The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adam Bede, by George Eliot

THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH

AND OTHER STORIES

BY LEO TOLSTOY

This PDF eBook was produced in the year 2009 by Tantor Media, Incorporated, which holds the

copyright thereto.

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2

Publisher‟s Note: The following eBook contains a translation of The Death of

Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories that is slightly different than the audio program.

Contents

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

The Forged Coupon

Part First

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

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Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Part Second

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

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After the Dance

My Dream

I

II

III

There Are No Guilty People

I

II

The Young Tsar

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The Death of Ivan Ilyich

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6

Chapter I

DURING an interval in the Melvinski trial in the large building of the

Law Courts the members and public prosecutor met in Ivan Egorovich

Shebek‟s private room, where the conversation turned on the celebrated

Krasovski case. Fedor Vasilievich warmly maintained that it was not

subject to their jurisdiction, Ivan Egorovich maintained the contrary,

while Peter Ivanovich, not having entered into the discussion at the start,

took no part in it but looked through the Gazette which had just been

handed in.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “Ivan Ilyich has died!”

“You don‟t say so!”

“Here, read it yourself,” replied Peter Ivanovich, handing Fedor

Vasilievich the paper still damp from the press. Surrounded by a black

border were the words: “Praskovya Fedorovna Golovina, with profound

sorrow, informs relatives and friends of the demise of her beloved

husband Ivan Ilyich Golovin, Member of the Court of Justice, which

occurred on February the 4th of this year 1882. The funeral will take

place on Friday at one o‟clock in the afternoon.”

Ivan Ilyich had been a colleague of the gentlemen present and was

liked by them all. He had been ill for some weeks with an illness said to

be incurable. His post had been kept open for him, but there had been

conjectures that in case of his death Alexeev might receive his

appointment, and that either Vinnikov or Shtabel would succeed Alexeev.

So on receiving the news of Ivan Ilyich‟s death the first thought of each

of the gentlemen in that private room was of the changes and promotions

it might occasion among themselves or their acquaintances.

“I shall be sure to get Shtabel‟s place or Vinnikov‟s,” thought Fedor

Vasilievich. “I was promised that long ago, and the promotion means an

extra eight hundred rubles a year for me besides the allowance.”

“Now I must apply for my brother-in-law‟s transfer from Kaluga,”

thought Peter Ivanovich. “My wife will be very glad, and then she won‟t

be able to say that I never do anything for her relations.”

“I thought he would never leave his bed again,” said Peter Ivanovich

aloud.

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7

“It‟s very sad.”

“But what really was the matter with him?”

“The doctors couldn‟t say—at least they could, but each of them said

something different. When last I saw him I though he was getting better.”

“And I haven‟t been to see him since the holidays. I always meant to

go.”

“Had he any property?”

“I think his wife had a little—but something quiet trifling.”

“We shall have to go to see her, but they live so terribly far away.”

“Far away from you, you mean. Everything‟s far away from your

place.”

“You see, he never can forgive my living on the other side of the

river,” said Peter Ivanovich, smiling at Shebek. Then, still talking of the

distances between different parts of the city, they returned to the Court.

Besides considerations as to the possible transfers and promotions

likely to result from Ivan Ilyich‟s death, the mere fact of the death of a

near acquaintance aroused, as usual, in all who heard of it the complacent

feeling that, “it is he who is dead and not I.”

Each one thought or felt, “Well, he‟s dead but I‟m alive!” But the

more intimate of Ivan Ilyich‟s acquaintances, his so-called friends, could

not help thinking also that they would now have to fulfil the very

tiresome demands of propriety by attending the funeral service and

paying a visit of condolence to the widow. Fedor Vasilievich and Peter

Ivanovich had been his nearest acquaintances. Peter Ivanovich had

studied law with Ivan Ilyich and had considered himself to be under

obligations to him.

Having told his wife at dinner-time of Ivan Ilyich‟s death, and of his

conjecture that it might be possible to get her brother transferred to their

circuit, Peter Ivanovich sacrificed his usual nap, put on his evening

clothes and drove to Ivan Ilyich‟s house.

At the entrance stood a carriage and two cabs. Leaning against the

wall in the hall downstairs near the cloakstand was a coffin-lid covered

with cloth of gold, ornamented with gold cord and tassels, that had been

polished up with metal powder. Two ladies in black were taking off their

fur cloaks. Peter Ivanovich recognized one of them as Ivan Ilyich‟s

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8

sister, but the other was a stranger to him. His colleague Schwartz was

just coming downstairs, but on seeing Peter Ivanovich enter he stopped

and winked at him, as if to say: “Ivan Ilyich has made a mess of things—

not like you and me.”

Schwartz‟s face with his Piccadilly whiskers, and his slim figure in

evening dress, had as usual an air of elegant solemnity which contrasted

with the playfulness of his character and had a special piquancy here, or

so it seemed to Peter Ivanovich.

Peter Ivanovich allowed the ladies to precede him and slowly

followed them upstairs. Schwartz did not come down but remained

where he was, and Peter Ivanovich understood that he wanted to arrange

where they should play bridge that evening. The ladies went upstairs to

the widow‟s room, and Schwartz with seriously compressed lips but a

playful looking his eyes, indicated by a twist of his eyebrows the room to

the right where the body lay.

Peter Ivanovich, like everyone else on such occasions, entered

feeling uncertain what he would have to do. All he knew was that at such

times it is always safe to cross oneself. But he was not quite sure whether

one should make obseisances while doing so. He therefore adopted a

middle course. On entering the room he began crossing himself and

made a slight movement resembling a bow. At the same time, as far as

the motion of his head and arm allowed, he surveyed the room. Two

young men—apparently nephews, one of whom was a high-school

pupil—were leaving the room, crossing themselves as they did so. An

old woman was standing motionless, and a lady with strangely arched

eyebrows was saying something to her in a whisper. A vigorous, resolute

Church Reader, in a frock-coat, was reading something in a loud voice

with an expression that precluded any contradiction. The butler‟s

assistant, Gerasim, stepping lightly in front of Peter Ivanovich, was

strewing something on the floor. Noticing this, Peter Ivanovich was

immediately aware of a faint odour of a decomposing body.

The last time he had called on Ivan Ilyich, Peter Ivanovich had seen

Gerasim in the study. Ivan Ilyich had been particularly fond of him and

he was performing the duty of a sick nurse.

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Peter Ivanovich continued to make the sign of the cross slightly

inclining his head in an intermediate direction between the coffin, the

Reader, and the icons on the table in a corner of the room. Afterwards,

when it seemed to him that this movement of his arm in crossing himself

had gone on too long, he stopped and began to look at the corpse.

The dead man lay, as dead men always lie, in a specially heavy way,

his rigid limbs sunk in the soft cushions of the coffin, with the head

forever bowed on the pillow. His yellow waxen brow with bald patches

over his sunken temples was thrust up in the way peculiar to the dead,

the protruding nose seeming to press on the upper lip. He was much

changed and grown even thinner since Peter Ivanovich had last seen him,

but, as is always the case with the dead, his face was handsomer and

above all more dignified than when he was alive. The expression on the

face said that what was necessary had been accomplished, and

accomplished rightly. Besides this there was in that expression a

reproach and a warning to the living. This warning seemed to Peter

Ivanovich out of place, or at least not applicable to him. He felt a certain

discomfort and so he hurriedly crossed himself once more and turned and

went out of the door—too hurriedly and too regardless of propriety, as he

himself was aware.

Schwartz was waiting for him in the adjoining room with legs spread

wide apart and both hands toying with his top-hat behind his back. The

mere sight of that playful, well-groomed, and elegant figure refreshed

Peter Ivanovich. He felt that Schwartz was above all these happenings

and would not surrender to any depressing influences. His very look said

that this incident of a church service for Ivan Ilyich could not be a

sufficient reason for infringing the order of the session—in other words,

that it would certainly not prevent his unwrapping a new pack of cards

and shuffling them that evening while a footman placed fresh candles on

the table: in fact, that there was no reason for supposing that this incident

would hinder their spending the evening agreeably. Indeed he said this in

a whisper as Peter Ivanovich passed him, proposing that they should

meet for a game at Fedor Vasilievich‟s. But apparently Peter Ivanovich

was not destined to play bridge that evening. Praskovya Fedorovna (a

short, fat woman who despite all efforts to the contrary had continued to

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10

broaden steadily from her shoulders downwards and who had the same

extraordinarily arched eyebrows as the lady who had been standing by

the coffin), dressed all in black, her head covered with lace, came out of

her own room with some other ladies, conducted them to the room where

the dead body lay, and said: “The service will begin immediately. Please

go in.”

Schwartz, making an indefinite bow, stood still, evidently neither

accepting nor declining this invitation. Praskovya Fedorovna recognizing

Peter Ivanovich, sighed, went close up to him, took his hand, and said: “I

know you were a true friend to Ivan Ilyich . . .” and looked at him

awaiting some suitable response. And Peter Ivanovich knew that, just as

it had been the right thing to cross himself in that room, so what he had

to do here was to press her hand, sigh, and say, “Believe me . . .” So he

did all this and as he did it felt that the desired result had been achieved:

that both he and she were touched.

“Come with me. I want to speak to you before it begins,” said the

widow. “Give me your arm.”

Peter Ivanovich gave her his arm and they went to the inner rooms,

passing Schwartz who winked at Peter Ivanovich compassionately.

“That does for our bridge! Don‟s object if we find another player.

Perhaps you can cut in when you do escape,” said his playful look.

Peter Ivanovich sighed still more deeply and despondently, and

Praskovya Fedorovna pressed his arm gratefully. When they reached the

drawing-room, upholstered in pink cretonne and lighted by a dim lamp,

they sat down at the table—she on a sofa and Peter Ivanovich on a low

pouffe, the springs of which yielded spasmodically under his weight.

Praskovya Fedorovna had been on the point of warning him to take

another seat, but felt that such a warning was out of keeping with her

present condition and so changed her mind. As he sat down on the pouffe

Peter Ivanovich recalled how Ivan Ilyich had arranged this room and had

consulted him regarding this pink cretonne with green leaves. The whole

room was full of furniture and knick-knacks, and on her way to the sofa

the lace of the widow‟s black shawl caught on the edge of the table. Peter

Ivanovich rose to detach it, and the springs of the pouffe, relieved of his

weight, rose also and gave him a push. The widow began detaching her

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11

shawl herself, and Peter Ivanovich again sat down, suppressing the

rebellious springs of the pouffe under him. But the widow had not quite

freed herself and Peter Ivanovich got up again, and again the pouffe

rebelled and even creaked. When this was all over she took out a clean

cambric handkerchief and began to weep. The episode with the shawl

and the struggle with the pouffe had cooled Peter Ivanovich‟s emotions

and he sat there with a sullen look on his face. This awkward situation

was interrupted by Sokolov, Ivan Ilyich‟s butler, who came to report that

the plot in the cemetery that Praskovya Fedorovna had chosen would

cost tow hundred rubles. She stopped weeping and, looking at Peter

Ivanovich with the air of a victim, remarked in French that it was very

hard for her. Peter Ivanovich made a silent gesture signifying his full

conviction that it must indeed be so.

“Please smoke,” she said in a magnanimous yet crushed voice, and

turned to discuss with Sokolov the price of the plot for the grave.

Peter Ivanovich while lighting his cigarette heard her inquiring very

circumstantially into the prices of different plots in the cemetery and

finally decide which she would take. When that was done she gave

instructions about engaging the choir. Sokolov then left the room.

“I look after everything myself,” she told Peter Ivanovich, shifting

the albums that lay on the table; and noticing that the table was

endangered by his cigarette-ash, she immediately passed him an ash-tray,

saying as she did so: “I consider it an affectation to say that my grief

prevents my attending to practical affairs. On the contrary, if anything

can—I won‟t say console me, but—distract me, it is seeing to everything

concerning him.” She again took out her handkerchief as if preparing to

cry, but suddenly, as if mastering her feeling, she shook herself and

began to speak calmly. “But there is something I want to talk to you

about.”

Peter Ivanovich bowed, keeping control of the springs of the pouffe,

which immediately began quivering under him.

“He suffered terribly the last few days.”

“Did he?” said Peter Ivanovich.

“Oh, terribly! He screamed unceasingly, not for minutes but for

hours. For the last three days he screamed incessantly. It was

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12

unendurable. I cannot understand how I bore it; you could hear him three

rooms off. Oh, what I have suffered!”

“Is it possible that he was conscious all that time?” asked Peter

Ivanovich.

“Yes,” she whispered. “To the last moment. He took leave of us a

quarter of an hour before he died, and asked us to take Volodya away.”

The thought of the suffering of this man he had known so intimately,

first as a merry little boy, then as a schoolmate, and later as a grown-up

colleague, suddenly struck Peter Ivanovich with horror, despite an

unpleasant consciousness of his own and this woman‟s dissimulation. He

again saw that brow, and that nose pressing down on the lip, and felt

afraid for himself.

“Three days of frightful suffering and the death! Why, that might

suddenly, at any time, happen to me,” he thought, and for a moment felt

terrified. But—he did not himself know how—the customary reflection

at once occurred to him that this had happened to Ivan Ilyich and not to

him, and that it should not and could not happen to him, and that to think

that it could would be yielding to depressing which he ought not to do, as

Schwartz‟s expression plainly showed. After which reflection Peter

Ivanovich felt reassured, and began to ask with interest about the details

of Ivan Ilyich‟s death, as though death was an accident natural to Ivan

Ilyich but certainly not to himself.

After many details of the really dreadful physical sufferings Ivan

Ilyich had endured (which details he learnt only from the effect those

sufferings had produced on Praskovya Fedorovna‟s nerves) the widow

apparently found it necessary to get to business.

“Oh, Peter Ivanovich, how hard it is! How terribly, terribly hard!”

and she again began to weep.

Peter Ivanovich sighed and waited for her to finish blowing her nose.

When she had done so he said, “Believe me . . .” and she again began

talking and brought out what was evidently her chief concern with him—

namely, to question him as to how she could obtain a grant of money

from the government on the occasion of her husband‟s death. She made

it appear that she was asking Peter Ivanovich‟s advice about her pension,

but he soon saw that she already knew about that to the minutest detail,

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13

more even than he did himself. She knew how much could be got out of

the government in consequence of her husband‟s death, but wanted to

find out whether she could not possibly extract something more. Peter

Ivanovich tried to think of some means of doing so, but after reflecting

for a while and, out of propriety, condemning the government for its

niggardliness, he said he thought that nothing more could be got. Then

she sighed and evidently began to devise means of getting rid of her

visitor. Noticing this, he put out his cigarette, rose, pressed her hand, and

went out into the anteroom.

In the dining-room where the clock stood that Ivan Ilyich had liked

so much and had bought at an antique shop, Peter Ivanovich met a priest

and a few acquaintances who had come to attend the service, and he

recognized Ivan Ilyich‟s daughter, a handsome young woman. She was

in black and her slim figure appeared slimmer than ever. She had a

gloomy, determined, almost angry expression, and bowed to Peter

Ivanovich as though he were in some way to blame. Behind her, with the

same offended look, stood a wealthy young man, and examining

magistrate, whom Peter Ivanovich also knew and who was her fiancé, as

he had heard. He bowed mournfully to them and was about to pass into

the death-chamber, when from under the stairs appeared the figure of

Ivan Ilyich‟s schoolboy son, who was extremely like his father. He

seemed a little Ivan Ilyich, such as Peter Ivanovich remembered when

they studied law together. His tear-stained eyes had in them the look that

is seen in the eyes of boys of thirteen or fourteen who are not pure-

minded. When he saw Peter Ivanovich he scowled morosely and

shamefacedly. Peter Ivanovich nodded to him and entered the death-

chamber. The service began: candles, groans, incense, tears, and sobs.

Peter Ivanovich stood looking gloomily down at his feet. He did not look

once at the dead man, did not yield to any depressing influence, and was

one of the first to leave the room. There was no one in the anteroom, but

Gerasim darted out of the dead man‟s room, rummaged with his strong

hands among the fur coats to find Peter Ivanovich‟s and helped him on

with it.

“Well, friend Gerasim,” said Peter Ivanovich, so as to say something.

“It‟s a sad affair, isn‟t it?”

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14

“It‟s God will. We shall all come to it someday,” said Gerasim,

displaying his teeth—the even white teeth of a healthy peasant—and,

like a man in the thick of urgent work, he briskly opened the front door,

called the coachman, helped Peter Ivanovich into the sledge, and sprang

back to the porch as if in readiness for what he had to do next.

Peter Ivanovich found the fresh air particularly pleasant after the

smell of incense, the dead body, and carbolic acid.

“Where to sir?” asked the coachman.

“It‟s not too late even now. . . . I‟ll call round on Fedor Vasilievich.”

He accordingly drove there and found them just finishing the first

rubber, so that it was quite convenient for him to cut in.

Chapter II

IVAN Ilyich‟s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore

most terrible.

He had been a member of the Court of Justice, and died at the age of

forty-five. His father had been an official who after serving in various

ministries and departments in Petersburg had made the sort of career

which brings men to positions from which by reason of their long service

they cannot be dismissed, though they are obviously unfit to hold any

responsible position, and for whom therefore posts are specially created,

which though fictitious carry salaries of from six to ten thousand rubles

that are not fictitious, and in receipt of which they live on to a great age.

Such was the Privy Councillor and superfluous member of various

superfluous institutions, Ilya Epimovich Golovin.

He had three sons, of whom Ivan Ilyich was the second. The eldest

son was following in his father‟s footsteps only in another department,

and was already approaching that stage in the service at which a similar

sinecure would be reached. The third son was a failure. He had ruined his

prospects in a number of positions and was not serving in the railway

department. His father and brothers, and still more their wives, not

merely disliked meeting him, but avoided remembering his existence

unless compelled to do so. His sister had married Baron Greff, a

Petersburg official of her father‟s type. Ivan Ilyich was le phenix de la

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15

famille as people said. He was neither as cold and formal as his elder

brother nor as wild as the younger, but was a happy mean between

them—an intelligent polished, lively and agreeable man. He had studied

with his younger brother at the School of Law, but the latter had failed to

complete the course and was expelled when he was in the fifth class.

Ivan Ilyich finished the course well. Even when he was at the School of

Law he was just what he remained for the rest of his life: a capable,

cheerful, good-natured, and sociable man, though strict in the fulfillment

of what he considered to be his duty: and he considered his duty to be

what was so considered by those in authority. Neither as a boy nor as a

man was he a toady, but from early youth was by nature attracted to

people of high station as a fly is drawn to the light, assimilating their

ways and views of life and establishing friendly relations with them. All

the enthusiasms of childhood and youth passed without leaving much

trace on him; he succumbed to sensuality, to vanity, and latterly among

the highest classes to liberalism, but always within limits which his

instinct unfailingly indicated to him as correct.

At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him

very horrid and made him feel disgusted with himself when he did them;

but when later on he saw that such actions were done by people of good

position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not

exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not

be at all troubled at remembering them.

Having graduated from the School of Law and qualified for the tenth

rank of the civil service, and having received money from his father for

his equipment, Ivan Ilyich ordered himself clothes at Scharmer‟s, the

fashionable tailor, hung a medallion inscribed respice finem on his

watch-chain, took leave of his professor and the prince who was patron

of the school, had a farewell dinner with his comrades at Donon‟s first-

class restaurant, and with his new and fashionable portmanteau, linen,

clothes, shaving and other toilet appliances, and a travelling rug, all

purchased at the best shops, he set off for one of the provinces where

through his father‟s influence, he had been attached to the governor as an

official for special service.

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16

In the province Ivan Ilyich soon arranged as easy and agreeable a

position for himself as he had had at the School of Law. He performed

his official task, made his career, and at the same time amused himself

pleasantly and decorously. Occasionally he paid official visits to country

districts where he behaved with dignity both to his superiors and

inferiors, and performed the duties entrusted to him, which related

chiefly to the sectarians, with an exactness and incorruptible honesty of

which he could not but feel proud.

In official matters, despite his youth and taste for frivolous gaiety, he

was exceedingly reserved, punctilious, and even severe; but in society he

was often amusing and witty, and always good-natured, correct in his

manner, and bon enfant, as the governor and his wife—with whom he

was like one of the family—used to say of him.

In the province he had an affair with a lady who made advances to

the elegant young lawyer, and there was also a milliner; and there were

carousals with aides-de-camp who visited the district, and after-supper

visits to a certain outlying street of doubtful reputation; and there was too

some obsequiousness to his chief and even to his chief‟s wife, but all this

was done with such a tone of good breeding that no hard names could be

applied to it. It all came under the heading of the French saying: “Il faut

que jeunesse se passe.” It was all done with clean hands, in clean linen,

with French phrases, and above all among people of the best society and

consequently with the approval of people of rank.

So Ivan Ilyich served for five years and then came a change in his

official life. The new and reformed judicial institutions were introduced,

and new men were needed. Ivan Ilyich became such a new man. He was

offered the post of examining magistrate, and he accepted it though the

post was in another province and obliged him to give up the connections

he had formed and to make new ones. His friends met to give him a

send-off; they had a group photograph taken and presented him with a

silver cigarette-case, and he set off to his new post.

As examining magistrate Ivan Ilyich was just as comme il faut and

decorous a man, inspiring general respect and capable of separating his

official duties from his private life, as he had been when acting as an

official on special service. His duties now as examining magistrate were

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17

far more interesting and attractive than before. In his former position it

had been pleasant to wear an undress uniform made by Scharmer, and to

pass through the crowd of petitioners and officials who were timorously

awaiting an audience with the governor, and who envied him as with free

and easy gait he went straight into his chief‟s private room to have a cup

of tea and a cigarette with him.

But not many people had then been directly dependent on him—only

police officials and the sectarians when he went on special missions—

and he liked to treat them politely, almost as comrades, as if he were

letting them feel that he who had the power to crush them was treating

them in this simple, friendly way. There were then but few such people.

But now, as an examining magistrate, Ivan Ilyich felt that everyone

without exception, even the most important and self-satisfied, was in his

power, and that he need only write a few words on a sheet of paper with

a certain heading, and this or that important, self-satisfied person would

be brought before him in the role of an accused person or a witness, and

if he did not choose to allow him to sit down, would have to stand before

him and answer his questions. Ivan Ilyich never abused his power; he

tried on the contrary to soften its expression, but the consciousness of it

and the possibility of softening its effect, supplied the chief interest and

attraction of his office. In his work itself, especially in his examinations,

he very soon acquired a method of eliminating all considerations

irrelevant to the legal aspect of the case, and reducing even the most

complicated case to a form in which it would be presented on paper only

in its externals, completely excluding his personal opinion of the matter,

while above all observing every prescribed formality. The work was new

and Ivan Ilyich was one of the first men to apply the new Code of 1864.

On taking up the post of examining magistrate in a new town, he

made new acquaintances and connections, placed himself on a new

footing and assumed a somewhat different tone. He took up an attitude of

rather dignified aloofness towards the provincial authorities, but picked

out the best circle of legal gentlemen and wealthy gentry living in the

town and assumed a tone of slight dissatisfaction with the government, of

moderate liberalism, and of enlightened citizenship. At the same time,

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18

without at all altering the elegance of his toilet, he ceased shaving his

chin and allowed his beard to grow as it pleased.

Ivan Ilyich settled down very pleasantly in this new town. The

society there, which inclined towards opposition to the governor was

friendly, his salary was larger, and he began to play vint [a form of

bridge], which he found added not a little to the pleasure of life, for he

had a capacity for cards, played good-humouredly, and calculated rapidly

and astutely, so that he usually won.

After living there for two years he met his future wife, Praskovya

Fedorovna Mikhel, who was the most attractive, clever, and brilliant girl

of the set in which he moved, and among other amusements and

relaxations from his labours as examining magistrate, Ivan Ilyich

established light and playful relations with her.

While he had been an official on special service he had been

accustomed to dance, but now as an examining magistrate it was

exceptional for him to do so. If he danced now, he did it as if to show

that though he served under the reformed order of things, and had

reached the fifth official rank, yet when it came to dancing he could do it

better than most people. So at the end of an evening he sometimes

danced with Praskovya Fedorovna, and it was chiefly during these

dances that he captivated her. She fell in love with him. Ivan Ilyich had

at first no definite intention of marrying, but when the girl fell in love

with him he said to himself: “Really, why shouldn‟t I marry?”

Praskovya Fedorovna came of a good family, was not bad looking,

and had some little property. Ivan Ilyich might have aspired to a more

brilliant match, but even this was good. He had his salary, and she, he

hoped, would have an equal income. She was well connected, and was a

sweet, pretty, and thoroughly correct young woman. To say that Ivan

Ilyich married because he fell in love with Praskovya Fedorovna and

found that she sympathized with his views of life would be as incorrect

as to say that he married because his social circle approved of the match.

He was swayed by both these considerations: the marriage gave him

personal satisfaction, and at the same time it was considered the right

thing by the most highly placed of his associates.

So Ivan Ilyich got married.

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The preparations for marriage and the beginning of married life, with

its conjugal caresses, the new furniture, new crockery, and new linen,

were very pleasant until his wife became pregnant—so that Ivan Ilyich

had begun to think that marriage would not impair the easy, agreeable,

gay and always decorous character of his life, approved of by society and

regarded by himself as natural, but would even improve it. But from the

first months of his wife‟s pregnancy, something new, unpleasant,

depressing, and unseemly, and from which there was no way of escape,

unexpectedly showed itself.

His wife, without any reason—de gaiete de coeur as Ivan Ilyich

expressed it to himself—began to disturb the pleasure and propriety of

their life. She began to be jealous without any cause, expected him to

devote his whole attention to her, found fault with everything, and made

coarse and ill-mannered scenes.

At first Ivan Ilyich hoped to escape from the unpleasantness of this

state of affairs by the same easy and decorous relation to life that had

served him heretofore: he tried to ignore his wife‟s disagreeable moods,

continued to live in his usual easy and pleasant way, invited friends to his

house for a game of cards, and also tried going out to his club or

spending his evenings with friends. But one day his wife began

upbraiding him so vigorously, using such coarse words, and continued to

abuse him every time he did not fulfill her demands, so resolutely and

with such evident determination not to give way till he submitted—that

is, until he stayed at home and was bored just as she was—that he

became alarmed. He now realized that matrimony—at any rate with

Praskovya Fedorovna—was not always conducive to the pleasures and

amenities of life, but on the contrary often infringed both comfort and

propriety, and that he must therefore entrench himself against such

infringement. And Ivan Ilyich began to seek for means of doing so. His

official duties were the one thing that imposed upon Praskovya

Fedorovna, and by means of his official work and the duties attached to it

he began struggling with his wife to secure his own independence.

With the birth of their child, the attempts to feed it and the various

failures in doing so, and with the real and imaginary illnesses of mother

and child, in which Ivan Ilyich‟s sympathy was demanded but about

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20

which he understood nothing, the need of securing for himself an

existence outside his family life became still more imperative.

As his wife grew more irritable and exacting and Ivan Ilyich

transferred the center of gravity of his life more and more to his official

work, so did he grow to like his work better and became more ambitious

than before.

Very soon, within a year of his wedding, Ivan Ilyich had realized that

marriage, though it may add some comforts to life, is in fact a very

intricate and difficult affair towards which in order to perform one‟s

duty, that is, to lead a decorous life approved of by society, one must

adopt a definite attitude just as towards one‟s official duties.

And Ivan Ilyich evolved such an attitude towards married life. He

only required of it those conveniences—dinner at home, housewife, and

bed—which it could give him, and above all that propriety of external

forms required by public opinion. For the rest he looked for lighthearted

pleasure and propriety, and was very thankful when he found them, but if

he met with antagonism and querulousness he at once retired into his

separate fenced-off world of official duties, where he found satisfaction.

Ivan Ilyich was esteemed a good official, and after three years was

made Assistant Public Prosecutor. His new duties, their importance, the

possibility of indicting and imprisoning anyone he chose, the publicity

his speeches received, and the success he had in all these things, made

his work still more attractive.

More children came. His wife became more and more querulous and

ill-tempered, but the attitude Ivan Ilyich had adopted towards his home

life rendered him almost impervious to her grumbling.

After seven years‟ service in that town he was transferred to another

province as Public Prosecutor. They moved, but were short of money and

his wife did not like the place they moved to. Though the salary was

higher the cost of living was greater, besides which two of their children

died and family life became still more unpleasant for him.

Praskovya Fedorovna blamed her husband for every inconvenience

they encountered in their new home. Most of the conversations between

husband and wife, especially as to the children‟s education, led to topics

which recalled former disputes, and these disputes were apt to flare up

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21

again at any moment. There remained only those rare periods of

amorousness which still came to them at times but did not last long.

These were islets at which they anchored for a while and then again set

out upon that ocean of veiled hostility which showed itself in their

aloofness from one another. This aloofness might have grieved Ivan

Ilyich had he considered that it ought not to exist, but he now regarded

the position as normal, and even made it the goal at which he aimed in

family life. His aim was to free himself more and more from those

unpleasantness and to give them a semblance of harmlessness and

propriety. He attained this by spending less and less time with his family,

and when obliged to be at home he tried to safeguard his position by the

presence of outsiders. The chief thing however was that he had his

official duties. The whole interest of his life now centered in the official

world and that interest absorbed him. The consciousness of his power,

being able to ruin anybody he wished to ruin, the importance, even the

external dignity of his entry into court, or meetings with his subordinates,

his success with superiors and inferiors, and above all his masterly

handling of cases, of which he was conscious—all this gave him pleasure

and filled his life, together with chats with his colleagues, dinners, and

bridge. So that on the whole Ivan Ilyich‟s life continued to flow as he

considered it should do—pleasantly and properly.

So things continued for another seven years. His eldest daughter was

already sixteen, another child had died, and only one son was left, a

schoolboy and a subject of dissension. Ivan Ilyich wanted to put him in

the School of Law, but to spite him Praskovya Fedorovna entered him at

the High School. The daughter had been educated at home and had

turned out well: the boy did not learn badly either.

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22

Chapter III

SO Ivan Ilyich lived for seventeen years after his marriage. He was

already a Public Prosecutor of long standing, and had declined several

proposed transfers while awaiting a more desirable post, when an

unanticipated and unpleasant occurrence quite upset the peaceful course

of his life. He was expecting to be offered the post of presiding judge in a

University town, but Happe somehow came to the front and obtained the

appointment instead. Ivan Ilyich became irritable, reproached Happe, and

quarreled both with him and with his immediate superiors—who became

colder to him and again passed him over when other appointments were

made.

This was in 1880, the hardest year of Ivan Ilyich‟s life. It was then

that it became evident on the one hand that his salary was insufficient for

them to live on, and on the other that he had been forgotten, and not only

this, but that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice

appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence. Even his father did not

consider it his duty to help him. Ivan Ilyich felt himself abandoned by

everyone, and that they regarded his position with a salary of 3,500

rubles as quite normal and even fortunate. He alone knew that with the

consciousness of the injustices done him, with his wife‟s incessant

nagging, and with the debts he had contracted by living beyond his

means, his position was far from normal.

In order to save money that summer he obtained leave of absence

and went with his wife to live in the country at her brother‟s place.

In the country, without his work, he experienced ennui for the first

time in his life, and not only ennui but intolerable depression, and he

decided that it was impossible to go on living like that, and that it was

necessary to take energetic measures.

Having passed a sleepless night pacing up and down the veranda, he

decided to go to Petersburg and bestir himself, in order to punish those

who had failed to appreciate him and to get transferred to another

ministry.

Next day, despite many protests from his wife and her brother, he

started for Petersburg with the sole object of obtaining a post with a

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23

salary of five thousand rubles a year. He was no longer bent on any

particular department, or tendency, or kind of activity. All he now

wanted was an appointment to another post with a salary of five thousand

rubles, either in the administration, in the banks, with the railways in one

of the Empress Marya‟s Institutions, or even in the customs—but it had

to carry with it a salary of five thousand rubles and be in a ministry other

than that in which they had failed to appreciate him.

And this quest of Ivan Ilyich‟s was crowned with remarkable and

unexpected success. At Kursk an acquaintance of his, F. I. Ilyin, got into

the first-class carriage, sat down beside Ivan Ilyich, and told him of a

telegram just received by the governor of Kursk announcing that a

change was about to take place in the ministry: Peter Ivanovich was to be

superseded by Ivan Semonovich.

