went
forward first to take farewell of the corpse. Then followed the
numerous guests, who had come to render the last homage to her who for
so many years had been a participator in their frivolous amusements.
After these followed the members of the Countess's household. The last
of these was an old woman of the same age as the deceased. Two young
women led her forward by the hand. She had not strength enough to bow
down to the ground--she merely shed a few tears and kissed the cold
hand of her mistress.

Hermann now resolved to approach the coffin. He knelt down upon the
cold stones and remained in that position for some minutes; at last he
arose, as pale as the deceased Countess herself; he ascended the steps
of the catafalque and bent over the corpse... At that moment it seemed
to him that the dead woman darted a mocking look at him and winked
with one eye. Hermann started back, took a false step and fell to the
ground. Several persons hurried forward and raised him up. At the same
moment Lizaveta Ivanovna was borne fainting into the porch of the
church. This episode disturbed for some minutes the solemnity of the
gloomy ceremony. Among the congregation arose a deep murmur, and a
tall thin chamberlain, a near relative of the deceased, whispered in
the ear of an Englishman who was standing near him, that the young
officer was a natural son of the Countess, to which the Englishman
coldly replied: "Oh!"

During the whole of that day, Hermann was strangely excited. Repairing
to an out-of-the-way restaurant to dine, he drank a great deal of
wine, contrary to his usual custom, in the hope of deadening his
inward agitation. But the wine only served to excite his imagination
still more. On returning home, he threw himself upon his bed without
undressing, and fell into a deep sleep.

When he woke up it was already night, and the moon was shining into
the room. He looked at his watch: it was a quarter to three. Sleep had
left him; he sat down upon his bed and thought of the funeral of the
old Countess.

At that moment somebody in the street looked in at his window, and
immediately passed on again. Hermann paid no attention to this
incident. A few moments afterwards he heard the door of his ante-room
open. Hermann thought that it was his orderly, drunk as usual,
returning from some nocturnal expedition, but presently he heard
footsteps that were unknown to him: somebody was walking softly over
the floor in slippers. The door opened, and a woman dressed in white,
entered the room. Hermann mistook her for his old nurse, and wondered
what could bring her there at that hour of the night. But the white
woman glided rapidly across the room and stood before him--and Hermann
recognised the Countess!

"I have come to you against my wish," she said in a firm voice: "but I
have been ordered to grant your request. Three, seven, ace, will win
for you if played in succession, but only on these conditions: that
you do not play more than one card in twenty-four hours, and that you
never play again during the rest of your life. I forgive you my death,
on condition that you marry my companion, Lizaveta Ivanovna."

With these words she turned round very quietly, walked with a
shuffling gait towards the door and disappeared. Hermann heard the
street-door open and shut, and again he saw some one look in at him
through the window.

For a long time Hermann could not recover himself. He then rose up and
entered the next room. His orderly was lying asleep upon the floor,
and he had much difficulty in waking him. The orderly was drunk as
usual, and no information could be obtained from him. The street-door
was locked. Hermann returned to his room, lit his candle, and wrote
down all the details of his vision.



VI


Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two
bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.
"Three, seven, ace," soon drove out of Hermann's mind the thought of
the dead Countess. "Three, seven, ace," were perpetually running
through his head and continually being repeated by his lips. If he saw
a young girl, he would say: "How slender she is! quite like the three
of hearts." If anybody asked: "What is the time?" he would reply:
"Five minutes to seven." Every stout man that he saw reminded him of
the ace. "Three, seven, ace" haunted him in his sleep, and assumed all
possible shapes. The threes bloomed before him in the forms of
magnificent flowers, the sevens were represented by Gothic portals,
and the aces became transformed into gigantic spiders. One thought
alone occupied his whole mind--to make a profitable use of the secret
which he had purchased so dearly. He thought of applying for a
furlough so as to travel abroad. He wanted to go to Paris and tempt
fortune in some of the public gambling-houses that abounded there.
Chance spared him all this trouble.

There was in Moscow a society of rich gamesters, presided over by the
celebrated Chekalinsky, who had passed all his life at the card-table
and had amassed millions, accepting bills of exchange for his winnings
and paying his losses in ready money. His long experience secured for
him the confidence of his companions, and his open house, his famous
cook, and his agreeable and fascinating manners gained for him the
respect of the public. He came to St. Petersburg. The young men of the
capital flocked to his rooms, forgetting balls for cards, and
preferring the emotions of faro to the seductions of flirting. Narumov
conducted Hermann to Chekalinsky's residence.

They passed through a suite of magnificent rooms, filled with
attentive domestics. The place was crowded. Generals and Privy
Counsellors were playing at whist; young men were lolling carelessly
upon the velvet-covered sofas, eating ices and smoking pipes. In the
drawing-room, at the head of a long table, around which were assembled
about a score of players, sat the master of the house keeping the
bank. He was a man of about sixty years of age, of a very dignified
appearance; his head was covered with silvery-white hair; his full,
florid countenance expressed good-nature, and his eyes twinkled with a
perpetual smile. Narumov introduced Hermann to him. Chekalinsky shook
him by the hand in a friendly manner, requested him not to stand on
ceremony, and then went on dealing.

The game occupied some time. On the table lay more than thirty cards.
Chekalinsky paused after each throw, in order to give the players time
to arrange their cards and note down their losses, listened politely
to their requests, and more politely still, put straight the corners
of cards that some player's hand had chanced to bend. At last the game
was finished. Chekalinsky shuffled the cards and prepared to deal
again.

"Will you allow me to take a card?" said Hermann, stretching out his
hand from behind a stout gentleman who was punting.

Chekalinsky smiled and bowed silently, as a sign of acquiescence.
Narumov laughingly congratulated Hermann on his abjuration of that
abstention from cards which he had practised for so long a period, and
wished him a lucky beginning.

"Stake!" said Hermann, writing some figures with chalk on the back of
his card.

"How much?" asked the banker, contracting the muscles of his eyes;
"excuse me, I cannot see quite clearly."

"Forty-seven thousand rubles," replied Hermann.

At these words every head in the room turned suddenly round, and all
eyes were fixed upon Hermann.

"He has taken leave of his senses!" thought Narumov.

"Allow me to inform you," said Chekalinsky, with his eternal smile,
"that you are playing very high; nobody here has ever staked more than
two hundred and seventy-five rubles at once."

"Very well," replied Hermann; "but do you accept my card or not?"

Chekalinsky bowed in token of consent.

"I only wish to observe," said he, "that although I have the greatest
confidence in my friends, I can only play against ready money. For my
own part, I am quite convinced that your word is sufficient, but for
the sake of the order of the game, and to facilitate the reckoning up,
I must ask you to put the money on your card."

Hermann drew from his pocket a bank-note and handed it to Chekalinsky,
who, after examining it in a cursory manner, placed it on Hermann's
card.

He began to deal. On the right a nine turned up, and on the left a
three.

"I have won!" said Hermann, showing his card.

A murmur of astonishment arose among the players. Chekalinsky frowned,
but the smile quickly returned to his face.

"Do you wish me to settle with you?" he said to Hermann.

"If you please," replied the latter.

Chekalinsky drew from his pocket a number of banknotes and paid at
once. Hermann took up his money and left the table. Narumov could not
recover from his astonishment. Hermann drank a glass of lemonade and
returned home.

The next evening he again repaired to Chekalinsky's. The host was
dealing. Hermann walked up to the table; the punters immediately made
room for him. Chekalinsky greeted him with a gracious bow.

Hermann waited for the next deal, took a card and placed upon it his
forty-seven thousand roubles, together with his winnings of the
previous evening.

Chekalinsky began to deal. A knave turned up on the right, a seven on
the left.

Hermann showed his seven.

There was a general exclamation. Chekalinsky was evidently ill at
ease, but he counted out the ninety-four thousand rubles and handed
them over to Hermann, who pocketed them in the coolest manner possible
and immediately left the house.

The next evening Hermann appeared again at the table. Every one was
expecting him. The generals and Privy Counsellors left their whist in
order to watch such extraordinary play. The young officers quitted
their sofas, and even the servants crowded into the room. All pressed
round Hermann. The other players left off punting, impatient to see
how it would end. Hermann stood at the table and prepared to play
alone against the pale, but still smiling Chekalinsky. Each opened a
pack of cards. Chekalinsky shuffled. Hermann took a card and covered
it with a pile of bank-notes. It was like a duel. Deep silence reigned
around.

Chekalinsky began to deal; his hands trembled. On the right a queen
turned up, and on the left an ace.

"Ace has won!" cried Hermann, showing his card.

"Your queen has lost," said Chekalinsky, politely.

Hermann started; instead of an ace, there lay before him the queen of
spades! He could not believe his eyes, nor could he understand how he
had made such a mistake.

At that moment it seemed to him that the queen of spades smiled
ironically and winked her eye at him. He was struck by her remarkable
resemblance...

"The old Countess!" he exclaimed, seized with terror.

Chekalinsky gathered up his winnings. For some time, Hermann remained
perfectly motionless. When at last he left the table, there was a
general commotion in the room.

"Splendidly punted!" said the players. Chekalinsky shuffled the cards
afresh, and the game went on as usual.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hermann went out of his mind, and is now confined in room Number 17 of
the Obukhov Hospital. He never answers any questions, but he
constantly mutters with unusual rapidity: "Three, seven, ace!" "Three,
seven, queen!"

Lizaveta Ivanovna has married a very amiable young man, a son of the
former steward of the old Countess. He is in the service of the State
somewhere, and is in receipt of a good income. Lizaveta is also
supporting a poor relative.

Tomsky has been promoted to the rank of captain, and has become the
husband of the Princess Pauline.




THE CLOAK



BY NIKOLAY V. GOGOL


In the department of----, but it is better not to mention the
department. The touchiest things in the world are departments,
regiments, courts of justice, in a word, all branches of public
service. Each individual nowadays thinks all society insulted in his
person. Quite recently, a complaint was received from a district chief
of police in which he plainly demonstrated that all the imperial
institutions were going to the dogs, and that the Czar's sacred name
was being taken in vain; and in proof he appended to the complaint a
romance, in which the district chief of police is made to appear about
once in every ten pages, and sometimes in a downright drunken
condition. Therefore, in order to avoid all unpleasantness, it will be
better to designate the department in question, as a certain
department.

So, in a certain department there was a certain official--not a very
notable one, it must be allowed--short of stature, somewhat
pock-marked, red-haired, and mole-eyed, with a bald forehead, wrinkled
cheeks, and a complexion of the kind known as sanguine. The St.
Petersburg climate was responsible for this. As for his official
rank--with us Russians the rank comes first--he was what is called a
perpetual titular councillor, over which, as is well known, some
writers make merry and crack their jokes, obeying the praiseworthy
custom of attacking those who cannot bite back.

His family name was Bashmachkin. This name is evidently derived from
bashmak (shoe); but, when, at what time, and in what manner, is not
known. His father and grandfather, and all the Bashmachkins, always
wore boots, which were resoled two or three times a year. His name was
Akaky Akakiyevich. It may strike the reader as rather singular and
far-fetched; but he may rest assured that it was by no means
far-fetched, and that the circumstances were such that it would have
been impossible to give him any other.

This was how it came about.

Akaky Akakiyevich was born, if my memory fails me not, in the evening
on the 23rd of March. His mother, the wife of a Government official,
and a very fine woman, made all due arrangements for having the child
baptised. She was lying on the bed opposite the door; on her right
stood the godfather, Ivan Ivanovich Eroshkin, a most estimable man,
who served as the head clerk of the senate; and the godmother, Arina
Semyonovna Bielobrinshkova, the wife of an officer of the quarter, and
a woman of rare virtues. They offered the mother her choice of three
names, Mokiya, Sossiya, or that the child should be called after the
martyr Khozdazat. "No," said the good woman, "all those names are
poor." In order to please her, they opened the calendar at another
place; three more names appeared, Triphily, Dula, and Varakhasy. "This
is awful," said the old woman. "What names! I truly never heard the
like. I might have put up with Varadat or Varukh, but not Triphily and
Varakhasy!" They turned to another page and found Pavsikakhy and
Vakhtisy. "Now I see," said the old woman, "that it is plainly fate.
And since such is the case, it will be better to name him after his
father. His father's name was Akaky, so let his son's name be Akaky
too." In this manner he became Akaky Akakiyevich. They christened the
child, whereat he wept, and made a grimace, as though he foresaw that
he was to be a titular councillor.

In this manner did it all come about. We have mentioned it in order
that the reader might see for himself that it was a case of necessity,
and that it was utterly impossible to give him any other name.

When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one
could remember. However much the directors and chiefs of all kinds
were changed, he was always to be seen in the same place, the same
attitude, the same occupation--always the letter-copying clerk--so
that it was afterwards affirmed that he had been born in uniform with
a bald head. No respect was shown him in the department. The porter
not only did not rise from his seat when he passed, but never even
glanced at him, any more than if a fly had flown through the
reception-room. His superiors treated him in coolly despotic fashion.
Some insignificant assistant to the head clerk would thrust a paper
under his nose without so much as saying, "Copy," or, "Here's an
interesting little case," or anything else agreeable, as is customary
amongst well-bred officials. And he took it, looking only at the
paper, and not observing who handed it to him, or whether he had the
right to do so; simply took it, and set about copying it.

The young officials laughed at and made fun of him, so far as their
official wit permitted; told in his presence various stories concocted
about him, and about his landlady, an old woman of seventy; declared
that she beat him; asked when the wedding was to be; and strewed bits
of paper over his head, calling them snow. But Akaky Akakiyevich
answered not a word, any more than if there had been no one there
besides himself. It even had no effect upon his work. Amid all these
annoyances he never made a single mistake in a letter. But if the
joking became wholly unbearable, as when they jogged his head, and
prevented his attending to his work, he would exclaim:

"Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?"