The proposed change, apart from its significance for Russia, had a

special significance for Ivan Ilyich, because by bringing forward a new

man, Peter Petrovich, and consequently his friend Zachar Ivanovich, it

was highly favourable for Ivan Ilyich, since Sachar Ivanovich was a

friend and colleague of his.

In Moscow this news was confirmed, and on reaching Petersburg

Ivan Ilyich found Zachar Ivanovich and received a definite promise of an

appointment in his former Department of Justice.

A week later he telegraphed to his wife: “Zachar in Miller‟s place. I

shall receive appointment on presentation of report.”

Thanks to this change of personnel, Ivan Ilyich had unexpectedly

obtained an appointment in his former ministry which placed him two

states above his former colleagues besides giving him five thousand

rubles salary and three thousand five hundred rubles for expenses

connected with his removal. All his ill humour towards his former

enemies and the whole department vanished, and Ivan Ilyich was

completely happy.

He returned to the country more cheerful and contented than he had

been for a long time. Praskovya Fedorovna also cheered up and a truce

was arranged between them. Ivan Ilyich told of how he had been feted by

everybody in Petersburg, how all those who had been his enemies were

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24

put to shame and now fawned on him, how envious they were of his

appointment, and how much everybody in Petersburg had liked him.

Praskovya Fedorovna listened to all this and appeared to believe it.

She did not contradict anything, but only made plans for their life in the

town to which they were going. Ivan Ilyich saw with delight that these

plans were his plans, that he and his wife agreed, and that, after a

stumble, his life was regaining its due and natural character of pleasant

lightheartedness and decorum.

Ivan Ilyich had come back for a short time only, for he had to take up

his new duties on the 10th of September. Moreover, he needed time to

settle into the new place, to move all his belongings from the province,

and to buy and order many additional things: in a word, to make such

arrangements as he had resolved on, which were almost exactly what

Praskovya Fedorovna too had decided on.

Now that everything had happened so fortunately, and that he and his

wife were at one in their aims and moreover saw so little of one another,

they got on together better than they had done since the first years of

marriage. Ivan Ilyich had thought of taking his family away with him at

once, but the insistence of his wife‟s brother and her sister-in-law, who

had suddenly become particularly amiable and friendly to him and his

family, induced him to depart alone.

So he departed, and the cheerful state of mind induced by his success

and by the harmony between his wife and himself, the one intensifying

the other, did not leave him. He found a delightful house, just the thing

both he and his wife had dreamt of. Spacious, lofty reception rooms in

the old style, a convenient and dignified study, rooms for his wife and

daughter, a study for his son—it might have been specially built for

them. Ivan Ilyich himself superintended the arrangements, chose the

wallpapers, supplemented the furniture (preferably with antiques which

he considered particularly comme il faut), and supervised the upholstering.

Everything progressed and progressed and approached the ideal he had

set himself: even when things were only half completed they exceeded

his expectations. He saw what a refined and elegant character, free from

vulgarity, it would all have when it was ready. On falling asleep he

pictured to himself how the reception room would look. Looking at the

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25

yet unfinished drawing room he could see the fireplace, the screen, the

what-not, the little chairs dotted here and there, the dishes and plates on

the walls, and the bronzes, as they would be when everything was in

place. He was pleased by the thought of how his wife and daughter, who

shared his taste n this matter, would be impressed by it.

They were certainly not expecting as much. He had been particularly

successful in finding, and buying cheaply, antiques which gave a

particularly aristocratic character to the whole place. But in his letters he

intentionally understated everything in order to be able to surprise them.

All this so absorbed him that his new duties—though he liked his official

work—interested him less than he had expected. Sometimes he even had

moments of absent-mindedness during the court sessions and would

consider whether he should have straight or curved cornices for his

curtains. He was so interested in it all that he often did things himself,

rearranging the furniture, or rehanging the curtains. Once when mounting

a step-ladder to show the upholsterer, who did not understand, how he

wanted the hangings draped, he made a false step and slipped, but being

a strong and agile man he clung on and only knocked his side against the

knob of the window frame. The bruised place was painful but the pain

soon passed, and he felt particularly bright and well just then. He wrote:

“I feel fifteen years younger.” He thought he would have everything

ready by September, but it dragged on till mid-October. But the result

was charming not only in his eyes but to everyone who saw it.

In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of

moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in

resembling others like themselves: there are damasks, dark wood, plants,

rugs, and dull and polished bronzes—all the things people of a certain

class have in order to resemble other people of that class. His house was

so like the others that it would never have been noticed, but to him it all

seemed to be quite exceptional. He was very happy when he met his

family at the station and brought them to the newly furnished house all lit

up, where a footman in a white tie opened the door into the hall

decorated with plants, and when they went on into the drawing-room and

the study uttering exclamations of delight. He conducted them every-

where, drank in their praises eagerly, and beamed with pleasure. At tea

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26

that evening, when Praskovya Fedorovna among others things asked him

about his fall, he laughed, and showed them how he had gone flying and

had frightened the upholsterer.

“It‟s a good thing I‟m a bit of an athlete. Another man might have

been killed, but I merely knocked myself, just here; it hurts when it‟s

touched, but it‟s passing off already—it‟s only a bruise.”

So they began living in their new home—in which, as always

happens, when they got thoroughly settled in they found they were just

one room short—and with the increased income, which as always was

just a little (some five hundred rubles) too little, but it was all very nice.

Things went particularly well at first, before everything was finally

arranged and while something had still to be done: this thing bought, that

thing ordered, another thing moved, and something else adjusted.

Though there were some disputes between husband and wife, they were

both so well satisfied and had so much to do that it all passed off without

any serious quarrels. When nothing was left to arrange it became rather

dull and something seemed to be lacking, but they were then making

acquaintances, forming habits, and life was growing fuller.

Ivan Ilyich spent his mornings at the law court and came home to

diner, and at first he was generally in a good humour, though he

occasionally became irritable just on account of his house. (Every spot

on the tablecloth or the upholstery, and every broken window-blind

string, irritated him. He had devoted so much trouble to arranging it all

that every disturbance of it distressed him.) But on the whole his life ran

its course as he believed life should do: easily, pleasantly, and decorously.

He got up at nine, drank his coffee, read the paper, and then put on

his undress uniform and went to the law courts. There the harness in

which he worked had already been stretched to fit him and he donned it

without a hitch: petitioners, inquiries at the chancery, the chancery itself,

and the sittings public and administrative. In all this the thing was to

exclude everything fresh and vital, which always disturbs the regular

course of official business, and to admit only official relations with

people, and then only on official grounds. A man would come, for

instance, wanting some information. Ivan Ilyich, as one in whose sphere

the matter did not lie, would have nothing to do with him: but if the man

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27

had some business with him in his official capacity, something that could

be expressed on officially stamped paper, he would do everything,

positively everything he could within the limits of such relations, and in

doing so would maintain the semblance of friendly human relations, that

is, would observe the courtesies of life.

As soon as the official relations ended, so did everything else. Ivan

Ilyich possessed this capacity to separate his real life from the official

side of affairs and not mix the two, in the highest degree, and by long

practice and natural aptitude had brought it to such a pitch that some-

times, in the manner of a virtuoso, he would even allow himself to let the

human and official relations mingle. He let himself do this just because

he felt that he could at any time he chose resume the strictly official

attitude again and drop the human relation. And he did it all easily,

pleasantly, correctly, and even artistically. In the intervals between the

sessions he smoked, drank tea, chatted a little about politics, a little about

general topics, a little about cards, but most of all about official

appointments.

Tired, but with the feelings of a virtuoso—one of the first violins

who has played his part in an orchestra with precision—he would return

home to find that his wife and daughter had been out paying calls, or had

a visitor, and that his son had been to school, had done his homework

with his tutor, and was surely learning what is taught at High Schools.

Everything was as it should be. After dinner, if they had no visitors, Ivan

Ilyich sometimes read a book that was being much discussed at the time,

and in the evening settled down to work, that is, read official papers,

compared the depositions of witnesses, and noted paragraphs of the Code

applying to them. This was neither dull nor amusing. It was dull when he

might have been playing bridge, but if no bridge was available it was at

any rate better than doing nothing or sitting with his wife. Ivan Ilyich‟s

chief pleasure was giving little dinners to which he invited men and

women of good social position, and just as his drawing-room resembled

all other drawing-rooms so did his enjoyable little parties resemble all

other such parties.

Once they even gave a dance. Ivan Ilyich enjoyed it and everything

went off well, except that it led to a violent quarrel with his wife about

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28

the cakes and sweets. Praskovya Fedorovna had made her own plans, but

Ivan Ilyich insisted on getting everything from an expensive confectioner

and ordered too many cakes, and the quarrel occurred because some of

those cakes were left over and the confectioner‟s bill came to forty-five

rubles. It was a great and disagreeable quarrel. Praskovya Fedorovna

called him “a fool and an imbecile,” and he clutched at his head and

made angry allusions to divorce.

But the dance itself had been enjoyable. The best people were there,

and Ivan Ilyich had danced with Princess Trufonova, a sister of the

distinguished founder of the Society “Bear My Burden”.

The pleasures connected with his work were pleasures of ambition;

his social pleasures were those of vanity; but Ivan Ilyich‟s greatest

pleasure was playing bridge. He acknowledged that whatever disagreeable

incident happened in his life, the pleasure that beamed like a ray of light

above everything else was to sit down to bridge with good players, not

noisy partners, and of course to four-handed bridge (with five players it

was annoying to have to stand out, though one pretended not to mind), to

play a clever and serious game (when the cards allowed it) and then to

have supper and drink a glass of wine. after a game of bridge, especially

if he had won a little (to win a large sum was unpleasant), Ivan Ilyich

went to bed in a specially good humour.

So they lived. They formed a circle of acquaintances among the best

people and were visited by people of importance and by young folk. In

their views as to their acquaintances, husband, wife and daughter were

entirely agreed, and tacitly and unanimously kept at arm‟s length and

shook off the various shabby friends and relations who, with much show

of affection, gushed into the drawing-room with its Japanese plates on

the walls. Soon these shabby friends ceased to obtrude themselves and

only the best people remained in the Golovins‟ set.

Young men made up to Lisa, and Petrishchev, an examining

magistrate and Dmitri Ivanovich Petrishchev‟s son and sole heir, began

to be so attentive to her that Ivan Ilyich had already spoken to Praskovya

Fedorovna about it, and considered whether they should not arrange a

party for them, or get up some private theatricals.

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29

So they lived, and all went well, without change, and life flowed

pleasantly.

Chapter IV

THEY were all in good health. It could not be called ill health if Ivan

Ilyich sometimes said that he had a queer taste in his mouth and felt

some discomfort in his left side.

But this discomfort increased and, though not exactly painful, grew

into a sense of pressure in his side accompanied by ill humour. And his

irritability became worse and worse and began to mar the agreeable,

easy, and correct life that had established itself in the Golovin family.

Quarrels between husband and wife became more and more frequent,

and soon the ease and amenity disappeared and even the decorum was

barely maintained. Scenes again became frequent, and very few of those

islets remained on which husband and wife could meet without an

explosion. Praskovya Fedorovna now had good reason to say that her

husband‟s temper was trying. With characteristic exaggeration she said

he had always had a dreadful temper, and that it had needed all her good

nature to put up with it for twenty years. It was true that now the quarrels

were started by him. His bursts of temper always came just before

dinner, often just as he began to eat his soup. Sometimes he noticed that

a plate or dish was chipped, or the food was not right, or his son put his

elbow on the table, or his daughter‟s hair was not done as he liked it, and

for all this he blamed Praskovya Fedorovna.

At first she retorted and said disagreeable things to him, but once or

twice he fell into such a rage at the beginning of dinner that she realized

it was due to some physical derangement brought on by taking food, and

so she restrained herself and did not answer, but only hurried to get the

dinner over. She regarded this self-restraint as highly praiseworthy.

Having come to the conclusion that her husband had a dreadful temper

and made her life miserable, she began to feel sorry for herself, and the

more she pitied herself the more she hated her husband. She began to

wish he would die; yet she did not want him to die because then his

salary would cease. And this irritated her against him still more. She

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30

considered herself dreadfully unhappy just because not even his death

could save her, and though she concealed her exasperation, that hidden

exasperation of hers increased his irritation also.

After one scene in which Ivan Ilyich had been particularly unfair and

after which he had said in explanation that he certainly was irritable but

that it was due to his not being well, she said that he was ill it should be

attended to, and insisted on his going to see a celebrated doctor.

He went. Everything took place as he had expected and as it always

does. There was the usual waiting and the important air assumed by the

doctor, with which he was so familiar (resembling that which he himself

assumed in court), and the sounding and listening, and the questions

which called for answers that were foregone conclusions and were

evidently unnecessary, and the look of importance which implied that “if

only you put yourself in our hands we will arrange everything—we know

indubitably how it has to be done, always in the same way for everybody

alike.” It was all just as it was in the law courts. The doctor put on just

the same air towards him as he himself put on towards an accused

person.

The doctor said that so-and-so indicated that there was so-and-so

inside the patient, but if the investigation of so-and-so did not confirm

this, then he must assume that and that. If he assumed that and that, then .

. . and so on. To Ivan Ilyich only one question was important: was his

case serious or not? But the doctor ignored that inappropriate question.

From his point of view it was not the one under consideration, the real

question was to decide between a floating kidney, chronic catarrh, or

appendicitis. It was not a question the doctor solved brilliantly, as it

seemed to Ivan Ilyich, in favour of the appendix, with the reservation that

should an examination of the urine give fresh indications the matter

would be reconsidered. All this was just what Ivan Ilyich had himself

brilliantly accomplished a thousand times in dealing with men on trial.

The doctor summed up just as brilliantly, looking over his spectacles

triumphantly and even gaily at the accused. From the doctor‟s summing

up Ivan Ilyich concluded that things were bad, but that for the doctor,

and perhaps for everybody else, it was a matter of indifference, though

for him it was bad. And this conclusion struck him painfully, arousing in

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31

him a great feeling of pity for himself and of bitterness towards the

doctor‟s indifference to a matter of such importance.

He said nothing of this, but rose, placed the doctor‟s fee on the table,

and remarked with a sigh: “We sick people probably often put

inappropriate questions. But tell me, in general, is this complaint

dangerous, or not? . . .”

The doctor looked at him sternly over his spectacles with one eye, as

if to say: “Prisoner, if you will not keep to the questions put to you, I

shall be obliged to have you removed from the court.”

“I have already told you what I consider necessary and proper. The

analysis may show something more.” And the doctor bowed.

Ivan Ilyich went out slowly, seated himself disconsolately in his

sledge, and drove home. All the way home he was going over what the

doctor had said, trying to translate those complicated, obscure, scientific

phrases into plain language and find in them an answer to the question:

“Is my condition bad? Is it very bad? Or is there as yet nothing much

wrong?” And it seemed to him that the meaning of what the doctor had

said was that it was very bad. Everything in the streets seemed

depressing. The cabmen, the houses, the passers-by, and the shops, were

dismal. His ache, this dull gnawing ache that never ceased for a moment,

seemed to have acquired a new and more serious significance from the

doctor‟s dubious remarks. Ivan Ilyich now watched it with a new and

oppressive feeling.

He reached home and began to tell his wife about it. She listened, but

in the middle of his account his daughter came in with her hat on, ready

to go out with her mother. She sat down reluctantly to listen to this

tedious story, but could not stand it long, and her mother too did not hear

him to the end.

“Well, I am very glad,” she said. “Mind now to take your medicine

regularly. Give me the prescription and I‟ll send Gerasim to the

chemist‟s.” And she went to get ready to go out.

While she was in the room Ivan Ilyich had hardly taken time to

breathe, but he sighed deeply when she left it.

“Well,” he thought, “perhaps it isn‟t so bad after all.”

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32

He began taking his medicine and following the doctor‟s directions,

which had been altered after the examination of the urine. but then it

happened that there was a contradiction between the indications drawn

from the examination of the urine and the symptoms that showed

themselves. It turned out that what was happening differed from what the

doctor had told him, and that he had either forgotten or blundered, or

hidden something from him. He could not, however, be blamed for that,

and Ivan Ilyich still obeyed his orders implicitly and at first derived some

comfort from doing so.

From the time of his visit to the doctor, Ivan Ilyich‟s chief

occupation was the exact fulfillment of the doctor‟s instructions

regarding hygiene and the taking of medicine, and the observation of his

pain and his excretions. His chief interest came to be people‟s ailments

and people‟s health. When sickness, deaths, or recoveries were

mentioned in his presence, especially when the illness resembled his

own, he listened with agitation which he tried to hide, asked questions,

and applied what he heard to his own case.

The pain did not grow less, but Ivan Ilyich made efforts to force

himself to think that he was better. And he could do this so long as

nothing agitated him. But as soon as he had any unpleasantness with his

wife, any lack of success in his official work, or held bad cards at bridge,

he was at once acutely sensible of his disease. He had formerly borne

such mischances, hoping soon to adjust what was wrong, to master it and

attain success, or make a grand slam. But now every mischance upset

him and plunged him into despair. He would say to himself: “there now,

just as I was beginning to get better and the medicine had begun to take

effect, comes this accursed misfortune, or unpleasantness . . .” And he

was furious with the mishap, or with the people who were causing the

unpleasantness and killing him, for he felt that this fury was killing him

but he could not restrain it. One would have thought that it should have

been clear to him that this exasperation with circumstances and people

aggravated his illness, and that he ought therefore to ignore unpleasant

occurrences. But he drew the very opposite conclusion: he said that he

needed peace, and he watched for everything that might disturb it and

became irritable at the slightest infringement of it.

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33

His condition was rendered worse by the fact that he read medical

books and consulted doctors. The progress of his disease was so gradual

that he could deceive himself when comparing one day with another—

the difference was so slight. But when he consulted the doctors it seemed

to him that he was getting worse, and even very rapidly. Yet despite this

he was continually consulting them.

That month he went to see another celebrity, who told him almost the

same as the first had done but put his questions rather differently, and the

interview with this celebrity only increased Ivan Ilyich‟s doubts and

fears.

A friend of a friend of his, a very good doctor, diagnosed his illness

again quite differently from the others, and though he predicted recovery,

his questions and suppositions bewildered Ivan Ilyich still more and

increased his doubts. A homeopathist diagnosed the disease in yet

another way, and prescribed medicine which Ivan Ilyich took secretly for

a week. But after a week, not feeling any improvement and having lost

confidence both in the former doctor‟s treatment and in this one‟s, he

became still more despondent. One day a lady acquaintance mentioned a

cure effected by a wonder-working icon. Ivan Ilyich caught himself

listening attentively and beginning to believe that it had occurred. This

incident alarmed him.

“Has my mind really weakened to such an extent?” he asked himself.

“Nonsense! It‟s all rubbish. I mustn‟t give way to nervous fears but

having chosen a doctor must keep strictly to his treatment. That is what I

will do. Now it‟s all settled. I won‟t think about it, but will follow the

treatment seriously till summer, and then we shall see. From now there

must be no more of this wavering!” this was easy to say but impossible

to carry out. The pain in his side oppressed him and seemed to grow

worse and more incessant, while the taste in his mouth grew stranger and

stranger. It seemed to him that his breath had a disgusting smell, and he

was conscious of a loss of appetite and strength. There was no deceiving

himself: something terrible, new, and more important than anything

before in his life, was taking place within him of which he alone was

aware. Those about him did not understand or would not understand it,

but thought everything in the world was going on as usual. That

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34

tormented Ivan Ilyich more than anything. He saw that his household,

especially his wife and daughter who were in a perfect whirl of visiting,

did not understand anything of it and were annoyed that he was so

depressed and so exacting, as if he were to blame for it. Though they

tried to disguise it he saw that he was an obstacle in their path, and that

his wife had adopted a definite line in regard to his illness and kept to it

regardless of anything he said or did. Her attitude was this: “You know,”

she would say to her friends, “Ivan Ilyich can‟t do as other people do,

and keep to the treatment prescribed for him. One day he‟ll take his

drops and keep strictly to his diet and go to bed in good time, but the

next day unless I watch him he‟ll suddenly forget his medicine, eat

sturgeon—which is forbidden—and sit up playing cards till one o‟clock

in the morning.”

“Oh, come, when was that?” Ivan Ilyich would ask in vexation.

“Only once at Peter Ivanovich‟s.”

“And yesterday with shebek.”

“Well, even if I hadn‟t stayed up, this pain would have kept me

awake.”

“Be that as it may you‟ll never get well like that, but will always

make us wretched.”

Praskovya Fedorovna‟s attitude to Ivan Ilyich‟s illness, as she

expressed it both to others and to him, was that it was his own fault and

was another of the annoyances he caused her. Ivan Ilyich felt that this

opinion escaped her involuntarily—but that did not make it easier for

him.

At the law courts too, Ivan Ilyich noticed, or thought he noticed, a

strange attitude towards himself. It sometimes seemed to him that people

were watching him inquisitively as a man whose place might soon be

vacant. Then again, his friends would suddenly begin to chaff him in a

friendly way about his low spirits, as if the awful, horrible, and unheard-

of thing that was going on within him, incessantly gnawing at him and

irresistibly drawing him away, was a very agreeable subject for jests.

Schwartz in particular irritated him by his jocularity, vivacity, and

savoir-faire, which reminded him of what he himself had been ten years

ago.

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35

Friends came to make up a set and they sat down to cards. They

dealt, bending the new cards to soften them, and he sorted the diamonds

in his hand and found he had seven. His partner said “No trumps” and

supported him with two diamonds. What more could be wished for? It

ought to be jolly and lively. They would make a grand slam. But suddenly

Ivan Ilyich was conscious of that gnawing pain, that taste in his mouth,

and it seemed ridiculous that in such circumstances he should be pleased

to make a grand slam.

He looked at his partner Mikhail Mikhaylovich, who rapped the table

with his strong hand and instead of snatching up the tricks pushed the

cards courteously and indulgently towards Ivan Ilyich that he might have

the pleasure of gathering them up without the trouble of stretching out

his hand for them. “Does he think I am too weak to stretch out my arm?”

thought Ivan Ilyich, and forgetting what he was doing he over-trumped

his partner, missing the grand slam by three tricks. And what was most

awful of all was that he saw how upset Mikhail Mikhaylovich was about

it but did not himself care. And it was dreadful to realize why he did not

care.

They all saw that he was suffering, and said: “We can stop if you are

tired. Take a rest.” Lie down? No, he was not at all tired, and he finished

the rubber. All were gloomy and silent. Ivan Ilyich felt that he had

diffused this gloom over them and could not dispel it. They had supper

and went away, and Ivan Ilyich was left alone with the consciousness

that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that

this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his

whole being.

With this consciousness, and with physical pain besides the terror, he

must go to bed, often to lie awake the greater part of the night. Next

morning he had to get up again, dress, go to the law courts, speak, and

write; or if he did not go out, spend at home those twenty-four hours a

day each of which was a torture. And he had to live thus all alone on the

brink of an abyss, with no one who understood or pitied him.

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36

Chapter V

SO one month passed and then another. Just before the New Year his

brother-in-law came to town and stayed at their house. Ivan Ilyich was at

the law courts and Praskovya Fedorovna had gone shopping. When Ivan

Ilyich came home and entered his study he found his brother-in-law

there—a healthy, florid man—unpacking his portmanteau himself. He

raised his head on hearing Ivan Ilyich‟s footsteps and looked up at him

for a moment without a word. That stare told Ivan Ilyich everything. His

brother-in-law opened his mouth to utter an exclamation of surprise but

checked himself, and that action confirmed it all.

“I have changed, eh?”

“Yes, there is a change.”

And after that, try as he would to get his brother-in-law to return to

the subject of his looks, the latter would say nothing about it. Praskovya

Fedorovna came home and her brother went out to her. Ivan Ilyich

locked to door and began to examine himself in the glass, first full face,

then in profile. He took up a portrait of himself taken with his wife, and

compared it with what he saw in the glass. The change in him was

immense. Then he bared his arms to the elbow, looked at them, drew the

sleeves down again, sat down on an ottoman, and grew blacker than

night.

“No, no, this won‟t do!” he said to himself, and jumped up, went to

the table, took up some law papers and began to read them, but could not

continue. He unlocked the door and went into the reception-room. The

door leading to the drawing-room was shut. He approached it on tiptoe

and listened.

“No, you are exaggerating!” Praskovya Fedorovna was saying.

“Exaggerating! Don‟t you see it? Why, he‟s a dead man! Look at his

eyes—there‟s no life in them. But what is it that is wrong with him?”

“No one knows. Nikolaevich [that was another doctor] said

something, but I don‟t know what. And Seshchetitsky [this was the

celebrated specialist] said quite the contrary . . .”

Ivan Ilyich walked away, went to his own room, lay down, and

began musing; “The kidney, a floating kidney.” He recalled all the

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37

doctors had told him of how it detached itself and swayed about. And by

an effort of imagination he tried to catch that kidney and arrest it and

support it. So little was needed for this, it seemed to him. “No, I‟ll go to

see Peter Ivanovich again.” [That was the friend whose friend was a

doctor.] He rang, ordered the carriage, and got ready to go.

“Where are you going, Jean?” asked his wife with a specially sad and

exceptionally kind look.

This exceptionally kind look irritated him. He looked morosely at

her.

“I must go to see Peter Ivanovich.”

He went to see Peter Ivanovich, and together they went to see his

friend, the doctor. He was in, and Ivan Ilyich had a long talk with him.

Reviewing the anatomical and physiological details of what in the

doctor‟s opinion was going on inside him, he understood it all.

There was something, a small thing, in the vermiform appendix. It

might all come right. Only stimulate the energy of one organ and check

the activity of another, then absorption would take place and everything

would come right. He got home rather late for dinner, ate his dinner, and

conversed cheerfully, but could not for a long time bring himself to go

back to work in his room. At last, however, he went to his study and did

what was necessary, but the consciousness that he had put something

aside—an important, intimate matter which he would revert to when his

work was done—never left him. When he had finished his work he

remembered that this intimate matter was the thought of his vermiform

appendix. But he did not give himself up to it, and went to the drawing-

room for tea. There were callers there, including the examining magistrate

who was a desirable match for his daughter, and they were conversing,

playing the piano, and singing.

Ivan Ilyich, as Praskovya Fedorovna remarked, spent that evening

more cheerfully than usual, but he never for a moment forgot that he had

postponed the important matter of the appendix. At eleven o‟clock he

said goodnight and went to his bedroom. Since his illness he had slept

alone in a small room next to his study. He undressed and took up a

novel by Zola, but instead of reading it he fell into thought, and in his

imagination that desired improvement in the vermiform appendix

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38

occurred. There was the absorption and evacuation and the re-

establishment of normal activity. “Yes, that‟s it!” he said to himself.

“One need only assist nature, that‟s all.” He remembered his medicine,

rose, took it, and lay down on his back watching for the beneficent action

of the medicine and for it to lessen the pain. “I need only take it regularly

and avoid all injurious influences. I am already feeling better, much

better.” He began touching his side: it was not painful to the touch.

“There, I really don‟t feel it. It‟s much better already.” He put out the

light and turned on his side . . . “The appendix is getting better,

absorption is occurring.” Suddenly he felt the old, familiar, dull, gnawing

pain, stubborn and serious. There was the same familiar loathsome taste

in his mouth. His heart sand and he felt dazed. “My God! My God!” he

muttered. “Again, again! And it will never cease.” And suddenly the

matter presented itself in a quite different aspect. “Vermiform appendix!

Kidney!” he said to himself. “It‟s not a question of appendix or kidney,

but of life and . . . death. Yes, life was there and now it is going, going

and I cannot stop it. Yes. Why deceive myself? Isn‟t it obvious to

everyone but me that I‟m dying, and that it‟s only a question of weeks,

days . . . it may happen this moment. There was light and now there is

darkness. I was here and now I‟m going there! Where?” A chill came

over him, his breathing ceased, and he felt only the throbbing of his

heart.

“When I am not, what will there be? There will be nothing. Then

where shall I be when I am no more? Can this be dying? No, I don‟t want

to!” He jumped up and tried to light the candle, felt for it with trembling

hands, dropped candle and candlestick on the floor, and fell back on his

pillow.

“What‟s the use? It makes no difference,” he said to himself, staring

with wide-open eyes into the darkness. “Death. Yes, death. And none of

them knows or wishes to know it, and they have no pity for me. Now

they are playing.” (He heard through the door the distant sound of a song

and its accompaniment.) “It‟s all the same to them, but they will die too!

Fools! I first, and they later, but it will be the same for them. And now

they are merry . . . the beasts!”

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39

Anger choked him and he was agonizingly, unbearably miserable. “It

is impossible that all men have been doomed to suffer this awful horror!”

He raised himself.

“Something must be wrong. I must calm myself—must think it all

over from the beginning.” And he again began thinking. “Yes, the

beginning of my illness: I knocked my side, but I was still quite well that

day and the next. It hurt a little, then rather more. I saw the doctors, then

followed despondency and anguish, more doctors, and I drew nearer to

the abyss. My strength grew less and I kept coming nearer and nearer,

and now I have wasted away and there is no light in my eyes. I think of

the appendix—but this is death! I think of mending the appendix, and all

the while here is death! Can it really be death?” Again terror seized him

and he gasped for breath. He leant down and began feeling for the

matches, pressing with his elbow on the stand beside the bed. It was in

his way and hurt him, he grew furious with it, pressed on it still harder,

and upset it. Breathless and in despair he fell on his back, expecting

death to come immediately.

Meanwhile the visitors were leaving. Praskovya Fedorovna was

seeing them off. She heard something fall and came in.

“What has happened?”

“Nothing. I knocked it over accidentally.”

She went out and returned with a candle. He lay there panting

heavily, like a man who has run a thousand yards, and stared upwards at

her with a fixed look.

“What is it, Jean?”

“No . . . o . . . thing. I upset it.” (“Why speak of it? She won‟t

understand,” he thought.)

And in truth she did not understand. She picked up the stand, lit his

candle, and hurried away to see another visitor off. When she came back

he still lay on his back, looking upwards.

“What is it? Do you feel worse?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head and sat down.

“Do you know, Jean, I think we must ask Leshchetitsky to come and

see you here.”

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40

This meant calling in the famous specialist, regardless of expense.

He smiled malignantly and said “No.” She remained a little longer and

then went up to him and kissed his forehead.

While she was kissing him he hated her from the bottom of his soul

and with difficulty refrained from pushing her away.

“Good night. Please God you‟ll sleep.”

“Yes.”

Chapter VI

Ivan Ilyich saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair.

In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he

not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.

The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter‟s Logic: “Caius is a

man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,” had always seemed to

him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself.

That Caius—man in the abstract—was mortal, was perfectly correct, but

he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate

from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa,

with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, after-

wards with Katenka and will all the joys, griefs, and delights of child-

hood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that

striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his

mother‟s hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius?

Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius

been in love like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? “Caius

really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little

Vanya, Ivan Ilyich, with all my thoughts and emotions, it‟s altogether a

different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too

terrible.”

Such was his feeling.

“If I had to die like Caius I would have known it was so. An inner

voice would have told me so, but there was nothing of the sort in me and

I and all my friends felt that our case was quite different from that of

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41

Caius. and now here it is!” he said to himself. “It can‟t be. It‟s

impossible! But here it is. How is this? How is one to understand it?”

He could not understand it, and tried to drive this false, incorrect,

morbid thought away and to replace it by other proper and healthy

thoughts. But that thought, and not the thought only but the reality itself,

seemed to come and confront him.

And to replace that thought he called up a succession of others,

hoping to find in them some support. He tried to get back into the former

current of thoughts that had once screened the thought of death from

him. But strange to say, all that had formerly shut off, hidden, and

destroyed his consciousness of death, no longer had that effect. Ivan

Ilyich now spent most of his time in attempting to re-establish that old

current. He would say to himself: “I will take up my duties again—after

all I used to live by them.” And banishing all doubts he would go to the

law courts, enter into conversation with his colleagues, and sit carelessly

as was his wont, scanning the crowd with a thoughtful look and leaning

both his emaciated arms on the arms of his oak chair; bending over as

usual to a colleague and drawing his papers nearer he would interchange

whispers with him, and then suddenly raising his eyes and sitting erect

would pronounce certain words and open the proceedings. But suddenly

in the midst of those proceedings the pain in his side, regardless of the

stage the proceedings had reached, would begin its own gnawing work.