And there was something strange in the words and the voice in which
they were uttered. There was in it something which moved to pity; so
much so that one young man, a newcomer, who, taking pattern by the
others, had permitted himself to make sport of Akaky, suddenly stopped
short, as though all about him had undergone a transformation, and
presented itself in a different aspect. Some unseen force repelled him
from the comrades whose acquaintance he had made, on the supposition
that they were decent, well-bred men. Long afterwards, in his gayest
moments, there recurred to his mind the little official with the bald
forehead, with his heart-rending words, "Leave me alone! Why do you
insult me?" In these moving words, other words resounded--"I am thy
brother." And the young man covered his face with his hand; and many a
time afterwards, in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how
much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness is
concealed beneath refined, cultured, worldly refinement, and even, O
God! in that man whom the world acknowledges as honourable and
upright.

It would be difficult to find another man who lived so entirely for
his duties. It is not enough to say that Akaky laboured with zeal; no,
he laboured with love. In his copying, he found a varied and agreeable
employment. Enjoyment was written on his face; some letters were even
favourites with him; and when he encountered these, he smiled, winked,
and worked with his lips, till it seemed as though each letter might
be read in his face, as his pen traced it. If his pay had been in
proportion to his zeal, he would, perhaps, to his great surprise, have
been made even a councillor of state. But he worked, as his
companions, the wits, put it, like a horse in a mill.

However, it would be untrue to say that no attention was paid to him.
One director being a kindly man, and desirous of rewarding him for his
long service, ordered him to be given something more important than
mere copying. So he was ordered to make a report of an already
concluded affair, to another department; the duty consisting simply in
changing the heading and altering a few words from the first to the
third person. This caused him so much toil, that he broke into a
perspiration, rubbed his forehead, and finally said, "No, give me
rather something to copy." After that they let him copy on forever.

Outside this copying, it appeared that nothing existed for him. He
gave no thought to his clothes. His uniform was not green, but a sort
of rusty-meal colour. The collar was low, so that his neck, in spite
of the fact that it was not long, seemed inordinately so as it emerged
from it, like the necks of the plaster cats which pedlars carry about
on their heads. And something was always sticking to his uniform,
either a bit of hay or some trifle. Moreover, he had a peculiar knack,
as he walked along the street, of arriving beneath a window just as
all sorts of rubbish was being flung out of it; hence he always bore
about on his hat scraps of melon rinds, and other such articles. Never
once in his life did he give heed to what was going on every day to
the street; while it is well known that his young brother officials
trained the range of their glances till they could see when any one's
trouser-straps came undone upon the opposite sidewalk, which always
brought a malicious smile to their faces. But Akaky Akakiyevich saw in
all things the clean, even strokes of his written lines; and only when
a horse thrust his nose, from some unknown quarter, over his shoulder,
and sent a whole gust of wind down his neck from his nostrils, did he
observe that he was not in the middle of a line, but in the middle of
the street.

On reaching home, he sat down at once at the table, sipped his
cabbage-soup up quickly, and swallowed a bit of beef with onions,
never noticing their taste, and gulping down everything with flies and
anything else which the Lord happened to send at the moment. When he
saw that his stomach was beginning to swell, he rose from the table,
and copied papers which he had brought home. If there happened to be
none, he took copies for himself, for his own gratification,
especially if the document was noteworthy, not on account of its
style, but of its being addressed to some distinguished person.

Even at the hour when the grey St. Petersburg sky had quite
disappeared, and all the official world had eaten or dined, each as he
could, in accordance with the salary he received and his own fancy;
when, all were resting from the department jar of pens, running to and
fro, for their own and other people's indispensable occupations, and
from all the work that an uneasy man makes willingly for himself,
rather than what is necessary; when, officials hasten to dedicate to
pleasure the time which is left to them, one bolder than the rest,
going to the theatre; another; into the street looking under the
bonnets; another, wasting his evening in compliments to some pretty
girl, the star of a small official circle; another--and this is the
common case of all--visiting his comrades on the third or fourth
floor, in two small rooms with an ante-room or kitchen, and some
pretensions to fashion, such as a lamp or some other trifle which has
cost many a sacrifice of dinner or pleasure trip; in a word, at the
hour when all officials disperse among the contracted quarters of
their friends, to play whist, as they sip their tea from glasses with
a kopek's worth of sugar, smoke long pipes, relate at time some bits
of gossip which a Russian man can never, under any circumstances,
refrain from, and when there is nothing else to talk of, repeat
eternal anecdotes about the commandant to whom they had sent word that
the tails of the horses on the Falconet Monument had been cut off;
when all strive to divert themselves, Akaky Akakiyevich indulged in no
kind of diversion. No one could even say that he had seen him at any
kind of evening party. Having written to his heart's content, he lay
down to sleep, smiling at the thought of the coming day--of what God
might send him to copy on the morrow.

Thus flowed on the peaceful life of the man, who, with a salary of
four hundred rubles, understood how to be content with his lot; and
thus it would have continued to flow on, perhaps, to extreme old age,
were it not that there are various ills strewn along the path of life
for titular councillors as well as for private, actual, court, and
every other species of councillor, even to those who never give any
advice or take any themselves.

There exists in St. Petersburg a powerful foe of all who receive a
salary of four hundred rubles a year, or there-abouts. This foe is no
other than the Northern cold, although it is said to be very healthy.
At nine o'clock in the morning, at the very hour when the streets are
filled with men bound for the various official departments, it begins
to bestow such powerful and piercing nips on all noses impartially,
that the poor officials really do not know what to do with them. At an
hour, when the foreheads of even those who occupy exalted positions
ache with the cold, and tears start to their eyes, the poor titular
councillors are sometimes quite unprotected. Their only salvation lies
in traversing as quickly as possible, in their thin little cloaks,
five or six streets, and then warming their feet in the porter's room,
and so thawing all their talents and qualifications for official
service, which had become frozen on the way.

Akaky Akakiyevich had felt for some time that his back and shoulders
were paining with peculiar poignancy, in spite of the fact that he
tried to traverse the distance with all possible speed. He began
finally to wonder whether the fault did not lie in his cloak. He
examined it thoroughly at home, and discovered that in two places,
namely, on the back and shoulders, it had become thin as gauze. The
cloth was worn to such a degree that he could see through it, and the
lining had fallen into pieces. You must know that Akaky Akakiyevich's
cloak served as an object of ridicule to the officials. They even
refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape. In fact, it
was of singular make, its collar diminishing year by year to serve to
patch its other parts. The patching did not exhibit great skill on the
part of the tailor, and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the
matter stood, Akaky Akakiyevich decided that it would be necessary to
take the cloak to Petrovich, the tailor, who lived somewhere on the
fourth floor up a dark staircase, and who, in spite of his having but
one eye and pock-marks all over his face, busied himself with
considerable success in repairing the trousers and coats of officials
and others; that is to say, when he was sober and not nursing some
other scheme in his head.

It is not necessary to say much about this tailor, but as it is the
custom to have the character of each personage in a novel clearly
defined there is no help for it, so here is Petrovich the tailor. At
first he was called only Grigory, and was some gentleman's serf. He
commenced calling himself Petrovich from the time when he received his
free papers, and further began to drink heavily on all holidays, at
first on the great ones, and then on all church festivals without
discrimination, wherever a cross stood in the calendar. On this point
he was faithful to ancestral custom; and when quarrelling with his
wife, he called her a low female and a German. As we have mentioned
his wife, it will be necessary to say a word or two about her.
Unfortunately, little is known of her beyond the fact that Petrovich
had a wife, who wore a cap and a dress, but could not lay claim to
beauty, at least, no one but the soldiers of the guard even looked
under her cap when they met her.

Ascending the staircase which led to Petrovich's room--which staircase
was all soaked with dish-water and reeked with the smell of spirits
which affects the eyes, and is an inevitable adjunct to all dark
stairways in St. Petersburg houses--ascending the stairs, Akaky
Akakiyevich pondered how much Petrovich would ask, and mentally
resolved not to give more than two rubles. The door was open, for the
mistress, in cooking some fish, had raised such a smoke in the kitchen
that not even the beetles were visible. Akaky Akakiyevich passed
through the kitchen unperceived, even by the housewife, and at length
reached a room where he beheld Petrovich seated on a large unpainted
table, with his legs tucked under him like a Turkish pasha. His feet
were bare, after the fashion of tailors as they sit at work; and the
first thing which caught the eye was his thumb, with a deformed nail
thick and strong as a turtle's shell. About Petrovich's neck hung a
skein of silk and thread, and upon his knees lay some old garment. He
had been trying unsuccessfully for three minutes to thread his needle,
and was enraged at the darkness and even at the thread, growling in a
low voice, "It won't go through, the barbarian! you pricked me, you
rascal!"

Akaky Akakiyevich was vexed at arriving at the precise moment when
Petrovich was angry. He liked to order something of Petrovich when he
was a little downhearted, or, as his wife expressed it, "when he had
settled himself with brandy, the one-eyed devil!" Under such
circumstances Petrovich generally came down in his price very readily,
and even bowed and returned thanks. Afterwards, to be sure, his wife
would come, complaining that her husband had been drunk, and so had
fixed the price too low; but, if only a ten-kopek piece were added
then the matter would be settled. But now it appeared that Petrovich
was in a sober condition, and therefore rough, taciturn, and inclined
to demand, Satan only knows what price. Akaky Akakiyevich felt this,
and would gladly have beat a retreat, but he was in for it. Petrovich
screwed up his one eye very intently at him, and Akaky Akakiyevich
involuntarily said, "How do you do, Petrovich?"

"I wish you a good morning, sir," said Petrovich squinting at Akaky
Akakiyevich's hands, to see what sort of booty he had brought.

"Ah! I--to you, Petrovich, this--" It must be known that Akaky
Akakiyevich expressed himself chiefly by prepositions, adverbs, and
scraps of phrases which had no meaning whatever. If the matter was a
very difficult one, he had a habit of never completing his sentences,
so that frequently, having begun a phrase with the words, "This, in
fact, is quite--" he forgot to go on, thinking he had already finished
it.

"What is it?" asked Petrovich, and with his one eye scanned Akaky
Akakiyevich's whole uniform from the collar down to the cuffs, the
back, the tails and the button-holes, all of which were well known to
him, since they were his own handiwork. Such is the habit of tailors;
it is the first thing they do on meeting one.

"But I, here, this--Petrovich--a cloak, cloth--here you see,
everywhere, in different places, it is quite strong--it is a little
dusty and looks old, but it is new, only here in one place it is a
little--on the back, and here on one of the shoulders, it is a little
worn, yes, here on this shoulder it is a little--do you see? That is
all. And a little work--"

Petrovich took the cloak, spread it out, to begin with, on the table,
looked at it hard, shook his head, reached out his hand to the
window-sill for his snuff-box, adorned with the portrait of some
general, though what general is unknown, for the place where the face
should have been had been rubbed through by the finger and a square
bit of paper had been pasted over it. Having taken a pinch of snuff,
Petrovich held up the cloak, and inspected it against the light, and
again shook his head. Then he turned it, lining upwards, and shook his
head once more. After which he again lifted the general-adorned lid
with its bit of pasted paper, and having stuffed his nose with snuff,
dosed and put away the snuff-box, and said finally, "No, it is
impossible to mend it. It is a wretched garment!"

Akaky Akakiyevich's heart sank at these words.

"Why is it impossible, Petrovich?" he said, almost in the pleading
voice of a child. "All that ails it is, that it is worn on the
shoulders. You must have some pieces--"

"Yes, patches could be found, patches are easily found," said
Petrovich, "but there's nothing to sew them to. The thing is
completely rotten. If you put a needle to it--see, it will give way."

"Let it give way, and you can put on another patch at once."

"But there is nothing to put the patches on to. There's no use in
strengthening it. It is too far gone. It's lucky that it's cloth, for,
if the wind were to blow, it would fly away."

"Well, strengthen it again. How this, in fact--"

"No," said Petrovich decisively, "there is nothing to be done with it.
It's a thoroughly bad job. You'd better, when the cold winter weather
comes on, make yourself some gaiters out of it, because stockings are
not warm. The Germans invented them in order to make more money."
Petrovich loved on all occasions to have a fling at the Germans. "But
it is plain you must have a new cloak."

At the word "new" all grew dark before Akaky Akakiyevich's eyes, and
everything in the room began to whirl round. The only thing he saw
clearly was the general with the paper face on the lid of Petrovich's
snuff-box. "A new one?" said he, as if still in a dream. "Why, I have
no money for that."

"Yes, a new one," said Petrovich, with barbarous composure.

"Well, if it came to a new one, how--it--"

"You mean how much would it cost?"

"Yes."

"Well, you would have to lay out a hundred and fifty or more," said
Petrovich, and pursed up his lips significantly. He liked to produce
powerful effects, liked to stun utterly and suddenly, and then to
glance sideways to see what face the stunned person would put on the
matter.

"A hundred and fifty rubles for a cloak!" shrieked poor Akaky
Akakiyevich, perhaps for the first time in his life, for his voice had
always been distinguished for softness.

"Yes, sir," said Petrovich, "for any kind of cloak. If you have a
marten fur on the collar, or a silk-lined hood, it will mount up to
two hundred."

"Petrovich, please," said Akaky Akakiyevich in a beseeching tone, not
hearing, and not trying to hear, Petrovich's words, and disregarding
all his "effects," "some repairs, in order that it may wear yet a
little longer."