Ivan Ilyich would turn his attention to it and try to drive the thought of it

away, but without success. It would come and stand before him and look

at him, and he would be petrified and the light would die out of his eyes,

and he would again begin asking himself whether it alone was true. And

his colleagues and subordinates would see with surprise and distress that

he, the brilliant and subtle judge, was becoming confused and making

mistakes. He would shake himself, try to pull himself together, manage

somehow to bring the sitting to a close, and return home with the

sorrowful consciousness that his judicial labours could not as formerly

hide from him what he wanted them to hide, and could not deliver him

from It. And what was worst of all was that It drew his attention to itself

not in order to make him take some action but only that he should look at

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42

It, look it straight in the face: look at it and without doing anything,

suffer inexpressibly.

And to save himself from this condition Ivan Ilyich looked for

consolations—new screens—and new screens were found and for a

while seemed to save him, but then they immediately fell to pieces or

rather became transparent, as if It penetrated them and nothing could veil

It.

In these latter days he would go into the drawing-room he had

arranged—that drawing-room where he had fallen and for the sake of

which (how bitterly ridiculous it seemed) he had sacrificed his life—for

he knew that his illness originated with that knock. He would enter and

see that something had scratched the polished table. He would look for

the cause of this and find that it was the bronze ornamentation of an

album, that had got bent. He would take up the expensive album which

he had lovingly arranged, and feel vexed with his daughter and her

friends for their untidiness—for the album was torn here and there and

some of the photographs turned upside down. He would put it carefully

in order and bend the ornamentation back into position. Then it would

occur to him to place all those things in another corner of the room, near

the plants. He would call the footman, but his daughter or wife would

come to help him. They would not agree, and his wife would contradict

him, and he would dispute and grow angry. But that was all right, for

then he did not think about It. It was invisible.

But then, when he was moving something himself, his wife would

say: “Let the servants do it. You will hurt yourself again.” And suddenly

it would flash through the screen and he would see it. It was just a flash,

and he hoped it would disappear, but he would involuntarily pay

attention to his side. “It sits there as before, gnawing just the same!” And

he could no longer forget It, but could distinctly see it looking at him

from behind the flowers. “What is it all for?”

“It really is so! I lost my life over that curtain as I might have done

when storming a fort. Is that possible? How terrible and how stupid. It

can‟t be true! It can‟t, but it is.”

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43

He would go to his study, lie down, and again be alone with It: face

to face with It. And nothing could be done with It except to look at it and

shudder.

Chapter VII

HOW it happened it is impossible to say because it came about step by

step, unnoticed, but in the third month of Ivan Ilyich‟s illness, his wife,

his daughter, his son, his acquaintances, the doctors, the servants, and

above all he himself, were aware that the whole interest he had for other

people was whether he would soon vacate his place, and at last release

the living from the discomfort caused by his presence and be himself

released from his sufferings.

He slept less and less. He was given opium and hypodermic injections

of morphine, but this did not relieve him. The dull depression he

experienced in a somnolent condition at first gave him a little relief, but

only as something new, afterwards it became as distressing as the pain

itself or even more so.

Special foods were prepared for him by the doctors‟ orders, but all

those foods became increasingly distasteful and disgusting to him.

For his excretions also special arrangements had to be made, and this

was a torment to him every time—a torment from the uncleanliness, the

unseemliness, and the smell, and from knowing that another person had

to take part in it.

But just through his most unpleasant matter, Ivan Ilyich obtained

comfort. Gerasim, the butler‟s young assistant, always came in to carry

the things out. Gerasim was a clean, fresh peasant lad, grown stout on

town food and always cheerful and bright. At first the sight of him, in his

clean Russian peasant costume, engaged on that disgusting task

embarrassed Ivan Ilyich.

Once when he got up from the commode too weak to draw up his

trousers, he dropped into a soft armchair and looked with horror at his

bare, enfeebled thighs with the muscles so sharply marked on them.

Gerasim with a firm light tread, his heavy boots emitting a pleasant

smell of tar and fresh winter air, came in wearing a clean Hessian apron,

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44

the sleeves of his print shirt tucked up over his strong bare young arms;

and refraining from looking at his sick master out of consideration for his

feelings, and restraining the joy of life that beamed from his face, he

went up to the commode.

“Gerasim!” said Ivan Ilyich in a weak voice.

“Gerasim started, evidently afraid he might have committed some

blunder, and with a rapid movement turned his fresh, kind, simple young

face which just showed the first downy signs of a beard.

“Yes, sir?”

“That must be very unpleasant for you. You must forgive me. I am

helpless.”

“Oh, why, sir,” and Gerasim‟s eyes beamed and he showed his

glistening white teeth, “what‟s a little trouble? It‟s a case of illness with

you, sir.”

And his deft strong hands did their accustomed task, and he went out

of the room stepping lightly. Five minutes later he as lightly returned.

Ivan Ilyich was still sitting in the same position in the armchair.

“Gerasim,” he said when the latter had replaced the freshly-washed

utensil. “Please come here and help me.” Gerasim went up to him. “Lift

me up. It is hard for me to get up, and I have sent Dmitri away.”

Gerasim went up to him, grasped his master with his strong arms

deftly but gently, in the same way that he stepped—lifted him, supported

him with one hand, and with the other drew up his trousers and would

have set him down again, but Ivan Ilyich asked to be led to the sofa.

Gerasim, without an effort and without apparent pressure, led him,

almost lifting him, to the sofa and placed him on it.

“That you. How easily and well you do it all!”

Gerasim smiled again and turned to leave the room. But Ivan Ilyich

felt his presence such a comfort that he did not want to let him go.

“One thing more, please move up that chair. No, the other one—

under my feet. It is easier for me when my feet are raised.”

Gerasim brought the chair, set it down gently in place, and raised

Ivan Ilyich‟s legs on it. It seemed to Ivan Ilyich that he felt better while

Gerasim was holding up his legs.

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45

“It‟s better when my legs are higher,” he said. “Place that cushion

under them.”

Gerasim did so. He again lifted the legs and placed them, and again

Ivan Ilyich felt better while Gerasim held his legs. When he set them

down Ivan Ilyich fancied he felt worse.

“Gerasim,” he said. “Are you busy now?”

“Not at all, sir,” said Gerasim, who had learnt from the townsfolk

how to speak to gentlefolk.

“What have you still to do?”

“What have I to do? I‟ve done everything except chopping the logs

for tomorrow.”

“Then hold my legs up a bit higher, can you?”

“Of course I can. Why not?” and Gerasim raised his master‟s legs

higher and Ivan Ilyich thought that in that position he did not feel any

pain at all.

“And how about the logs?”

“Don‟t trouble about that, sir. There‟s plenty of time.”

Ivan Ilyich told Gerasim to sit down and hold his legs, and began to

talk to him. And strange to say it seemed to him that he felt better while

Gerasim held his legs up.

After that Ivan Ilyich would sometimes call Gerasim and get him to

hold his legs on his shoulders, and he liked talking to him. Gerasim did it

all easily, willingly, simply, and with a good nature that touched Ivan

Ilyich. Health, strength, and vitality in other people were offensive to

him, but Gerasim‟s strength and vitality did not mortify but soothed him.

What tormented Ivan Ilyich most was the deception, the lie, which

for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply

ill, and the only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then

something very good would result. He however knew that do what they

would nothing would come of it, only still more agonizing suffering and

death. This deception tortured him—their not wishing to admit what they

all knew and what he knew, but wanting to lie to him concerning his

terrible condition, and wishing and forcing him to participate in that lie.

Those lies—lies enacted over him on the eve of his death and destined to

degrade this awful, solemn act to the level of their visitings, their

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46

curtains, their sturgeon for dinner—were a terrible agony for Ivan Ilyich.

And strangely enough, many times when they were going through their

antics over him he had been within a hairbreadth of calling out to them:

“Stop lying! You know and I know that I am dying. Then at least stop

lying about it!” But he had never had the spirit to do it. The awful,

terrible act of his dying was, he could see, reduced by those about him to

the level of a casual, unpleasant, and almost indecorous incident (as if

someone entered a drawing room defusing an unpleasant odour) and this

was done by that very decorum which he had served all his life long. He

saw that no one felt for him, because no one even wished to grasp his

position. Only Gerasim recognized it and pitied him.

And so Ivan Ilyich felt at ease only with him. He felt comforted

when Gerasim supported his legs (sometimes all night long) and refused

to go to bed, saying: “Don‟t you worry, Ivan Ilyich. I‟ll get sleep enough

later on,” or when he suddenly became familiar and exclaimed: “If you

weren‟t sick it would be another matter, but as it is, why should I grudge

a little trouble?” Gerasim alone did not lie; everything showed that he

alone understood the facts of the case and did not consider it necessary to

disguise them, but simply felt sorry for his emaciated and enfeebled

master.

Once when Ivan Ilyich was sending him away he even said straight

out: “We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?”—

expressing the fact that he did not think his work burdensome, because

he was doing it for a dying man and hoped someone would do the same

for him when his time came.

Apart from this lying, or because of it, what most tormented Ivan

Ilyich was that no one pitied him as he wished to be pitied. At certain

moments after prolonged suffering he wished most of all (though he

would have been ashamed to confess it) for someone to pity him as a sick

child is pitied. He longed to be petted and comforted. he knew he was an

important functionary, that he had a beard turning grey, and that

therefore what he long for was impossible, but still he longed for it. And

in Gerasim‟s attitude towards him there was something akin to what he

wished for, and so that attitude comforted him. Ivan Ilyich wanted to

weep, wanted to be petted and cried over, and then his colleague Shebek

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47

would come, and instead of weeping and being petted, Ivan Ilyich would

assume a serious, severe, and profound air, and by force of habit would

express his opinion on a decision of the Court of Cassation and would

stubbornly insist on that view. This falsity around him and within him

did more than anything else to poison his last days.

Chapter VIII

IT was morning. He knew it was morning because Gerasim had gone,

and Peter the footman had come and put out the candles, drawn back one

of the curtains, and begun quietly to tidy up. Whether it was morning or

evening, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, it was all just the same:

the gnawing, unmitigated, agonizing pain, never ceasing for an instant,

the consciousness of life inexorably waning but not yet extinguished, the

approach of that ever dreaded and hateful Death which was the only

reality, and always the same falsity. What were days, weeks, hours, in

such a case?

“Will you have some tea, sir?”

“He wants things to be regular, and wishes the gentlefolk to drink tea

in the morning,” thought Ivan Ilyich, and only said “No.”

“Wouldn‟t you like to move onto the sofa, sir?”

“He wants to tidy up the room, and I‟m in the way. I am

uncleanliness and disorder,” he thought, and said only:

“No, leave me alone.”

The man went on bustling about. Ivan Ilyich stretched out his hand.

Peter came up, ready to help.

“What is it, sir?”

“My watch.”

Peter took the watch which was close at hand and gave it to his

master.

“Half-past eight. Are they up?”

“No sir, except Vladimir Ivanovich” (the son) “who has gone to

school. Praskovya Fedorovna ordered me to wake her if you asked for

her. Shall I do so?”

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48

“No, there‟s no need to.” “Perhaps I‟s better have some tea,” he

thought, and added aloud: “Yes, bring me some tea.”

Peter went to the door, but Ivan Ilyich dreaded being left alone.

“How can I keep him here? Oh yes, my medicine.” “Peter, give me my

medicine.” “Why not? Perhaps it may still do some good.” He took a

spoonful and swallowed it. “No, it won‟t help. It‟s all tomfoolery, all

deception,” he decided as soon as he became aware of the familiar,

sickly, hopeless taste. “No, I can‟t believe in it any longer. But the pain,

why this pain? If it would only cease just for a moment!” And he

moaned. Peter turned towards him. “It‟s all right. Go and fetch me some

tea.”

Peter went out. Left alone Ivan Ilyich groaned not so much with

pain, terrible thought that was, as from mental anguish. Always and

forever the same, always these endless days and nights. If only it would

come quicker! If only what would come quicker? Death, darkness? . . .

No, no! anything rather than death!

When Peter returned with the tea on a tray, Ivan Ilyich stared at him

for a time in perplexity, not realizing who and what he was. Peter was

disconcerted by that look and his embarrassment brought Ivan Ilyich to

himself.

“Oh, tea! All right, put it down. Only help me to wash and put on a

clean shirt.”

And Ivan Ilyich began to wash. With pauses for rest, he washed his

hands and then his face, cleaned his teeth, brushed his hair, looked in the

glass. He was terrified by what he saw, especially by the limp way in

which his hair clung to his pallid forehead.

While his shirt was being changed he knew that he would be still

more frightened at the sight of his body, so he avoided looking at it.

Finally he was ready. He drew on a dressing-gown, wrapped himself in a

plaid, and sat down in the armchair to take his tea. For a moment he felt

refreshed, but as soon as he began to drink the tea he was again aware of

the same taste, and the pain also returned. He finished it with an effort,

and then lay down stretching out his legs, and dismissed Peter.

Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of

despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always

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49

the same. When alone he had a dreadful and distressing desire to call

someone, but he knew beforehand that with others present it would be

still worse. “Another dose of morphine—to lose consciousness. I will tell

him, the doctor, that he must think of something else. It‟s impossible,

impossible, to go on like this.”

An hour and another pass like that. But now there is a ring at the

door bell. Perhaps it‟s the doctor? It is. He comes in fresh, hearty, plump,

and cheerful, with that look on his face that seems to say: “There now,

you‟re in a panic about something, but we‟ll arrange it all for you

directly!” The doctor knows this expression is out of place here, but he

has put it on once for all and can‟t take it off—like a man who has put on

a frock-coat in the morning to pay a round of calls.

The doctor rubs his hands vigorously and reassuringly.

“Brr! How cold it is! There‟s such a sharp frost; just let me warm

myself!” he says, as if it were only a matter of waiting till he was warm,

and then he would put everything right.

“Well now, how are you?”

Ivan Ilyich feels that the doctor would like to say: “Well, how are

our affairs?” but that even he feels that this would not do, and says

instead:

“What sort of a night have you had?”

Ivan Ilyich looks at him as much as to say: “Are you really never

ashamed of lying?” But the doctor does not wish to understand this

question, and Ivan Ilyich says: “Just as terrible as ever. The pain never

leaves me and never subsides. If only something . . .”

“Yes, you sick people are always like that. . . . There, now I think I

am warm enough. Even Praskovya Fedorovna, who is so particular,

could find no fault with my temperature. Well, now I can say good-

morning,” and the doctor presses his patient‟s hand.

Then dropping his former playfulness, he begins with a most serious

face to examine the patient, feeling his pulse and taking his temperature,

and then begins the sounding and auscultation.

Ivan Ilyich knows quite well and definitely that all this is nonsense

and pure deception, but when the doctor, getting down on his knee, leans

over him, putting his ear first higher then lower, and performs various

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50

gymnastic movements over him with a significant expression on his face,

Ivan Ilyich submits to it all as he used to submit to the speeches of the

lawyers, though he knew very well that they were all lying and why they

were lying.

The doctor, kneeling on the sofa, is still sounding him when

Praskovya Fedorovna‟s silk dress rustles at the door and she is heard

scolding Peter for not having let her know of the doctor‟s arrival.

She comes in, kisses her husband, and at once proceeds to prove that

she has been up a long time already, and only owing to a mis-

understanding failed to be there when the doctor arrived.

Ivan Ilyich looks at her, scans her all over, sets against her the

whiteness and plumpness and cleanness of her hands and neck, the gloss

of her hair, and the sparkle of her vivacious eyes. He hates her with his

whole soul. And the thrill of hatred he feels for her makes him suffer

from her touch.

Her attitude towards him and his diseases is still the same. Just as the

doctor had adopted a certain relation to his patient which he could not

abandon, so had she formed one towards him—that he was not doing

something he ought to do and was himself to blame, and that she

reproached him lovingly for this—and she could not now change that

attitude.

“You see he doesn‟t listen to me and doesn‟t take his medicine at the

proper time. And above all he lies in a position that is no doubt bad for

him—with his legs up.”

She described how he made Gerasim hold his legs up.

The doctor smiled with a contemptuous affability that said: “What‟s

to be done? These sick people do have foolish fancies of that kind, but

we must forgive them.”

When the examination was over the doctor looked at his watch, and

then Praskovya Fedorovna announced to Ivan Ilyich that it was of course

as he pleased, but she had sent today for a celebrated specialist who

would examine him and have a consultation with Michael Danilovich

(their regular doctor).

“Please don‟t raise any objections. I am doing this for my own sake,”

she said ironically, letting it be felt that she was doing it all for his sake

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51

and only said this to leave him no right to refuse. He remained silent,

knitting his brows. He felt that he was surrounded and involved in a

mesh of falsity that it was hard to unravel anything.

Everything she did for him was entirely for her own sake, and she

told him she was doing for herself what she actually was doing for

herself, as if that was so incredible that he must understand the opposite.

At half-past eleven the celebrated specialist arrived. Again the

sounding began and the significant conversations in his presence and in

another room, about the kidneys and the appendix, and the questions and

answers, with such an air of importance that again, instead of the real

question of life and death which now alone confronted him, the question

arose of the kidney and appendix which were not behaving as they ought

to and would now be attached by Michael Danilovich and the specialist

and forced to amend their ways.

The celebrated specialist took leave of him with a serious though not

hopeless look, and in reply to the timid question Ivan Ilyich, with eyes

glistening with fear and hope, put to him as to whether there was a

chance of recovery, said that he could not vouch for it but there was a

possibility. The look of hope with which Ivan Ilyich watched the doctor

out was so pathetic that Praskovya Fedorovna, seeing it, even wept as she

left the room to hand the doctor his fee.

The gleam of hope kindled by the doctor‟s encouragement did not

last long. The same room, the same pictures, curtains, wall-paper,

medicine bottles, were all there, and the same aching suffering body, and

Ivan Ilyich began to moan. They gave him a subcutaneous injection and

he sank into oblivion.

It was twilight when he came to. They brought him his dinner and he

swallowed some beef tea with difficulty, and then everything was the

same again and night was coming on.

After dinner, at seven o‟clock, Praskovya Fedorovna came into the

room in evening dress, her full bosom pushed up by her corset, and with

traces of powder on her face. She had reminded him in the morning that

they were going to the theatre. Sarah Bernhardt was visiting the town and

they had a box, which he had insisted on their taking. Now he had

forgotten about it and her toilet offended him, but he concealed his

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52

vexation when he remembered that he had himself insisted on their

securing a box and going because it would be an instructive and aesthetic

pleasure for the children.

Praskovya Fedorovna came in, self-satisfied but yet with a rather

guilty air. She sat down and asked how he was, but, as he saw, only for

the sake of asking and not in order to learn about it, knowing that there

was nothing to learn—and then went on to what she really wanted to say:

that she would not on any account have gone but that the box had been

taken and Helen and their daughter were going, as well as Petrishchev

(the examining magistrate, their daughter‟s fiancé) and that it was out of

the question to let them go alone; but that she would have much

preferred to sit with him for a while; and he must be sure to follow the

doctor‟s orders while she was away.

“Oh, and Fedor Petrovich” (the fiancé) “would like to come in. May

he? And Lisa?”

“All right.”

Their daughter came in in full evening dress, her fresh young flesh

exposed (making a show of that very flesh which in his own case caused

so much suffering), strong, healthy, evidently in love, and impatient with

illness, suffering, and death, because they interfered with her happiness.

Fedor Petrovich came in too, in evening dress, his hair curled a la

Capoul, a tight stiff collar round his long sinewy neck, an enormous

white shirt-front and narrow black trousers tightly stretched over his

strong thighs. He had one white glove tightly drawn on, and was holding

his opera hat in his hand.

Following him the schoolboy crept in unnoticed, in a new uniform,

poor little fellow, and wearing gloves. Terribly dark shadows showed

under his eyes, the meaning of which Ivan Ilyich knew well.

His son had always seemed pathetic to him, and now it was dreadful

to see the boy‟s frightened look of pity. It seemed to Ivan Ilyich that

Vasya was the only one besides Gerasim who understood and pitied him.

They all sat down and again asked how he was. A silence followed.

Lisa asked her mother about the opera glasses, and there was an

altercation between mother and daughter as to who had taken them and

where they had been put. This occasioned some unpleasantness.

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53

Fedor Petrovich inquired of Ivan Ilyich whether he had ever seen

Sarah Bernhardt. Ivan Ilyich did not at first catch the question, but then

replied: “No, have you seen her before?”

“Yes, in Adrienne Lecouvreur.”

Praskovya Fedorovna mentioned some roles in which Sarah

Bernhardt was particularly good. Her daughter disagreed. Conversation

sprang up as to the elegance and realism of her acting—the sort of

conversation that is always repeated and is always the same.

In the midst of the conversation Fedor Petrovich glanced at Ivan

Ilyich and became silent. The others also looked at him and grew silent.

Ivan Ilyich was staring with glittering eyes straight before him, evidently

indignant with them. This had to be rectified, but it was impossible to do

so. The silence had to be broken, but for a time no one dared to break it

and they all became afraid that the conventional deception would

suddenly become obvious and the truth become plain to all. Lisa was the

first to pluck up courage and break that silence, but by trying to hide

what everybody was feeling, she betrayed it.

“Well, if we are going it‟s time to start,” she said, looking at her

watch, a present from her father, and with a faint and significant smile at

Fedor Petrovich relating to something known only to them. She got up

with a rustle of her dress.

They all rose, said good-night, and went away.

When they had gone it seemed to Ivan Ilyich that he felt better; the

falsity had gone with them. But the pain remained—that same pain and

that same fear that made everything monotonously alike, nothing harder

and nothing easier. Everything was worse.

Again minute followed minute and hour followed hour. Everything

remained the same and there was no cessation. And the inevitable end of

it all became more and more terrible.

“Yes, send Gerasim here,” he replied to a question Peter asked.

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54

Chapter IX

HIS wife returned late at night. She came in on tiptoe, but he heard her,

opened his eyes, and made haste to close them again. She wished to send

Gerasim away and to sit with him herself, but he opened his eyes and

said:

“No, go away.”

“Are you in great pain?”

“Always the same.”

“Take some opium.”

He agreed and took some. She went away.

Till about three in the morning he was in a state of stupefied misery.

It seemed to him that he and his pain were being thrust into a narrow,

deep black sack, but though they were pushed further and further in they

could not be pushed to the bottom. And this, terrible enough in itself, was

accompanied by suffering. He was frightened yet wanted to fall through

the sack, he struggled but yet co-operated. And suddenly he broke

through, fell, and regained consciousness. Gerasim was sitting at the foot

of the bed dozing quietly and patiently, while he himself lay with his

emaciated stockinged legs resting on Gerasim‟s shoulders; the same

shaded candle was there and the same unceasing pain.

“Go away, Gerasim,” he whispered.

“It‟s all right, sir. I‟ll stay a while.”

“No. Go away.”

He removed his legs from Gerasim‟s shoulders, turned sideways

onto his arm, and felt sorry for himself. He only waited till Gerasim had

gone into the next room and then restrained himself no longer but wept

like a child. He wept on account of his helplessness, his terrible

loneliness, the cruelty of man, the cruelty of God, and the absence of

God.

“Why hast Thou done all this? Why hast Thou brought me here?

Why, why dost Thou torment me so terribly?”

He did not expect an answer and yet wept because there was no

answer and could be none. The pain again grew more acute, but he did

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55

not stir and did not call. He said to himself: “Go on! Strike me! But what

is it for? What have I done to Thee? What is it for?”

Then he grew quiet and not only ceased weeping but even held his

breath and became all attention. It was as though he were listening not to

an audible voice but to the voice of his soul, to the current of thoughts

arising within him.

“What is it you want?” was the first clear conception capable of

expression in words, that he heard.

“What do you want? What do you want?” he repeated to himself.

“What do I want? To live and not to suffer,” he answered.

And again he listened with such concentrated attention that even his

pain did not distract him.

“To live? How?” asked his inner voice.

“Why, to live as I used to—well and pleasantly.”

“As you lived before, well and pleasantly?” the voice repeated.

And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his

pleasant life. But strange to say none of those best moments of his

pleasant life now seemed at all what they had then seemed—none of

them except the first recollections of childhood. There, in childhood,

there had been something really pleasant with which it would be possible

to live if it could return.

But the child who had experienced that happiness existed no longer,

it was like a reminiscence of somebody else.

As soon as the period began which had produced the present Ivan

Ilyich, all that had then seemed joys now melted before his sight and

turned into something trivial and often nasty.

And the further he departed from childhood and the nearer he came

to the present the more worthless and doubtful were the joys. This began

with the School of Law. A little that was really good was still found

there—there was light-heartedness, friendship, and hope. But in the

upper classes there had already been fewer of such good moments. Then

during the first years of his official career, when he was in the service of

the governor, some pleasant moments again occurred: they were the

memories of love for a woman.

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56

Then all became confused and there was still less of what was good;

later on again there was still less that was good, and the further he went

the less there was. His marriage, a mere accident, then the dis-

enchantment that followed it, his wife‟s bad breath and the sensuality and

hypocrisy: then that deadly official life and those preoccupations about

money, a year of it, and two, and ten, and twenty, and always the same

thing. And the longer it lasted the more deadly it became. “It is as if I had

been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is really

what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life

was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only

death.

“Then what does it mean? Why? It can‟t be that life is so senseless

and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must

I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!

“Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,” it suddenly occurred

to him. “But how could that be, when I did everything properly?” he

replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution

of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible.

“Then what do you want now? To live? Live how? Live as you lived

in the law courts when the usher proclaimed „The judge is coming!‟ The

judge is coming, the judge!” he repeated to himself. “Here he is, the

judge. But I am not guilty!” he exclaimed angrily. “What is it for?” And

he ceased crying, but turning his face to the wall continued to ponder on

the same question: Why, and for what purpose, is there all this horror?

But however much he pondered he found no answer. And whenever the

thought occurred to him, as it often did, that it all resulted from his not

having lived as he ought to have done, he at once recalled the correctness

of his whole life and dismissed so strange an idea.

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57

Chapter X

ANOTHER fortnight passed. Ivan Ilyich now no longer left his sofa. He

would not lie in bed but lay on the sofa, facing the wall nearly all the

time. He suffered ever the same unceasing agonies and in his loneliness

pondered always on the same insoluble question: “What is this? Can it be

that it is Death?” And the inner voice answered: “Yes, it is Death.”

“Why these sufferings?” And the voice answered, “For no reason—

they just are so.” Beyond and besides this there was nothing.

From the very beginning of his illness, ever since he had first been to

see the doctor, Ivan Ilyich‟s life had been divided between two contrary

and alternating moods: now it was despair and the expectation of this

uncomprehended and terrible death, and now hope and an intently

interested observation of the functioning of his organs. Now before his

eyes there was only a kidney or an intestine that temporarily evaded its

duty, and now only that incomprehensible and dreadful death from which

it was impossible to escape.

These two states of mind had alternated from the very beginning of

his illness, but the further it progressed the more doubtful and fantastic

became the conception of the kidney, and the more real the sense of

impending death.

He had but to call to mind what he had been three months before and

what he was now, to call to mind with what regularity he had been going

downhill, for every possibility of hope to be shattered.

Latterly during the loneliness in which he found himself as he lay

facing the back of the sofa, a loneliness in the midst of a populous town

and surrounded by numerous acquaintances and relations but that yet

could not have been more complete anywhere—either at the bottom of

the sea or under the earth—during that terrible loneliness Ivan Ilyich had

lived only in memories of the past. Pictures of his past rose before him

one after another. They always began with what was nearest in time and

then went back to what was most remote—to his childhood—and rested

there. If he thought of the stewed prunes that had been offered him that

day, his mind went back to the raw shrivelled French plums of his

childhood, their peculiar flavour and the flow of saliva when he sucked

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58

their stones, and along with the memory of that taste came a whole series

of memories of those days: his nurse, his brother, and their toys. “No, I

mustn‟t think of that. . . . It is too painful,” Ivan Ilyich said to himself,

and brought himself back to the present—to the button on the back of the

sofa and the creases in its morocco. “Morocco is expensive, but it does

not wear well: there had been a quarrel about it. It was a different kind of

quarrel and a different kind of morocco that time when we tore father‟s

portfolio and were punished, and mamma brought us some tarts. . . .”

And again his thoughts dwelt on his childhood, and again it was painful

and he tried to banish them and fix his mind on something else.

Then again together with that chain of memories another series

passed through his mind—of how his illness had progressed and grown

worse. There also the further back he looked the more life there had

been. There had been more of what was good in life and more of life

itself. The two merged together. “Just as the pain went on getting worse

and worse, so my life grew worse and worse,” he thought. “There is one

bright spot there at the back, at the beginning of life, and afterwards all

becomes blacker and blacker and proceeds more and more rapidly—in

inverse ration to the square of the distance from death,” thought Ivan

Ilyich. And the example of a stone falling downwards with increasing

velocity entered his mind. Life, a series of increasing sufferings, flies

further and further towards its end—the most terrible suffering. “I am

flying. . . .” He shuddered, shifted himself, and tried to resist, but was

already aware that resistance was impossible, and again with eyes weary

of gazing but unable to cease seeing what was before them, he stared at

the back of the sofa and waited—awaiting that dreadful fall and shock

and destruction.

“Resistance is impossible!” he said to himself. “If I could only

understand what it is all for! But that too is impossible. An explanation

would be possible if it could be said that I have not lived as I ought to.

But it is impossible to say that,” and he remembered all the legality,

correctitude, and propriety of his life. “That at any rate can certainly not

be admitted,” he thought, and his lips smiled ironically as if someone

could see that smile and be taken in by it. “There is no explanation!

Agony, death. . . . What for?”

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Chapter XI

ANOTHER two weeks went by in this way and during that fortnight an

event occurred that Ivan Ilyich and his wife had desired. Petrishchev

formally proposed. It happened in the evening. The next day Praskovya

Fedorovna came into her husband‟s room considering how best to inform

him of it, but that very night there had been a fresh change for the worse

in his condition. She found him still lying on the sofa but in a different

position. He lay on his back, groaning and staring fixedly straight in front

of him.

She began to remind him of his medicines, but he turned his eyes

towards her with such a look that she did not finish what she was saying;

so great an animosity, to her in particular, did that look express.

“For Christ‟s sake let me die in peace!” he said.

She would have gone away, but just then their daughter came in and

went up to say good morning. He looked at her as he had done at his

wife, and in reply to her inquiry about his health said dryly that he would

soon free them all of himself. They were both silent and after sitting with

him for a while went away.

“Is it our fault?” Lisa said to her mother. “It‟s as if we were to

blame! I am sorry for papa, but why should we be tortured?”

The doctor came at his usual time. Ivan Ilyich answered “Yes” and

“No,” never taking his angry eyes from him, and at last said: “You know

you can do nothing for me, so leave me alone.”

“We can ease your sufferings.”

“You can‟t even do that. Let me be.”

The doctor went into the drawing room and told Praskovya

Fedorovna that the case was very serious and that the only resource left

was opium to allay her husband‟s sufferings, which must be terrible.

It was true, as the doctor said, that Ivan Ilyich‟s physical sufferings

were terrible, but worse than the physical sufferings were his mental

sufferings which were his chief torture.

His mental sufferings were due to the fact that that night, as he

looked at Gerasim‟s sleepy, good-natured face with it prominent cheek-

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60

bones, the question suddenly occurred to him: “What if my whole life

has been wrong?”

It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible

before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done,

might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible

attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most

highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had

immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest

false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life

and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have

been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly

felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to

defend.

“But if that is so,” he said to himself, “and i am leaving this life with

the consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and it is

impossible to rectify it—what then?”

He lay on his back and began to pass his life in review in quite a new

way. In the morning when he saw first his footman, then his wife, then

his daughter, and then the doctor, their every word and movement

confirmed to him the awful truth that had been revealed to him during

the night. In them he saw himself—all that for which he had lived—and

saw clearly that it was not real at all, but a terrible and huge deception

which had hidden both life and death. This consciousness intensified his

physical suffering tenfold. He groaned and tossed about, and pulled at his

clothing which choked and stifled him. And he hated them on that

account.

He was given a large dose of opium and became unconscious, but at

noon his sufferings began again. He drove everybody away and tossed

from side to side.

His wife came to him and said:

“Jean, my dear, do this for me. It can‟t do any harm and often helps.

Healthy people often do it.”

He opened his eyes wide.

“What? Take communion? Why? It‟s unnecessary! However . . .”

She began to cry.

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61

“Yes, do, my dear. I‟ll send for our priest. He is such a nice man.”

“All right. Very well,” he muttered.