"No, it would only be a waste of time and money," said Petrovich. And
Akaky Akakiyevich went away after these words, utterly discouraged.
But Petrovich stood for some time after his departure, with
significantly compressed lips, and without betaking himself to his
work, satisfied that he would not be dropped, and an artistic tailor
employed.

Akaky Akakiyevich went out into the street as if in a dream. "Such an
affair!" he said to himself. "I did not think it had come to--" and
then after a pause, he added, "Well, so it is! see what it has come to
at last! and I never imagined that it was so!" Then followed a long
silence, after which he exclaimed, "Well, so it is! see what
already--nothing unexpected that--it would be nothing--what a strange
circumstance!" So saying, instead of going home, he went in exactly
the opposite direction without suspecting it. On the way, a
chimney-sweep bumped up against him, and blackened his shoulder, and a
whole hatful of rubbish landed on him from the top of a house which
was building. He did not notice it, and only when he ran against a
watchman, who, having planted his halberd beside him, was shaking some
snuff from his box into his horny hand, did he recover himself a
little, and that because the watchman said, "Why are you poking
yourself into a man's very face? Haven't you the pavement?" This
caused him to look about him, and turn towards home.

There only, he finally began to collect his thoughts, and to survey
his position in its clear and actual light, and to argue with himself,
sensibly and frankly, as with a reasonable friend, with whom one can
discuss private and personal matters. "No," said Akaky Akakiyevich,
"it is impossible to reason with Petrovich now. He is that--evidently,
his wife has been beating him. I'd better go to him on Sunday morning.
After Saturday night he will be a little cross-eyed and sleepy, for he
will want to get drunk, and his wife won't give him any money, and at
such a time, a ten-kopek piece in his hand will--he will become more
fit to reason with, and then the cloak and that--" Thus argued Akaky
Akakiyevich with himself regained his courage, and waited until the
first Sunday, when, seeing from afar that Petrovich's wife had left
the house, he went straight to him.

Petrovich's eye was indeed very much askew after Saturday. His head
drooped, and he was very sleepy; but for all that, as soon as he knew
what it was a question of, it seemed as though Satan jogged his
memory. "Impossible," said he. "Please to order a new one." Thereupon
Akaky Akakiyevich handed over the ten-kopek piece. "Thank you, sir. I
will drink your good health," said Petrovich. "But as for the cloak,
don't trouble yourself about it; it is good for nothing. I will make
you a capital new one, so let us settle about it now."

Akaky Akakiyevich was still for mending it, but Petrovich would not
hear of it, and said, "I shall certainly have to make you a new one,
and you may depend upon it that I shall do my best. It may even be, as
the fashion goes, that the collar can be fastened by silver hooks
under a flap."

Then Akaky Akakiyevich saw that it was impossible to get along without
a new cloak, and his spirit sank utterly. How, in fact, was it to be
done? Where was the money to come from? He must have some new
trousers, and pay a debt of long standing to the shoemaker for putting
new tops to his old boots, and he must order three shirts from the
seamstress, and a couple of pieces of linen. In short, all his money
must be spent. And even if the director should be so kind as to order
him to receive forty-five or even fifty rubles instead of forty, it
would be a mere nothing, a mere drop in the ocean towards the funds
necessary for a cloak, although he knew that Petrovich was often
wrong-headed enough to blurt out some outrageous price, so that even
his own wife could not refrain from exclaiming, "Have you lost your
senses, you fool?" At one time he would not work at any price, and now
it was quite likely that he had named a higher sum than the cloak
would cost.

But although he knew that Petrovich would undertake to make a cloak
for eighty rubles, still, where was he to get the eighty rubles from?
He might possibly manage half. Yes, half might be procured, but where
was the other half to come from? But the reader must first be told
where the first half came from.

Akaky Akakiyevich had a habit of putting, for every ruble he spent, a
groschen into a small box, fastened with lock and key, and with a slit
in the top for the reception of money. At the end of every half-year
he counted over the heap of coppers, and changed it for silver. This
he had done for a long time, and in the course of years, the sum had
mounted up to over forty rubles. Thus he had one half on hand. But
where was he to find the other half? Where was he to get another forty
rubles from? Akaky Akakiyevich thought and thought, and decided that
it would be necessary to curtail his ordinary expenses, for the space
of one year at least, to dispense with tea in the evening, to burn no
candles, and, if there was anything which he must do, to go into his
landlady's room, and work by her light. When he went into the street,
he must walk as lightly as he could, and as cautiously, upon the
stones, almost upon tiptoe, in order not to wear his heels down in too
short a time. He must give the laundress as little to wash as
possible; and, in order not to wear out his clothes, he must take them
off as soon as he got home, and wear only his cotton dressing-gown,
which had been long and carefully saved.

To tell the truth, it was a little hard for him at first to accustom
himself to these deprivations. But he got used to them at length,
after a fashion, and all went smoothly. He even got used to being
hungry in the evening, but he made up for it by treating himself, so
to say, in spirit, by bearing ever in mind the idea of his future
cloak. From that time forth, his existence seemed to become, in some
way, fuller, as if he were married, or as if some other man lived in
him, as if, in fact, he were not alone, and some pleasant friend had
consented to travel along life's path with him, the friend being no
other than the cloak, with thick wadding and a strong lining incapable
of wearing out. He became more lively, and even his character grew
firmer, like that of a man who has made up his mind, and set himself a
goal. From his face and gait, doubt and indecision, all hesitating and
wavering disappeared of themselves. Fire gleamed in his eyes, and
occasionally the boldest and most daring ideas flitted through his
mind. Why not, for instance, have marten fur on the collar? The
thought of this almost made him absent-minded. Once, in copying a
letter, he nearly made a mistake, so that he exclaimed almost aloud,
"Ugh!" and crossed himself. Once, in the course of every month, he had
a conference with Petrovich on the subject of the cloak, where it
would be better to buy the cloth, and the colour, and the price. He
always returned home satisfied, though troubled, reflecting that the
time would come at last when it could all be bought, and then the
cloak made.

The affair progressed more briskly than he had expected. For beyond
all his hopes, the director awarded neither forty nor forty-five
rubles for Akaky Akakiyevich's share, but sixty. Whether he suspected
that Akaky Akakiyevich needed a cloak, or whether it was merely
chance, at all events, twenty extra rubles were by this means
provided. This circumstance hastened matters. Two or three months more
of hunger and Akaky Akakiyevich had accumulated about eighty rubles.
His heart, generally so quiet, began to throb. On the first possible
day, he went shopping in company with Petrovich. They bought some very
good cloth, and at a reasonable rate too, for they had been
considering the matter for six months, and rarely let a month pass
without their visiting the shops to enquire prices. Petrovich himself
said that no better cloth could be had. For lining, they selected a
cotton stuff, but so firm and thick, that Petrovich declared it to be
better than silk, and even prettier and more glossy. They did not buy
the marten fur, because it was, in fact, dear, but in its stead, they
picked out the very best of cat-skin which could be found in the shop,
and which might, indeed, be taken for marten at a distance.

Petrovich worked at the cloak two whole weeks, for there was a great
deal of quilting; otherwise it would have been finished sooner. He
charged twelve rubles for the job, it could not possibly have been
done for less. It was all sewed with silk, in small, double seams, and
Petrovich went over each seam afterwards with his own teeth, stamping
in various patterns.

It was--it is difficult to say precisely on what day, but probably the
most glorious one in Akaky Akakiyevich's life, when Petrovich at
length brought home the cloak. He brought it in the morning, before
the hour when it was necessary to start for the department. Never did
a cloak arrive so exactly in the nick of time, for the severe cold had
set in, and it seemed to threaten to increase. Petrovich brought the
cloak himself as befits a good tailor. On his countenance was a
significant expression, such as Akaky Akakiyevich had never beheld
there. He seemed fully sensible that he had done no small deed, and
crossed a gulf separating tailors who put in linings, and execute
repairs, from those who make new things. He took the cloak out of the
pocket-handkerchief in which he had brought it. The handkerchief was
fresh from the laundress, and he put it in his pocket for use. Taking
out the cloak, he gazed proudly at it, held it up with both hands, and
flung it skilfully over the shoulders of Akaky Akakiyevich. Then he
pulled it and fitted it down behind with his hand, and he draped it
around Akaky Akakiyevich without buttoning it. Akaky Akakiyevich, like
an experienced man, wished to try the sleeves. Petrovich helped him on
with them, and it turned out that the sleeves were satisfactory also.
In short, the cloak appeared to be perfect, and most seasonable.
Petrovich did not neglect to observe that it was only because he lived
in a narrow street, and had no signboard, and had known Akaky
Akakiyevich so long, that he had made it so cheaply; but that if he
had been in business on the Nevsky Prospect, he would have charged
seventy-five rubles for the making alone. Akaky Akakiyevich did not
care to argue this point with Petrovich. He paid him, thanked him, and
set out at once in his new cloak for the department. Petrovich
followed him, and pausing in the street, gazed long at the cloak in
the distance, after which he went to one side expressly to run through
a crooked alley, and emerge again into the street beyond to gaze once
more upon the cloak from another point, namely, directly in front.

Meantime Akaky Akakiyevich went on in holiday mood. He was conscious
every second of the time that he had a new cloak on his shoulders, and
several times he laughed with internal satisfaction. In fact, there
were two advantages, one was its warmth, the other its beauty. He saw
nothing of the road, but suddenly found himself at the department. He
took off his cloak in the ante-room, looked it over carefully, and
confided it to the special care of the attendant. It is impossible to
say precisely how it was that every one in the department knew at once
that Akaky Akakiyevich had a new cloak, and that the "cape" no longer
existed. All rushed at the same moment into the ante-room to inspect
it. They congratulated him, and said pleasant things to him, so that
he began at first to smile, and then to grow ashamed. When all
surrounded him, and said that the new cloak must be "christened," and
that he must at least give them all a party, Akaky Akakiyevich lost
his head completely, and did not know where he stood, what to answer,
or how to get out of it. He stood blushing all over for several
minutes, trying to assure them with great simplicity that it was not a
new cloak, that it was in fact the old "cape."

At length one of the officials, assistant to the head clerk, in order
to show that he was not at all proud, and on good terms with his
inferiors, said:

"So be it, only I will give the party instead of Akaky Akakiyevich; I
invite you all to tea with me to-night. It just happens to be my
name-day too."

The officials naturally at once offered the assistant clerk their
congratulations, and accepted the invitation with pleasure. Akaky
Akakiyevich would have declined; but all declared that it was
discourteous, that it was simply a sin and a shame, and that he could
not possibly refuse. Besides, the notion became pleasant to him when
he recollected that he should thereby have a chance of wearing his new
cloak in the evening also.

That whole day was truly a most triumphant festival for Akaky
Akakiyevich. He returned home in the most happy frame of mind, took
off his cloak, and hung it carefully on the wall, admiring afresh the
cloth and the lining. Then he brought out his old, worn-out cloak, for
comparison. He looked at it, and laughed, so vast was the difference.
And long after dinner he laughed again when the condition of the
"cape" recurred to his mind. He dined cheerfully, and after dinner
wrote nothing, but took his ease for a while on the bed, until it got
dark. Then he dressed himself leisurely, put on his cloak, and stepped
out into the street.

Where the host lived, unfortunately we cannot say. Our memory begins
to fail us badly. The houses and streets in St. Petersburg have become
so mixed up in our head that it is very difficult to get anything out
of it again in proper form. This much is certain, that the official
lived in the best part of the city; and therefore it must have been
anything but near to Akaky Akakiyevich's residence. Akaky Akakiyevich
was first obliged to traverse a kind of wilderness of deserted,
dimly-lighted streets. But in proportion as he approached the
official's quarter of the city, the streets became more lively, more
populous, and more brilliantly illuminated. Pedestrians began to
appear; handsomely dressed ladies were more frequently encountered;
the men had otter skin collars to their coats; shabby sleigh-men with
their wooden, railed sledges stuck over with brass-headed nails,
became rarer; whilst on the other hand, more and more drivers in red
velvet caps, lacquered sledges and bear-skin coats began to appear,
and carriages with rich hammer-cloths flew swiftly through the
streets, their wheels scrunching the snow.

Akaky Akakiyevich gazed upon all this as upon a novel sight. He had
not been in the streets during the evening for years. He halted out of
curiosity before a shop-window, to look at a picture representing a
handsome woman, who had thrown off her shoe, thereby baring her whole
foot in a very pretty way; whilst behind her the head of a man with
whiskers and a handsome moustache peeped through the doorway of
another room. Akaky Akakiyevich shook his head, and laughed, and then
went on his way. Why did he laugh? Either because he had met with a
thing utterly unknown, but for which every one cherishes,
nevertheless, some sort of feeling, or else he thought, like many
officials, "Well, those French! What is to be said? If they do go in
for anything of that sort, why--" But possibly he did not think at
all.

Akaky Akakiyevich at length reached the house in which the head
clerk's assistant lodged. He lived in fine style. The staircase was
lit by a lamp, his apartment being on the second floor. On entering
the vestibule, Akaky Akakiyevich beheld a whole row of goloshes on the
floor. Among them, in the centre of the room, stood a samovar, humming
and emitting clouds of steam. On the walls hung all sorts of coats and
cloaks, among which there were even some with beaver collars, or
velvet facings. Beyond, the buzz of conversation was audible, and
became clear and loud, when the servant came out with a trayful of
empty glasses, cream-jugs and sugar-bowls. It was evident that the
officials had arrived long before, and had already finished their
first glass of tea.

Akaky Akakiyevich, having hung up his own cloak, entered the inner
room. Before him all at once appeared lights, officials, pipes, and
card-tables, and he was bewildered by a sound of rapid conversation
rising from all the tables, and the noise of moving chairs. He halted
very awkwardly in the middle of the room, wondering what he ought to
do. But they had seen him. They received him with a shout, and all
thronged at once into the ante-room, and there took another look at
his cloak. Akaky Akakiyevich, although somewhat confused, was
frank-hearted, and could not refrain from rejoicing when he saw how
they praised his cloak. Then, of course, they all dropped him and his
cloak, and returned, as was proper, to the tables set out for whist.

All this, the noise, the talk, and the throng of people, was rather
overwhelming to Akaky Akakiyevich. He simply did not know where he
stood, or where to put his hands, his feet, and his whole body.
Finally he sat down by the players, looked at the cards, gazed at the
face of one and another, and after a while began to gape, and to feel
that it was wearisome, the more so, as the hour was already long past
when he usually went to bed. He wanted to take leave of the host, but
they would not let him go, saying that he must not fail to drink a
glass of champagne, in honour of his new garment. In the course of an
hour, supper, consisting of vegetable salad, cold veal, pastry,
confectioner's pies, and champagne, was served. They made Akaky
Akakiyevich drink two glasses of champagne, after which he felt things
grow livelier.

Still, he could not forget that it was twelve o'clock, and that he
should have been at home long ago. In order that the host might not
think of some excuse for detaining him, he stole out of the room
quickly, sought out, in the ante-room, his cloak, which, to his
sorrow, he found lying on the floor, brushed it, picked off every
speck upon it, put it on his shoulders, and descended the stairs to
the street.

In the street all was still bright. Some petty shops, those permanent
clubs of servants and all sorts of folks, were open. Others were shut,
but, nevertheless, showed a streak of light the whole length of the
door-crack, indicating that they were not yet free of company, and
that probably some domestics, male and female, were finishing their
stories and conversations, whilst leaving their masters in complete
ignorance as to their whereabouts. Akaky Akakiyevich went on in a
happy frame of mind. He even started to run, without knowing why,
after some lady, who flew past like a flash of lightning. But he
stopped short, and went on very quietly as before, wondering why he
had quickened his pace. Soon there spread before him these deserted
streets which are not cheerful in the daytime, to say nothing of the
evening. Now they were even more dim and lonely. The lanterns began to
grow rarer, oil, evidently, had been less liberally supplied. Then
came wooden houses and fences. Not a soul anywhere; only the snow
sparkled in the streets, and mournfully veiled the low-roofed cabins
with their closed shutters. He approached the spot where the street
crossed a vast square with houses barely visible on its farther side,
a square which seemed a fearful desert.

Afar, a tiny spark glimmered from some watchman's-box, which seemed to
stand on the edge of the world. Akaky Akakiyevich's cheerfulness
diminished at this point in a marked degree. He entered the square,
not without an involuntary sensation of fear, as though his heart
warned him of some evil. He glanced back, and on both sides it was
like a sea about him. "No, it is better not to look," he thought, and
went on, closing his eyes. When he opened them, to see whether he was
near the end of the square, he suddenly beheld, standing just before
his very nose, some bearded individuals of precisely what sort, he
could not make out. All grew dark before his eyes, and his heart
throbbed.

"Of course, the cloak is mine!" said one of them in a loud voice,
seizing hold of his collar. Akaky Akakiyevich was about to shout
"Help!" when the second man thrust a fist, about the size of an
official's head, at his very mouth, muttering, "Just you dare to
scream!"

Akaky Akakiyevich felt them strip off his cloak, and give him a kick.
He fell headlong upon the snow, and felt no more.

In a few minutes he recovered consciousness, and rose to his feet, but
no one was there. He felt that it was cold in the square, and that his
cloak was gone. He began to shout, but his voice did not appear to
reach the outskirts of the square. In despair, but without ceasing to
shout, he started at a run across the square, straight towards the
watch-box, beside which stood the watchman, leaning on his halberd,
and apparently curious to know what kind of a customer was running
towards him shouting. Akaky Akakiyevich ran up to him, and began in a
sobbing voice to shout that he was asleep, and attended to nothing,
and did not see when a man was robbed. The watchman replied that he
had seen two men stop him in the middle of the square, but supposed
that they were friends of his, and that, instead of scolding vainly,
he had better go to the police on the morrow, so that they might make
a search for whoever had stolen the cloak.

Akaky Akakiyevich ran home and arrived in a state of complete
disorder, his hair which grew very thinly upon his temples and the
back of his head all tousled, his body, arms and legs, covered with
snow. The old woman, who was mistress of his lodgings, on hearing a
terrible knocking, sprang hastily from her bed, and, with only one
shoe on, ran to open the door, pressing the sleeve of her chemise to
her bosom out of modesty. But when she had opened it, she fell back on
beholding Akaky Akakiyevich in such a condition. When he told her
about the affair, she clasped her hands, and said that he must go
straight to the district chief of police, for his subordinate would
turn up his nose, promise well, and drop the matter there. The very
best thing to do, therefore, would be to go to the district chief,
whom she knew, because Finnish Anna, her former cook, was now nurse at
his house. She often saw him passing the house, and he was at church
every Sunday, praying, but at the same time gazing cheerfully at
everybody; so that he must be a good man, judging from all
appearances. Having listened to this opinion, Akaky Akakiyevich betook
himself sadly to his room. And how he spent the night there, any one
who can put himself in another's place may readily imagine.

Early in the morning, he presented himself at the district chief's,
but was told the official was asleep. He went again at ten and was
again informed that he was asleep. At eleven, and they said, "The
superintendent is not at home." At dinner time, and the clerks in the
ante-room would not admit him on any terms, and insisted upon knowing
his business. So that at last, for once in his life, Akaky Akakiyevich
felt an inclination to show some spirit, and said curtly that he must
see the chief in person, that they ought not to presume to refuse him
entrance, that he came from the department of justice, and that when
he complained of them, they would see.

The clerks dared make no reply to this, and one of them went to call
the chief, who listened to the strange story of the theft of the coat.
Instead of directing his attention to the principal points of the
matter, he began to question Akaky Akakiyevich. Why was he going home
so late? Was he in the habit of doing so, or had he been to some
disorderly house? So that Akaky Akakiyevich got thoroughly confused,
and left him, without knowing whether the affair of his cloak was in
proper train or not.

All that day, for the first time in his life, he never went near the
department. The next day he made his appearance, very pale, and in his
old cape, which had become even more shabby. The news of the robbery
of the cloak touched many, although there were some officials present
who never lost an opportunity, even such a one as the present, of
ridiculing Akaky Akakiyevich. They decided to make a collection for
him on the spot, but the officials had already spent a great deal in
subscribing for the director's portrait, and for some book, at the
suggestion of the head of that division, who was a friend of the
author; and so the sum was trifling.

One of them, moved by pity, resolved to help Akaky Akakiyevich with
some good advice, at least, and told him that he ought not to go to
the police, for although it might happen that a police-officer,
wishing to win the approval of his superiors, might hunt up the cloak
by some means, still, his cloak would remain in the possession of the
police if he did not offer legal proof that it belonged to him. The
best thing for him, therefore, would be to apply to a certain
prominent personage; since this prominent personage, by entering into
relation with the proper persons, could greatly expedite the matter.

As there was nothing else to be done, Akaky Akakiyevich decided to go
to the prominent personage. What was the exact official position of
the prominent personage, remains unknown to this day. The reader must
know that the prominent personage had but recently become a prominent
personage, having up to that time been only an insignificant person.
Moreover, his present position was not considered prominent in
comparison with others still more so. But there is always a circle of
people to whom what is insignificant in the eyes of others, is
important enough. Moreover, he strove to increase his importance by
sundry devices. For instance, he managed to have the inferior
officials meet him on the staircase when he entered upon his service;
no one was to presume to come directly to him, but the strictest
etiquette must be observed; the collegiate recorder must make a report
to the government secretary, the government secretary to the titular
councillor, or whatever other man was proper, and all business must
come before him in this manner. In Holy Russia, all is thus
contaminated with the love of imitation; every man imitates and copies
his superior. They even say that a certain titular councillor, when
promoted to the head of some small separate office, immediately
partitioned off a private room for himself, called it the audience
chamber, and posted at the door a lackey with red collar and braid,
who grasped the handle of the door, and opened to all comers, though
the audience chamber would hardly hold an ordinary writing table.

The manners and customs of the prominent personage were grand and
imposing, but rather exaggerated. The main foundation of his system
was strictness. "Strictness, strictness, and always strictness!" he
generally said; and at the last word he looked significantly into the
face of the person to whom he spoke. But there was no necessity for
this, for the halfscore of subordinates, who formed the entire force
of the office, were properly afraid. On catching sight of him afar
off, they left their work, and waited, drawn up in line, until he had
passed through the room. His ordinary converse with his inferiors
smacked of sternness, and consisted chiefly of three phrases: "How
dare you?" "Do you know whom you are speaking to?" "Do you realise who
is standing before you?"

Otherwise he was a very kind-hearted man, good to his comrades, and
ready to oblige. But the rank of general threw him completely off his
balance. On receiving any one of that rank, he became confused, lost
his way, as it were, and never knew what to do. If he chanced to be
amongst his equals, he was still a very nice kind of man, a very good
fellow in many respects, and not stupid, but the very moment that he
found himself in the society of people but one rank lower than
himself, he became silent. And his situation aroused sympathy, the
more so, as he felt himself that he might have been making an
incomparably better use of his time. In his eyes, there was sometimes
visible a desire to join some interesting conversation or group, but
he was kept back by the thought, "Would it not be a very great
condescension on his part? Would it not be familiar? And would he not
thereby lose his importance?" And in consequence of such reflections,
he always remained in the same dumb state, uttering from time to time
a few monosyllabic sounds, and thereby earning the name of the most
wearisome of men.

To this prominent personage Akaky Akakiyevich presented himself, and
this at the most unfavourable time for himself, though opportune for
the prominent personage. The prominent personage was in his cabinet,
conversing very gaily with an old acquaintance and companion of his
childhood, whom he had not seen for several years, and who had just
arrived, when it was announced to him that a person named Bashmachkin
had come. He asked abruptly, "Who is he?"--"Some official," he was
informed. "Ah, he can wait! This is no time for him to call," said the
important man.

It must be remarked here that the important man lied outrageously. He
had said all he had to say to his friend long before, and the
conversation had been interspersed for some time with very long
pauses, during which they merely slapped each other on the leg, and
said, "You think so, Ivan Abramovich!" "Just so, Stepan Varlamovich!"
Nevertheless, he ordered that the official should be kept waiting, in
order to show his friend, a man who had not been in the service for a
long time, but had lived at home in the country, how long officials
had to wait in his ante-room.

At length, having talked himself completely out, and more than that,
having had his fill of pauses, and smoked a cigar in a very
comfortable arm-chair with reclining back, he suddenly seemed to
recollect, and said to the secretary, who stood by the door with
papers of reports, "So it seems that there is an official waiting to
see me. Tell him that he may come in." On perceiving Akaky
Akakiyevich's modest mien and his worn uniform, he turned abruptly to
him, and said, "What do you want?" in a curt hard voice, which he had
practised in his room in private, and before the looking-glass, for a
whole week before being raised to his present rank.

Akaky Akakiyevich, who was already imbued with a due amount of fear,
became somewhat confused, and as well as his tongue would permit,
explained, with a rather more frequent addition than usual of the word
"that" that his cloak was quite new, and had been stolen in the most
inhuman manner; that he had applied to him, in order that he might, in
some way, by his intermediation--that he might enter into
correspondence with the chief of police, and find the cloak.

For some inexplicable reason, this conduct seemed familiar to the
prominent personage.

"What, my dear sir!" he said abruptly, "are you not acquainted with
etiquette? To whom have you come? Don't you know how such matters are
managed? You should first have presented a petition to the office. It
would have gone to the head of the department, then to the chief of
the division, then it would have been handed over to the secretary,
and the secretary would have given it to me."

"But, your excellency," said Akaky Akakiyevich, trying to collect his
small handful of wits, and conscious at the same time that he was
perspiring terribly, "I, your excellency, presumed to trouble you
because secretaries--are an untrustworthy race."

"What, what, what!" said the important personage. "Where did you get
such courage? Where did you get such ideas? What impudence towards
their chiefs and superiors has spread among the young generation!" The
prominent personage apparently had not observed that Akaky Akakiyevich
was already in the neighbourhood of fifty. If he could be called a
young man, it must have been in comparison with some one who was
seventy. "Do you know to whom you are speaking? Do you realise who is
standing before you? Do you realise it? Do you realise it, I ask you!"
Then he stamped his foot, and raised his voice to such a pitch that it
would have frightened even a different man from Akaky Akakiyevich.

Akaky Akakiyevich's senses failed him. He staggered, trembled in every
limb, and, if the porters had not run in to support him, would have
fallen to the floor. They carried him out insensible. But the
prominent personage, gratified that the effect should have surpassed
his expectations, and quite intoxicated with the thought that his word
could even deprive a man of his senses, glanced sideways at his friend
in order to see how he looked upon this, and perceived, not without
satisfaction, that his friend was in a most uneasy frame of mind, and
even beginning on his part, to feel a trifle frightened.

Akaky Akakiyevich could not remember how he descended the stairs, and
got into the street. He felt neither his hands nor feet. Never in his
life had he been so rated by any high official, let alone a strange
one. He went staggering on through the snow-storm, which was blowing
in the streets, with his mouth wide open. The wind, in St. Petersburg
fashion, darted upon him from all quarters, and down every
cross-street. In a twinkling it had blown a quinsy into his throat,
and he reached home unable to utter a word. His throat was swollen,
and he lay down on his bed. So powerful is sometimes a good scolding!