When the priest came and heard his confession, Ivan Ilyich was

softened and seemed to feel a relief from his doubts and consequently

from his sufferings, and for a moment there came a ray of hope. He again

began to think of the vermiform appendix and the possibility of

correcting it. He received the sacrament with tears in his eyes.

When they laid him down again afterwards he felt a moment‟s ease,

and the hope that he might live awoke in him again. He began to think of

the operation that had been suggested to him. “To live! I want to live!”

he said to himself.

His wife came in to congratulate him after his communion, and when

uttering the usual conventional words she added:

“You feel better, don‟t you?”

Without looking at her he said “Yes.”

Her dress, her figure, the expression of her face, the tone of her

voice, all revealed the same thing. “This is wrong, it is not as it should

be. All you have lived for and still live for is falsehood and deception,

hiding life and death from you.” And as soon as he admitted that thought,

his hatred and his agonizing physical suffering again sprang up, and with

that suffering a consciousness of the unavoidable, approaching end. And

to this was added a new sensation of grinding shooting pain and a feeling

of suffocation.

The expression of his face when he uttered that “Yes” was dreadful.

Having uttered it, he looked her straight in the eyes, turned on his face

with a rapidity extraordinary in his weak state and shouted:

“Go away! Go away and leave me alone!”

Chapter XII

FROM that moment the screaming began that continued for three days,

and was so terrible that one could not hear it through two closed doors

without horror. At the moment he answered his wife realized that he was

lost, that there was no return, that the end had come, the very end, and

his doubts were still unsolved and remained doubts.

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“Oh! Oh! Oh!” he cried in various intonations. he had begun by

screaming “I won‟t!” and continued screaming on the letter “O”.

For three whole days, during which time did not exist for him, he

struggled in that black sack into which he was being thrust by an

invisible, resistless force. He struggled as a man condemned to death

struggles in the hands of the executioner, knowing that he cannot save

himself. And every moment he felt that despite all his efforts he was

drawing nearer and nearer to what terrified him. he felt that his agony

was due to his being thrust into that black hole and still more to his not

being able to get right into it. He was hindered from getting into it by his

conviction that his life had been a good one. That very justification of his

life held him fast and prevented his moving forward, and it caused him

most torment of all.

Suddenly some force struck him in the chest and side, making it still

harder to breathe, and he fell through the hole and there at the bottom

was a light. What had happened to him was like the sensation one

sometimes experiences in a railway carriage when one thinks one is

going backwards while one is really going forwards and suddenly

becomes aware of the real direction.

“Yes, it was not the right thing,” he said to himself, “but that‟s no

matter. It can be done. But what is the right thing? he asked himself, and

suddenly grew quiet.

This occurred at the end of the third day, two hours before his death.

Just then his schoolboy son had crept softly in and gone up to the

bedside. The dying man was still screaming desperately and waving his

arms. His hand fell on the boy‟s head, and the boy caught it, pressed it to

his lips, and began to cry.

At that very moment Ivan Ilyich fell through and caught sight of the

light, and it was revealed to him that though his life had not been what it

should have been, this could still be rectified. He asked himself, “What is

the right thing?” and grew still, listening. Then he felt that someone was

kissing his hand. He opened his eyes, looked at his son, and felt sorry for

him. His wife camp up to him and he glanced at her. She was gazing at

him open-mouthed, with undried tears on her nose and cheek and a

despairing look on her face. He felt sorry for her too.

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“Yes, I am making them wretched,” he thought. “They are sorry, but

it will be better for them when I die.” He wished to say this but had not

the strength to utter it. “Besides, why speak? I must act,” he thought.

With a look at his wife he indicated his son and said: “Take him away. . .

sorry for him . . . sorry for you too. . . .” He tried to add, “Forgive me,”

but said “Forego” and waved his hand, knowing that He whose

understanding mattered would understand.

And suddenly it grew clear to him that what had been oppressing

him and would not leave his was all dropping away at once from two

sides, from ten sides, and from all sides. He was sorry for them, he must

act so as not to hurt them: release them and free himself from these

sufferings. “How good and how simple!” he thought. “And the pain?” he

asked himself. “What has become of it? Where are you, pain?”

He turned his attention to it.

“Yes, here it is. Well, what of it? Let the pain be.”

“And death . . . where is it?”

He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it.

“Where is it? What death?” There was no fear because there was no

death.

In place of death there was light.

“So that‟s what it is!” he suddenly exclaimed aloud. “What joy!”

To him all this happened in a single instant, and the meaning of that

instant did not change. For those present his agony continued for another

two hours. Something rattled in his throat, his emaciated body twitched,

then the gasping and rattle became less and less frequent.

“It is finished!” said someone near him.

He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.

“Death is finished,” he said to himself. “It is no more!”

He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and

died.

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The Forged Coupon

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Part First

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Chapter I

FEDOR Mihailovich Smokovnikov, the president of the local Income

Tax Department, a man of unswerving honesty—and proud of it, too—a

gloomy Liberal, a free-thinker, and an enemy to every manifestation of

religious feeling, which he thought a relic of superstition, came home

from his office feeling very much annoyed. The Governor of the

province had sent him an extraordinarily stupid minute, almost assuming

that his dealings had been dishonest.

Fedor Mihailovich felt embittered, and wrote at once a sharp answer.

On his return home everything seemed to go contrary to his wishes.

It was five minutes to five, and he expected the dinner to be served at

once, but he was told it was not ready. He banged the door and went to

his study. Somebody knocked at the door. “Who the devil is that?” he

thought; and shouted,—“Who is there?”

The door opened and a boy of fifteen came in, the son of Fedor

Mihailovich, a pupil of the fifth class of the local school.

“What do you want?”

“It is the first of the month to-day, father.”

“Well! You want your money?”

It had been arranged that the father should pay his son a monthly

allowance of three roubles as pocket money. Fedor Mihailovich frowned,

took out of his pocket-book a coupon of two roubles fifty kopeks which

he found among the bank-notes, and added to it fifty kopeks in silver out

of the loose change in his purse. The boy kept silent, and did not take the

money his father proffered him.

“Father, please give me some more in advance.”

“What?”

“I would not ask for it, but I have borrowed a small sum from a

friend, and promised upon my word of honour to pay it off. My honour is

dear to me, and that is why I want another three roubles. I don‟t like

asking you; but, please, father, give me another three roubles.”

“I have told you—”

“I know, father, but just for once.”

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68

“You have an allowance of three roubles and you ought to be

content. I had not fifty kopeks when I was your age.”

“Now, all my comrades have much more. Petrov and Ivanitsky have

fifty roubles a month.”

“And I tell you that if you behave like them you will be a scoundrel.

Mind that.”

“What is there to mind? You never understand my position. I shall be

disgraced if I don‟t pay my debt. It is all very well for you to speak as

you do.”

“Be off, you silly boy! Be off!”

Fedor Mihailovich jumped from his seat and pounced upon his son.

“Be off, I say!” he shouted. “You deserve a good thrashing, all you

boys!”

His son was at once frightened and embittered. The bitterness was

even greater than the fright. With his head bent down he hastily turned to

the door. Fedor Mihailovich did not intend to strike him, but he was glad

to vent his wrath, and went on shouting and abusing the boy till he had

closed the door.

When the maid came in to announce that dinner was ready, Fedor

Mihailovich rose.

“At last!” he said. “I don‟t feel hungry any longer.”

He went to the dining-room with a sullen face. At table his wife

made some remark, but he gave her such a short and angry answer that

she abstained from further speech. The son also did not lift his eyes from

his plate, and was silent all the time. The trio finished their dinner in

silence, rose from the table and separated, without a word.

After dinner the boy went to his room, took the coupon and the

change out of his pocket, and threw the money on the table. After that he

took off his uniform and put on a jacket.

He sat down to work, and began to study Latin grammar out of a

dog‟s-eared book. After a while he rose, closed and bolted the door,

shifted the money into a drawer, took out some cigarette papers, rolled

one up, stuffed it with cotton wool, and began to smoke.

He spent nearly two hours over his grammar and writing books

without understanding a word of what he saw before him; then he rose

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69

and began to stamp up and down the room, trying to recollect all that his

father had said to him. All the abuse showered upon him, and worst of all

his father‟s angry face, were as fresh in his memory as if he saw and

heard them all over again. “Silly boy! You ought to get a good

thrashing!” And the more he thought of it the angrier he grew. He

remembered also how his father said: “I see what a scoundrel you will

turn out. I know you will. You are sure to become a cheat, if you go on

like that.” He had certainly forgotten how he felt when he was young!

“What crime have I committed, I wonder? I wanted to go to the theatre,

and having no money borrowed some from Petia Grouchetsky. Was that

so very wicked of me? Another father would have been sorry for me;

would have asked how it all happened; whereas he just called me names.

He never thinks of anything but himself. When it is he who has not got

something he wants—that is a different matter! Then all the house is

upset by his shouts. And I—I am a scoundrel, a cheat, he says. No, I

don‟t love him, although he is my father. It may be wrong, but I hate

him.”

There was a knock at the door. The servant brought a letter—a

message from his friend. “They want an answer,” said the servant.

The letter ran as follows: “I ask you now for the third time to pay me

back the six roubles you have borrowed; you are trying to avoid me. That

is not the way an honest man ought to behave. Will you please send the

amount by my messenger? I am myself in a frightful fix. Can you not get

the money somewhere?—Yours, according to whether you send the

money or not, with scorn, or love, Grouchetsky.”

“There we have it! Such a pig! Could he not wait a while? I will have

another try.”

Mitia went to his mother. This was his last hope. His mother was

very kind, and hardly ever refused him anything. She would probably

have helped him this time also out of his trouble, but she was in great

anxiety: her younger child, Petia, a boy of two, had fallen ill. She got

angry with Mitia for rushing so noisily into the nursery, and refused him

almost without listening to what he had to say. Mitia muttered something

to himself and turned to go. The mother felt sorry for him. “Wait, Mitia,”

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70

she said; “I have not got the money you want now, but I will get it for

you to-morrow.”

But Mitia was still raging against his father.

“What is the use of having it to-morrow, when I want it to-day? I am

going to see a friend. That is all I have got to say.”

He went out, banging the door. . . .

“Nothing else is left to me. He will tell me how to pawn my watch,”

he thought, touching his watch in his pocket.

Mitia went to his room, took the coupon and the watch from the

drawer, put on his coat, and went to Mahin.

Chapter II

MAHIN was his schoolfellow, his senior, a grown-up young man with a

moustache. He gambled, had a large feminine acquaintance, and always

had ready cash. He lived with his aunt. Mitia quite realised that Mahin

was not a respectable fellow, but when he was in his company he could

not help doing what he wished. Mahin was in when Mitia called, and was

just preparing to go to the theatre. His untidy room smelt of scented soap

and eau-de-Cologne.

“That‟s awful, old chap,” said Mahin, when Mitia telling him about

his troubles, showed the coupon and the fifty kopeks, and added that he

wanted nine roubles more. “We might, of course, go and pawn your

watch. But we might do something far better.” And Mahin winked an

eye.

“What‟s that?”

“Something quite simple.” Mahin took the coupon in his hand. “Put

one before the 2.50 and it will be 12.50.”

“But do such coupons exist?”

“Why, certainly; the thousand roubles notes have coupons of 12.50. I

have cashed one in the same way.”

“You don‟t say so?”

“Well, yes or no?” asked Mahin, taking the pen and smoothing the

coupon with the fingers of his left hand.

“But it is wrong.”

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71

“Nonsense!”

“Nonsense, indeed,” thought Mitia, and again his father‟s hard words

came back to his memory. “Scoundrel! As you called me that, I might as

well be it.” He looked into Mahin‟s face. Mahin looked at him, smiling

with perfect ease.

“Well?” he said.

“All right. I don‟t mind.”

Mahin carefully wrote the unit in front of 2.50.

“Now let us go to the shop across the road; they sell photographers‟

materials there. I just happen to want a frame—for this young person

here.” He took out of his pocket a photograph of a young lady with large

eyes, luxuriant hair, and an uncommonly well-developed bust.

“Is she not sweet? Eh?”

“Yes, yes . . . of course . . .”

“Well, you see.—But let us go.”

Mahin took his coat, and they left the house.

Chapter III

THE two boys, having rung the door-bell, entered the empty shop, which

had shelves along the walls and photographic appliances on them,

together with show-cases on the counters. A plain woman, with a kind

face, came through the inner door and asked from behind the counter

what they required.

“A nice frame, if you please, madam.”

“At what price?” asked the woman; she wore mittens on her swollen

fingers with which she rapidly handled picture-frames of different

shapes.

“These are fifty kopeks each; and these are a little more expensive.

There is rather a pretty one, of quite a new style; one rouble and twenty

kopeks.”

“All right, I will have this. But could not you make it cheaper? Let us

say one rouble.”

“We don‟t bargain in our shop,” said the shopkeeper with a dignified

air.

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72

“Well, I will take it,” said Mahin, and put the coupon on the counter.

“Wrap up the frame and give me change. But please be quick. We must

be off to the theatre, and it is getting late.”

“You have plenty of time,” said the shopkeeper, examining the

coupon very closely because of her shortsightedness.

“It will look lovely in that frame, don‟t you think so?” said Mahin,

turning to Mitia.

“Have you no small change?” asked the shop-woman.

“I am sorry, I have not. My father gave me that, so I have to cash it.”

“But surely you have one rouble twenty?”

“I have only fifty kopeks in cash. But what are you afraid of? You

don‟t think, I suppose, that we want to cheat you and give you bad

money?”

“Oh, no; I don‟t mean anything of the sort.”

“You had better give it to me back. We will cash it somewhere else.”

“How much have I to pay you back? Eleven and something.”

She made a calculation on the counter, opened the desk, took out a

ten-roubles note, looked for change and added to the sum six twenty-

kopeks coins and two five-kopek pieces.

“Please make a parcel of the frame,” said Mahin, taking the money

in a leisurely fashion.

“Yes, sir.” She made a parcel and tied it with a string.

Mitia only breathed freely when the door bell rang behind them, and

they were again in the street.

“There are ten roubles for you, and let me have the rest. I will give it

back to you.”

Mahin went off to the theatre, and Mitia called on Grouchetsky to

repay the money he had borrowed from him.

Chapter IV

AN hour after the boys were gone Eugene Mihailovich, the owner of the

shop, came home, and began to count his receipts.

“Oh, you clumsy fool! Idiot that you are!” he shouted, addressing his

wife, after having seen the coupon and noticed the forgery.

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73

“But I have often seen you, Eugene, accepting coupons in payment,

and precisely twelve rouble ones,” retorted his wife, very humiliated,

grieved, and all but bursting into tears. “I really don‟t know how they

contrived to cheat me,” she went on. “They were pupils of the school, in

uniform. One of them was quite a handsome boy, and looked so comme

il faut.”

“A comme il faut fool, that is what you are!” The husband went on

scolding her, while he counted the cash. . . . When I accept coupons, I

see what is written on them. And you probably looked only at the boys‟

pretty faces. “You had better behave yourself in your old age.”

His wife could not stand this, and got into a fury.

“That is just like you men! Blaming everybody around you. But

when it is you who lose fifty-four roubles at cards—that is of no

consequence in your eyes.”

“That is a different matter

“I don‟t want to talk to you,” said his wife, and went to her room.

There she began to remind herself that her family was opposed to her

marriage, thinking her present husband far below her in social rank, and

that it was she who insisted on marrying him. Then she went on thinking

of the child she had lost, and how indifferent her husband had been to

their loss. She hated him so intensely at that moment that she wished for

his death. Her wish frightened her, however, and she hurriedly began to

dress and left the house. When her husband came from the shop to the

inner rooms of their flat she was gone. Without waiting for him she had

dressed and gone off to friends—a teacher of French in the school, a

Russified Pole, and his wife—who had invited her and her husband to a

party in their house that evening.

Chapter V

THE guests at the party had tea and cakes offered to them, and sat down

after that to play whist at a number of card-tables.

The partners of Eugene Mihailovich‟s wife were the host himself, an

officer, and an old and very stupid lady in a wig, a widow who owned a

music-shop; she loved playing cards and played remarkably well. But it

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74

was Eugene Mihailovich‟s wife who was the winner all the time. The

best cards were continually in her hands. At her side she had a plate with

grapes and a pear and was in the best of spirits.

“And Eugene Mihailovich? Why is he so late?” asked the hostess,

who played at another table.

“Probably busy settling accounts,” said Eugene Mihailovich‟s wife.

“He has to pay off the tradesmen, to get in firewood.” The quarrel she

had with her husband revived in her memory; she frowned, and her

hands, from which she had not taken off the mittens, shook with fury

against him.

“Oh, there he is.—We have just been speaking of you,” said the

hostess to Eugene Mihailovich, who came in at that very moment. “Why

are you so late?”

“I was busy,” answered Eugene Mihailovich, in a gay voice, rubbing

his hands. And to his wife‟s surprise he came to her side and said,—

“You know, I managed to get rid of the coupon.”

“No! You don‟t say so!”

“Yes, I used it to pay for a cartload of firewood I bought from a

peasant.”

And Eugene Mihailovich related with great indignation to the

company present—his wife adding more details to his narrative—how

his wife had been cheated by two unscrupulous schoolboys.

“Well, and now let us sit down to work,” he said, taking his place at

one of the whist-tables when his turn came, and beginning to shuffle the

cards.

Chapter VI

EUGENE Mihailovich had actually used the coupon to buy firewood

from the peasant Ivan Mironov, who had thought of setting up in

business on the seventeen roubles he possessed. He hoped in this way to

earn another eight roubles, and with the twenty-five roubles thus

amassed he intended to buy a good strong horse, which he would want in

the spring for work in the fields and for driving on the roads, as his old

horse was almost played out.

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75

Ivan Mironov‟s commercial method consisted in buying from the

stores a cord of wood and dividing it into five cartloads, and then driving

about the town, selling each of these at the price the stores charged for a

quarter of a cord. That unfortunate day Ivan Mironov drove out very

early with half a cartload, which he soon sold. He loaded up again with

another cartload which he hoped to sell, but he looked in vain for a

customer; no one would buy it. It was his bad luck all that day to come

across experienced towns-people, who knew all the tricks of the peasants

in selling firewood, and would not believe that he had actually brought

the wood from the country as he assured them. He got hungry, and felt

cold in his ragged woollen coat. It was nearly below zero when evening

came on; his horse which he had treated without mercy, hoping soon to

sell it to the knacker‟s yard, refused to move a step. So Ivan Mironov

was quite ready to sell his firewood at a loss when he met Eugene

Mihailovich, who was on his way home from the tobacconist.

“Buy my cartload of firewood, sir. I will give it to you cheap. My

poor horse is tired, and can‟t go any farther.”

“Where do you come from?”

“From the country, sir. This firewood is from our place. Good dry

wood, I can assure you.”

“Good wood indeed! I know your tricks. Well, what is your price?”

Ivan Mironov began by asking a high price, but reduced it once, and

finished by selling the cartload for just what it had cost him.

“I‟m giving it to you cheap, just to please you, sir.—Besides, I am

glad it is not a long way to your house,” he added.

Eugene Mihailovich did not bargain very much. He did not mind

paying a little more, because he was delighted to think he could make use

of the coupon and get rid of it. With great difficulty Ivan Mironov

managed at last, by pulling the shafts himself, to drag his cart into the

courtyard, where he was obliged to unload the firewood unaided and pile

it up in the shed. The yard-porter was out. Ivan Mironov hesitated at first

to accept the coupon, but Eugene Mihailovich insisted, and as he looked

a very important person the peasant at last agreed.

He went by the backstairs to the servants‟ room, crossed himself

before the ikon, wiped his beard which was covered with icicles, turned

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76

up the skirts of his coat, took out of his pocket a leather purse, and out of

the purse eight roubles and fifty kopeks, and handed the change to

Eugene Mihailovich. Carefully folding the coupon, he put it in the purse.

Then, according to custom, he thanked the gentleman for his kindness,

and, using the whip-handle instead of the lash, he belaboured the half-

frozen horse that he had doomed to an early death, and betook himself to

a public-house.

Arriving there, Ivan Mironov called for vodka and tea for which he

paid eight kopeks. Comfortable and warm after the tea, he chatted in the

very best of spirits with a yard-porter who was sitting at his table. Soon

he grew communicative and told his companion all about the conditions

of his life. He told him he came from the village Vassilievsky, twelve

miles from town, and also that he had his allotment of land given to him

by his family, as he wanted to live apart from his father and his brothers;

that he had a wife and two children; the elder boy went to school, and did

not yet help him in his work. He also said he lived in lodgings and

intended going to the horse-fair the next day to look for a good horse,

and, may be, to buy one. He went on to state that he had now nearly

twenty-five roubles—only one rouble short—and that half of it was a

coupon. He took the coupon out of his purse to show to his new friend.

The yard-porter was an illiterate man, but he said he had had such

coupons given him by lodgers to change; that they were good; but that

one might also chance on forged ones; so he advised the peasant, for the

sake of security, to change it at once at the counter. Ivan Mironov gave

the coupon to the waiter and asked for change. The waiter, however, did

not bring the change, but came back with the manager, a bald-headed

man with a shining face, who was holding the coupon in his fat hand.

“Your money is no good,” he said, showing the coupon, but

apparently determined not to give it back.

“The coupon must be all right. I got it from a gentleman.”

“It is bad, I tell you. The coupon is forged.”

“Forged? Give it back to me.”

“I will not. You fellows have got to be punished for such tricks. Of

course, you did it yourself—you and some of your rascally friends.”

“Give me the money. What right have you—”

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77

“Sidor! Call a policeman,” said the barman to the waiter. Ivan

Mironov was rather drunk, and in that condition was hard to manage. He

seized the manager by the collar and began to shout.

“Give me back my money, I say. I will go to the gentleman who

gave it to me. I know where he lives.”

The manager had to struggle with all his force to get loose from Ivan

Mironov, and his shirt was torn,—“Oh, that‟s the way you behave! Get

hold of him.”

The waiter took hold of Ivan Mironov; at that moment the policeman

arrived. Looking very important, he inquired what had happened, and

unhesitatingly gave his orders:

“Take him to the police-station.”

As to the coupon, the policeman put it in his pocket; Ivan Mironov,

together with his horse, was brought to the nearest station.

Chapter VII

IVAN Mironov had to spend the night in the police-station, in the

company of drunkards and thieves. It was noon of the next day when he

was summoned to the police officer; put through a close examination,

and sent in the care of a policeman to Eugene Mihailovich‟s shop. Ivan

Mironov remembered the street and the house.

The policeman asked for the shopkeeper, showed him the coupon

and confronted him with Ivan Mironov, who declared that he had

received the coupon in that very place. Eugene Mihailovich at once

assumed a very severe and astonished air.

“You are mad, my good fellow,” he said. “I have never seen this man

before in my life,” he added, addressing the policeman.

“It is a sin, sir,” said Ivan Mironov. “Think of the hour when you

will die.”

“Why, you must be dreaming! You have sold your firewood to

someone else,” said Eugene Mihailovich. “But wait a minute. I will go

and ask my wife whether she bought any firewood yesterday.” Eugene

Mihailovich left them and immediately called the yard-porter Vassily, a

strong, handsome, quick, cheerful, well-dressed man.

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78

He told Vassily that if anyone should inquire where the last supply of

firewood was bought, he was to say they‟d got it from the stores, and not

from a peasant in the street.

“A peasant has come,” he said to Vassily, “who has declared to the

police that I gave him a forged coupon. He is a fool and talks nonsense,

but you, are a clever man. Mind you say that we always get the firewood

from the stores. And, by the way, I‟ve been thinking sometime of giving

you money to buy a new jacket,” added Eugene Mihailovich, and gave

the man five roubles. Vassily looking with pleasure first at the five

rouble note, then at Eugene Mihailovich‟s face, shook his head and

smiled.

“I know, those peasant folks have no brains. Ignorance, of course.

Don‟t you be uneasy. I know what I have to say.”

Ivan Mironov, with tears in his eyes, implored Eugene Mihailovich

over and over again to acknowledge the coupon he had given him, and

the yard-porter to believe what he said, but it proved quite useless; they

both insisted that they had never bought firewood from a peasant in the

street. The policeman brought Ivan Mironov back to the police-station,

and he was charged with forging the coupon. Only after taking the advice

of a drunken office clerk in the same cell with him, and bribing the

police officer with five roubles, did Ivan Mironov get out of jail, without

the coupon, and with only seven roubles left out of the twenty-five he

had the day before.

Of these seven roubles he spent three in the public-house and came

home to his wife dead drunk, with a bruised and swollen face.

His wife was expecting a child, and felt very ill. She began to scold

her husband; he pushed her away, and she struck him. Without

answering a word he lay down on the plank and began to weep bitterly.

Not till the next day did he tell his wife what had actually happened.

She believed him at once, and thoroughly cursed the dastardly rich man

who had cheated Ivan. He was sobered now, and remembering the advice

a workman had given him, with whom he had many a drink the day

before, decided to go to a lawyer and tell him of the wrong the owner of

the photograph shop had done him.

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79

Chapter VIII

THE lawyer consented to take proceedings on behalf of Ivan Mironov,

not so much for the sake of the fee, as because he believed the peasant,

and was revolted by the wrong done to him.

Both parties appeared in the court when the case was tried, and the

yard-porter Vassily was summoned as witness. They repeated in the

court all they had said before to the police officials. Ivan Mironov again

called to his aid the name of the Divinity, and reminded the shopkeeper

of the hour of death. Eugene Mihailovich, although quite aware of his

wickedness, and the risks he was running, despite the rebukes of his

conscience, could not now change his testimony, and went on calmly to

deny all the allegations made against him.

The yard-porter Vassily had received another ten roubles from his

master, and, quite unperturbed, asserted with a smile that he did not

know anything about Ivan Mironov. And when he was called upon to

take the oath, he overcame his inner qualms, and repeated with assumed

ease the terms of the oath, read to him by the old priest appointed to the

court. By the holy Cross and the Gospel, he swore that he spoke the

whole truth.

The case was decided against Ivan Mironov, who was sentenced to

pay five roubles for expenses. This sum Eugene Mihailovich generously

paid for him. Before dismissing Ivan Mironov, the judge severely

admonished him, saying he ought to take care in the future not to accuse

respectable people, and that he also ought to be thankful that he was not

forced to pay the costs, and that he had escaped a prosecution for slander,

for which he would have been condemned to three months‟

imprisonment.

“I offer my humble thanks,” said Ivan Mironov; and, shaking his

head, left the court with a heavy sigh.

The whole thing seemed to have ended well for Eugene Mihailovich

and the yard-porter Vassily. But only in appearance. Something had

happened which was not noticed by any one, but which was much more

important than all that had been exposed to view.

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80

Vassily had left his village and settled in town over two years ago.

As time went on he sent less and less money to his father, and he did not

ask his wife, who remained at home, to join him. He was in no need of

her; he could in town have as many wives as he wished, and much better

ones too than that clumsy, village-bred woman. Vassily, with each

recurring year, became more and more familiar with the ways of the

town people, forgetting the conventions of a country life. There

everything was so vulgar, so grey, so poor and untidy. Here, in town, all

seemed on the contrary so refined, nice, clean, and rich; so orderly too.

And he became more and more convinced that people in the country live

just like wild beasts, having no idea of what life is, and that only life in

town is real. He read books written by clever writers, and went to the

performances in the Peoples‟ Palace. In the country, people would not

see such wonders even in dreams. In the country old men say: “Obey the

law, and live with your wife; work; don‟t eat too much; don‟t care for

finery,” while here, in town, all the clever and learned people—those, of

course, who know what in reality the law is—only pursue their own

pleasures. And they are the better for it.

Previous to the incident of the forged coupon, Vassily could not

actually believe that rich people lived without any moral law. But after

that, still more after having perjured himself, and not being the worse for

it in spite of his fears—on the contrary, he had gained ten roubles out of

it—Vassily became firmly convinced that no moral laws whatever exist,

and that the only thing to do is to pursue one‟s own interests and

pleasures. This he now made his rule in life. He accordingly got as much

profit as he could out of purchasing goods for lodgers. But this did not

pay all his expenses. Then he took to stealing, whenever chance

offered—money and all sorts of valuables. One day he stole a purse full

of money from Eugene Mihailovich, but was found out. Eugene

Mihailovich did not hand him over to the police, but dismissed him on

the spot.

Vassily had no wish whatever to return home to his village, and

remained in Moscow with his sweetheart, looking out for a new job. He

got one as yard-porter at a grocer‟s, but with only small wages. The next

day after he had entered that service he was caught stealing bags. The

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81

grocer did not call in the police, but gave him a good thrashing and

turned him out. After that he could not find work. The money he had left

was soon gone; he had to sell all his clothes and went about nearly in

rags. His sweetheart left him. But notwithstanding, he kept up his high

spirits, and when the spring came he started to walk home.

Chapter IX

PETER Nikolaevich Sventizky, a short man in black spectacles (he had

weak eyes, and was threatened with complete blindness), got up, as was

his custom, at dawn of day, had a cup of tea, and putting on his short fur

coat trimmed with astrachan, went to look after the work on his estate.

Peter Nikolaevich had been an official in the Customs, and had

gained eighteen thousand roubles during his service. About twelve years

ago he quitted the service—not quite of his own accord: as a matter of

fact he had been compelled to leave—and bought an estate from a young

landowner who had dissipated his fortune. Peter Nikolaevich had married

at an earlier period, while still an official in the Customs. His wife, who

belonged to an old noble family, was an orphan, and was left without

money. She was a tall, stoutish, good-looking woman. They had no

children. Peter Nikolaevich had considerable practical talents and a

strong will. He was the son of a Polish gentleman, and knew nothing

about agriculture and land management; but when he acquired an estate

of his own, he managed it so well that after fifteen years the waste piece

of land, consisting of three hundred acres, became a model estate. All the

buildings, from the dwelling-house to the corn stores and the shed for the

fire engine were solidly built, had iron roofs, and were painted at the

right time. In the tool house carts, ploughs, harrows, stood in perfect

order, the harness was well cleaned and oiled. The horses were not very

big, but all home-bred, grey, well fed, strong and devoid of blemish.

The threshing machine worked in a roofed barn, the forage was kept

in a separate shed, and a paved drain was made from the stables. The

cows were home-bred, not very large, but giving plenty of milk; fowls

were also kept in the poultry yard, and the hens were of a special kind,

laying a great quantity of eggs. In the orchard the fruit trees were well

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82

whitewashed and propped on poles to enable them to grow straight.

Everything was looked after—solid, clean, and in perfect order. Peter

Nikolaevich rejoiced in the perfect condition of his estate, and was proud

to have achieved it—not by oppressing the peasants, but, on the contrary,

by the extreme fairness of his dealings with them.

Among the nobles of his province he belonged to the advanced party,

and was more inclined to liberal than conservative views, always taking

the side of the peasants against those who were still in favour of serfdom.

“Treat them well, and they will be fair to you,” he used to say. Of course,

he did not overlook any carelessness on the part of those who worked on

his estate, and he urged them on to work if they were lazy; but then he

gave them good lodging, with plenty of good food, paid their wages

without any delay, and gave them drinks on days of festival.

Walking cautiously on the melting snow—for the time of the year

was February—Peter Nikolaevich passed the stables, and made his way

to the cottage where his workmen were lodged. It was still dark, the

darker because of the dense fog; but the windows of the cottage were

lighted. The men had already got up. His intention was to urge them to

begin work. He had arranged that they should drive out to the forest and

bring back the last supply of firewood he needed before spring.

“What is that?” he thought, seeing the door of the stable wide open.

“Hello, who is there?”

No answer. Peter Nikolaevich stepped into the stable. It was dark;

the ground was soft under his feet, and the air smelt of dung; on the right

side of the door were two loose boxes for a pair of grey horses. Peter

Nikolaevich stretched out his hand in their direction—one box was

empty. He put out his foot—the horse might have been lying down. But

his foot did not touch anything solid. “Where could they have taken the

horse?” he thought. They certainly had not harnessed it; all the sledges

stood still outside. Peter Nikolaevich went out of the stable.

“Stepan, come here!” he called.

Stepan was the head of the workmen‟s gang. He was just stepping

out of the cottage.

“Here I am!” he said, in a cheerful voice. “Oh, is that you, Peter

Nikolaevich? Our men are coming.”

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83

“Why is the stable door open?

“Is it? I don‟t know anything about it. I say, Proshka, bring the

lantern!”

Proshka came with the lantern. They all went to the stable, and

Stepan knew at once what had happened.

“Thieves have been here, Peter Nikolaevich,” he said. “The lock is

broken.”