The next day a violent fever developed. Thanks to the generous
assistance of the St. Petersburg climate, the malady progressed more
rapidly than could have been expected, and when the doctor arrived, he
found, on feeling the sick man's pulse, that there was nothing to be
done, except to prescribe a poultice, so that the patient might not be
left entirely without the beneficent aid of medicine. But at the same
time, he predicted his end in thirty-six hours. After this he turned
to the landlady, and said, "And as for you, don't waste your time on
him. Order his pine coffin now, for an oak one will be too expensive
for him."

Did Akaky Akakiyevich hear these fatal words? And if he heard them,
did they produce any overwhelming effect upon him? Did he lament the
bitterness of his life?--We know not, for he continued in a delirious
condition. Visions incessantly appeared to him, each stranger than the
other. Now he saw Petrovich, and ordered him to make a cloak, with
some traps for robbers, who seemed to him to be always under the bed;
and he cried every moment to the landlady to pull one of them from
under his coverlet. Then he inquired why his old mantle hung before
him when he had a new cloak. Next he fancied that he was standing
before the prominent person, listening to a thorough setting-down and
saying, "Forgive me, your excellency!" but at last he began to curse,
uttering the most horrible words, so that his aged landlady crossed
herself, never in her life having heard anything of the kind from him,
and more so as these words followed directly after the words "your
excellency." Later on he talked utter nonsense, of which nothing could
be made, all that was evident being that these incoherent words and
thoughts hovered ever about one thing, his cloak.

At length poor Akaky Akakiyevich breathed his last. They sealed up
neither his room nor his effects, because, in the first place, there
were no heirs, and, in the second, there was very little to inherit
beyond a bundle of goose-quills, a quire of white official paper,
three pairs of socks, two or three buttons which had burst off his
trousers, and the mantle already known to the reader. To whom all this
fell, God knows. I confess that the person who told me this tale took
no interest in the matter. They carried Akaky Akakiyevich out, and
buried him.

And St. Petersburg was left without Akaky Akakiyevich, as though he
had never lived there. A being disappeared, who was protected by none,
dear to none, interesting to none, and who never even attracted to
himself the attention of those students of human nature who omit no
opportunity of thrusting a pin through a common fly and examining it
under the microscope. A being who bore meekly the jibes of the
department, and went to his grave without having done one unusual
deed, but to whom, nevertheless, at the close of his life, appeared a
bright visitant in the form of a cloak, which momentarily cheered his
poor life, and upon him, thereafter, an intolerable misfortune
descended, just as it descends upon the heads of the mighty of this
world!

Several days after his death, the porter was sent from the department
to his lodgings, with an order for him to present himself there
immediately, the chief commanding it. But the porter had to return
unsuccessful, with the answer that he could not come; and to the
question, "Why?" replied, "Well, because he is dead! he was buried
four days ago." In this manner did they hear of Akaky Akakiyevich's
death at the department. And the next day a new official sat in his
place, with a handwriting by no means so upright, but more inclined
and slanting.

But who could have imagined that this was not really the end of Akaky
Akakiyevich, that he was destined to raise a commotion after death, as
if in compensation for his utterly insignificant life? But so it
happened, and our poor story unexpectedly gains a fantastic ending.

A rumour suddenly spread through St. Petersburg, that a dead man had
taken to appearing on the Kalinkin Bridge, and its vicinity, at night
in the form of an official seeking a stolen cloak, and that, under the
pretext of its being the stolen cloak, he dragged, without regard to
rank or calling, every one's cloak from his shoulders, be it cat-skin,
beaver, fox, bear, sable, in a word, every sort of fur and skin which
men adopted for their covering. One of the department officials saw
the dead man with his own eyes, and immediately recognised in him
Akaky Akakiyevich. This, however, inspired him with such terror, that
he ran off with all his might, and therefore did not scan the dead man
closely, but only saw how the latter threatened him from afar with his
finger. Constant complaints poured in from all quarters, that the
backs and shoulders, not only of titular but even of court
councillors, were exposed to the danger of a cold, on account of the
frequent dragging off of their cloaks.

Arrangements were made by the police to catch the corpse, alive or
dead, at any cost, and punish him as an example to others, in the most
severe manner. In this they nearly succeeded, for a watchman, on guard
in Kirinshkin Lane, caught the corpse by the collar on the very scene
of his evil deeds, when attempting to pull off the frieze cloak of a
retired musician. Having seized him by the collar, he summoned, with a
shout, two of his comrades, whom he enjoined to hold him fast, while
he himself felt for a moment in his boot, in order to draw out his
snuff-box, and refresh his frozen nose. But the snuff was of a sort
which even a corpse could not endure. The watchman having closed his
right nostril with his finger, had no sooner succeeded in holding half
a handful up to the left, than the corpse sneezed so violently that he
completely filled the eyes of all three. While they raised their hands
to wipe them, the dead man vanished completely, so that they
positively did not know whether they had actually had him in their
grip at all. Thereafter the watchmen conceived such a terror of dead
men that they were afraid even to seize the living, and only screamed
from a distance. "Hey, there! go your way!" So the dead official began
to appear even beyond the Kalinkin Bridge, causing no little terror to
all timid people.

But we have totally neglected that certain prominent personage who may
really be considered as the cause of the fantastic turn taken by this
true history. First of all, justice compels us to say, that after the
departure of poor, annihilated Akaky Akakiyevich, he felt something
like remorse. Suffering was unpleasant to him, for his heart was
accessible to many good impulses, in spite of the fact that his rank
often prevented his showing his true self. As soon as his friend had
left his cabinet, he began to think about poor Akaky Akakiyevich. And
from that day forth, poor Akaky Akakiyevich, who could not bear up
under an official reprimand, recurred to his mind almost every day.
The thought troubled him to such an extent, that a week later he even
resolved to send an official to him, to learn whether he really could
assist him. And when it was reported to him that Akaky Akakiyevich had
died suddenly of fever, he was startled, hearkened to the reproaches
of his conscience, and was out of sorts for the whole day.

Wishing to divert his mind in some way and drive away the disagreeable
impression, he set out that evening for one of his friends' houses,
where he found quite a large party assembled. What was better, nearly
every one was of the same rank as himself, so that he need not feel in
the least constrained. This had a marvellous effect upon his mental
state. He grew expansive, made himself agreeable in conversation, in
short, he passed a delightful evening. After supper he drank a couple
of glasses of champagne--not a bad recipe for cheerfulness, as every
one knows. The champagne inclined him to various adventures, and he
determined not to return home, but to go and see a certain well-known
lady, of German extraction, Karolina Ivanovna, a lady, it appears,
with whom he was on a very friendly footing.

It must be mentioned that the prominent personage was no longer a
young man, but a good husband and respected father of a family. Two
sons, one of whom was already in the service, and a good-looking,
sixteen-year-old daughter, with a slightly arched but pretty little
nose, came every morning to kiss his hand and say, "_Bon jour_, papa."
His wife, a still fresh and good-looking woman, first gave him her
hand to kiss, and then, reversing the procedure, kissed his. But the
prominent personage, though perfectly satisfied in his domestic
relations, considered it stylish to have a friend in another quarter
of the city. This friend was scarcely prettier or younger than his
wife; but there are such puzzles in the world, and it is not our place
to judge them. So the important personage descended the stairs,
stepped into his sledge, said to the coachman, "To Karolina
Ivanovna's," and, wrapping himself luxuriously in his warm cloak,
found himself in that delightful frame of mind than which a Russian
can conceive nothing better, namely, when you think of nothing
yourself, yet when the thoughts creep into your mind of their own
accord, each more agreeable than the other, giving you no trouble
either to drive them away, or seek them. Fully satisfied, he recalled
all the gay features of the evening just passed and all the mots which
had made the little circle laugh. Many of them he repeated in a low
voice, and found them quite as funny as before; so it is not
surprising that he should laugh heartily at them. Occasionally,
however, he was interrupted by gusts of wind, which, coming suddenly,
God knows whence or why, cut his face, drove masses of snow into it,
filled out his cloak-collar like a sail, or suddenly blew it over his
head with supernatural force, and thus caused him constant trouble to
disentangle himself.

Suddenly the important personage felt some one clutch him firmly by
the collar. Turning round, he perceived a man of short stature, in an
old, worn uniform, and recognised, not without terror, Akaky
Akakiyevich. The official's face was white as snow, and looked just
like a corpse's. But the horror of the important personage transcended
all bounds when he saw the dead man's mouth open, and heard it utter
the following remarks, while it breathed upon him the terrible odour
of the grave: "Ah, here you are at last! I have you, that--by the
collar! I need your cloak. You took no trouble about mine, but
reprimanded me. So now give up your own."

The pallid prominent personage almost died of fright. Brave as he was
in the office and in the presence of inferiors generally, and
although, at the sight of his manly form and appearance, every one
said, "Ugh! how much character he has!" at this crisis, he, like many
possessed of an heroic exterior, experienced such terror, that, not
without cause, he began to fear an attack of illness. He flung his
cloak hastily from his shoulders and shouted to his coachman in an
unnatural voice, "Home at full speed!" The coachman, hearing the tone
which is generally employed at critical moments, and even accompanied
by something much more tangible, drew his head down between his
shoulders in case of an emergency, flourished his whip, and flew on
like an arrow. In a little more than six minutes the prominent
personage was at the entrance of his own house. Pale, thoroughly
scared, and cloakless, he went home instead of to Karolina Ivanovna's,
reached his room somehow or other, and passed the night in the direst
distress; so that the next morning over their tea, his daughter said,
"You are very pale to-day, papa." But papa remained silent, and said
not a word to any one of what had happened to him, where he had been,
or where he had intended to go.

This occurrence made a deep impression upon him. He even began to say,
"How dare you? Do you realise who is standing before you?" less
frequently to the under-officials, and, if he did utter the words, it
was only after first having learned the bearings of the matter. But
the most noteworthy point was, that from that day forward the
apparition of the dead official ceased to be seen. Evidently the
prominent personage's cloak just fitted his shoulders. At all events,
no more instances of his dragging cloaks from people's shoulders were
heard of. But many active and solicitous persons could by no means
reassure themselves, and asserted that the dead official still showed
himself in distant parts of the city.

In fact, one watchman in Kolomen saw with his own eyes the apparition
come from behind a house. But the watchman was not a strong man, so he
was afraid to arrest him, and followed him in the dark, until, at
length, the apparition looked round, paused, and inquired, "What do
you want?" at the same time showing such a fist as is never seen on
living men. The watchman said, "Nothing," and turned back instantly.
But the apparition was much too tall, wore huge moustaches, and,
directing its steps apparently towards the Obukhov Bridge, disappeared
in the darkness of the night.




THE DISTRICT DOCTOR



BY IVAN S. TURGENEV


One day in autumn on my way back from a remote part of the country I
caught cold and fell ill. Fortunately the fever attacked me in the
district town at the inn; I sent for the doctor. In half-an-hour the
district doctor appeared, a thin, dark-haired man of middle height. He
prescribed me the usual sudorific, ordered a mustard-plaster to be put
on, very deftly slid a five-ruble note up his sleeve, coughing drily
and looking away as he did so, and then was getting up to go home, but
somehow fell into talk and remained. I was exhausted with
feverishness; I foresaw a sleepless night, and was glad of a little
chat with a pleasant companion. Tea was served. My doctor began to
converse freely. He was a sensible fellow, and expressed himself with
vigour and some humour. Queer things happen in the world: you may live
a long while with some people, and be on friendly terms with them, and
never once speak openly with them from your soul; with others you have
scarcely time to get acquainted, and all at once you are pouring out
to him--or he to you--all your secrets, as though you were at
confession. I don't know how I gained the confidence of my new
friend--anyway, with nothing to lead up to it, he told me a rather
curious incident; and here I will report his tale for the information
of the indulgent reader. I will try to tell it in the doctor's own
words.

"You don't happen to know," he began in a weak and quavering voice
(the common result of the use of unmixed Berezov snuff); "you don't
happen to know the judge here, Mylov, Pavel Lukich?... You don't know
him?... Well, it's all the same." (He cleared his throat and rubbed
his eyes.) "Well, you see, the thing happened, to tell you exactly
without mistake, in Lent, at the very time of the thaws. I was sitting
at his house--our judge's, you know--playing preference. Our judge is
a good fellow, and fond of playing preference. Suddenly" (the doctor
made frequent use of this word, suddenly) "they tell me, 'There's a
servant asking for you.' I say, 'What does he want?' They say, He has
brought a note--it must be from a patient.' 'Give me the note,' I say.
So it is from a patient--well and good--you understand--it's our bread
and butter... But this is how it was: a lady, a widow, writes to me;
she says, 'My daughter is dying. Come, for God's sake!' she says, 'and
the horses have been sent for you.'... Well, that's all right. But she
was twenty miles from the town, and it was midnight out of doors, and
the roads in such a state, my word! And as she was poor herself, one
could not expect more than two silver rubles, and even that
problematic; and perhaps it might only be a matter of a roll of linen
and a sack of oatmeal in _payment_. However, duty, you know, before
everything: a fellow-creature may be dying. I hand over my cards at
once to Kalliopin, the member of the provincial commission, and return
home. I look; a wretched little trap was standing at the steps, with
peasant's horses, fat--too fat--and their coat as shaggy as felt; and
the coachman sitting with his cap off out of respect. Well, I think to
myself, 'It's clear, my friend, these patients aren't rolling in
riches.'... You smile; but I tell you, a poor man like me has to take
everything into consideration... If the coachman sits like a prince,
and doesn't touch his cap, and even sneers at you behind his beard,
and flicks his whip--then you may bet on six rubles. But this case, I
saw, had a very different air. However, I think there's no help for
it; duty before everything. I snatch up the most necessary drugs, and
set off. Will you believe it? I only just managed to get there at all.
The road was infernal: streams, snow, watercourses, and the dyke had
suddenly burst there--that was the worst of it! However, I arrived at
last. It was a little thatched house. There was a light in the
windows; that meant they expected me. I was met by an old lady, very
venerable, in a cap. 'Save her!' she says; 'she is dying.' I say,
'Pray don't distress yourself--Where is the invalid?' 'Come this way.'
I see a clean little room, a lamp in the corner; on the bed a girl of
twenty, unconscious. She was in a burning heat, and breathing
heavily--it was fever. There were two other girls, her sisters, scared
and in tears. 'Yesterday,' they tell me, 'she was perfectly well and
had a good appetite; this morning she complained of her head, and this
evening, suddenly, you see, like this.' I say again: 'Pray don't be
uneasy.' It's a doctor's duty, you know--and I went up to her and bled
her, told them to put on a mustard-plaster, and prescribed a mixture.
Meantime I looked at her; I looked at her, you know--there, by God! I
had never seen such a face!--she was a beauty, in a word! I felt quite
shaken with pity. Such lovely features; such eyes!... But, thank God!
she became easier; she fell into a perspiration, seemed to come to her
senses, looked round, smiled, and passed her hand over her face... Her
sisters bent over her. They ask, 'How are you?' 'All right,' she says,
and turns away. I looked at her; she had fallen asleep. 'Well,' I say,
'now the patient should be left alone.' So we all went out on tiptoe;
only a maid remained, in case she was wanted. In the parlour there was
a samovar standing on the table, and a bottle of rum; in our
profession one can't get on without it. They gave me tea; asked me to
stop the night... I consented: where could I go, indeed, at that time
of night? The old lady kept groaning. 'What is it?' I say; 'she will
live; don't worry yourself; you had better take a little rest
yourself; it is about two o'clock.' 'But will you send to wake me if
anything happens?' 'Yes, yes.' The old lady went away, and the girls
too went to their own room; they made up a bed for me in the parlour.
Well, I went to bed--but I could not get to sleep, for a wonder! for
in reality I was very tired. I could not get my patient out of my
head. At last I could not put up with it any longer; I got up
suddenly; I think to myself, 'I will go and see how the patient is
getting on.' Her bedroom was next to the parlour. Well, I got up, and
gently opened the door--how my heart beat! I looked in: the servant
was asleep, her mouth wide open, and even snoring, the wretch! but the
patient lay with her face towards me and her arms flung wide apart,
poor girl! I went up to her ... when suddenly she opened her eyes and
stared at me! 'Who is it? who is it?' I was in confusion. 'Don't be
alarmed, madam,' I say; 'I am the doctor; I have come to see how you
feel.' 'You the doctor?' 'Yes, the doctor; your mother sent for me
from the town; we have bled you, madam; now pray go to sleep, and in a
day or two, please God! we will set you on your feet again.' 'Ah, yes,
yes, doctor, don't let me die... please, please.' 'Why do you talk
like that? God bless you!' She is in a fever again, I think to myself;
I felt her pulse; yes, she was feverish. She looked at me, and then
took me by the hand. 'I will tell you why I don't want to die: I will
tell you... Now we are alone; and only, please don't you ... not to
any one ... Listen...' I bent down; she moved her lips quite to my
ear; she touched my cheek with her hair--I confess my head went
round--and began to whisper... I could make out nothing of it... Ah,
she was delirious! ... She whispered and whispered, but so quickly,
and as if it were not in Russian; at last she finished, and shivering
dropped her head on the pillow, and threatened me with her finger:
'Remember, doctor, to no one.' I calmed her somehow, gave her
something to drink, waked the servant, and went away."

At this point the doctor again took snuff with exasperated energy, and
for a moment seemed stupefied by its effects.

"However," he continued, "the next day, contrary to my expectations,
the patient was no better. I thought and thought, and suddenly decided
to remain there, even though my other patients were expecting me...
And you know one can't afford to disregard that; one's practice
suffers if one does. But, in the first place, the patient was really
in danger; and secondly, to tell the truth, I felt strongly drawn to
her. Besides, I liked the whole family. Though they were really badly
off, they were singularly, I may say, cultivated people... Their
father had been a learned man, an author; he died, of course, in
poverty, but he had managed before he died to give his children an
excellent education; he left a lot of books too. Either because I
looked after the invalid very carefully, or for some other reason;
anyway, I can venture to say all the household loved me as if I were
one of the family... Meantime the roads were in a worse state than
ever; all communications, so to say, were cut off completely; even
medicine could with difficulty be got from the town... The sick girl
was not getting better... Day after day, and day after day ... but ...
here..." (The doctor made a brief pause.) "I declare I don't know how
to tell you."... (He again took snuff, coughed, and swallowed a little
tea.) "I will tell you without beating about the bush. My patient ...
how should I say?... Well she had fallen in love with me ... or, no,
it was not that she was in love ... however ... really, how should one
say?" (The doctor looked down and grew red.) "No," he went on quickly,
"in love, indeed! A man should not over-estimate himself. She was an
educated girl, clever and well-read, and I had even forgotten my
Latin, one may say, completely. As to appearance" (the doctor looked
himself over with a smile) "I am nothing to boast of there either. But
God Almighty did not make me a fool; I don't take black for white; I
know a thing or two; I could see very clearly, for instance that
Aleksandra Andreyevna--that was her name--did not feel love for me,
but had a friendly, so to say, inclination--a respect or something for
me. Though she herself perhaps mistook this sentiment, anyway this was
her attitude; you may form your own judgment of it. But," added the
doctor, who had brought out all these disconnected sentences without
taking breath, and with obvious embarrassment, "I seem to be wandering
rather--you won't understand anything like this ... There, with your
leave, I will relate it all in order."

He drank off a glass of tea, and began in a calmer voice.

"Well, then. My patient kept getting worse and worse. You are not a
doctor, my good sir; you cannot understand what passes in a poor
fellow's heart, especially at first, when he begins to suspect that
the disease is getting the upper hand of him. What becomes of his
belief in himself? You suddenly grow so timid; it's indescribable. You
fancy then that you have forgotten everything you knew, and that the
patient has no faith in you, and that other people begin to notice how
distracted you are, and tell you the symptoms with reluctance; that
they are looking at you suspiciously, whispering... Ah! it's horrid!
There must be a remedy, you think, for this disease, if one could find
it. Isn't this it? You try--no, that's not it! You don't allow the
medicine the necessary time to do good... You clutch at one thing,
then at another. Sometimes you take up a book of medical
prescriptions--here it is, you think! Sometimes, by Jove, you pick one
out by chance, thinking to leave it to fate... But meantime a
fellow-creature's dying, and another doctor would have saved him. 'We
must have a consultation,' you say; 'I will not take the
responsibility on myself.' And what a fool you look at such times!
Well, in time you learn to bear it; it's nothing to you. A man has
died--but it's not your fault; you treated him by the rules. But
what's still more torture to you is to see blind faith in you, and to
feel yourself that you are not able to be of use. Well, it was just
this blind faith that the whole of Aleksandra Andreyevna's family had
in me; they had forgotten to think that their daughter was in danger.
I, too, on my side assure them that it's nothing, but meantime my
heart sinks into my boots. To add to our troubles, the roads were in
such a state that the coachman was gone for whole days together to get
medicine. And I never left the patient's room; I could not tear myself
away; I tell her amusing stories, you know, and play cards with her. I
watch by her side at night. The old mother thanks me with tears in her
eyes; but I think to myself, 'I don't deserve your gratitude.' I
frankly confess to you--there is no object in concealing it now--I was
in love with my patient. And Aleksandra Andreyevna had grown fond of
me; she would not sometimes let any one be in her room but me. She
began to talk to me, to ask me questions; where I had studied, how I
lived, who are my people, whom I go to see. I feel that she ought not
to talk; but to forbid her to--to forbid her resolutely, you know--I
could not. Sometimes I held my head in my hands, and asked myself,
"What are you doing, villain?"... And she would take my hand and hold
it, give me a long, long look, and turn away, sigh, and say, 'How good
you are!' Her hands were so feverish, her eyes so large and languid...
'Yes,' she says, 'you are a good, kind man; you are not like our
neighbours... No, you are not like that... Why did I not know you till
now!' 'Aleksandra Andreyevna, calm yourself,' I say... 'I feel,
believe me, I don't know how I have gained ... but there, calm
yourself... All will be right; you will be well again.' And meanwhile
I must tell you," continued the doctor, bending forward and raising
his eyebrows, "that they associated very little with the neighbours,
because the smaller people were not on their level, and pride hindered
them from being friendly with the rich. I tell you, they were an
exceptionally cultivated family; so you know it was gratifying for me.
She would only take her medicine from my hands ... she would lift
herself up, poor girl, with my aid, take it, and gaze at me... My
heart felt as if it were bursting. And meanwhile she was growing worse
and worse, worse and worse, all the time; she will die, I think to
myself; she must die. Believe me, I would sooner have gone to the
grave myself; and here were her mother and sisters watching me,
looking into my eyes ... and their faith in me was wearing away.
'Well? how is she?' 'Oh, all right, all right!' All right, indeed! My
mind was failing me. Well, I was sitting one night alone again by my
patient. The maid was sitting there too, and snoring away in full
swing; I can't find fault with the poor girl, though; she was worn out
too. Aleksandra Andreyevna had felt very unwell all the evening; she
was very feverish. Until midnight she kept tossing about; at last she
seemed to fall asleep; at least, she lay still without stirring. The
lamp was burning in the corner before the holy image. I sat there, you
know, with my head bent; I even dozed a little. Suddenly it seemed as
though some one touched me in the side; I turned round... Good God!
Aleksandra Andreyevna was gazing with intent eyes at me ... her lips
parted, her cheeks seemed burning. 'What is it?' 'Doctor, shall I
die?' 'Merciful Heavens!' 'No, doctor, no; please don't tell me I
shall live ... don't say so... If you knew... Listen! for God's sake
don't conceal my real position,' and her breath came so fast. 'If I
can know for certain that I must die ... then I will tell you all--
all!' 'Aleksandra Andreyevna, I beg!' 'Listen; I have not been asleep
at all ... I have been looking at you a long while... For God's
sake!... I believe in you; you are a good man, an honest man; I
entreat you by all that is sacred in the world--tell me the truth! If
you knew how important it is for me... Doctor, for God's sake tell
me... Am I in danger?' 'What can I tell you, Aleksandra Andreyevna,
pray?' 'For God's sake, I beseech you!' 'I can't disguise from you,' I
say, 'Aleksandra Andreyevna; you are certainly in danger; but God is
merciful.' 'I shall die, I shall die.' And it seemed as though she
were pleased; her face grew so bright; I was alarmed. 'Don't be
afraid, don't be afraid! I am not frightened of death at all.' She
suddenly sat up and leaned on her elbow. 'Now ... yes, now I can tell
you that I thank you with my whole heart ... that you are kind and
good--that I love you!' I stare at her, like one possessed; it was
terrible for me, you know. 'Do you hear, I love you!' 'Aleksandra
Andreyevna, how have I deserved--' 'No, no, you don't--you don't
understand me.'... And suddenly she stretched out her arms, and taking
my head in her hands, she kissed it... Believe me, I almost screamed
aloud... I threw myself on my knees, and buried my head in the pillow.
She did not speak; her fingers trembled in my hair; I listen; she is
weeping. I began to soothe her, to assure her... I really don't know
what I did say to her. 'You will wake up the girl,' I say to her;
'Aleksandra Andreyevna, I thank you ... believe me ... calm yourself.'
'Enough, enough!' she persisted; 'never mind all of them; let them
wake, then; let them come in--it does not matter; I am dying, you
see... And what do you fear? why are you afraid? Lift up your head...
Or, perhaps, you don't love me; perhaps I am wrong... In that case,
forgive me.' 'Aleksandra Andreyevna, what are you saying!... I love
you, Aleksandra Andreyevna.' She looked straight into my eyes, and
opened her arms wide. 'Then take me in your arms.' I tell you frankly,
I don't know how it was I did not go mad that night. I feel that my
patient is killing herself; I see that she is not fully herself; I
understand, too, that if she did not consider herself on the point of
death, she would never have thought of me; and, indeed, say what you
will, it's hard to die at twenty without having known love; this was
what was torturing her; this was why, in despair, she caught at
me--do you understand now? But she held me in her arms, and would not
let me go. 'Have pity on me, Aleksandra Andreyevna, and have pity on
yourself,' I say. 'Why,' she says; 'what is there to think of? You
know I must die.' ... This she repeated incessantly ... 'If I knew
that I should return to life, and be a proper young lady again, I
should be ashamed ... of course, ashamed ... but why now?' 'But who
has said you will die?' 'Oh, no, leave off! you will not deceive me;
you don't know how to lie--look at your face.' ... 'You shall live,
Aleksandra Andreyevna; I will cure you; we will ask your mother's
blessing ... we will be united--we will be happy.' 'No, no, I have
your word; I must die ... you have promised me ... you have told me.'
... It was cruel for me--cruel for many reasons. And see what trifling
things can do sometimes; it seems nothing at all, but it's painful. It
occurred to her to ask me, what is my name; not my surname, but my
first name. I must needs be so unlucky as to be called Trifon. Yes,
indeed; Trifon Ivanich. Every one in the house called me doctor.
However, there's no help for it. I say, 'Trifon, madam.' She frowned,
shook her head, and muttered something in French--ah, something
unpleasant, of course!--and then she laughed--disagreeably too. Well,
I spent the whole night with her in this way. Before morning I went
away, feeling as though I were mad. When I went again into her room it
was daytime, after morning tea. Good God! I could scarcely recognise
her; people are laid in their grave looking better than that. I swear
to you, on my honour, I don't understand--I absolutely don't
understand--now, how I lived through that experience. Three days and
nights my patient still lingered on. And what nights! What things she
said to me! And on the last night--only imagine to yourself--I was
sitting near her, and kept praying to God for one thing only: 'Take
her,' I said, 'quickly, and me with her.' Suddenly the old mother
comes unexpectedly into the room. I had already the evening before
told her---the mother--there was little hope, and it would be well to
send for a priest. When the sick girl saw her mother she said: 'It's
very well you have come; look at us, we love one another--we have
given each other our word.' 'What does she say, doctor? what does she
say?' I turned livid. 'She _is_ wandering,' I say; 'the fever.' But
she: 'Hush, hush; you told me something quite different just now, and
have taken my ring. Why do you pretend? My mother is good--she will
forgive--she will understand--and I am dying. ... I have no need to
tell lies; give me your hand.' I jumped up and ran out of the room.
The old lady, of course, guessed how it was.