“No; you don‟t say so!”

“Yes, the brigands! I don‟t see „Mashka.‟ „Hawk‟ is here. But

„Beauty‟ is not. Nor yet „Dapple-grey.‟”

Three horses had been stolen!

Peter Nikolaevich did not utter a word at first. He only frowned and

took deep breaths.

“Oh,” he said after a while. “If only I could lay hands on them! Who

was on guard?”

“Peter. He evidently fell asleep.”

Peter Nikolaevich called in the police, and making an appeal to all

the authorities, sent his men to track the thieves. But the horses were not

to be found.

“Wicked people,” said Peter Nikolaevich. “How could they! I was

always so kind to them. Now, wait! Brigands! Brigands the whole lot of

them. I will no longer be kind.”

Chapter X

IN the meanwhile the horses, the grey ones, had all been disposed of;

Mashka was sold to the gipsies for eighteen roubles; Dapple-grey was

exchanged for another horse, and passed over to another peasant who

lived forty miles away from the estate; and Beauty died on the way. The

man who conducted the whole affair was—Ivan Mironov. He had been

employed on the estate, and knew all the whereabouts of Peter

Nikolaevich. He wanted to get back the money he had lost, and stole the

horses for that reason.

After his misfortune with the forged coupon, Ivan Mironov took to

drink; and all he possessed would have gone on drink if it had not been

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84

for his wife, who locked up his clothes, the horses‟ collars, and all the

rest of what he would otherwise have squandered in public-houses. In his

drunken state Ivan Mironov was continually thinking, not only of the

man who had wronged him, but of all the rich people who live on

robbing the poor. One day he had a drink with some peasants from the

suburbs of Podolsk, and was walking home together with them. On the

way the peasants, who were completely drunk, told him they had stolen a

horse from a peasant‟s cottage. Ivan Mironov got angry, and began to

abuse the horse-thieves.

“What a shame!” he said. “A horse is like a brother to the peasant.

And you robbed him of it? It is a great sin, I tell you. If you go in for

stealing horses, steal them from the landowners. They are worse than

dogs, and deserve anything.”

The talk went on, and the peasants from Podolsk told him that it

required a great deal of cunning to steal a horse on an estate.

“You must know all the ins and outs of the place, and must have

somebody on the spot to help you.”

Then it occurred to Ivan Mironov that he knew a landowner—

Sventizky; he had worked on his estate, and Sventizky, when paying him

off, had deducted one rouble and a half for a broken tool. He

remembered well the grey horses which he used to drive at Sventizky‟s.

Ivan Mironov called on Peter Nikolaevich pretending to ask for

employment, but really in order to get the information he wanted. He

took precautions to make sure that the watchman was absent, and that the

horses were standing in their boxes in the stable. He brought the thieves

to the place, and helped them to carry off the three horses.

They divided their gains, and Ivan Mironov returned to his wife with

five roubles in his pocket. He had nothing to do at home, having no horse

to work in the field, and therefore continued to steal horses in company

with professional horse-thieves and gipsies.

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85

Chapter XI

PETER Nikolaevich Sventizky did his best to discover who had stolen

his horses. He knew somebody on the estate must have helped the

thieves, and began to suspect all his staff. He inquired who had slept out

that night, and the gang of the working men told him Proshka had not

been in the whole night. Proshka, or Prokofy Nikolaevich, was a young

fellow who had just finished his military service, handsome, and skilful

in all he did; Peter Nikolaevich employed him at times as coachman. The

district constable was a friend of Peter Nikolaevich, as were the

provincial head of the police, the marshal of the nobility, and also the

rural councilor and the examining magistrate. They all came to his house

on his saint‟s day, drinking the cherry brandy he offered them with

pleasure, and eating the nice preserved mushrooms of all kinds to

accompany the liqueurs. They all sympathized with him in his trouble

and tried to help him.

“You always used to take the side of the peasants,” said the district

constable, “and there you are! I was right in saying they are worse than

wild beasts. Flogging is the only way to keep them in order. Well, you

say it is all Proshka‟s doings. Is it not he who was your coachman

sometimes?”

“Yes, that is he.”

“Will you kindly call him?”

Proshka was summoned before the constable, who began to examine

him.

“Where were you that night?”

Proshka pushed back his hair, and his eyes sparkled.

“At home.”

“How so? All the men say you were not in.”

“Just as you please, your honour.”

“My pleasure has nothing to do with the matter. Tell me where you

were that night.”

“At home.”

“Very well. Policeman, bring him to the police-station.”

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86

The reason why Proshka did not say where he had been that night

was that he had spent it with his sweetheart, Parasha, and had promised

not to give her away. He kept his word. No proofs were discovered

against him, and he was soon discharged. But Peter Nikolaevich was

convinced that Prokofy had been at the bottom of the whole affair, and

began to hate him. One day Proshka bought as usual at the merchant‟s

two measures of oats. One and a half he gave to the horses, and half a

measure he gave back to the merchant; the money for it he spent in drink.

Peter Nikolaevich found it out, and charged Prokofy with cheating. The

judge sentenced the man to three months‟ imprisonment.

Prokofy had a rather proud nature, and thought himself superior to

others. Prison was a great humiliation for him. He came out of it very

depressed; there was nothing more to be proud of in life. And more than

that, he felt extremely bitter, not only against Peter Nikolaevich, but

against the whole world.

On the whole, as all the people around him noticed, Prokofy became

another man after his imprisonment, both careless and lazy; he took to

drink, and he was soon caught stealing clothes at some woman‟s house,

and found himself again in prison.

All that Peter Nikolaevich discovered about his grey horses was the

hide of one of them, Beauty, which had been found somewhere on the

estate. The fact that the thieves had got off scot-free irritated Peter

Nikolaevich still more. He was unable now to speak of the peasants or to

look at them without anger. And whenever he could he tried to oppress

them.

Chapter XII

AFTER having got rid of the coupon, Eugene Mihailovich forgot all

about it; but his wife, Maria Vassilievna, could not forgive herself for

having been taken in, nor yet her husband for his cruel words. And most

of all she was furious against the two boys who had so skilfully cheated

her. From the day she had accepted the forged coupon as payment, she

looked closely at all the schoolboys who came in her way in the streets.

One day she met Mahin, but did not recognise him, for on seeing her he

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87

made a face which quite changed his features. But when, a fortnight after

the incident with the coupon, she met Mitia Smokovnikov face to face,

she knew him at once.

She let him pass her, then turned back and followed him, and

arriving at his house she made inquiries as to whose son he was. The

next day she went to the school and met the divinity instructor, the priest

Michael Vedensky, in the hall. He asked her what she wanted. She

answered that she wished to see the head of the school. “He is not quite

well,” said the priest. “Can I be of any use to you, or give him your

message?”

Maria Vassilievna thought that she might as well tell the priest what

was the matter. Michael Vedensky was a widower, and a very ambitious

man. A year ago he had met Mitia Smokovnikov‟s father in society, and

had had a discussion with him on religion. Smokovnikov had beaten him

decisively on all points; indeed, he had made him appear quite ridiculous.

Since that time the priest had decided to pay special attention to

Smokovnikov‟s son; and, finding him as indifferent to religious matters

as his father was, he began to persecute him, and even brought about his

failure in examinations.

When Maria Vassilievna told him what young Smokovnikov had

done to her, Vedensky could not help feeling an inner satisfaction. He

saw in the boy‟s conduct a proof of the utter wickedness of those who are

not guided by the rules of the Church. He decided to take advantage of

this great opportunity of warning unbelievers of the perils that threatened

them. At all events, he wanted to persuade himself that this was the only

motive that guided him in the course he had resolved to take. But at the

bottom of his heart he was only anxious to get his revenge on the proud

atheist.

“Yes, it is very sad indeed,” said Father Michael, toying with the

cross he was wearing over his priestly robes, and passing his hands over

its polished sides. “I am very glad you have given me your confidence.

As a servant of the Church I shall admonish the young man—of course

with the utmost kindness. I shall certainly do it in the way that befits my

holy office,” said Father Michael to himself, really thinking that he had

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88

forgotten the ill-feeling the boy‟s father had towards him. He firmly

believed the boy‟s soul to be the only object of his pious care.

The next day, during the divinity lesson which Father Michael was

giving to Mitia Smokovnikov‟s class, he narrated the incident of the

forged coupon, adding that the culprit had been one of the pupils of the

school. “It was a very wicked thing to do,” he said; “but to deny the

crime is still worse. If it is true that the sin has been committed by one of

you, let the guilty one confess.” In saying this, Father Michael looked

sharply at Mitia Smokovnikov. All the boys, following his glance, turned

also to Mitia, who blushed, and felt extremely ill at ease, with large

beads of perspiration on his face. Finally, he burst into tears, and ran out

of the classroom. His mother, noticing his trouble, found out the truth,

ran at once to the photographer‟s shop, paid over the twelve roubles and

fifty kopeks to Maria Vassilievna, and made her promise to deny the

boy‟s guilt. She further implored Mitia to hide the truth from everybody,

and in any case to withhold it from his father.

Accordingly, when Fedor Mihailovich had heard of the incident in

the divinity class, and his son, questioned by him, had denied all

accusations, he called at once on the head of the school, told him what

had happened, expressed his indignation at Father Michael‟s conduct,

and said he would not let matters remain as they were.

Father Michael was sent for, and immediately fell into a hot dispute

with Smokovnikov.

“A stupid woman first falsely accused my son, then retracts her

accusation, and you of course could not hit on anything more sensible to

do than to slander an honest and truthful boy!”

“I did not slander him, and I must beg you not to address me in such

a way. You forget what is due to my cloth.”

“Your cloth is of no consequence to me.”

“Your perversity in matters of religion is known to everybody in the

town!” replied Father Michael; and he was so transported with anger that

his long thin head quivered.

“Gentlemen! Father Michael!” exclaimed the director of the school,

trying to appease their wrath. But they did not listen to him.

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89

“It is my duty as a priest to look after the religious and moral

education of our pupils.”

“Oh, cease your pretence to be religious! Oh, stop all this humbug of

religion! As if I did not know that you believe neither in God nor Devil.”

“I consider it beneath my dignity to talk to a man like you,” said

Father Michael, very much hurt by Smokovnikov‟s last words, the more

so because he knew they were true.

Michael Vedensky carried on his studies in the academy for priests,

and that is why, for a long time past, he ceased to believe in what he

confessed to be his creed and in what he preached from the pulpit; he

only knew that men ought to force themselves to believe in what he tried

to make himself believe.

Smokovnikov was not shocked by Father Michael‟s conduct; he only

thought it illustrative of the influence the Church was beginning to

exercise on society, and he told all his friends how his son had been

insulted by the priest.

Seeing not only young minds, but also the elder generation,

contaminated by atheistic tendencies, Father Michael became more and

more convinced of the necessity of fighting those tendencies. The more

he condemned the unbelief of Smokovnikov, and those like him, the

more confident he grew in the firmness of his own faith, and the less he

felt the need of making sure of it, or of bringing his life into harmony

with it. His faith, acknowledged as such by all the world around him,

became Father Michael‟s very best weapon with which to fight those

who denied it.

The thoughts aroused in him by his conflict with Smokovnikov,

together with the annoyance of being blamed by his chiefs in the school,

made him carry out the purpose he had entertained ever since his wife‟s

death—of taking monastic orders, and of following the course carried out

by some of his fellow-pupils in the academy. One of them was already a

bishop, another an archimandrite and on the way to become a bishop.

At the end of the term Michael Vedensky gave up his post in the

school, took orders under the name of Missael, and very soon got a post

as rector in a seminary in a town on the river Volga.

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90

Chapter XIII

MEANWHILE the yard-porter Vassily was marching on the open road

down to the south.

He walked in daytime, and when night came some policeman would

get him shelter in a peasant‟s cottage. He was given bread everywhere,

and sometimes he was asked to sit down to the evening meal. In a village

in the Orel district, where he had stayed for the night, he heard that a

merchant who had hired the landowner‟s orchard for the season, was

looking out for strong and able men to serve as watchmen for the fruit-

crops. Vassily was tired of tramping, and as he had also no desire

whatever to go back to his native village, he went to the man who owned

the orchard, and got engaged as watchman for five roubles a month.

Vassily found it very agreeable to live in his orchard shed, and all the

more so when the apples and pears began to grow ripe, and when the

men from the barn supplied him every day with large bundles of fresh

straw from the threshing machine. He used to lie the whole day long on

the fragrant straw, with fresh, delicately smelling apples in heaps at his

side, looking out in every direction to prevent the village boys from

stealing fruit; and he used to whistle and sing meanwhile, to amuse

himself. He knew no end of songs, and had a fine voice. When peasant

women and young girls came to ask for apples, and to have a chat with

him, Vassily gave them larger or smaller apples according as he liked

their looks, and received eggs or money in return. The rest of the time he

had nothing to do, but to lie on his back and get up for his meals in the

kitchen. He had only one shirt left, one of pink cotton, and that was in

holes. But he was strongly built and enjoyed excellent health. When the

kettle with black gruel was taken from the stove and served to the

working men, Vassily used to eat enough for three, and filled the old

watchman on the estate with unceasing wonder. At nights Vassily never

slept. He whistled or shouted from time to time to keep off thieves, and

his piercing, cat-like eyes saw clearly in the darkness.

One night a company of young lads from the village made their way

stealthily to the orchard to shake down apples from the trees. Vassily,

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91

coming noiselessly from behind, attacked them; they tried to escape, but

he took one of them prisoner to his master.

Vassily‟s first shed stood at the farthest end of the orchard, but after

the pears had been picked he had to remove to another shed only forty

paces away from the house of his master. He liked this new place very

much. The whole day long he could see the young ladies and gentlemen

enjoying themselves; going out for drives in the evenings and quite late

at nights, playing the piano or the violin, and singing and dancing. He

saw the ladies sitting with the young students on the window sills,

engaged in animated conversation, and then going in pairs to walk the

dark avenue of lime trees, lit up only by streaks of moonlight. He saw the

servants running about with food and drink, he saw the cooks, the

stewards, the laundresses, the gardeners, the coachmen, hard at work to

supply their masters with food and drink and constant amusement.

Sometimes the young people from the master‟s house came to the shed,

and Vassily offered them the choicest apples, juicy and red. The young

ladies used to take large bites out of the apples on the spot, praising their

taste, and spoke French to one another—Vassily quite understood it was

all about him—and asked Vassily to sing for them.

Vassily felt the greatest admiration for his master‟s mode of living,

which reminded him of what he had seen in Moscow; and he became

more and more convinced that the only thing that mattered in life was

money. He thought and thought how to get hold of a large sum of money.

He remembered his former ways of making small profits whenever he

could, and came to the conclusion that that was altogether wrong.

Occasional stealing is of no use, he thought. He must arrange a well-

prepared plan, and after getting all the information he wanted, carry out

his purpose so as to avoid detection.

After the feast of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the last crop

of autumn apples was gathered; the master was content with the results,

paid off Vassily, and gave him an extra sum as reward for his faithful

service.

Vassily put on his new jacket, and a new hat—both were presents

from his master‟s son—but did not make his way homewards. He hated

the very thought of the vulgar peasants‟ life. He went back to Moscow in

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92

company of some drunken soldiers, who had been watchmen in the

orchard together with him. On his arrival there he at once resolved, under

cover of night, to break into the shop where he had been employed, and

beaten, and then turned out by the proprietor without being paid. He

knew the place well, and knew where the money was locked up. So he

bade the soldiers, who helped him, keep watch outside, and forcing the

courtyard door entered the shop and took all the money he could lay his

hands on. All this was done very cleverly, and no trace was left of the

burglary. The money Vassily had found in the shop amounted to 370

roubles. He gave a hundred roubles to his assistants, and with the rest left

for another town where he gave way to dissipation in company of friends

of both sexes. The police traced his movements, and when at last he was

arrested and put into prison he had hardly anything left out of the money

which he had stolen.

Chapter XIV

IVAN Mironov had become a very clever, fearless and successful horse-

thief. Afimia, his wife, who at first used to abuse him for his evil ways,

as she called it, was now quite content and felt proud of her husband,

who possessed a new sheepskin coat, while she also had a warm jacket

and a new fur cloak.

In the village and throughout the whole district everyone knew quite

well that Ivan Mironov was at the bottom of all the horse-stealing; but

nobody would give him away, being afraid of the consequences.

Whenever suspicion fell on him, he managed to clear his character. Once

during the night he stole horses from the pasture ground in the village

Kolotovka. He generally preferred to steal horses from landowners or

tradespeople. But this was a harder job, and when he had no chance of

success he did not mind robbing peasants too. In Kolotovka he drove off

the horses without making sure whose they were. He did not go himself

to the spot, but sent a young and clever fellow, Gerassim, to do the

stealing for him. The peasants only got to know of the theft at dawn; they

rushed in all directions to hunt for the robbers. The horses, meanwhile,

were hidden in a ravine in the forest lands belonging to the state.

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93

Ivan Mironov intended to leave them there till the following night,

and then to transport them with the utmost haste a hundred miles away to

a man he knew. He visited Gerassim in the forest, to see how he was

getting on, brought him a pie and some vodka, and was returning home

by a side track in the forest where he hoped to meet nobody. But by ill-

luck, he chanced on the keeper of the forest, a retired soldier.

“I say! Have you been looking for mushrooms?” asked the soldier.

“There were none to be found,” answered Ivan Mironov, showing

the basket of lime bark he had taken with him in case he might want it.

“Yes, mushrooms are scarce this summer,” said the soldier. He stood

still for a moment, pondered, and then went his way. He clearly saw that

something was wrong. Ivan Mironov had no business whatever to take

early morning walks in that forest. The soldier went back after a while

and looked round. Suddenly he heard the snorting of horses in the ravine.

He made his way cautiously to the place whence the sounds came. The

grass in the ravine was trodden down, and the marks of horses‟ hoofs

were clearly to be seen. A little further he saw Gerassim, who was sitting

and eating his meal, and the horses tied to a tree.

The soldier ran to the village and brought back the bailiff, a police

officer, and two witnesses. They surrounded on three sides the spot

where Gerassim was sitting and seized the man. He did not deny

anything; but, being drunk, told them at once how Ivan Mironov had

given him plenty of drink, and induced him to steal the horses; he also

said that Ivan Mironov had promised to come that night in order to take

the horses away. The peasants left the horses and Gerassim in the ravine,

and hiding behind the trees prepared to lie in ambush for Ivan Mironov.

When it grew dark, they heard a whistle. Gerassim answered it with a

similar sound. The moment Ivan Mironov descended the slope, the

peasants surrounded him and brought him back to the village. The next

morning a crowd assembled in front of the bailiff‟s cottage. Ivan

Mironov was brought out and subjected to a close examination. Stepan

Pelageushkine, a tall, stooping man with long arms, an aquiline nose, and

a gloomy face was the first to put questions to him. Stepan had

terminated his military service, and was of a solitary turn of mind. When

he had separated from his father, and started his own home, he had his

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94

first experience of losing a horse. After that he worked for two years in

the mines, and made money enough to buy two horses. These two had

been stolen by Ivan Mironov.

“Tell me where my horses are!” shouted Stepan, pale with fury,

alternately looking at the ground and at Ivan Mironov‟s face.

Ivan Mironov denied his guilt. Then Stepan aimed so violent a blow

at his face that he smashed his nose and the blood spurted out.

“Tell the truth, I say, or I‟ll kill you!”

Ivan Mironov kept silent, trying to avoid the blows by stooping.

Stepan hit him twice more with his long arm. Ivan Mironov remained

silent, turning his head backwards and forwards.

“Beat him, all of you!” cried the bailiff, and the whole crowd rushed

upon Ivan Mironov. He fell without a word to the ground, and then

shouted,—“Devils, wild beasts, kill me if that‟s what you want! I am not

afraid of you!”

Stepan seized a stone out of those that had been collected for the

purpose, and with a heavy blow smashed Ivan Mironov‟s head.

Chapter XV

IVAN Mironov‟s murderers were brought to trial, Stepan Pelageushkine

among them. He had a heavier charge to answer than the others, all the

witnesses having stated that it was he who had smashed Ivan Mironov‟s

head with a stone. Stepan concealed nothing when in court. He contented

himself with explaining that, having been robbed of his two last horses,

he had informed the police. Now it was comparatively easy at that time

to trace the horses with the help of professional thieves among the

gipsies. But the police officer would not even permit him, and no search

had been ordered.

“Nothing else could be done with such a man. He has ruined us all.”

“But why did not the others attack him. It was you alone who broke

his head open.”

“That is false. We all fell upon him. The village agreed to kill him. I

only gave the final stroke. What is the use of inflicting unnecessary

sufferings on a man?”

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95

The judges were astonished at Stepan‟s wonderful coolness in

narrating the story of his crime—how the peasants fell upon Ivan

Mironov, and how he had given the final stroke. Stepan actually did not

see anything particularly revolting in this murder. During his military

service he had been ordered on one occasion to shoot a soldier, and, now

with regard to Ivan Mironov, he saw nothing loathsome in it. “A man

shot is a dead man—that‟s all. It was him to-day, it might be me to-

morrow,” he thought. Stepan was only sentenced to one year‟s

imprisonment, which was a mild punishment for what he had done. His

peasant‟s dress was taken away from him and put in the prison stores,

and he had a prison suit and felt boots given to him instead. Stepan had

never had much respect for the authorities, but now he became quite

convinced that all the chiefs, all the fine folk, all except the Tsar—who

alone had pity on the peasants and was just—all were robbers who suck

blood out of the people. All he heard from the deported convicts, and

those sentenced to hard labour, with whom he had made friends in

prisons, confirmed him in his views. One man had been sentenced to

hard labour for having convicted his superiors of a theft; another for

having struck an official who had unjustly confiscated the property of a

peasant; a third because he forged bank notes. The well-to-do-people, the

merchants, might do whatever they chose and come to no harm; but a

poor peasant, for a trumpery reason or for none at all, was sent to prison

to become food for vermin.

He had visits from his wife while in prison. Her life without him was

miserable enough, when, to make it worse, her cottage was destroyed by

fire. She was completely ruined, and had to take to begging with her

children. His wife‟s misery embittered Stepan still more. He got on very

badly with all the people in the prison; was rude to every one; and one

day he nearly killed the cook with an axe, and therefore got an additional

year in prison. In the course of that year he received the news that his

wife was dead, and that he had no longer a home.

When Stepan had finished his time in prison, he was taken to the

prison stores, and his own dress was taken down from the shelf and

handed to him.

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“Where am I to go now?” he asked the prison officer, putting on his

old dress.

“Why, home.”

“I have no home. I shall have to go on the road. Robbery will not be

a pleasant occupation.”

“In that case you will soon be back here.”

“I am not so sure of that.”

And Stepan left the prison. Nevertheless he took the road to his own

place. He had nowhere else to turn.

On his way he stopped for a night‟s rest in an inn that had a public

bar attached to it. The inn was kept by a fat man from the town,

Vladimir, and he knew Stepan. He knew that Stepan had been put into

prison through ill luck, and did not mind giving him shelter for the night.

He was a rich man, and had persuaded his neighbour‟s wife to leave her

husband and come to live with him. She lived in his house as his wife,

and helped him in his business as well.

Stepan knew all about the innkeeper‟s affairs—how he had wronged

the peasant, and how the woman who was living with him had left her

husband. He saw her now sitting at the table in a rich dress, and looking

very hot as she drank her tea. With great condescension she asked Stepan

to have tea with her. No other travellers were stopping in the inn that

night. Stepan was given a place in the kitchen where he might sleep.

Matrena—that was the woman‟s name—cleared the table and went to her

room. Stepan went to lie down on the large stove in the kitchen, but he

could not sleep, and the wood splinters put on the stove to dry were

crackling under him, as he tossed from side to side. He could not help

thinking of his host‟s fat paunch protruding under the belt of his shirt,

which had lost its colour from having been washed ever so many times.

Would not it be a good thing to make a good clean incision in that

paunch. And that woman, too, he thought.

One moment he would say to himself, “I had better go from here to-

morrow, bother them all!” But then again Ivan Mironov came back to his

mind, and he went on thinking of the innkeeper‟s paunch and Matrena‟s

white throat bathed in perspiration. “Kill I must, and it must be both!”

He heard the cock crow for the second time.

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97

“I must do it at once, or dawn will be here.” He had seen in the

evening before he went to bed a knife and an axe. He crawled down from

the stove, took the knife and axe, and went out of the kitchen door. At

that very moment he heard the lock of the entrance door open. The

innkeeper was going out of the house to the courtyard. It all turned out

contrary to what Stepan desired. He had no opportunity of using the

knife; he just swung the axe and split the innkeeper‟s head in two. The

man tumbled down on the threshold of the door, then on the ground.

Stepan stepped into the bedroom. Matrena jumped out of bed, and

remained standing by its side. With the same axe Stepan killed her also.

Then he lighted the candle, took the money out of the desk, and left

the house.

Chapter XVI

IN a small district town, some distance away from the other buildings, an

old man, a former official, who had taken to drink, lived in his own

house with his two daughters and his son-in-law. The married daughter

was also addicted to drink and led a bad life, and it was the elder

daughter, the widow Maria Semenovna, a wrinkled woman of fifty, who

supported the whole family. She had a pension of two hundred and fifty

roubles a year, and the family lived on this. Maria Semenovna did all the

work in the house, looked after the drunken old father, who was very

weak, attended to her sister‟s child, and managed all the cooking and the

washing of the family. And, as is always the case, whatever there was to

do, she was expected to do it, and was, moreover, continually scolded by

all the three people in the house; her brother-in-law used even to beat her

when he was drunk. She bore it all patiently, and as is also always the

case, the more work she had to face, the quicker she managed to get

through it. She helped the poor, sacrificing her own wants; she gave them

her clothes, and was a ministering angel to the sick.

Once the lame, crippled village tailor was working in Maria

Semenovna‟s house. He had to mend her old father‟s coat, and to mend

and repair Maria Semenovna‟s fur-jacket for her to wear in winter when

she went to market.

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98

The lame tailor was a clever man, and a keen observer: he had seen

many different people owing to his profession, and was fond of

reflection, condemned as he was to a sedentary life.

Having worked a week at Maria Semenovna‟s, he wondered greatly

about her life. One day she came to the kitchen, where he was sitting

with his work, to wash a towel, and began to ask him how he was getting

on. He told her of the wrong he had suffered from his brother, and how

he now lived on his own allotment of land, separated from that of his

brother.

“I thought I should have been better off that way,” he said. “But I am

now just as poor as before.”

“It is much better never to change, but to take life as it comes,” said

Maria Semenovna. “Take life as it comes,” she repeated.

“Why, I wonder at you, Maria Semenovna,” said the lame tailor.

“You alone do the work, and you are so good to everybody. But they

don‟t repay you in kind, I see.”

Maria Semenovna did not utter a word in answer.

“I dare say you have found out in books that we are rewarded in

heaven for the good we do here.”

“We don‟t know that. But we must try to do the best we can.”

“Is it said so in books?”

“In books as well,” she said, and read to him the Sermon on the

Mount. The tailor was much impressed. When he had been paid for his

job and gone home, he did not cease to think about Maria Semenovna,

both what she had said and what she had read to him.

Chapter XVII

PETER Nikolaevich Sventizky‟s views of the peasantry had now

changed for the worse, and the peasants had an equally bad opinion of

him. In the course of a single year they felled twenty-seven oaks in his

forest, and burnt a barn which had not been insured. Peter Nikolaevich

came to the conclusion that there was no getting on with the people

around him.

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99

At that very time the landowner, Liventsov, was trying to find a

manager for his estate, and the Marshal of the Nobility recommended

Peter Nikolaevich as the ablest man in the district in the management of

land. The estate owned by Liventsov was an extremely large one, but

there was no revenue to be got out of it, as the peasants appropriated all

its wealth to their own profit. Peter Nikolaevich undertook to bring

everything into order; rented out his own land to somebody else; and

settled with his wife on the Liventsov estate, in a distant province on the

river Volga.

Peter Nikolaevich was always fond of order, and wanted things to be

regulated by law; and now he felt less able of allowing those raw and

rude peasants to take possession, quite illegally too, of property that did

not belong to them. He was glad of the opportunity of giving them a

good lesson, and set seriously to work at once. One peasant was sent to

prison for stealing wood; to another he gave a thrashing for not having

made way for him on the road with his cart, and for not having lifted his

cap to salute him. As to the pasture ground which was a subject of

dispute, and was considered by the peasants as their property, Peter

Nikolaevich informed the peasants that any of their cattle grazing on it

would be driven away by him.

The spring came and the peasants, just as they had done in previous

years, drove their cattle on to the meadows belonging to the landowner.

Peter Nikolaevich called some of the men working on the estate and

ordered them to drive the cattle into his yard. The peasants were working

in the fields, and, disregarding the screaming of the women, Peter

Nikolaevich‟s men succeeded in driving in the cattle. When they came

home the peasants went in a crowd to the cattle-yard on the estate, and

asked for their cattle. Peter Nikolaevich came out to talk to them with a

gun slung on his shoulder; he had just returned from a ride of inspection.

He told them that he would not let them have their cattle unless they paid

a fine of fifty kopeks for each of the horned cattle, and twenty kopeks for

each sheep. The peasants loudly declared that the pasture ground was

their property, because their fathers and grandfathers had used it, and

protested that he had no right whatever to lay hand on their cattle.

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100

“Give back our cattle, or you will regret it,” said an old man coming

up to Peter Nikolaevich.

“How shall I regret it?” cried Peter Nikolaevich, turning pale, and

coming close to the old man.

“Give them back, you villain, and don‟t provoke us.”

“What?” cried Peter Nikolaevich, and slapped the old man in the

face.

“You dare to strike me? Come along, you fellows, let us take back

our cattle by force.”

The crowd drew close to him. Peter Nikolaevich tried to push his

way, through them, but the peasants resisted him. Again he tried force.

His gun, accidentally discharged in the melee, killed one of the

peasants. Instantly the fight began. Peter Nikolaevich was trodden down,

and five minutes later his mutilated body was dragged into the ravine.

The murderers were tried by martial law, and two of them sentenced

to the gallows.

Chapter XVIII

IN the village where the lame tailor lived, in the Zemliansk district of the

Voronesh province, five rich peasants hired from the landowner a

hundred and five acres of rich arable land, black as tar, and let it out on

lease to the rest of the peasants at fifteen to eighteen roubles an acre. Not

one acre was given under twelve roubles. They got a very profitable

return, and the five acres which were left to each of their company

practically cost them nothing. One of the five peasants died, and the lame

tailor received an offer to take his place.

When they began to divide the land, the tailor gave up drinking

vodka, and, being consulted as to how much land was to be divided, and

to whom it should be given, he proposed to give allotments to all on

equal terms, not taking from the tenants more than was due for each

piece of land out of the sum paid to the landowner.

“Why so?”

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101

“We are no heathens, I should think,” he said. “It is all very well for

the masters to be unfair, but we are true Christians. We must do as God

bids. Such is the law of Christ.”

“Where have you got that law from?

“It is in the Book, in the Gospels; just come to me on Sunday, I will

read you a few passages, and we will have a talk afterwards.”

They did not all come to him on Sunday, but three came, and he

began reading to them.

He read five chapters of St. Matthew‟s Gospel, and they talked. One

man only, Ivan Chouev, accepted the lesson and carried it out

completely, following the rule of Christ in everything from that day. His

family did the same. Out of the arable land he took only what was his

due, and refused to take more.

The lame tailor and Ivan had people calling on them, and some of

these people began to grasp the meaning of the Gospels, and in

consequence gave up smoking, drinking, swearing, and using bad

language and tried to help one another. They also ceased to go to church,

and took their ikons to the village priest, saying they did not want them

anymore. The priest was frightened, and reported what had occurred to

the bishop. The bishop was at a loss what to do. At last he resolved to

send the archimandrite Missael to the village, the one who had formerly

been Mitia Smokovnikov‟s teacher of religion.

Chapter XIX

ASKING Father Missael on his arrival to take a seat, the bishop told him

what had happened in his diocese.

“It all comes from weakness of spirit and from ignorance. You are a

learned man, and I rely on you. Go to the village, call the parishioners

together, and convince them of their error.”

“If your Grace bids me go, and you give me your blessing, I will do

my best,” said Father Missael. He was very pleased with the task

entrusted to him. Every opportunity he could find to demonstrate the

firmness of his faith was a boon to him. In trying to convince others he

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102

was chiefly intent on persuading himself that he was really a firm

believer.

“Do your best. I am greatly distressed about my flock,” said the

bishop, leisurely taking a cup with his white plump hands from the

servant who brought in the tea.

“Why is there only one kind of jam? Bring another,” he said to the

servant. “I am greatly distressed,” he went on, turning to Father Missael.

Missael earnestly desired to prove his zeal; but, being a man of small

means, he asked to be paid for the expenses of his journey; and being

afraid of the rough people who might be ill-dis-posed towards him, he

also asked the bishop to get him an order from the governor of the

province, so that the local police might help him in case of need. The

bishop complied with his wishes, and Missael got his things ready with

the help of his servant and his cook. They furnished him with a case full

of wine, and a basket with the victuals he might need in going to such a

lonely place. Fully provided with all he wanted, he started for the village

to which he was commissioned. He was pleasantly conscious of the

importance of his mission. All his doubts as to his own faith passed

away, and he was now fully convinced of its reality.

His thoughts, far from being concerned with the real foundation of

his creed—this was accepted as an axiom—were occupied with the

arguments used against the forms of worship.

Chapter XX

THE village priest and his wife received Father Missael with great

honours, and the next day after he had arrived the parishioners were

invited to assemble in the church. Missael in a new silk cassock, with a

large cross on his chest, and his long hair carefully combed, ascended the

pulpit; the priest stood at his side, the deacons and the choir at a little

distance behind him, and the side entrances were guarded by the police.

The dissenters also came in their dirty sheepskin coats.

After the service Missael delivered a sermon, admonishing the

dissenters to return to the bosom of their mother, the Church, threatening

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103

them with the torments of hell, and promising full forgiveness to those

who would repent.

The dissenters kept silent at first. Then, being asked questions, they

gave answers. To the question why they dissented, they said that their

chief reason was the fact that the Church worshipped gods made of

wood, which, far from being ordained, were condemned by the

Scriptures.

When asked by Missael whether they actually considered the holy

ikons to be mere planks of wood, Chouev answered,—“Just look at the

back of any ikon you choose and you will see what they are made of.”

When asked why they turned against the priests, their answer was

that the Scripture says: “As you have received it without fee, so you must

give it to the others; whereas the priests require payment for the grace

they bestow by the sacraments.” To all attempts which Missael made to

oppose them by arguments founded on Holy Writ, the tailor and Ivan

Chouev gave calm but very firm answers, contradicting his assertions by

appeal to the Scriptures, which they knew uncommonly well.

Missael got angry and threatened them with persecution by the

authorities. Their answer was: It is said, I have been persecuted and so

will you be.

The discussion came to nothing, and all would have ended well if

Missael had not preached the next day at mass, denouncing the wicked

seducers of the faithful and saying that they deserved the worst

punishment. Coming out of the church, the crowd of peasants began to

consult whether it would not be well to give the infidels a good lesson for

disturbing the minds of the community. The same day, just when Missael

was enjoying some salmon and gangfish, dining at the village priest‟s in

company with the inspector, a violent brawl arose in the village. The

peasants came in a crowd to Chouev‟s cottage, and waited for the

dissenters to come out in order to give them a thrashing.

The dissenters assembled in the cottage numbered about twenty men

and women. Missael‟s sermon and the attitude of the orthodox peasants,

together with their threats, aroused in the mind of the dissenters angry

feelings, to which they had before been strangers. It was near evening,

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104

the women had to go and milk the cows, and the peasants were still

standing and waiting at the door.

A boy who stepped out of the door was beaten and driven back into

the house. The people within began consulting what was to be done, and

could come to no agreement. The tailor said, “We must bear whatever is

done to us, and not resist.” Chouev replied that if they decided on that

course they would, all of them, be beaten to death. In consequence, he

seized a poker and went out of the house. “Come!” he shouted, “let us

follow the law of Moses!” And, falling upon the peasants, he knocked

out one man‟s eye, and in the meanwhile all those who had been in his

house contrived to get out and make their way home.

Chouev was thrown into prison and charged with sedition and

blasphemy.

Chapter XXI

TWO years previous to those events a strong and handsome young girl of

an eastern type, Katia Turchaninova, came from the Don military

settlements to St. Petersburg to study in the university college for

women. In that town she met a student, Turin, the son of a district

governor in the Simbirsk province, and fell in love with him. But her

love was not of the ordinary type, and she had no desire to become his

wife and the mother of his children. He was a dear comrade to her, and

their chief bond of union was a feeling of revolt they had in common, as

well as the hatred they bore, not only to the existing forms of

government, but to all those who represented that government. They had

also in common the sense that they both excelled their enemies in

culture, in brains, as well as in morals. Katia Turchaninova was a gifted

girl, possessed of a good memory, by means of which she easily mastered

the lectures she attended. She was successful in her examinations, and,

apart from that, read all the newest books. She was certain that her

vocation was not to bear and rear children, and even looked on such a

task with disgust and contempt. She thought herself chosen by destiny to

destroy the present government, which was fettering the best abilities of

the nation, and to reveal to the people a higher standard of life,

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105

inculcated by the latest writers of other countries. She was handsome, a

little inclined to stoutness: she had a good complexion, shining black

eyes, abundant black hair. She inspired the men she knew with feelings

she neither wished nor had time to share, busy as she was with

propaganda work, which consisted chiefly in mere talking. She was not

displeased, however, to inspire these feelings; and, without dressing too

smartly, did not neglect her appearance. She liked to be admired, as it

gave her opportunities of showing how little she prized what was valued

so highly by other women.

In her views concerning the method of fighting the government she

went further than the majority of her comrades, and than her friend

Turin; all means, she taught, were justified in such a struggle, not

excluding murder. And yet, with all her revolutionary ideas, Katia

Turchaninova was in her soul a very kind girl, ready to sacrifice herself

for the welfare and the happiness of other people, and sincerely pleased

when she could do a kindness to anybody, a child, an old person, or an

animal.

She went in the summer to stay with a friend, a schoolmistress in a

small town on the river Volga. Turin lived near that town, on his father‟s

estate. He often came to see the two girls; they gave each other books to

read, and had long discussions, expressing their common indignation

with the state of affairs in the country. The district doctor, a friend of

theirs, used also to join them on many occasions.

The estate of the Turins was situated in the neighbourhood of the

Liventsov estate, the one that was entrusted to the management of Peter

Nikolaevich Sventizky. Soon after Peter Nikolaevich had settled there,

and begun to enforce order, young Turin, having observed an

independent tendency in the peasants on the Liventsov estate, as well as

their determination to uphold their rights, became interested in them. He

came often to the village to talk with the men, and developed his

socialistic theories, insisting particularly on the nationalisation of the

land.

After Peter Nikolaevich had been murdered, and the murderers sent

to trial, the revolutionary group of the small town boiled over with

indignation, and did not shrink from openly expressing it. The fact of

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106

Turin‟s visits to the village and his propaganda work among the students,

became known to the authorities during the trial. A search was made in

his house; and, as the police found a few revolutionary leaflets among his

effects, he was arrested and transferred to prison in St. Petersburg.

Katia Turchaninova followed him to the metropolis, and went to visit

him in prison. She was not admitted on the day she came, and was told to

come on the day fixed by regulations for visits to the prisoners. When

that day arrived, and she was finally allowed to see him, she had to talk

to him through two gratings separating the prisoner from his visitor. This

visit increased her indignation against the authorities. And her feelings

become all the more revolutionary after a visit she paid to the office of a

gendarme officer who had to deal with the Turin case. The officer, a

handsome man, seemed obviously disposed to grant her exceptional

favours in visiting the prisoner, if she would allow him to make love to

her. Disgusted with him, she appealed to the chief of police. He

pretended—just as the officer did when talking officially to her—to be

powerless himself, and to depend entirely on orders coming from the

minister of state. She sent a petition to the minister asking for an

interview, which was refused.

Then she resolved to do a desperate thing and bought a revolver.

Chapter XXII

THE minister was receiving petitioners at the usual hour appointed for

the reception. He had talked successively to three of them, and now a

pretty young woman with black eyes, who was holding a petition in her

left hand, approached. The minister‟s eyes gleamed when he saw how

attractive the petitioner was, but recollecting his high position he put on a

serious face.

“What do you want?” he asked, coming down to where she stood.

Without answering his question the young woman quickly drew a

revolver from under her cloak and aiming it at the minister‟s chest

fired—but missed him.

The minister rushed at her, trying to seize her hand, but she escaped,

and taking a step back, fired a second time. The minister ran out of the

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107

room. The woman was immediately seized. She was trembling violently,

and could not utter a single word; after a while she suddenly burst into a

hysterical laugh. The minister was not even wounded.

That woman was Katia Turchaninova. She was put into the prison of

preliminary detention. The minister received congratulations and marks

of sympathy from the highest quarters, and even from the emperor

himself, who appointed a commission to investigate the plot that had led

to the attempted assassination. As a matter of fact there was no plot

whatever, but the police officials and the detectives set to work with the

utmost zeal to discover all the threads of the non-existing conspiracy.

They did everything to deserve the fees they were paid; they got up in the

small hours of the morning, searched one house after another, took

copies of papers and of books they found, read diaries, personal letters,

made extracts from them on the very best notepaper and in beautiful

handwriting, interrogated Katia Turchaninova ever so many times, and

confronted her with all those whom they suspected of conspiracy, in

order to extort from her the names of her accomplices.

The minister, a good-natured man at heart, was sincerely sorry for

the pretty girl. But he said to himself that he was bound to consider his

high state duties imposed upon him, even though they did not imply

much work and trouble. So, when his former colleague, a chamberlain

and a friend of the Turins, met him at a court ball and tried to rouse his

pity for Turin and the girl Turchaninova, he shrugged his shoulders,

stretching the red ribbon on his white waistcoat, and said: “Je ne

demanderais pas mieux que de relacher cette pauvre fillette, mais vous

savez le devoir.” And in the meantime Katia Turchaninova was kept in

prison. She was at times in a quiet mood, communicated with her fellow-

prisoners by knocking on the walls, and read the books that were sent to

her. But then came days when she had fits of desperate fury, knocking

with her fists against the wall, screaming and laughing like a mad-

woman.

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108

Chapter XXIII

ONE day Maria Semenovna came home from the treasurer‟s office,

where she had received her pension. On her way she met a schoolmaster,

a friend of hers.

“Good day, Maria Semenovna! Have you received your money?” the

schoolmaster asked, in a loud voice from the other side of the street.

“I have,” answered Maria Semenovna. “But it was not much; just

enough to fill the holes.”

“Oh, there must be some tidy pickings out of such a lot of money,”

said the schoolmaster, and passed on, after having said good-bye.

“Good-bye,” said Maria Semenovna. While she was looking at her

friend, she met a tall man face to face, who had very long arms and a

stern look in his eyes. Coming to her house, she was very startled on

again seeing the same man with the long arms, who had evidently

followed her. He remained standing another moment after she had gone

in, then turned and walked away.

Maria Semenovna felt somewhat frightened at first. But when she

had entered the house, and had given her father and her nephew Fedia the

presents she had brought for them, and she had patted the dog Treasure,

who whined with joy, she forgot her fears. She gave the money to her

father and began to work, as there was always plenty for her to do.

The man she met face to face was Stepan.

After he had killed the innkeeper, he did not return to town. Strange

to say, he was not sorry to have committed that murder. His mind went

back to the murdered man over and over again during the following day;

and he liked the recollection of having done the thing so skilfully, so

cleverly, that nobody-would ever discover it, and he would not therefore

be prevented from murdering other people in the same way. Sitting in the

public-house and having his tea, he looked at the people around him with

the same thought how he should murder them. In the evening he called at

a carter‟s, a man from his village, to spend the night at his house. The

carter was not in. He said he would wait for him, and in the meanwhile

began talking to the carter‟s wife. But when she moved to the stove, with

her back turned to him, the idea entered his mind to kill her. He

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109

marvelled at himself at first, and shook his head; but the next moment he

seized the knife he had hidden in his boot, knocked the woman down on

the floor, and cut her throat. When the children began to scream, he

killed them also and went away. He did not look out for another place to

spend the night, but at once left the town. In a village some distance

away he went to the inn and slept there. The next day he returned to the

district town, and there he overheard in the street Maria Semenovna‟s

talk with the schoolmaster. Her look frightened him, but yet he made up

his mind to creep into her house, and rob her of the money she had

received. When the night came he broke the lock and entered the house.

The first person who heard his steps was the younger daughter, the

married one. She screamed. Stepan stabbed her immediately with his

knife. Her husband woke up and fell upon Stepan, seized him by his

throat, and struggled with him desperately. But Stepan was the stronger

man and overpowered him. After murdering him, Stepan, excited by the

long fight, stepped into the next room behind a partition. That was Maria

Semenovna‟s bedroom. She rose in her bed, looked at Stepan with her

mild frightened eyes, and crossed herself.

Once more her look scared Stepan. He dropped his eyes.

“Where is your money?” he asked, without raising his face.

She did not answer.

“Where is the money?” asked Stepan again, showing her his knife.

“How can you . . .” she said.

“You will see how.”

Stepan came close to her, in order to seize her hands and prevent her

struggling with him, but she did not even try to lift her arms or offer any

resistance; she pressed her hands to her chest, and sighed heavily.

“Oh, what a great sin!” she cried. “How can you! Have mercy on

yourself. To destroy somebody‟s soul . . . and worse, your own! . . .”

Stepan could not stand her voice any longer, and drew his knife

sharply across her throat. “Stop that talk!” he said. She fell back with a

hoarse cry, and the pillow was stained with blood. He turned away, and

went round the rooms in order to collect all he thought worth taking.

Having made a bundle of the most valuable things, he lighted a cigarette,

sat down for a while, brushed his clothes, and left the house. He thought

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this murder would not matter to him more than those he had committed

before; but before he got a night‟s lodging, he felt suddenly so exhausted

that he could not walk any farther. He stepped down into the gutter and

remained lying there the rest of the night, and the next day and the next

night.

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Part Second

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Chapter I

THE whole time he was lying in the gutter Stepan saw continually before

his eyes the thin, kindly, and frightened face of Maria Semenovna, and

seemed to hear her voice. “How can you?” she went on saying in his

imagination, with her peculiar lisping voice. Stepan saw over again and

over again before him all he had done to her. In horror he shut his eyes,

and shook his hairy head, to drive away these thoughts and recollections.

For a moment he would get rid of them, but in their place horrid black

faces with red eyes appeared and frightened him continuously. They

grinned at him, and kept repeating, “Now you have done away with her

you must do away with yourself, or we will not leave you alone.” He

opened his eyes, and again he saw her and heard her voice; and felt an

immense pity for her and a deep horror and disgust with himself. Once

more he shut his eyes, and the black faces reappeared. Towards the

evening of the next day he rose and went, with hardly any strength left,

to a public-house. There he ordered a drink, and repeated his demands

over and over again, but no quantity of liquor could make him

intoxicated. He was sitting at a table, and swallowed silently one glass

after another.

A police officer came in. “Who are you?” he asked Stepan.

“I am the man who murdered all the Dobrotvorov people last night,”

he answered.

He was arrested, bound with ropes, and brought to the nearest police-

station; the next day he was transferred to the prison in the town. The

inspector of the prison recognised him as an old inmate, and a very

turbulent one; and, hearing that he had now become a real criminal,

accosted him very harshly.

“You had better be quiet here,” he said in a hoarse voice, frowning,

and protruding his lower jaw. “The moment you don‟t behave, I‟ll flog

you to death! Don‟t try to escape—I will see to that!”

“I have no desire to escape,” said Stepan, dropping his eyes. “I

surrendered of my own free will.”

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113

“Shut up! You must look straight into your superior‟s eyes when you

talk to him,” cried the inspector, and struck Stepan with his fist under the

jaw.

At that moment Stepan again saw the murdered woman before him,

and heard her voice; he did not pay attention, therefore, to the inspector‟s

words.

“What?” he asked, coming to his senses when he felt the blow on his

face.

“Be off! Don‟t pretend you don‟t hear.”

The inspector expected Stepan to be violent, to talk to the other

prisoners, to make attempts to escape from prison. But nothing of the

kind ever happened. Whenever the guard or the inspector himself looked

into his cell through the hole in the door, they saw Stepan sitting on a bag

filled with straw, holding his head with his hands and whispering to

himself. On being brought before the examining magistrate charged with

the inquiry into his case, he did not behave like an ordinary convict. He

was very absent-minded, hardly listening to the questions; but when he

heard what was asked, he answered truthfully, causing the utmost

perplexity to the magistrate, who, accustomed as he was to the necessity

of being very clever and very cunning with convicts, felt a strange

sensation just as if he were lifting up his foot to ascend a step and found

none. Stepan told him the story of all his murders; and did it frowning,

with a set look, in a quiet, businesslike voice, trying to recollect all the

circumstances of his crimes. “He stepped out of the house,” said Stepan,

telling the tale of his first murder, “and stood barefooted at the door; I hit

him, and he just groaned; I went to his wife, . . .” And so on.

One day the magistrate, visiting the prison cells, asked Stepan

whether there was anything he had to complain of, or whether he had any

wishes that might be granted him. Stepan said he had no wishes

whatever, and had nothing to complain of the way he was treated in

prison. The magistrate, on leaving him, took a few steps in the foul

passage, then stopped and asked the governor who had accompanied him

in his visit how this prisoner was behaving.

“I simply wonder at him,” said the governor, who was very pleased

with Stepan, and spoke kindly of him. “He has now been with us about

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114

two months, and could be held up as a model of good behaviour. But I

am afraid he is plotting some mischief. He is a daring man, and

exceptionally strong.”

Chapter II

DURING the first month in prison Stepan suffered from the same

agonising vision. He saw the grey wall of his cell, he heard the sounds of

the prison; the noise of the cell below him, where a number of convicts

were confined together; the striking of the prison clock; the steps of the

sentry in the passage; but at the same time he saw her with that kindly

face which conquered his heart the very first time he met her in the

street, with that thin, strongly-marked neck, and he heard her soft,

lisping, pathetic voice: “To destroy somebody‟s soul . . . and, worst of

all, your own. . . . How can you? . . .”

After a while her voice would die away, and then black faces would

appear. They would appear whether he had his eyes open or shut. With

his closed eyes he saw them more distinctly. When he opened his eyes

they vanished for a moment, melting away into the walls and the door;

but after a while they reappeared and surrounded him from three sides,

grinning at him and saying over and over: “Make an end! Make an end!

Hang yourself! Set yourself on fire!” Stepan shook all over when he

heard that, and tried to say all the prayers he knew: “Our Lady” or “Our

Father.” At first this seemed to help. In saying his prayers he began to

recollect his whole life; his father, his mother, the village, the dog

“Wolf,” the old grandfather lying on the stove, the bench on which the

children used to play; then the girls in the village with their songs, his

horses and how they had been stolen, and how the thief was caught and

how he killed him with a stone. He recollected also the first prison he

was in and his leaving it, and the fat innkeeper, the carter‟s wife and the

children. Then again she came to his mind and again he was terrified.

Throwing his prison overcoat off his shoulders, he jumped out of bed,

and, like a wild animal in a cage, began pacing up and down his tiny cell,

hastily turning round when he had reached the damp walls. Once more

he tried to pray, but it was of no use now.

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115

The autumn came with its long nights. One evening when the wind

whistled and howled in the pipes, Stepan, after he had paced up and

down his cell for a long time, sat down on his bed. He felt he could not

struggle anymore; the black demons had overpowered him, and he had to

submit. For some time he had been looking at the funnel of the oven. If

he could fix on the knob of its lid a loop made of thin shreds of narrow

linen straps it would hold. . . . But he would have to manage it very

cleverly. He set to work, and spent two days in making straps out of the

linen bag on which he slept. When the guard came into the cell he

covered the bed with his overcoat. He tied the straps with big knots and

made them double, in order that they might be strong enough to hold his

weight. During these preparations he was free from tormenting visions.

When the straps were ready he made a slip-knot out of them, and put it

round his neck, stood up in his bed, and hanged himself. But at the very

moment that his tongue began to protrude the straps got loose, and he fell

down. The guard rushed in at the noise. The doctor was called in, Stepan

was brought to the infirmary. The next day he recovered, and was

removed from the infirmary, no more to solitary confinement, but to

share the common cell with other prisoners.

In the common cell he lived in the company of twenty men, but felt

as if he were quite alone. He did not notice the presence of the rest; did

not speak to anybody, and was tormented by the old agony. He felt it

most of all when the men were sleeping and he alone could not get one

moment of sleep. Continually he saw her before his eyes, heard her

voice, and then again the black devils with their horrible eyes came and

tortured him in the usual way.

He again tried to say his prayers, but, just as before, it did not help

him. One day when, after his prayers, she was again before his eyes, he

began to implore her dear soul to forgive him his sin, and release him.

Towards morning, when he fell down quite exhausted on his crushed

linen bag, he fell asleep at once, and in his dream she came to him with

her thin, wrinkled, and severed neck. “Will you forgive me?” he asked.

She looked at him with her mild eyes and did not answer. “Will you

forgive me?” And so he asked her three times. But she did not say a

word, and he awoke. From that time onwards he suffered less, and

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116

seemed to come to his senses, looked around him, and began for the first

time to talk to the other men in the cell.

Chapter III

STEPAN‟S cell was shared among others by the former yard-porter,

Vassily, who had been sentenced to deportation for robbery, and by

Chouev, sentenced also to deportation. Vassily sang songs the whole day

long with his fine voice, or told his adventures to the other men in the

cell. Chouev was working at something all day, mending his clothes, or

reading the Gospel and the Psalter.

Stepan asked him why he was put into prison, and Chouev answered

that he was being persecuted because of his true Christian faith by the

priests, who were all of them hypocrites and hated those who followed

the law of Christ. Stepan asked what that true law was, and Chouev made

clear to him that the true law consists in not worshipping gods made with

hands, but worshipping the spirit and the truth. He told him how he had

learnt the truth from the lame tailor at the time when they were dividing

the land.

“And what will become of those who have done evil?” asked Stepan.

“The Scriptures give an answer to that,” said Chouev, and read aloud

to him Matthew XXV. 31:—“When the Son of Man shall come in His

glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne

of His glory: and before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall

separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth His sheep from

the goats: and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on

the left. Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye

blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the

foundation of the world: for I was an hungred, and ye gave Me meat: I

was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me in:

naked, and ye clothed Me: I was sick, and ye visited Me: I was in prison,

and ye came unto Me. Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying,

Lord, when saw we Thee an hungred, and fed Thee? or thirsty, and gave

Thee drink? When saw we Thee a stranger, and took Thee in? or naked,

and clothed Thee? Or when saw we Thee sick, or in prison, and came

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117

unto Thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say

unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My

brethren, ye have done it unto Me. Then shall He say also unto them on

the left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared

for the devil and his angels: for I was an hungred, and ye gave Me no

meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink: I was a stranger and ye

took Me not in: naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick, and in prison, and ye

visited Me not. Then shall they also answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw

we Thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in

prison, and did not minister unto Thee? Then shall He answer them,

saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the

least of these, ye did it not to Me. And these shall go away into

everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”

Vassily, who was sitting on the floor at Chouev‟s side, and was

listening to his reading the Gospel, nodded his handsome head in

approval. “True,” he said in a resolute tone. “Go, you cursed villains,

into everlasting punishment, since you did not give food to the hungry,

but swallowed it all yourself. Serves them right! I have read the holy

Nikodim‟s writings,” he added, showing off his erudition.

“And will they never be pardoned?” asked Stepan, who had listened

silently, with his hairy head bent low down.

“Wait a moment, and be silent,” said Chouev to Vassily, who went

on talking about the rich who had not given meat to the stranger, nor

visited him in the prison.

“Wait, I say!” said Chouev, again turning over the leaves of the

Gospel. Having found what he was looking for, Chouev smoothed the

page with his large and strong hand, which had become exceedingly

white in prison:

“And there were also two other malefactors, led with Him”—it

means with Christ—“to be put to death. And when they were come to the

place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the

malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said

Jesus,—„Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.‟ And the

people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided Him,

saying,—„He saved others; let Him save Himself if He be Christ, the

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118

chosen of God.‟ And the soldiers also mocked Him, coming to Him, and

offering Him vinegar, and saying, „If Thou be the King of the Jews save

Thyself.‟ And a superscription also was written over Him in letters of

Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, „This is the King of the Jews.‟ And one of

the malefactors which were hanged railed on Him, saying, „If thou be

Christ, save Thyself and us.‟ But the other answering rebuked Him,

saying, „Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same

condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of

our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.‟ And he said unto

Jesus, „Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.‟ And

Jesus said unto him, „Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with Me

in paradise.‟”

Stepan did not say anything, and was sitting in thought, as if he were

listening.

Now he knew what the true faith was. Those only will be saved who

have given food and drink to the poor and visited the prisoners; those

who have not done it, go to hell. And yet the malefactor had repented on

the cross, and went nevertheless to paradise. This did not strike him as

being inconsistent. Quite the contrary. The one confirmed the other: the

fact that the merciful will go to Heaven, and the unmerciful to hell,

meant that everybody ought to be merciful, and the malefactor having

been forgiven by Christ meant that Christ was merciful. This was all new

to Stepan, and he wondered why it had been hidden from him so long.

From that day onward he spent all his free time with Chouev, asking

him questions and listening to him. He saw but a single truth at the

bottom of the teaching of Christ as revealed to him by Chouev: that all

men are brethren, and that they ought to love and pity one another in

order that all might be happy. And when he listened to Chouev,

everything that was consistent with this fundamental truth came to him

like a thing he had known before and only forgotten since, while

whatever he heard that seemed to contradict it, he would take no notice

of, as he thought that he simply had not understood the real meaning.

And from that time Stepan was a different man.

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Chapter IV

STEPAN had been very submissive and meek ever since he came to the

prison, but now he made the prison authorities and all his fellow-

prisoners wonder at the change in him. Without being ordered, and out of

his proper turn he would do all the very hardest work in prison, and the

dirtiest too. But in spite of his humility, the other prisoners stood in awe

of him, and were afraid of him, as they knew he was a resolute man,

possessed of great physical strength. Their respect for him increased after

the incident of the two tramps who fell upon him; he wrenched himself

loose from them and broke the arm of one of them in the fight. These

tramps had gambled with a young prisoner of some means and deprived

him of all his money. Stepan took his part, and deprived the tramps of

their winnings. The tramps poured their abuse on him; but when they

attacked him, he got the better of them. When the Governor asked how

the fight had come about, the tramps declared that it was Stepan who had

begun it. Stepan did not try to exculpate himself, and bore patiently his

sentence which was three days in the punishment-cell, and after that

solitary confinement.

In his solitary cell he suffered because he could no longer listen to

Chouev and his Gospel. He was also afraid that the former visions of her

and of the black devils would reappear to torment him. But the visions

were gone for good. His soul was full of new and happy ideas. He felt

glad to be alone if only he could read, and if he had the Gospel. He knew

that he might have got hold of the Gospel, but he could not read.

He had started to learn the alphabet in his boyhood, but could not

grasp the joining of the syllables, and remained illiterate. He made up his

mind to start reading anew, and asked the guard to bring him the

Gospels. They were brought to him, and he sat down to work. He

contrived to recollect the letters, but could not join them into syllables.

He tried as hard as he could to understand how the letters ought to be put

together to form words, but with no result whatever. He lost his sleep,

had no desire to eat, and a deep sadness came over him, which he was

unable to shake off.

“Well, have you not yet mastered it?” asked the guard one day.

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120

“No.”

“Do you know „Our Father‟?”

“I do.”

“Since you do, read it in the Gospels. Here it is,” said the guard,

showing him the prayer in the Gospels. Stepan began to read it,

comparing the letters he knew with the familiar sounds.

And all of a sudden the mystery of the syllables was revealed to him,

and he began to read. This was a great joy. From that moment he could

read, and the meaning of the words, spelt out with such great pains,

became more significant.

Stepan did not mind any more being alone. He was so full of his

work that he did not feel glad when he was transferred back to the

common cell, his private cell being needed for a political prisoner who

had been just sent to prison.

Chapter V

IN the meantime Mahin, the schoolboy who had taught his friend

Smokovnikov to forge the coupon, had finished his career at school and

then at the university, where he had studied law. He had the advantage of

being liked by women, and as he had won favour with a vice-minister‟s

former mistress, he was appointed when still young as examining

magistrate. He was dishonest, had debts, had gambled, and had seduced

many women; but he was clever, sagacious, and a good magistrate. He

was appointed to the court of the district where Stepan Pelageushkine

had been tried. When Stepan was brought to him the first time to give

evidence, his sincere and quiet answers puzzled the magistrate. He

somehow unconsciously felt that this man, brought to him in fetters and

with a shorn head, guarded by two soldiers who were waiting to take him

back to prison, had a free soul and was immeasurably superior to

himself. He was in consequence somewhat troubled, and had to summon

up all his courage in order to go on with the inquiry and not blunder in

his questions. He was amazed that Stepan should narrate the story of his

crimes as if they had been things of long ago, and committed not by him

but by some different man.

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121

“Had you no pity for them?” asked Mahin.

“No. I did not know then.”

“Well, and now?”

Stepan smiled with a sad smile. “Now,” he said, “I would not do it

even if I were to be burned alive.”

“But why?

“Because I have come to know that all men are brethren.”

“What about me? Am I your brother also?”

“Of course you are.”

“And how is it that I, your brother, am sending you to hard labour?”

“It is because you don‟t know.”

“What do I not know?”

“Since you judge, it means obviously that you don‟t know.”

“Go on. . . . What next?”

Chapter VI

NOW it was not Chouev, but Stepan who used to read the gospel in the

common cell. Some of the prisoners were singing coarse songs, while

others listened to Stepan reading the gospel and talking about what he

had read. The most attentive among those who listened were two of the

prisoners, Vassily, and a convict called Mahorkin, a murderer who had

become a hangman. Twice during his stay in this prison he was called

upon to do duty as hangman, and both times in far-away places where

nobody could be found to execute the sentences.

Two of the peasants who had killed Peter Nikolaevich Sventizky,

had been sentenced to the gallows, and Mahorkin was ordered to go to

Pensa to hang them. On all previous occasions he used to write a petition

to the governor of the province—he knew well how to read and to

write—stating that he had been ordered to fulfil his duty, and asking for

money for his expenses. But now, to the greatest astonishment of the

prison authorities, he said he did not intend to go, and added that he

would not be a hangman any more.

“And what about being flogged?” cried the governor of the prison.

“I will have to bear it, as the law commands us not to kill.”

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122

“Did you get that from Pelageushkine? A nice sort of a prison

prophet! You just wait and see what this will cost you!”

When Mahin was told of that incident, he was greatly impressed by

the fact of Stepan‟s influence on the hangman, who refused to do his

duty, running the risk of being hanged himself for insubordination.

Chapter VII

AT an evening party at the Eropkins, Mahin, who was paying attentions

to the two young daughters of the house—they were rich matches, both

of them—having earned great applause for his fine singing and playing

the piano, began telling the company about the strange convict who had

converted the hangman. Mahin told his story very accurately, as he had a

very good memory, which was all the more retentive because of his total

indifference to those with whom he had to deal. He never paid the

slightest attention to other people‟s feelings, and was therefore better

able to keep all they did or said in his memory. He got interested in

Stepan Pelageushkine, and, although he did not thoroughly understand

him, yet asked himself involuntarily what was the matter with the man?

He could not find an answer, but feeling that there was certainly

something remarkable going on in Stepan‟s soul, he told the company at

the Eropkins all about Stepan‟s conversion of the hangman, and also

about his strange behaviour in prison, his reading the Gospels and his

great influence on the rest of the prisoners. All this made a special

impression on the younger daughter of the family, Lisa, a girl of

eighteen, who was just recovering from the artificial life she had been

living in a boarding-school; she felt as if she had emerged out of water,

and was taking in the fresh air of true life with ecstasy. She asked Mahin

to tell her more about the man Pelageushkine, and to explain to her how

such a great change had come over him. Mahin told her what he knew

from the police official about Stepan‟s last murder, and also what he had

heard from Pelageushkine himself—how he had been conquered by the

humility, mildness, and fearlessness of a kind woman, who had been his

last victim, and how his eyes had been opened, while the reading of the

Gospels had completed the change in him.