"I will not, however, weary you any longer, and to me too, of course,
it's painful to recall all this. My patient passed away the next day.
God rest her soul!" the doctor added, speaking quickly and with a
sigh. "Before her death she asked her family to go out and leave me
alone with her."

"'Forgive me,' she said; 'I am perhaps to blame towards you ... my
illness ... but believe me, I have loved no one more than you ... do
not forget me ... keep my ring.'"

The doctor turned away; I took his hand.

"Ah!" he said, "let us talk of something else, or would you care to
play preference for a small stake? It is not for people like me to
give way to exalted emotions. There's only one thing for me to think
of; how to keep the children from crying and the wife from scolding.
Since then, you know, I have had time to enter into lawful wedlock, as
they say... Oh ... I took a merchant's daughter--seven thousand for
her dowry. Her name's Akulina; it goes well with Trifon. She is an
ill-tempered woman, I must tell you, but luckily she's asleep all
day... Well, shall it be preference?"

We sat down to preference for halfpenny points. Trifon Ivanich won two
rubles and a half from me, and went home late, well pleased with his
success.




THE CHRISTMAS TREE AND THE WEDDING



BY FIODOR M. DOSTOYEVSKY


The other day I saw a wedding... But no! I would rather tell you about
a Christmas tree. The wedding was superb. I liked it immensely. But
the other incident was still finer. I don't know why it is that the
sight of the wedding reminded me of the Christmas tree. This is the
way it happened:

Exactly five years ago, on New Year's Eve, I was invited to a
children's ball by a man high up in the business world, who had his
connections, his circle of acquaintances, and his intrigues. So it
seemed as though the children's ball was merely a pretext for the
parents to come together and discuss matters of interest to
themselves, quite innocently and casually.

I was an outsider, and, as I had no special matters to air, I was able
to spend the evening independently of the others. There was another
gentleman present who like myself had just stumbled upon this affair
of domestic bliss. He was the first to attract my attention. His
appearance was not that of a man of birth or high family. He was tall,
rather thin, very serious, and well dressed. Apparently he had no
heart for the family festivities. The instant he went off into a
corner by himself the smile disappeared from his face, and his thick
dark brows knitted into a frown. He knew no one except the host and
showed every sign of being bored to death, though bravely sustaining
the role of thorough enjoyment to the end. Later I learned that he was
a provincial, had come to the capital on some important, brain-racking
business, had brought a letter of recommendation to our host, and our
host had taken him under his protection, not at all _con amore_. It
was merely out of politeness that he had invited him to the children's
ball.

They did not play cards with him, they did not offer him cigars. No
one entered into conversation with him. Possibly they recognised the
bird by its feathers from a distance. Thus, my gentleman, not knowing
what to do with his hands, was compelled to spend the evening stroking
his whiskers. His whiskers were really fine, but he stroked them so
assiduously that one got the feeling that the whiskers had come into
the world first and afterwards the man in order to stroke them.

There was another guest who interested me. But he was of quite a
different order. He was a personage. They called him Julian
Mastakovich. At first glance one could tell he was an honoured guest
and stood in the same relation to the host as the host to the
gentleman of the whiskers. The host and hostess said no end of amiable
things to him, were most attentive, wining him, hovering over him,
bringing guests up to be introduced, but never leading him to any one
else. I noticed tears glisten in our host's eyes when Julian
Mastakovich remarked that he had rarely spent such a pleasant evening.
Somehow I began to feel uncomfortable in this personage's presence.
So, after amusing myself with the children, five of whom, remarkably
well-fed young persons, were our host's, I went into a little
sitting-room, entirely unoccupied, and seated myself at the end that
was a conservatory and took up almost half the room.

The children were charming. They absolutely refused to resemble their
elders, notwithstanding the efforts of mothers and governesses. In a
jiffy they had denuded the Christmas tree down to the very last sweet
and had already succeeded in breaking half of their playthings before
they even found out which belonged to whom.

One of them was a particularly handsome little lad, dark-eyed,
curly-haired, who stubbornly persisted in aiming at me with his wooden
gun. But the child that attracted the greatest attention was his
sister, a girl of about eleven, lovely as a Cupid. She was quiet and
thoughtful, with large, full, dreamy eyes. The children had somehow
offended her, and she left them and walked into the same room that I
had withdrawn into. There she seated herself with her doll in a
corner.

"Her father is an immensely wealthy business man," the guests informed
each other in tones of awe. "Three hundred thousand rubles set aside
for her dowry already."

As I turned to look at the group from which I heard this news item
issuing, my glance met Julian Mastakovich's. He stood listening to the
insipid chatter in an attitude of concentrated attention, with his
hands behind his back and his head inclined to one side.

All the while I was quite lost in admiration of the shrewdness our
host displayed in the dispensing of the gifts. The little maid of the
many-rubied dowry received the handsomest doll, and the rest of the
gifts were graded in value according to the diminishing scale of the
parents' stations in life. The last child, a tiny chap of ten, thin,
red-haired, freckled, came into possession of a small book of nature
stories without illustrations or even head and tail pieces. He was the
governess's child. She was a poor widow, and her little boy, clad in a
sorry-looking little nankeen jacket, looked thoroughly crushed and
intimidated. He took the book of nature stories and circled slowly
about the children's toys. He would have given anything to play with
them. But he did not dare to. You could tell he already knew his
place.

I like to observe children. It is fascinating to watch the
individuality in them struggling for self-assertion. I could see that
the other children's things had tremendous charm for the red-haired
boy, especially a toy theatre, in which he was so anxious to take a
part that he resolved to fawn upon the other children. He smiled and
began to play with them. His one and only apple he handed over to a
puffy urchin whose pockets were already crammed with sweets, and he
even carried another youngster pickaback--all simply that he might be
allowed to stay with the theatre.

But in a few moments an impudent young person fell on him and gave him
a pummelling. He did not dare even to cry. The governess came and told
him to leave off interfering with the other children's games, and he
crept away to the same room the little girl and I were in. She let him
sit down beside her, and the two set themselves busily dressing the
expensive doll.

Almost half an hour passed, and I was nearly dozing off, as I sat
there in the conservatory half listening to the chatter of the
red-haired boy and the dowered beauty, when Julian Mastakovich entered
suddenly. He had slipped out of the drawing-room under cover of a
noisy scene among the children. From my secluded corner it had not
escaped my notice that a few moments before he had been eagerly
conversing with the rich girl's father, to whom he had only just been
introduced.

He stood still for a while reflecting and mumbling to himself, as if
counting something on his fingers.

"Three hundred--three hundred--eleven--twelve--thirteen--sixteen--in
five years! Let's say four per cent--five times twelve--sixty, and on
these sixty----. Let us assume that in five years it will amount
to--well, four hundred. Hm--hm! But the shrewd old fox isn't likely to
be satisfied with four per cent. He gets eight or even ten, perhaps.
Let's suppose five hundred, five hundred thousand, at least, that's
sure. Anything above that for pocket money--hm--"

He blew his nose and was about to leave the room when he spied the
girl and stood still. I, behind the plants, escaped his notice. He
seemed to me to be quivering with excitement. It must have been his
calculations that upset him so. He rubbed his hands and danced from
place to place, and kept getting more and more excited. Finally,
however, he conquered his emotions and came to a standstill. He cast a
determined look at the future bride and wanted to move toward her, but
glanced about first. Then, as if with a guilty conscience, he stepped
over to the child on tip-toe, smiling, and bent down and kissed her
head.

His coming was so unexpected that she uttered a shriek of alarm.

"What are you doing here, dear child?" he whispered, looking around
and pinching her cheek.

"We're playing."

"What, with him?" said Julian Mastakovich with a look askance at the
governess's child. "You should go into the drawing-room, my lad," he
said to him.

The boy remained silent and looked up at the man with wide-open eyes.
Julian Mastakovich glanced round again cautiously and bent down over
the girl.

"What have you got, a doll, my dear?"

"Yes, sir." The child quailed a little, and her brow wrinkled.

"A doll? And do you know, my dear, what dolls are made of?"

"No, sir," she said weakly, and lowered her head.

"Out of rags, my dear. You, boy, you go back to the drawing-room, to
the children," said Julian Mastakovich looking at the boy sternly.

The two children frowned. They caught hold of each other and would not
part.

"And do you know why they gave you the doll?" asked Julian
Mastakovich, dropping his voice lower and lower.

"No."

"Because you were a good, very good little girl the whole week."

Saying which, Julian Mastakovich was seized with a paroxysm of
agitation. He looked round and said in a tone faint, almost inaudible
with excitement and impatience:

"If I come to visit your parents will you love me, my dear?"

He tried to kiss the sweet little creature, but the red-haired boy saw
that she was on the verge of tears, and he caught her hand and sobbed
out loud in sympathy. That enraged the man.

"Go away! Go away! Go back to the other room, to your playmates."

"I don't want him to. I don't want him to! You go away!" cried the
girl. "Let him alone! Let him alone!" She was almost weeping.

There was a sound of footsteps in the doorway. Julian Mastakovich
started and straightened up his respectable body. The red-haired boy
was even more alarmed. He let go the girl's hand, sidled along the
wall, and escaped through the drawing-room into the dining-room.

Not to attract attention, Julian Mastakovich also made for the
dining-room. He was red as a lobster. The sight of himself in a mirror
seemed to embarrass him. Presumably he was annoyed at his own ardour
and impatience. Without due respect to his importance and dignity, his
calculations had lured and pricked him to the greedy eagerness of a
boy, who makes straight for his object--though this was not as yet an
object; it only would be so in five years' time. I followed the worthy
man into the dining-room, where I witnessed a remarkable play.

Julian Mastakovich, all flushed with vexation, venom in his look,
began to threaten the red-haired boy. The red-haired boy retreated
farther and farther until there was no place left for him to retreat
to, and he did not know where to turn in his fright.

"Get out of here! What are you doing here? Get out, I say, you
good-for-nothing! Stealing fruit, are you? Oh, so, stealing fruit! Get
out, you freckle face, go to your likes!"

The frightened child, as a last desperate resort, crawled quickly
under the table. His persecutor, completely infuriated, pulled out his
large linen handkerchief and used it as a lash to drive the boy out of
his position.

Here I must remark that Julian Mastakovich was a somewhat corpulent
man, heavy, well-fed, puffy-cheeked, with a paunch and ankles as round
as nuts. He perspired and puffed and panted. So strong was his dislike
(or was it jealousy?) of the child that he actually began to carry on
like a madman.

I laughed heartily. Julian Mastakovich turned. He was utterly confused
and for a moment, apparently, quite oblivious of his immense
importance. At that moment our host appeared in the doorway opposite.
The boy crawled out from under the table and wiped his knees and
elbows. Julian Mastakovich hastened to carry his handkerchief, which
he had been dangling by the corner, to his nose. Our host looked at
the three of us rather suspiciously. But, like a man who knows the
world and can readily adjust himself, he seized upon the opportunity
to lay hold of his very valuable guest and get what he wanted out of
him.

"Here's the boy I was talking to you about," he said, indicating the
red-haired child. "I took the liberty of presuming on your goodness in
his behalf."

"Oh," replied Julian Mastakovich, still not quite master of himself.

"He's my governess's son," our host continued in a beseeching tone.
"She's a poor creature, the widow of an honest official. That's why,
if it were possible for you--"

"Impossible, impossible!" Julian Mastakovich cried hastily. "You must
excuse me, Philip Alexeyevich, I really cannot. I've made inquiries.
There are no vacancies, and there is a waiting list of ten who have a
greater right--I'm sorry."

"Too bad," said our host. "He's a quiet, unobtrusive child."

"A very naughty little rascal, I should say," said Julian Mastakovich,
wryly. "Go away, boy. Why are you here still? Be off with you to the
other children."

Unable to control himself, he gave me a sidelong glance. Nor could I
control myself. I laughed straight in his face. He turned away and
asked our host, in tones quite audible to me, who that odd young
fellow was. They whispered to each other and left the room,
disregarding me.

I shook with laughter. Then I, too, went to the drawing-room. There
the great man, already surrounded by the fathers and mothers and the
host and the hostess, had begun to talk eagerly with a lady to whom he
had just been introduced. The lady held the rich little girl's hand.
Julian Mastakovich went into fulsome praise of her. He waxed ecstatic
over the dear child's beauty, her talents, her grace, her excellent
breeding, plainly laying himself out to flatter the mother, who
listened scarcely able to restrain tears of joy, while the father
showed his delight by a gratified smile.