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123

Lisa Eropkin was not able to sleep that night. For a couple of months

a struggle had gone on in her heart between society life, into which her

sister was dragging her, and her infatuation for Mahin, combined with a

desire to reform him. This second desire now became the stronger. She

had already heard about poor Maria Semenovna. But, after that kind

woman had been murdered in such a ghastly way, and after Mahin, who

learnt it from Stepan, had communicated to her all the facts concerning

Maria Semenovna‟s life, Lisa herself passionately desired to become like

her. She was a rich girl, and was afraid that Mahin had been courting her

because of her money. So she resolved to give all she possessed to the

poor, and told Mahin about it.

Mahin was very glad to prove his disinterestedness, and told Lisa

that he loved her and not her money. Such proof of his innate nobility

made him admire himself greatly. Mahin helped Lisa to carry out her

decision. And the more he did so, the more he came to realise the new

world of Lisa‟s spiritual ambitions, quite unknown to him heretofore.

Chapter VIII

ALL were silent in the common cell. Stepan was lying in his bed, but

was not yet asleep. Vassily approached him, and, pulling him by his leg,

asked him in a whisper to get up and to come to him. Stepan stepped out

of his bed, and came up to Vassily.

“Do me a kindness, brother,” said Vassily. “Help me!”

“In what?”

“I am going to fly from the prison.”

Vassily told Stepan that he had everything ready for his flight.

“To-morrow I shall stir them up—” He pointed to the prisoners

asleep in their beds. “They will give me away, and I shall be transferred

to the cell in the upper floor. I know my way from there. What I want

you for is to unscrew the prop in the door of the mortuary.” “I can do

that. But where will you go?”

“I don‟t care where. Are not there plenty of wicked people in every

place?”

“Quite so, brother. But it is not our business to judge them.”

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124

“I am not a murderer, to be sure. I have not destroyed a living soul in

my life. As for stealing, I don‟t see any harm in that. As if they have not

robbed us!”

“Let them answer for it themselves, if they do.”

“Bother them all! Suppose I rob a church, who will be hurt? This

time I will take care not to break into a small shop, but will get hold of a

lot of money, and then I will help people with it. I will give it to all good

people.”

One of the prisoners rose in his bed and listened. Stepan and Vassily

broke off their conversation. The next day Vassily carried out his idea.

He began complaining of the bread in prison, saying it was moist, and

induced the prisoners to call the governor and to tell him of their

discontent. The governor came, abused them all, and when he heard it

was Vassily who had stirred up the men, he ordered him to be transferred

into solitary confinement in the cell on the upper floor. This was all

Vassily wanted.

Chapter IX

VASSILY knew well that cell on the upper floor. He knew its floor, and

began at once to take out bits of it. When he had managed to get under

the floor he took out pieces of the ceiling beneath, and jumped down into

the mortuary a floor below. That day only one corpse was lying on the

table. There in the corner of the room were stored bags to make hay

mattresses for the prisoners. Vassily knew about the bags, and that was

why the mortuary served his purposes. The prop in the door had been

unscrewed and put in again. He took it out, opened the door, and went

out into the passage to the lavatory which was being built. In the lavatory

was a large hole connecting the third floor with the basement floor. After

having found the door of the lavatory he went back to the mortuary,

stripped the sheet off the dead body which was as cold as ice (in taking

off the sheet Vassily touched his hand), took the bags, tied them together

to make a rope, and carried the rope to the lavatory. Then he attached it

to the cross-beam, and climbed down along it. The rope did not reach the

ground, but he did not know how much was wanting. Anyhow, he had to

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125

take the risk. He remained hanging in the air, and then jumped down. His

legs were badly hurt, but he could still walk on. The basement had two

windows; he could have climbed out of one of them but for the grating

protecting them. He had to break the grating, but there was no tool to do

it with. Vassily began to look around him, and chanced on a piece of

plank with a sharp edge; armed with that weapon he tried to loosen the

bricks which held the grating. He worked a long time at that task. The

cock crowed for the second time, but the grating still held. At last he had

loosened one side; and then he pushed the plank under the loosened end

and pressed with all his force. The grating gave way completely, but at

that moment one of the bricks fell down heavily. The noise could have

been heard by the sentry. Vassily stood motionless. But silence reigned.

He climbed out of the window. His way of escape was to climb the wall.

An outhouse stood in the corner of the courtyard. He had to reach its

roof, and pass thence to the top of the wall. But he would not be able to

reach the roof without the help of the plank; so he had to go back through

the basement window to fetch it. A moment later he came out of the

window with the plank in his hands; he stood still for a while listening to

the steps of the sentry. His expectations were justified. The sentry was

walking up and down on the other side of the courtyard. Vassily came up

to the outhouse, leaned the plank against it, and began climbing. The

plank slipped and fell on the ground. Vassily had his stockings on; he

took them off so that he could cling with his bare feet in coming down.

Then he leaned the plank again against the house, and seized the water-

pipe with his hands. If only this time the plank would hold! A quick

movement up the water-pipe, and his knee rested on the roof. The sentry

was approaching. Vassily lay motionless. The sentry did not notice him,

and passed on. Vassily leaped to his feet; the iron roof cracked under

him. Another step or two, and he would reach the wall. He could touch it

with his hand now. He leaned forward with one hand, then with the

other, stretched out his body as far as he could, and found himself on the

wall. Only, not to break his legs in jumping down, Vassily turned round,

remained hanging in the air by his hands, stretched himself out, loosened

the grip of one hand, then the other. “Help, me, God!” He was on the

ground. And the ground was soft. His legs were not hurt, and he ran at

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126

the top of his speed. In a suburb, Malania opened her door, and he crept

under her warm coverlet, made of small pieces of different colours

stitched together.

Chapter X

THE wife of Peter Nikolaevich Sventizky, a tall and handsome woman,

as quiet and sleek as a well-fed heifer, had seen from her window how

her husband had been murdered and dragged away into the fields. The

horror of such a sight to Natalia Ivanovna was so intense—how could it

be otherwise?—that all her other feelings vanished. No sooner had the

crowd disappeared from view behind the garden fence, and the voices

had become still; no sooner had the barefooted Malania, their servant,

run in with her eyes starting out of her head, calling out in a voice more

suited to the proclamation of glad tidings the news that Peter Nikolaevich

had been murdered and thrown into the ravine, than Natalia Ivanovna felt

that behind her first sensation of horror, there was another sensation; a

feeling of joy at her deliverance from the tyrant, who through all the

nineteen years of their married life had made her work without a

moment‟s rest. Her joy made her aghast; she did not confess it to herself,

but hid it the more from those around. When his mutilated, yellow and

hairy body was being washed and put into the coffin, she cried with

horror, and wept and sobbed. When the coroner—a special coroner for

serious cases—came and was taking her evidence, she noticed in the

room, where the inquest was taking place, two peasants in irons, who had

been charged as the principal culprits. One of them was an old man with

a curly white beard, and a calm and severe countenance. The other was

rather young, of a gipsy type, with bright eyes and curly dishevelled hair.

She declared that they were the two men who had first seized hold of

Peter Nikolaevich‟s hands. In spite of the gipsy-like peasant looking at

her with his eyes glistening from under his moving eyebrows, and saying

reproachfully: “A great sin, lady, it is. Remember your death hour!”—in

spite of that, she did not feel at all sorry for them. On the contrary, she

began to hate them during the inquest, and wished desperately to take

revenge on her husband‟s murderers.

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127

A month later, after the case, which was committed for trial by court-

martial, had ended in eight men being sentenced to hard labour, and in

two—the old man with the white beard, and the gipsy boy, as she called

the other—being condemned to be hanged, Natalia felt vaguely uneasy.

But unpleasant doubts soon pass away under the solemnity of a trial.

Since such high authorities considered that this was the right thing to do,

it must be right.

The execution was to take place in the village itself. One Sunday

Malania came home from church in her new dress and her new boots,

and announced to her mistress that the gallows were being erected, and

that the hangman was expected from Moscow on Wednesday. She also

announced that the families of the convicts were raging, and that their

cries could be heard all over the village.

Natalia Ivanovna did not go out of her house; she did not wish to see

the gallows and the people in the village; she only wanted what had to

happen to be over quickly. She only considered her own feelings, and did

not care for the convicts and their families.

On Tuesday the village constable called on Natalia Ivanovna. He was

a friend, and she offered him vodka and preserved mushrooms of her

own making. The constable, after eating a little, told her that the

execution was not to take place the next day.

“Why?”

“A very strange thing has happened. There is no hangman to be

found. They had one in Moscow, my son told me, but he has been

reading the Gospels a good deal and says: „I will not commit a murder.‟

He had himself been sentenced to hard labour for having committed a

murder, and now he objects to hang when the law orders him. He was

threatened with flogging. „You may flog me,‟ he said, „but I won‟t do

it.‟”

Natalia Ivanovna grew red and hot at the thought which suddenly

came into her head.

“Could not the death sentence be commuted now?”

“How so, since the judges have passed it? The Tsar alone has the

right of amnesty.”

“But how would he know?”

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128

“They have the right of appealing to him.”

“But it is on my account they are to die,” said that stupid woman,

Natalia Ivanovna. “And I forgive them.”

The constable laughed. “Well—send a petition to the Tsar.”

“May I do it?”

“Of course you may.”

“But is it not too late?”

“Send it by telegram.”

“To the Tsar himself?”

“To the Tsar, if you like.”

The story of the hangman having refused to do his duty, and

preferring to take the flogging instead, suddenly changed the soul of

Natalia Ivanovna. The pity and the horror she felt the moment she heard

that the peasants were sentenced to death, could not be stifled now, but

filled her whole soul.

“Filip Vassilievich, my friend. Write that telegram for me. I want to

appeal to the Tsar to pardon them.”

The constable shook his head. “I wonder whether that would not

involve us in trouble?”

“I do it upon my own responsibility. I will not mention your name.”

“Is not she a kind woman,” thought the constable. “Very kind-

hearted, to be sure. If my wife had such a heart, our life would be a

paradise, instead of what it is now.” And he wrote the telegram,—“To

his Imperial Majesty, the Emperor. Your Majesty‟s loyal subject, the

widow of Peter Nikolaevich Sventizky, murdered by the peasants, throws

herself at the sacred feet (this sentence, when he wrote it down, pleased

the constable himself most of all) of your Imperial Majesty, and implores

you to grant an amnesty to the peasants so and so, from such a province,

district, and village, who have been sentenced to death.”

The telegram was sent by the constable himself, and Natalia

Ivanovna felt relieved and happy. She had a feeling that since she, the

widow of the murdered man, had forgiven the murderers, and was

applying for an amnesty, the Tsar could not possibly refuse it.

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129

Chapter XI

LISA Eropkin lived in a state of continual excitement. The longer she

lived a true Christian life as it had been revealed to her, the more

convinced she became that it was the right way, and her heart was full of

joy.

She had two immediate aims before her. The one was to convert

Mahin; or, as she put it to herself, to arouse his true nature, which was

good and kind. She loved him, and the light of her love revealed the

divine element in his soul which is at the bottom of all souls. But,

further, she saw in him an exceptionally kind and tender heart, as well as

a noble mind. Her other aim was to abandon her riches. She had first

thought of giving away what she possessed in order to test Mahin; but

afterwards she wanted to do so for her own sake, for the sake of her own

soul. She began by simply giving money to anyone who wanted it. But

her father stopped that; besides which, she felt disgusted at the crowd of

supplicants who personally, and by letters, besieged her with demands

for money. Then she resolved to apply to an old man, known to be a saint

by his life, and to give him her money to dispose of in the way he

thought best. Her father got angry with her when he heard about it.

During a violent altercation he called her mad, a raving lunatic, and said

he would take measures to prevent her from doing injury to herself.

Her father‟s irritation proved contagious. Losing all control over

herself, and sobbing with rage, she behaved with the greatest

impertinence to her father, calling him a tyrant and a miser.

Then she asked his forgiveness. He said he did not mind what she

said; but she saw plainly that he was offended, and in his heart did not

forgive her. She did not feel inclined to tell Mahin about her quarrel with

her father; as to her sister, she was very cold to Lisa, being jealous of

Mahin‟s love for her.

“I ought to confess to God,” she said to herself. As all this happened

in Lent, she made up her mind to fast in preparation for the communion,

and to reveal all her thoughts to the father confessor, asking his advice as

to what she ought to decide for the future.

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130

At a small distance from her town a monastery was situated, where

an old monk lived who had gained a great reputation by his holy life, by

his sermons and prophecies, as well as by the marvelous cures ascribed

to him.

The monk had received a letter from Lisa‟s father announcing the

visit of his daughter, and telling him in what a state of excitement the

young girl was. He also expressed the hope in that letter that the monk

would influence her in the right way, urging her not to depart from the

golden mean, and to live like a good Christian without trying to upset the

present conditions of her life.

The monk received Lisa after he had seen many other people, and

being very tired, began by quietly recommending her to be modest and to

submit to her present conditions of life and to her parents. Lisa listened

silently, blushing and flushed with excitement. When he had finished

admonishing her, she began saying with tears in her eyes, timidly at first,

that Christ bade us leave father and mother to follow Him. Getting more

and more excited, she told him her conception of Christ. The monk

smiled slightly, and replied as he generally did when admonishing his

penitents; but after a while he remained silent, repeating with heavy

sighs, “O God!” Then he said, “Well, come to confession to-morrow,”

and blessed her with his wrinkled hands.

The next day Lisa came to confession, and without renewing their

interrupted conversation, he absolved her and refused to dispose of her

fortune, giving no reasons for doing so.

Lisa‟s purity, her devotion to God and her ardent soul, impressed the

monk deeply. He had desired long ago to renounce the world entirely;

but the brotherhood, which drew a large income from his work as a

preacher, insisted on his continuing his activity. He gave way, although

he had a vague feeling that he was in a false position. It was rumoured

that he was a miracle-working saint, whereas in reality he was a weak

man, proud of his success in the world. When the soul of Lisa was

revealed to him, he saw clearly into his own soul. He discovered how

different he was to what he wanted to be, and realised the desire of his

heart.

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131

Soon after Lisa‟s visit he went to live in a separate cell as a hermit,

and for three weeks did not officiate again in the church of the friary.

After the celebration of the mass, he preached a sermon denouncing his

own sins and those of the world, and urging all to repent.

From that day he preached every fortnight, and his sermons attracted

increasing audiences. His fame as a preacher spread abroad. His sermons

were extraordinarily fearless and sincere, and deeply impressed all who

listened to him.

Chapter XII

VASSILY was actually carrying out the object he had in leaving the

prison. With the help of a few friends he broke into the house of the rich

merchant Krasnopuzov, whom he knew to be a miser and a debauchee.

Vassily took out of his writing-desk thirty thousand roubles, and began

disposing of them as he thought right. He even gave up drink, so as not

to spend that money on himself, but to distribute it to the poor; helping

poor girls to get married; paying off people‟s debts, and doing this all

without ever revealing himself to those he helped; his only desire was to

distribute his money in the right way. As he also gave bribes to the

police, he was left in peace for a long time.

His heart was singing for joy. When at last he was arrested and put to

trial, he confessed with pride that he had robbed the fat merchant. “The

money,” he said, “was lying idle in that fool‟s desk, and he did not even

know how much he had, whereas I have put it into circulation and helped

a lot of good people.”

The counsel for the defence spoke with such good humour and

kindness that the jury felt inclined to discharge Vassily, but sentenced

him nevertheless to confinement in prison. He thanked the jury, and

assured them that he would find his way out of prison before long.

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Chapter XIII

NATALIA Ivanovna Sventizky‟s telegram proved useless. The

committee appointed to deal with the petitions in the Emperor‟s name,

decided not even to make a report to the Tsar. But one day when the

Sventizky case was discussed at the Emperor‟s luncheon-table, the

chairman of the committee, who was present, mentioned the telegram

which had been received from Sventizky‟s widow.

“C‟est tres gentil de sa part,” said one of the ladies of the imperial

family.

The Emperor sighed, shrugged his shoulders, adorned with epaulettes.

“The law,” he said; and raised his glass for the groom of the chamber to

pour out some Moselle.

All those present pretended to admire the wisdom of the sovereign‟s

words. There was no further question about the telegram. The two

peasants, the old man and the young boy, were hanged by a Tartar

hangman from Kazan, a cruel convict and a murderer.

The old man‟s wife wanted to dress the body of her husband in a

white shirt, with white bands which serve as stockings, and new boots,

but she was not allowed to do so. The two men were buried together in

the same pit outside the church-yard wall.

“Princess Sofia Vladimirovna tells me he is a very remarkable

preacher,” remarked the old Empress, the Emperor‟s mother, one day to

her son: “Faites le venir. Il peut precher a la cathedrale.”

“No, it would be better in the palace church,” said the Emperor, and

ordered the hermit Isidor to be invited.

All the generals, and other high officials, assembled in the church of

the imperial palace; it was an event to hear the famous preacher.

A thin and grey old man appeared, looked at those present, and said:

“In the name of God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” and began to speak.

At first all went well, but the longer he spoke the worse it became.

“Il devient de plus en plus aggressif,” as the Empress put it afterwards.

He fulminated against every one. He spoke about the executions and

charged the government with having made so many necessary. How can

the government of a Christian country kill men?

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133

Everybody looked at everybody else, thinking of the bad taste of the

sermon, and how unpleasant it must be for the Emperor to listen to it; but

nobody expressed these thoughts aloud.

When Isidor had said Amen, the metropolitan approached, and asked

him to call on him.

After Isidor had had a talk with the metropolitan and with the

attorney-general, he was immediately sent away to a friary, not his own,

but one at Suzdal, which had a prison attached to it; the prior of that

friary was now Father Missael.

Chapter XIV

EVERY one tried to look as if Isidor‟s sermon contained nothing

unpleasant, and nobody mentioned it. It seemed to the Tsar that the

hermit‟s words had not made any impression on himself; but once or

twice during that day he caught himself thinking of the two peasants who

had been hanged, and the widow of Sventizky who had asked an amnesty

for them. That day the Emperor had to be present at a parade; after which

he went out for a drive; a reception of ministers came next, then dinner,

after dinner the theatre. As usual, the Tsar fell asleep the moment his

head touched the pillow. In the night an awful dream awoke him: he saw

gallows in a large field and corpses dangling on them; the tongues of the

corpses were protruding, and their bodies moved and shook. And

somebody shouted, “It is you—you who have done it!” The Tsar woke

up bathed in perspiration and began to think. It was the first time that he

had ever thought of the responsibilities which weighed on him, and the

words of old Isidor came back to his mind. . . .

But only dimly could he see himself as a mere human being, and he

could not consider his mere human wants and duties, because of all that

was required of him as Tsar. As to acknowledging that human duties

were more obligatory than those of a Tsar—he had not strength for that.

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134

Chapter XV

HAVING served his second term in the prison, Prokofy, who had

formerly worked on the Sventizky estate, was no longer the brisk,

ambitious, smartly dressed fellow he had been. He seemed, on the

contrary, a complete wreck. When sober he would sit idle and would

refuse to do any work, however much his father scolded him; moreover,

he was continually seeking to get hold of something secretly, and take it

to the public-house for a drink. When he came home he would continue

to sit idle, coughing and spitting all the time. The doctor on whom he

called, examined his chest and shook his head.

“You, my man, ought to have many things which you have not got.”

“That is usually the case, isn‟t it?

“Take plenty of milk, and don‟t smoke.”

“These are days of fasting, and besides we have no cow.”

Once in spring he could not get any sleep; he was longing to have a

drink. There was nothing in the house he could lay his hand on to take to

the public-house. He put on his cap and went out. He walked along the

street up to the house where the priest and the deacon lived together. The

deacon‟s harrow stood outside leaning against the hedge. Prokofy

approached, took the harrow upon his shoulder, and walked to an inn

kept by a woman, Petrovna. She might give him a small bottle of vodka

for it. But he had hardly gone a few steps when the deacon came out of

his house. It was already dawn, and he saw that Prokofy was carrying

away his harrow.

“Hey, what‟s that?” cried the deacon.

The neighbours rushed out from their houses. Prokofy was seized,

brought to the police station, and then sentenced to eleven months‟

imprisonment. It was autumn, and Prokofy had to be transferred to the

prison hospital. He was coughing badly; his chest was heaving from the

exertion; and he could not get warm. Those who were stronger contrived

not to shiver; Prokofy on the contrary shivered day and night, as the

superintendent would not light the fires in the hospital till November, to

save expense.

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135

Prokofy suffered greatly in body, and still more in soul. He was

disgusted with his surroundings, and hated every one—the deacon, the

superintendent who would not light the fires, the guard, and the man who

was lying in the bed next to his, and who had a swollen red lip. He began

also to hate the new convict who was brought into hospital. This convict

was Stepan. He was suffering from some disease on his head, and was

transferred to the hospital and put in a bed at Prokofy‟s side. After a time

that hatred to Stepan changed, and Prokofy became, on the contrary,

extremely fond of him; he delighted in talking to him. It was only after a

talk with Stepan that his anguish would cease for a while. Stepan always

told everyone he met about his last murder, and how it had impressed

him.

“Far from shrieking, or anything of that kind,” he said to Prokofy,

“she did not move. „Kill me! There I am,‟ she said. „But it is not my soul

you destroy, it is your own.‟”

“Well, of course, it is very dreadful to kill. I had one day to slaughter

a sheep, and even that made me half mad. I have not destroyed any living

soul; why then do those villains kill me? I have done no harm to anybody

. . .”

“That will be taken into consideration.”

“By whom?”

“By God, to be sure.”

“I have not seen anything yet showing that God exists, and I don‟t

believe in Him, brother. I think when a man dies, grass will grow over

the spot, and that is the end of it.”

“You are wrong to think like that. I have murdered so many people,

whereas she, poor soul, was helping everybody. And you think she and I

are to have the same lot? Oh no! Only wait.”

“Then you believe the soul lives on after a man is dead?”

“To be sure; it truly lives.”

Prokofy suffered greatly when death drew near. He could hardly

breathe. But in the very last hour he felt suddenly relieved from all pain.

He called Stepan to him. “Farewell, brother,” he said. “Death has come, I

see. I was so afraid of it before. And now I don‟t mind. I only wish it to

come quicker.”

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136

Chapter XVI

IN the meanwhile, the affairs of Eugene Mihailovich had grown worse

and worse. Business was very slack. There was a new shop in the town;

he was losing his customers, and the interest had to be paid. He borrowed

again on interest. At last his shop and his goods were to be sold up.

Eugene Mihailovich and his wife applied to everyone they knew, but

they could not raise the four hundred roubles they needed to save the

shop anywhere.

They had some hope of the merchant Krasnopuzov, Eugene

Mihailovich‟s wife being on good terms with his mistress. But news

came that Krasnopuzov had been robbed of a huge sum of money. Some

said of half a million roubles. “And do you know who is said to be the

thief?” said Eugene Mihailovich to his wife. “Vassily, our former yard-

porter. They say he is squandering the money, and the police are bribed

by him.”

“I knew he was a villain. You remember how he did not mind

perjuring himself? But I did not expect it would go so far.”

“I hear he has recently been in the courtyard of our house. Cook says

she is sure it was he. She told me he helps poor girls to get married.”

“They always invent tales. I don‟t believe it.”

At that moment a strange man, shabbily dressed, entered the shop.

“What is it you want?”

“Here is a letter for you.”

“From whom?”

“You will see yourself.”

“Don‟t you require an answer? Wait a moment.”

“I cannot.” The strange man handed the letter and disappeared.

“How extraordinary!” said Eugene Mihailovich, and tore open the

envelope. To his great amazement several hundred rouble notes fell out.

“Four hundred roubles!” he exclaimed, hardly believing his eyes. “What

does it mean?”

The envelope also contained a badly-spelt letter, addressed to

Eugene Mihailovich. “It is said in the Gospels,” ran the letter, “do good

for evil. You have done me much harm; and in the coupon case you

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137

made me wrong the peasants greatly. But I have pity for you. Here are

four hundred notes. Take them, and remember your porter Vassily.”

“Very extraordinary!” said Eugene Mihailovich to his wife and to

himself. And each time he remembered that incident, or spoke about it to

his wife, tears would come to his eyes.

Chapter XVII

FOURTEEN priests were kept in the Suzdal friary prison, chiefly for

having been untrue to the orthodox faith. Isidor had been sent to that

place also. Father Missael received him according to the instructions he

had been given, and without talking to him ordered him to be put into a

separate cell as a serious criminal. After a fortnight Father Missael,

making a round of the prison, entered Isidor‟s cell, and asked him

whether there was anything he wished for.

“There is a great deal I wish for,” answered Isidor; “but I cannot tell

you what it is in the presence of anybody else. Let me talk to you

privately.”

They looked at each other, and Missael saw he had nothing to be

afraid of in remaining alone with Isidor. He ordered Isidor to be brought

into his own room, and when they were alone, he said,—“Well, now you

can speak.”

Isidor fell on his knees.

“Brother,” said Isidor. “What are you doing to yourself! Have mercy

on your own soul. You are the worst villain in the world. You have

offended against all that is sacred . . .”

A month after Missael sent a report, asking that Isidor should be

released as he had repented, and he also asked for the release of the rest

of the prisoners. After which he resigned his post.

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138

Chapter XVIII

TEN years passed. Mitia Smokovnikov had finished his studies in the

Technical College; he was now an engineer in the gold mines in Siberia,

and was very highly paid. One day he was about to make a round in the

district. The governor offered him a convict, Stepan Pelageushkine, to

accompany him on his journey.

“A convict, you say? But is not that dangerous?”

“Not if it is this one. He is a holy man. You may ask anybody, they

will all tell you so.”

“Why has he been sent here?”

The governor smiled. “He had committed six murders, and yet he is

a holy man. I go bail for him.”

Mitia Smokovnikov took Stepan, now a bald-headed, lean, tanned

man, with him on his journey. On their way Stepan took care of

Smokovnikov, like his own child, and told him his story; told him why

he had been sent here, and what now filled his life.

And, strange to say, Mitia Smokovnikov, who up to that time used to

spend his time drinking, eating, and gambling, began for the first time to

meditate on life. These thoughts never left him now, and produced a

complete change in his habits. After a time he was offered a very

advantageous position. He refused it, and made up his mind to buy an

estate with the money he had, to marry, and to devote himself to the

peasantry, helping them as much as he could.

Chapter XIX

HE carried out his intentions. But before retiring to his estate he called

on his father, with whom he had been on bad terms, and who had settled

apart with his new family. Mitia Smokovnikov wanted to make it up. The

old man wondered at first, and laughed at the change he noticed in his

son; but after a while he ceased to find fault with him, and thought of the

many times when it was he who was the guilty one.

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After the Dance

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140

“—AND you say that a man cannot, of himself, understand what is good

and evil; that it is all environment, that the environment swamps the man.

But I believe it is all chance. Take my own case . . .”

Thus spoke our excellent friend, Ivan Vasilievich, after a

conversation between us on the impossibility of improving individual

character without a change of the conditions under which men live.

Nobody had actually said that one could not of oneself understand good

and evil; but it was a habit of Ivan Vasilievich to answer in this way the

thoughts aroused in his own mind by conversation, and to illustrate those

thoughts by relating incidents in his own life. He often quite forgot the

reason for his story in telling it; but he always told it with great sincerity

and feeling.

He did so now.

“Take my own case. My whole life was molded, not by environment,

but by something quite different.”

“By what, then?” we asked.

“Oh, that is a long story. I should have to tell you about a great many

things to make you understand.”

“Well, tell us then.”

Ivan Vasilievich thought a little, and shook his head.

“My whole life,” he said, “was changed in one night, or, rather,

morning.”

“Why, what happened?” one of us asked.

“What happened was that I was very much in love. I have been in

love many times, but this was the most serious of all. It is a thing of the

past; she has married daughters now. It was Varinka B———.” Ivan

Vasilievich mentioned her surname. “Even at fifty she is remarkably

handsome; but in her youth, at eighteen, she was exquisite—tall, slender,

graceful, and stately. Yes, stately is the word; she held herself very erect,

by instinct as it were; and carried her head high, and that together with

her beauty and height gave her a queenly air in spite of being thin, even

bony one might say. It might indeed have been deterring had it not been

for her smile, which was always gay and cordial, and for the charming

light in her eyes and for her youthful sweetness.”

“What an entrancing description you give, Ivan Vasilievich!”

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141

“Description, indeed! I could not possibly describe her so that you

could appreciate her. But that does not matter; what I am going to tell

you happened in the forties. I was at that time a student in a provincial

university. I don‟t know whether it was a good thing or no, but we had

no political clubs, no theories in our universities then. We were simply

young and spent our time as young men do, studying and amusing

ourselves. I was a very gay, lively, careless fellow, and had plenty of

money too. I had a fine horse, and used to go tobogganing with the

young ladies. Skating had not yet come into fashion. I went to drinking

parties with my comrades—in those days we drank nothing but

champagne—if we had no champagne we drank nothing at all. We never

drank vodka, as they do now. Evening parties and balls were my

favourite amusements. I danced well, and was not an ugly fellow.”

“Come, there is no need to be modest,” interrupted a lady near him.

“We have seen your photograph. Not ugly, indeed! You were a

handsome fellow.”

“Handsome, if you like. That does not matter. When my love for her

was at its strongest, on the last day of the carnival, I was at a ball at the

provincial marshal‟s, a good-natured old man, rich and hospitable, and a

court chamberlain. The guests were welcomed by his wife, who was as

good-natured as himself. She was dressed in puce-coloured velvet, and

had a diamond diadem on her forehead, and her plump, old white

shoulders and bosom were bare like the portraits of Empress Elizabeth,

the daughter of Peter the Great.

“It was a delightful ball. It was a splendid room, with a gallery for

the orchestra, which was famous at the time, and consisted of serfs

belonging to a musical landowner. The refreshments were magnificent,

and the champagne flowed in rivers. Though I was fond of champagne I

did not drink that night, because without it I was drunk with love. But I

made up for it by dancing waltzes and polkas till I was ready to drop—of

course, whenever possible, with Varinka. She wore a white dress with a

pink sash, white shoes, and white kid gloves, which did not quite reach to

her thin pointed elbows. A disgusting engineer named Anisimov robbed

me of the mazurka with her—to this day I cannot forgive him. He asked

her for the dance the minute she arrived, while I had driven to the hair-

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142

dresser‟s to get a pair of gloves, and was late. So I did not dance the

mazurka with her, but with a German girl to whom I had previously paid

a little attention; but I am afraid I did not behave very politely to her that

evening. I hardly spoke or looked at her, and saw nothing but the tall,

slender figure in a white dress, with a pink sash, a flushed, beaming,

dimpled face, and sweet, kind eyes. I was not alone; they were all

looking at her with admiration, the men and women alike, although she

outshone all of them. They could not help admiring her.

“Although I was not nominally her partner for the mazurka, I did as a

matter of fact dance nearly the whole time with her. She always came

forward boldly the whole length of the room to pick me out. I flew to

meet her without waiting to be chosen, and she thanked me with a smile

for my intuition. When I was brought up to her with somebody else, and

she guessed wrongly, she took the other man‟s hand with a shrug of her

slim shoulders, and smiled at me regretfully.

“Whenever there was a waltz figure in the mazurka, I waltzed with

her for a long time, and breathing fast and smiling, she would say,

„Encore‟; and I went on waltzing and waltzing, as though unconscious of

any bodily existence.”

“Come now, how could you be unconscious of it with your arm

round her waist? You must have been conscious, not only of your own

existence, but of hers,” said one of the party.

Ivan Vasilievich cried out, almost shouting in anger: “There you are,

moderns all over! Nowadays you think of nothing but the body. It was

different in our day. The more I was in love the less corporeal was she in

my eyes. Nowadays you think of nothing but the body. It was different in

our day. The more I was in love the less corporeal was she in my eyes.

Nowadays you set legs, ankles, and I don‟t know what. You undress the

women you are in love with. In my eyes, as Alphonse Karr said—and he

was a good writer—„the one I loved was always draped in robes of

bronze.‟ We never thought of doing so; we tried to veil her nakedness,

like Noah‟s good-natured son. Oh, well, you can‟t understand.”

“Don‟t pay any attention to him. Go on,” said one of them.

“Well, I danced for the most part with her, and did not notice how

time was passing. The musicians kept playing the same mazurka tunes

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143

over and over again in desperate exhaustion—you know what it is

towards the end of a ball. Papas and mammas were already getting up

from the card-tables in the drawing-room in expectation of supper, the

men-servants were running to and fro bringing in things. It was nearly

three o‟clock. I had to make the most of the last minutes. I chose her

again for the mazurka, and for the hundredth time we danced across the

room.