The joy was contagious. Everybody shared in it. Even the children were
obliged to stop playing so as not to disturb the conversation. The
atmosphere was surcharged with awe. I heard the mother of the
important little girl, touched to her profoundest depths, ask Julian
Mastakovich in the choicest language of courtesy, whether he would
honour them by coming to see them. I heard Julian Mastakovich accept
the invitation with unfeigned enthusiasm. Then the guests scattered
decorously to different parts of the room, and I heard them, with
veneration in their tones, extol the business man, the business man's
wife, the business man's daughter, and, especially, Julian
Mastakovich.

"Is he married?" I asked out loud of an acquaintance of mine standing
beside Julian Mastakovich.

Julian Mastakovich gave me a venomous look.

"No," answered my acquaintance, profoundly shocked by
my--intentional--indiscretion.

       *       *       *       *       *

Not long ago I passed the Church of----. I was struck by the concourse
of people gathered there to witness a wedding. It was a dreary day. A
drizzling rain was beginning to come down. I made my way through the
throng into the church. The bridegroom was a round, well-fed,
pot-bellied little man, very much dressed up. He ran and fussed about
and gave orders and arranged things. Finally word was passed that the
bride was coming. I pushed through the crowd, and I beheld a
marvellous beauty whose first spring was scarcely commencing. But the
beauty was pale and sad. She looked distracted. It seemed to me even
that her eyes were red from recent weeping. The classic severity of
every line of her face imparted a peculiar significance and solemnity
to her beauty. But through that severity and solemnity, through the
sadness, shone the innocence of a child. There was something
inexpressibly naïve, unsettled and young in her features, which,
without words, seemed to plead for mercy.

They said she was just sixteen years old. I looked at the bridegroom
carefully. Suddenly I recognised Julian Mastakovich, whom I had not
seen again in all those five years. Then I looked at the bride
again.--Good God! I made my way, as quickly as I could, out of the
church. I heard gossiping in the crowd about the bride's wealth--about
her dowry of five hundred thousand rubles--so and so much for pocket
money.

"Then his calculations were correct," I thought, as I pressed out into
the street.




GOD SEES THE TRUTH, BUT WAITS



BY LEO N. TOLSTOY


In the town of Vladimir lived a young merchant named Ivan Dmitrich
Aksionov. He had two shops and a house of his own.

Aksionov was a handsome, fair-haired, curly-headed fellow, full of
fun, and very fond of singing. When quite a young man he had been
given to drink, and was riotous when he had had too much; but after he
married he gave up drinking, except now and then.

One summer Aksionov was going to the Nizhny Fair, and as he bade
good-bye to his family, his wife said to him, "Ivan Dmitrich, do not
start to-day; I have had a bad dream about you."

Aksionov laughed, and said, "You are afraid that when I get to the
fair I shall go on a spree."

His wife replied: "I do not know what I am afraid of; all I know is
that I had a bad dream. I dreamt you returned from the town, and when
you took off your cap I saw that your hair was quite grey."

Aksionov laughed. "That's a lucky sign," said he. "See if I don't sell
out all my goods, and bring you some presents from the fair."

So he said good-bye to his family, and drove away.

When he had travelled half-way, he met a merchant whom he knew, and
they put up at the same inn for the night. They had some tea together,
and then went to bed in adjoining rooms.

It was not Aksionov's habit to sleep late, and, wishing to travel
while it was still cool, he aroused his driver before dawn, and told
him to put in the horses.

Then he made his way across to the landlord of the inn (who lived in a
cottage at the back), paid his bill, and continued his journey.

When he had gone about twenty-five miles, he stopped for the horses to
be fed. Aksionov rested awhile in the passage of the inn, then he
stepped out into the porch, and, ordering a samovar to be heated, got
out his guitar and began to play.

Suddenly a troika drove up with tinkling bells and an official
alighted, followed by two soldiers. He came to Aksionov and began to
question him, asking him who he was and whence he came. Aksionov
answered him fully, and said, "Won't you have some tea with me?" But
the official went on cross-questioning him and asking him. "Where did
you spend last night? Were you alone, or with a fellow-merchant? Did
you see the other merchant this morning? Why did you leave the inn
before dawn?"

Aksionov wondered why he was asked all these questions, but he
described all that had happened, and then added, "Why do you
cross-question me as if I were a thief or a robber? I am travelling on
business of my own, and there is no need to question me."

Then the official, calling the soldiers, said, "I am the
police-officer of this district, and I question you because the
merchant with whom you spent last night has been found with his throat
cut. We must search your things."

They entered the house. The soldiers and the police-officer unstrapped
Aksionov's luggage and searched it. Suddenly the officer drew a knife
out of a bag, crying, "Whose knife is this?"

Aksionov looked, and seeing a blood-stained knife taken from his bag,
he was frightened.

"How is it there is blood on this knife?"

Aksionov tried to answer, but could hardly utter a word, and only
stammered: "I--don't know--not mine." Then the police-officer said:
"This morning the merchant was found in bed with his throat cut. You
are the only person who could have done it. The house was locked from
inside, and no one else was there. Here is this blood-stained knife in
your bag and your face and manner betray you! Tell me how you killed
him, and how much money you stole?"

Aksionov swore he had not done it; that he had not seen the merchant
after they had had tea together; that he had no money except eight
thousand rubles of his own, and that the knife was not his. But his
voice was broken, his face pale, and he trembled with fear as though
he went guilty.

The police-officer ordered the soldiers to bind Aksionov and to put
him in the cart. As they tied his feet together and flung him into the
cart, Aksionov crossed himself and wept. His money and goods were
taken from him, and he was sent to the nearest town and imprisoned
there. Enquiries as to his character were made in Vladimir. The
merchants and other inhabitants of that town said that in former days
he used to drink and waste his time, but that he was a good man. Then
the trial came on: he was charged with murdering a merchant from
Ryazan, and robbing him of twenty thousand rubles.

His wife was in despair, and did not know what to believe. Her
children were all quite small; one was a baby at her breast. Taking
them all with her, she went to the town where her husband was in jail.
At first she was not allowed to see him; but after much begging, she
obtained permission from the officials, and was taken to him. When she
saw her husband in prison-dress and in chains, shut up with thieves
and criminals, she fell down, and did not come to her senses for a
long time. Then she drew her children to her, and sat down near him.
She told him of things at home, and asked about what had happened to
him. He told her all, and she asked, "What can we do now?"

"We must petition the Czar not to let an innocent man perish."

His wife told him that she had sent a petition to the Czar, but it had
not been accepted.

Aksionov did not reply, but only looked downcast.

Then his wife said, "It was not for nothing I dreamt your hair had
turned grey. You remember? You should not have started that day." And
passing her fingers through his hair, she said: "Vanya dearest, tell
your wife the truth; was it not you who did it?"

"So you, too, suspect me!" said Aksionov, and, hiding his face in his
hands, he began to weep. Then a soldier came to say that the wife and
children must go away; and Aksionov said good-bye to his family for
the last time.

When they were gone, Aksionov recalled what had been said, and when he
remembered that his wife also had suspected him, he said to himself,
"It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we must
appeal, and from Him alone expect mercy."

And Aksionov wrote no more petitions; gave up all hope, and only
prayed to God.

Aksionov was condemned to be flogged and sent to the mines. So he was
flogged with a knot, and when the wounds made by the knot were healed,
he was driven to Siberia with other convicts.

For twenty-six years Aksionov lived as a convict in Siberia. His hair
turned white as snow, and his beard grew long, thin, and grey. All his
mirth went; he stooped; he walked slowly, spoke little, and never
laughed, but he often prayed.

In prison Aksionov learnt to make boots, and earned a little money,
with which he bought _The Lives of the Saints_. He read this book when
there was light enough in the prison; and on Sundays in the
prison-church he read the lessons and sang in the choir; for his voice
was still good.

The prison authorities liked Aksionov for his meekness, and his
fellow-prisoners respected him: they called him "Grandfather," and
"The Saint." When they wanted to petition the prison authorities about
anything, they always made Aksionov their spokesman, and when there
were quarrels among the prisoners they came to him to put things
right, and to judge the matter.

No news reached Aksionov from his home, and he did not even know if
his wife and children were still alive.

One day a fresh gang of convicts came to the prison. In the evening
the old prisoners collected round the new ones and asked them what
towns or villages they came from, and what they were sentenced for.
Among the rest Aksionov sat down near the newcomers, and listened with
downcast air to what was said.

One of the new convicts, a tall, strong man of sixty, with a
closely-cropped grey beard, was telling the others what be had been
arrested for.

"Well, friends," he said, "I only took a horse that was tied to a
sledge, and I was arrested and accused of stealing. I said I had only
taken it to get home quicker, and had then let it go; besides, the
driver was a personal friend of mine. So I said, 'It's all right.'
'No,' said they, 'you stole it.' But how or where I stole it they
could not say. I once really did something wrong, and ought by rights
to have come here long ago, but that time I was not found out. Now I
have been sent here for nothing at all... Eh, but it's lies I'm
telling you; I've been to Siberia before, but I did not stay long."

"Where are you from?" asked some one.

"From Vladimir. My family are of that town. My name is Makar, and they
also call me Semyonich."

Aksionov raised his head and said: "Tell me, Semyonich, do you know
anything of the merchants Aksionov of Vladimir? Are they still alive?"

"Know them? Of course I do. The Aksionovs are rich, though their
father is in Siberia: a sinner like ourselves, it seems! As for you,
Gran'dad, how did you come here?"

Aksionov did not like to speak of his misfortune. He only sighed, and
said, "For my sins I have been in prison these twenty-six years."

"What sins?" asked Makar Semyonich.

But Aksionov only said, "Well, well--I must have deserved it!" He
would have said no more, but his companions told the newcomers how
Aksionov came to be in Siberia; how some one had killed a merchant,
and had put the knife among Aksionov's things, and Aksionov had been
unjustly condemned.

When Makar Semyonich heard this, he looked at Aksionov, slapped his
_own_ knee, and exclaimed, "Well, this is wonderful! Really wonderful!
But how old you've grown, Gran'dad!"

The others asked him why he was so surprised, and where he had seen
Aksionov before; but Makar Semyonich did not reply. He only said:
"It's wonderful that we should meet here, lads!"

These words made Aksionov wonder whether this man knew who had killed
the merchant; so he said, "Perhaps, Semyonich, you have heard of that
affair, or maybe you've seen me before?"

"How could I help hearing? The world's full of rumours. But it's a
long time ago, and I've forgotten what I heard."

"Perhaps you heard who killed the merchant?" asked Aksionov.

Makar Semyonich laughed, and replied: "It must have been him in whose
bag the knife was found! If some one else hid the knife there, 'He's
not a thief till he's caught,' as the saying is. How could any one put
a knife into your bag while it was under your head? It would surely
have woke you up."

When Aksionov heard these words, he felt sure this was the man who had
killed the merchant. He rose and went away. All that night Aksionov
lay awake. He felt terribly unhappy, and all sorts of images rose in
his mind. There was the image of his wife as she was when he parted
from her to go to the fair. He saw her as if she were present; her
face and her eyes rose before him; he heard her speak and laugh. Then
he saw his children, quite little, as they were at that time: one
with a little cloak on, another at his mother's breast. And then he
remembered himself as he used to be-young and merry. He remembered how
he sat playing the guitar in the porch of the inn where he was
arrested, and how free from care he had been. He saw, in his mind, the
place where he was flogged, the executioner, and the people standing
around; the chains, the convicts, all the twenty-six years of his
prison life, and his premature old age. The thought of it all made him
so wretched that he was ready to kill himself.

"And it's all that villain's doing!" thought Aksionov. And his anger
was so great against Makar Semyonich that he longed for vengeance,
even if he himself should perish for it. He kept repeating prayers all
night, but could get no peace. During the day he did not go near Makar
Semyonich, nor even look at him.

A fortnight passed in this way. Aksionov could not sleep at night, and
was so miserable that he did not know what to do.

One night as he was walking about the prison he noticed some earth
that came rolling out from under one of the shelves on which the
prisoners slept. He stopped to see what it was. Suddenly Makar
Semyonich crept out from under the shelf, and looked up at Aksionov
with frightened face. Aksionov tried to pass without looking at him,
but Makar seized his hand and told him that he had dug a hole under
the wall, getting rid of the earth by putting it into his high-boots,
and emptying it out every day on the road when the prisoners were
driven to their work.

"Just you keep quiet, old man, and you shall get out too. If you blab,
they'll flog the life out of me, but I will kill you first."

Aksionov trembled with anger as he looked at his enemy. He drew his
hand away, saying, "I have no wish to escape, and you have no need to
kill me; you killed me long ago! As to telling of you--I may do so or
not, as God shall direct."

Next day, when the convicts were led out to work, the convoy soldiers
noticed that one or other of the prisoners emptied some earth out of
his boots. The prison was searched and the tunnel found. The Governor
came and questioned all the prisoners to find out who had dug the
hole. They all denied any knowledge of it. Those who knew would not
betray Makar Semyonich, knowing he would be flogged almost to death.
At last the Governor turned to Aksionov whom he knew to be a just man,
and said:

"You are a truthful old man; tell me, before God, who dug the hole?"

Makar Semyonich stood as if he were quite unconcerned, looking at the
Governor and not so much as glancing at Aksionov. Aksionov's lips and
hands trembled, and for a long time he could not utter a word. He
thought, "Why should I screen him who ruined my life? Let him pay for
what I have suffered. But if I tell, they will probably flog the life
out of him, and maybe I suspect him wrongly. And, after all, what good
would it be to me?"

"Well, old man," repeated the Governor, "tell me the truth: who has
been digging under the wall?"

Aksionov glanced at Makar Semyonich, and said, "I cannot say, your
honour. It is not God's will that I should tell! Do what you like with
me; I am in your hands."

However much the Governor tried, Aksionov would say no more, and 

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