“„The quadrille after supper is mine,‟ I said, taking her to her place.

“„Of course, if I am not carried off home,‟ she said, with a smile.

“„I won‟t give you up,‟ I said.

“„Give me my fan, anyhow,‟ she answered.

“„I am so sorry to part with it,‟ I said, handing her a cheap white fan.

“„Well, here‟s something to console you,‟ she said, plucking a

feather out of the fan, and giving it to me.

“I took the feather, and could only express my rapture and gratitude

with my eyes. I was not only pleased and gay, I was happy, delighted; I

was good, I was not myself but some being not of this earth, knowing

nothing of evil. I hid the feather in my glove, and stood there unable to

tear myself away from her.

“„Look, they are urging father to dance,‟ she said to me, pointing to

the tall, stately figure of her father, a colonel with silver epaulettes, who

was standing in the doorway with some ladies.

“„Varinka, come here!‟ exclaimed our hostess, the lady with the

diamond ferronniere and with shoulders like Elizabeth, in a loud voice.

“„Varinka went to the door, and I followed her.

“„Persuade your father to dance the mazurka with you, ma chere.—

Do, please, Peter Valdislavovich,‟ she said, turning to the colonel.

“Varinka‟s father was a very handsome, well-preserved old man. He

had a good colour, moustaches curled in the style of Nicolas I., and white

whiskers which met the moustaches. His hair was combed on to his

forehead, and a bright smile, like his daughter‟s, was on his lips and in

his eyes. He was splendidly set up, with a broad military chest, on which

he wore some decorations, and he had powerful shoulders and long slim

legs. He was that ultra-military type produced by the discipline of

Emperor Nicolas I.

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“When we approached the door the colonel was just refusing to

dance, saying that he had quite forgotten how; but at that instant he

smiled, swung his arm gracefully around to the left, drew his sword from

its sheath, handed it to an obliging young man who stood near, and

smoothed his suede glove on his right hand.

“„Everything must be done according to rule,‟ he said with a smile.

He took the hand of his daughter, and stood one-quarter turned, waiting

for the music.

“At the first sound of the mazurka, he stamped one foot smartly,

threw the other forward, and, at first slowly and smoothly, then

buoyantly and impetuously, with stamping of feet and clicking of boots,

his tall, imposing figure moved the length of the room. Varinka swayed

gracefully beside him, rhythmically and easily, making her steps short or

long, with her little feet in their white satin slippers.

“All the people in the room followed every movement of the couple.

As for me I not only admired, I regarded them with enraptured sympathy.

I was particularly impressed with the old gentleman‟s boots. They were

not the modern pointed affairs, but were made of cheap leather, squared-

toed, and evidently built by the regimental cobbler. In order that his

daughter might dress and go out in society, he did not buy fashionable

boots, but wore home-made ones, I thought, and his square toes seemed

to me most touching. It was obvious that in his time he had been a good

dancer; but now he was too heavy, and his legs had not spring enough for

all the beautiful steps he tried to take. Still, he contrived to go twice

round the room. When at the end, standing with legs apart, he suddenly

clicked his feet together and fell on one knee, a bit heavily, and she

danced gracefully around him, smiling and adjusting her skirt, the whole

room applauded.

“Rising with an effort, he tenderly took his daughter‟s face between

his hands. He kissed her on the forehead, and brought her to me, under

the impression that I was her partner for the mazurka. I said I was not.

„Well, never mind, just go around the room once with her,‟ he said,

smiling kindly, as he replaced his sword in the sheath.

“As the contents of a bottle flow readily when the first drop has been

poured, so my love for Varinka seemed to set free the whole force of

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145

loving within me. In surrounding her it embraced the world. I loved the

hostess with her diadem and her shoulders like Elizabeth, and her

husband and her guests and her footmen, and even the engineer

Anisimov who felt peevish towards me. As for Varinka‟s father, with his

home-made boots and his kind smile, so like her own, I felt a sort of

tenderness for him that was almost rapture.

“After supper I danced the promised quadrille with her, and though I

had been infinitely happy before, I grew still happier every moment.

“We did not speak of love. I neither asked myself nor her whether

she loved me. It was quite enough to know that I loved her. And I had

only one fear—that something might come to interfere with my great joy.

“When I went home, and began to undress for the night, I found it

quite out of the question. I held the little feather out of her fan in my

hand, and one of her gloves which she gave me when I helped her into

the carriage after her mother. Looking at these things, and without

closing my eyes I could see her before me as she was for an instant when

she had to choose between two partners. She tried to guess what kind of

person was represented in me, and I could hear her sweet voice as she

said, „Pride—am I right?‟ and merrily gave me her hand. At supper she

took the first sip from my glass of champagne, looking at me over the

rim with her caressing glance. But, plainest of all, I could see her as she

danced with her father, gliding along beside him, and looking at the

admiring observers with pride and happiness.

“He and she were united in my mind in one rush of pathetic

tenderness.

“I was living then with my brother, who has since died. He disliked

going out, and never went to dances; and besides, he was busy preparing

for his last university examinations, and was leading a very regular life.

He was asleep. I looked at him, his head buried in the pillow and half

covered with the quilt; and I affectionately pitied him, pitied him for his

ignorance of the bliss I was experiencing. Our serf Petrusha had met me

with a candle, ready to undress me, but I sent him away. His sleepy face

and tousled hair seemed to me so touching. Trying not to make a noise, I

went to my room on tiptoe and sat down on my bed. No, I was too

happy; I could not sleep. Besides, it was too hot in the rooms. Without

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146

taking off my uniform, I went quietly into the hall, put on my overcoat,

opened the front door and stepped out into the street.

“It was after four when I had left the ball; going home and stopping

there a while had occupied two hours, so by the time I went out it was

dawn. It was regular carnival weather—foggy, and the road full of water-

soaked snow just melting, and water dripping from the eaves. Varinka‟s

family lived on the edge of town near a large field, one end of which was

a parade ground: at the other end was a boarding-school for young ladies.

I passed through our empty little street and came to the main

thoroughfare, where I met pedestrians and sledges laden with wood, the

runners grating the road. The horses swung with regular paces beneath

their shining yokes, their backs covered with straw mats and their heads

wet with rain; while the drivers, in enormous boots, splashed through the

mud beside the sledges. All this, the very horses themselves, seemed to

me stimulating and fascinating, full of suggestion.

“When I approached the field near their house, I saw at one end of it,

in the direction of the parade ground, something very huge and black,

and I heard sounds of fife and drum proceeding from it. My heart had

been full of song, and I had heard in imagination the tune of the mazurka,

but this was very harsh music. It was not pleasant.

“„What can that be?‟ I thought, and went towards the sound by a

slippery path through the centre of the field. Walking about a hundred

paces, I began to distinguish many black objects through the mist. They

were evidently soldiers. „It is probably a drill,‟ I thought.

“So I went along in that direction in company with a blacksmith,

who wore a dirty coat and an apron, and was carrying something. He

walked ahead of me as we approached the place. The soldiers in black

uniforms stood in two rows, facing each other motionless, their guns at

rest. Behind them stood the fifes and drums, incessantly repeating the

same unpleasant tune.

“„What are they doing?‟ I asked the blacksmith, who halted at my

side.

“„A Tartar is being beaten through the ranks for his attempt to

desert,‟ said the blacksmith in an angry tone, as he looked intently at the

far end of the line.

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147

“I looked in the same direction, and saw between the files something

horrid approaching me. The thing that approached was a man, stripped to

the waist, fastened with cords to the guns of two soldiers who were

leading him. At his side an officer in overcoat and cap was walking,

whose figure had a familiar look. The victim advanced under the blows

that rained upon him from both sides, his whole body plunging, his feet

dragging through the snow. Now he threw himself backward, and the

subalterns who led him thrust him forward. Now he fell forward, and

they pulled him up short; while ever at his side marched the tall officer,

with firm and nervous pace. It was Varinka‟s father, with his rosy face

and white moustache.

“At each stroke the man, as if amazed, turned his face, grimacing

with pain, towards the side whence the blow came, and showing his

white teeth repeated the same words over and over. But I could only hear

what the words were when he came quite near. He did not speak them, he

sobbed them out,—“„Brothers, have mercy on me! Brothers, have mercy

on me!‟ But the brothers had, no mercy, and when the procession came

close to me, I saw how a soldier who stood opposite me took a firm step

forward and lifting his stick with a whirr, brought it down upon the

man‟s back. The man plunged forward, but the subalterns pulled him

back, and another blow came down from the other side, then from this

side and then from the other. The colonel marched beside him, and

looking now at his feet and now at the man, inhaled the air, puffed out

his cheeks, and breathed it out between his protruded lips. When they

passed the place where I stood, I caught a glimpse between the two files

of the back of the man that was being punished. It was something so

many-coloured, wet, red, unnatural, that I could hardly believe it was a

human body.

“„My God!‟” muttered the blacksmith.

The procession moved farther away. The blows continued to rain

upon the writhing, falling creature; the fifes shrilled and the drums beat,

and the tall imposing figure of the colonel moved along-side the man,

just as before. Then, suddenly, the colonel stopped, and rapidly

approached a man in the ranks.

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148

“„I‟ll teach you to hit him gently,‟ I heard his furious voice say. „Will

you pat him like that? Will you?‟ and I saw how his strong hand in the

suede glove struck the weak, bloodless, terrified soldier for not bringing

down his stick with sufficient strength on the red neck of the Tartar.

“„Bring new sticks!‟ he cried, and looking round, he saw me.

Assuming an air of not knowing me, and with a ferocious, angry frown,

he hastily turned away. I felt so utterly ashamed that I didn‟t know where

to look. It was as if I had been detected in a disgraceful act. I dropped my

eyes, and quickly hurried home. All the way I had the drums beating and

the fifes whistling in my ears. And I heard the words, „Brothers, have

mercy on me!‟ or „Will you pat him? Will you?‟ My heart was full of

physical disgust that was almost sickness. So much so that I halted

several times on my way, for I had the feeling that I was going to be

really sick from all the horrors that possessed me at that sight. I do not

remember how I got home and got to bed. But the moment I was about to

fall asleep I heard and saw again all that had happened, and I sprang up.

“„Evidently he knows something I do not know,‟ I thought about the

colonel. „If I knew what he knows I should certainly grasp—

understand—what I have just seen, and it would not cause me such

suffering.‟

“But however much I thought about it, I could not understand the

thing that the colonel knew. It was evening before I could get to sleep,

and then only after calling on a friend and drinking till I; was quite

drunk.

“Do you think I had come to the conclusion that the deed I had

witnessed was wicked? Oh, no. Since it was done with such assurance,

and was recognised by everyone as indispensable, they doubtless knew

something which I did not know. So I thought, and tried to understand.

But no matter, I could never understand it, then or afterwards. And not

being able to grasp it, I could not enter the service as I had intended. I

don‟t mean only the military service: I did not enter the Civil Service

either. And so I have been of no use whatever, as you can see.”

“Yes, we know how useless you‟ve been,” said one of us. “Tell us,

rather, how many people would be of any use at all if it hadn‟t been for

you.”

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149

“Oh, that‟s utter nonsense,” said Ivan Vasilievich, with genuine

annoyance.

“Well; and what about the love affair?

“My love? It decreased from that day. When, as often happened, she

looked dreamy and meditative, I instantly recollected the colonel on the

parade ground, and I felt so awkward and uncomfortable that I began to

see her less frequently. So my love came to naught. Yes; such chances

arise, and they alter and direct a man‟s whole life,” he said in summing

up. “And you say . . .”

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150

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151

My Dream

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152

I

“AS a daughter she no longer exists for me. Can‟t you understand? She

simply doesn‟t exist. Still, I cannot possibly leave her to the charity of

strangers. I will arrange things so that she can live as she pleases, but I

do not wish to hear of her. Who would ever have thought . . . the horror

of it, the horror of it.”

He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and raised his eyes.

These words were spoken by Prince Michael Ivanovich to his brother

Peter, who was governor of a province in Central Russia. Prince Peter

was a man of fifty, Michael‟s junior by ten years.

On discovering that his daughter, who had left his house a year

before, had settled here with her child, the elder brother had come from

St. Petersburg to the provincial town, where the above conversation took

place.

Prince Michael Ivanovich was a tall, handsome, white-haired, fresh

coloured man, proud and attractive in appearance and bearing. His family

consisted of a vulgar, irritable wife, who wrangled with him continually

over every petty detail, a son, a ne‟er-do-well, spendthrift and roue—yet

a “gentleman,” according to his father‟s code, two daughters, of whom

the elder had married well, and was living in St. Petersburg; and the

younger, Lisa—his favourite, who had disappeared from home a year

before. Only a short while ago he had found her with her child in this

provincial town.

Prince Peter wanted to ask his brother how, and under what

circumstances, Lisa had left home, and who could possibly be the father

of her child. But he could not make up his mind to inquire.

That very morning, when his wife had attempted to condole with her

brother-in-law, Prince Peter had observed a look of pain on his brother‟s

face. The look had at once been masked by an expression of

unapproachable pride, and he had begun to question her about their flat,

and the price she paid. At luncheon, before the family and guests, he had

been witty and sarcastic as usual. Towards every one, excepting the

children, whom he treated with almost reverent tenderness, he adopted an

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153

attitude of distant hauteur. And yet it was so natural to him that every

one somehow acknowledged his right to be haughty.

In the evening his brother arranged a game of whist. When he retired

to the room which had been made ready for him, and was just beginning

to take out his artificial teeth, someone tapped lightly on the door with

two fingers.

“Who is that?”

“C‟est moi, Michael.”

Prince Michael Ivanovich recognised the voice of his sister-in-law,

frowned, replaced his teeth, and said to himself, “What does she want?”

Aloud he said, “Entrez.”

His sister-in-law was a quiet, gentle creature, who bowed in

submission to her husband‟s will. But to many she seemed a crank, and

some did not hesitate to call her a fool. She was pretty, but her hair was

always carelessly dressed, and she herself was untidy and absent-minded.

She had, also, the strangest, most unaristocratic ideas, by no means

fitting in the wife of a high official. These ideas she would express most

unexpectedly, to everybody‟s astonishment, her husband‟s no less than

her friends‟.

“Fous pouvez me renvoyer, mais je ne m‟en irai pas, je vous le dis

d‟avance,” she began, in her characteristic, indifferent way.

“Dieu preserve,” answered her brother-in-law, with his usual

somewhat exaggerated politeness, and brought forward a chair for her.

“Ca ne vous derange pas?” she asked, taking out a cigarette. “I‟m not

going to say anything unpleasant, Michael. I only wanted to say some-

thing about Lisochka.”

Michael Ivanovich sighed—the word pained him; but mastering

himself at once, he answered with a tired smile. “Our conversation can

only be on one subject, and that is the subject you wish to discuss.” He

spoke without looking at her, and avoided even naming the subject. But

his plump, pretty little sister-in-law was unabashed. She continued to

regard him with the same gentle, imploring look in her blue eyes, sighing

even more deeply.

“Michael, mon bon ami, have pity on her. She is only human.”

“I never doubted that,” said Michael Ivanovich with a bitter smile.

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“She is your daughter.”

“She was—but my dear Aline, why talk about this?”

“Michael, dear, won‟t you see her? I only wanted to say, that the one

who is to blame—”

Prince Michael Ivanovich flushed; his face became cruel.

“For heaven‟s sake, let us stop. I have suffered enough. I have now

but one desire, and that is to put her in such a position that she will be

independent of others, and that she shall have no further need of

communicating with me. Then she can live her own life, and my family

and I need know nothing more about her. That is all I can do.”

“Michael, you say nothing but „I‟! She, too, is „I.‟”

“No doubt; but, dear Aline, please let us drop the matter. I feel it too

deeply.”

Alexandra Dmitrievna remained silent for a few moments, shaking

her head. “And Masha, your wife, thinks as you do?”

“Yes, quite.”

Alexandra Dmitrievna made an inarticulate sound.

“Brisons la dessus et bonne nuit,” said he. But she did not go. She

stood silent a moment. Then,—“Peter tells me you intend to leave the

money with the woman where she lives. Have you the address?”

“I have.”

“Don‟t leave it with the woman, Michael! Go yourself. Just see how

she lives. If you don‟t want to see her, you need not. He isn‟t there; there

is no one there.”

Michael Ivanovich shuddered violently.

“Why do you torture me so? It‟s a sin against hospitality!”

Alexandra Dmitrievna rose, and almost in tears, being touched by

her own pleading, said, “She is so miserable, but she is such a dear.”

He got up, and stood waiting for her to finish. She held out her hand.

“Michael, you do wrong,” said she, and left him.

For a long while after she had gone Michael Ivanovich walked to and

fro on the square of carpet. He frowned and shivered, and exclaimed,

“Oh, oh!” And then the sound of his own voice frightened him, and he

was silent.

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His wounded pride tortured him. His daughter—his—brought up in

the house of her mother, the famous Avdotia Borisovna, whom the

Empress honoured with her visits, and acquaintance with whom was an

honour for all the world! His daughter—; and he had lived his life as a

knight of old, knowing neither fear nor blame. The fact that he had a

natural son born of a Frenchwoman, whom he had settled abroad, did not

lower his own self-esteem. And now this daughter, for whom he had not

only done everything that a father could and should do; this daughter to

whom he had given a splendid education and every opportunity to make

a match in the best Russian society—this daughter to whom he had not

only given all that a girl could desire, but whom he had really loved;

whom he had admired, been proud of—this daughter had repaid him with

such disgrace, that he was ashamed and could not face the eyes of men!

He recalled the time when she was not merely his child, and a

member of his family, but his darling, his joy and his pride. He saw her

again, a little thing of eight or nine, bright, intelligent, lively, impetuous,

graceful, with brilliant black eyes and flowing auburn hair. He

remembered how she used to jump up on his knees and hug him, and

tickle his neck; and how she would laugh, regardless of his protests, and

continue to tickle him, and kiss his lips, his eyes, and his cheeks. He was

naturally opposed to all demonstration, but this impetuous love moved

him, and he often submitted to her petting. He remembered also how

sweet it was to caress her. To remember all this, when that sweet child

had become what she now was, a creature of whom he could not think

without loathing.

He also recalled the time when she was growing into womanhood,

and the curious feeling of fear and anger that he experienced when he

became aware that men regarded her as a woman. He thought of his

jealous love when she came coquettishly to him dressed for a ball, and

knowing that she was pretty. He dreaded the passionate glances which

fell upon her, that she not only did not understand but rejoiced in. “Yes,”

thought he, “that superstition of woman‟s purity! Quite the contrary, they

do not know shame—they lack this sense.” He remembered how, quite

inexplicably to him, she had refused two very good suitors. She had

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become more and more fascinated by her own success in the round of

gaieties she lived in.

But this success could not last long. A year passed, then two, then

three. She was a familiar figure, beautiful—but her first youth had

passed, and she had become somehow part of the ball-room furniture.

Michael Ivanovich remembered how he had realised that she was on the

road to spinsterhood, and desired but one thing for her. He must get her

married off as quickly as possible, perhaps not quite so well as might

have been arranged earlier, but still a respectable match.

But it seemed to him she had behaved with a pride that bordered on

insolence. Remembering this, his anger rose more and more fiercely

against her. To think of her refusing so many decent men, only to end in

this disgrace. “Oh, oh!” he groaned again.

Then stopping, he lit a cigarette, and tried to think of other things. He

would send her money, without ever letting her see him. But memories

came again. He remembered—it was not so very long ago, for she was

more than twenty then—her beginning a flirtation with a boy of fourteen,

a cadet of the Corps of Pages who had been staying with them in the

country. She had driven the boy half crazy; he had wept in his

distraction. Then how she had rebuked her father severely, coldly, and

even rudely, when, to put an end to this stupid affair, he had sent the boy

away. She seemed somehow to consider herself insulted. Since then

father and daughter had drifted into undisguised hostility.

“I was right,” he said to himself. “She is a wicked and shameless

woman.”

And then, as a last ghastly memory, there was the letter from

Moscow, in which she wrote that she could not return home; that she was

a miserable, abandoned woman, asking only to be forgiven and

forgotten. Then the horrid recollection of the scene with his wife came to

him; their surmises and their suspicions, which became a certainty. The

calamity had happened in Finland, where they had let her visit her aunt;

and the culprit was an insignificant Swede, a student, an empty-headed,

worthless creature—and married.

All this came back to him now as he paced backwards and forwards

on the bedroom carpet, recollecting his former love for her, his pride in

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157

her. He recoiled with terror before the incomprehensible fact of her

downfall, and he hated her for the agony she was causing him. He

remembered the conversation with his sister-in-law, and tried to imagine

how he might forgive her. But as soon as the thought of “him” arose,

there surged up in his heart horror, disgust, and wounded pride. He

groaned aloud, and tried to think of something else.

“No, it is impossible; I will hand over the money to Peter to give her

monthly. And as for me, I have no longer a daughter.”

And again a curious feeling overpowered him: a mixture of self-pity

at the recollection of his love for her, and of fury against her for causing

him this anguish.

II

DURING the last year Lisa had without doubt lived through more than in

all the preceding twenty-five. Suddenly she had realised the emptiness of

her whole life. It rose before her, base and sordid—this life at home and

among the rich set in St. Petersburg—this animal existence that never

sounded the depths, but only touched the shallows of life.

It was well enough for a year or two, or perhaps even three. But

when it went on for seven or eight years, with its parties, balls, concerts,

and suppers; with its costumes and coiffures to display the charms of the

body; with its adorers old and young, all alike seemingly possessed of

some unaccountable right to have everything, to laugh at everything; and

with its summer months spent in the same way, everything yielding but a

superficial pleasure, even music and reading merely touching upon life‟s

problems, but never solving them—all this holding out no promise of

change, and losing its charm more and more—she began to despair. She

had desperate moods when she longed to die.

Her friends directed her thoughts to charity. On the one hand, she

saw poverty which was real and repulsive, and a sham poverty even

more repulsive and pitiable; on the other, she saw the terrible

indifference of the lady patronesses who came in carriages and gowns

worth thousands. Life became to her more and more unbearable. She

yearned for something real, for life itself—not this playing at living, not

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158

this skimming life of its cream. Of real life there was none. The best of

her memories was her love for the little cadet Koko. That had been a

good, honest, straight-forward impulse, and now there was nothing like

it. There could not be. She grew more and more depressed, and in this

gloomy mood she went to visit an aunt in Finland. The fresh scenery and

surroundings, the people strangely different to her own, appealed to her

at any rate as a new experience.

How and when it all began she could not clearly remember. Her aunt

had another guest, a Swede. He talked of his work, his people, the latest

Swedish novel. Somehow, she herself did not know how that terrible

fascination of glances and smiles began, the meaning of which cannot be

put into words.

These smiles and glances seemed to reveal to each, not only the soul

of the other, but some vital and universal mystery. Every word they

spoke was invested by these smiles with a profound and wonderful

significance. Music, too, when they were listening together, or when they

sang duets, became full of the same deep meaning. So, also, the words in

the books they read aloud. Sometimes they would argue, but the moment

their eyes met, or a smile flashed between them, the discussion remained

far behind. They soared beyond it to some higher plane consecrated to

themselves.

How it had come about, how and when the devil, who had seized

hold of them both, first appeared behind these smiles and glances, she

could not say. But, when terror first seized her, the invisible threads that

bound them were already so interwoven that she had no power to tear

herself free. She could only count on him and on his honour. She hoped

that he would not make use of his power; yet all the while she vaguely

desired it.

Her weakness was the greater, because she had nothing to support

her in the struggle. She was weary of society life and she had no

affection for her mother. Her father, so she thought, had cast her away

from him, and she longed passionately to live and to have done with

play. Love, the perfect love of a woman for a man, held the promise of

life for her. Her strong, passionate nature, too, was dragging her thither.

In the tall, strong figure of this man, with his fair hair and light upturned

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moustache, under which shone a smile attractive and compelling, she

saw the promise of that life for which she longed. And then the smiles

and glances, the hope of something so incredibly beautiful, led, as they

were bound to lead, to that which she feared but unconsciously awaited.

Suddenly all that was beautiful, joyous, spiritual, and full of promise

for the future, became animal and sordid, sad and despairing.

She looked into his eyes and tried to smile, pretending that she feared

nothing, that everything was as it should be; but deep down in her soul

she knew it was all over. She understood that she had not found in him

what she had sought; that which she had once known in herself and in

Koko. She told him that he must write to her father asking her hand in

marriage. This he promised to do; but when she met him next he said it

was impossible for him to write just then. She saw something vague and

furtive in his eyes, and her distrust of him grew. The following day he

wrote to her, telling her that he was already married, though his wife had

left him long since; that he knew she would despise him for the wrong he

had done her, and implored her forgiveness. She made him come to see

her. She said she loved him; that she felt herself bound to him forever

whether he was married or not, and would never leave him. The next

time they met he told her that he and his parents were so poor that he

could only offer her the meanest existence. She answered that she needed

nothing, and was ready to go with him at once wherever he wished. He

endeavoured to dissuade her, advising her to wait; and so she waited. But

to live on with this secret, with occasional meetings, and merely

corresponding with him, all hidden from her family, was agonising, and

she insisted again that he must take her away. At first, when she returned

to St. Petersburg, he wrote promising to come, and then letters ceased

and she knew no more of him.

She tried to lead her old life, but it was impossible. She fell ill, and

the efforts of the doctors were unavailing; in her hopelessness she

resolved to kill herself. But how was she to do this, so that her death

might seem natural? She really desired to take her life, and imagined that

she had irrevocably decided on the step. So, obtaining some poison, she

poured it into a glass, and in another instant would have drunk it, had not

her sister‟s little son of five at that very moment run in to show her a toy

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his grandmother had given him. She caressed the child, and, suddenly

stopping short, burst into tears.

The thought overpowered her that she, too, might have been a

mother had he not been married, and this vision of motherhood made her

look into her own soul for the first time. She began to think not of what

others would say of her, but of her own life. To kill oneself because of

what the world might say was easy; but the moment she saw her own life

dissociated from the world, to take that life was out of the question. She

threw away the poison, and ceased to think of suicide.

Then her life within began. It was real life, and despite the torture of

it, had the possibility been given her, she would not have turned back

from it. She began to pray, but there was no comfort in prayer; and her

suffering was less for herself than for her father, whose grief she foresaw

and understood.

Thus months dragged along, and then something happened which

entirely transformed her life. One day, when she was at work upon a

quilt, she suddenly experienced a strange sensation. No—it seemed

impossible. Motionless she sat with her work in hand. Was it possible

that this was it. Forgetting everything, his baseness and deceit, her

mother‟s querulousness, and her father‟s sorrow, she smiled. She

shuddered at the recollection that she was on the point of killing it,

together with herself.

She now directed all her thoughts to getting away—somewhere

where she could bear her child—and become a miserable, pitiful mother,

but a mother withal. Somehow she planned and arranged it all, leaving

her home and settling in a distant provincial town, where no one could

find her, and where she thought she would be far from her people. But,

unfortunately, her father‟s brother received an appointment there, a thing

she could not possibly foresee. For four months she had been living in

the house of a midwife—one Maria Ivanovna; and, on learning that her

uncle had come to the town, she was preparing to fly to a still remoter

hiding-place.

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III

MICHAEL Ivanovich awoke early next morning. He entered his

brother‟s study, and handed him the cheque, filled in for a sum which he

asked him to pay in monthly installments to his daughter. He inquired

when the express left for St. Petersburg. The train left at seven in the

evening, giving him time for an early dinner before leaving. He

breakfasted with his sister-in-law, who refrained from mentioning the

subject which was so painful to him, but only looked at him timidly; and

after breakfast he went out for his regular morning walk.

Alexandra Dmitrievna followed him into the hall.

“Go into the public gardens, Michael—it is very charming there, and

quite near to Everything,” said she, meeting his sombre looks with a

pathetic glance.

Michael Ivanovich followed her advice and went to the public

gardens, which were so near to Everything, and meditated with

annoyance on the stupidity, the obstinacy, and heartlessness of women.

“She is not in the very least sorry for me,” he thought of his sister-in-

law. “She cannot even understand my sorrow. And what of her?” He was

thinking of his daughter. “She knows what all this means to me—the

torture. What a blow in one‟s old age! My days will be shortened by it!

But I‟d rather have it over than endure this agony. And all that „pour les

beaux yeux d‟un chenapan‟—oh!” he moaned; and a wave of hatred and

fury arose in him as he thought of what would be said in the town when

everyone knew. (And no doubt everyone knew already.) Such a feeling

of rage possessed him that he would have liked to beat it into her head,

and make her understand what she had done. These women never

understand. “It is quite near Everything,” suddenly came to his mind, and

getting out his notebook, he found her address. Vera Ivanovna

Silvestrova, Kukonskaya Street, Abromov‟s house. She was living under

this name. He left the gardens and called a cab.

“Whom do you wish to see, sir?” asked the midwife, Maria

Ivanovna, when he stepped on the narrow landing of the steep, stuffy

staircase.

“Does Madame Silvestrova live here?”

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“Vera Ivanovna? Yes; please come in. She has gone out; she‟s gone

to the shop round the corner. But she‟ll be back in a minute.”

Michael Ivanovich followed the stout figure of Maria Ivanovna into

a tiny parlour, and from the next room came the screams of a baby,

sounding cross and peevish, which filled him with disgust. They cut him

like a knife.

Maria Ivanovna apologised, and went into the room, and he could

hear her soothing the child. The child became quiet, and she returned.

“That is her baby; she‟ll be back in a minute. You are a friend of

hers, I suppose?”

“Yes—a friend—but I think I had better come back later on,” said

Michael Ivanovich, preparing to go. It was too unbearable, this

preparation to meet her, and any explanation seemed impossible.

He had just turned to leave, when he heard quick, light steps on the

stairs, and he recognised Lisa‟s voice.

“Maria Ivanovna—has he been crying while I‟ve been gone—I

was—”

Then she saw her father. The parcel she was carrying fell from her

hands.

“Father!” she cried, and stopped in the doorway, white and

trembling.

He remained motionless, staring at her. She had grown so thin. Her

eyes were larger, her nose sharper, her hands worn and bony. He neither

knew what to do, nor what to say. He forgot all his grief about his

dishonour. He only felt sorrow, infinite sorrow for her; sorrow for her

thinness, and for her miserable rough clothing; and most of all, for her

pitiful face and imploring eyes.

“Father—forgive,” she said, moving towards him.

“Forgive—forgive me,” he murmured; and he began to sob like a

child, kissing her face and hands, and wetting them with his tears.

In his pity for her he understood himself. And when he saw himself

as he was, he realised how he had wronged her, how guilty he had been

in his pride, in his coldness, even in his anger towards her. He was glad

that it was he who was guilty, and that he had nothing to forgive, but that

he himself needed forgiveness. She took him to her tiny room, and told

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him how she lived; but she did not show him the child, nor did she

mention the past, knowing how painful it would be to him.

He told her that she must live differently.

“Yes; if I could only live in the country,” said she.

“We will talk it over,” he said. Suddenly the child began to wail and

to scream. She opened her eyes very wide; and, not taking them from her

father‟s face, remained hesitating and motionless.

“Well—I suppose you must feed him,” said Michael Ivanovich, and

frowned with the obvious effort.

She got up, and suddenly the wild idea seized her to show him whom

she loved so deeply the thing she now loved best of all in the world. But

first she looked at her father‟s face. Would he be angry or not? His face

revealed no anger, only suffering.

“Yes, go, go,” said he; “God bless you. Yes. I‟ll come again to-

morrow, and we will decide. Good-bye, my darling—good-bye.” Again

he found it hard to swallow the lump in his throat.

When Michael Ivanovich returned to his brother‟s house, Alexandra

Dmitrievna immediately rushed to him.

“Well?”

“Well? Nothing.”

“Have you seen?” she asked, guessing from his expression that

something had happened.

“Yes,” he answered shortly, and began to cry. “I‟m getting old and

stupid,” said he, mastering his emotion.

“No; you are growing wise—very wise.”

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There Are No Guilty People

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166

I

MINE is a strange and wonderful lot! The chances are that there is not a

single wretched beggar suffering under the luxury and oppression of the

rich who feels anything like as keenly as I do either the injustice, the

cruelty, and the horror of their oppression of and contempt for the poor;

or the grinding humiliation and misery which befall the great majority of

the workers, the real producers of all that makes life possible. I have felt

this for a long time, and as the years have passed by the feeling has

grown and grown, until recently it reached its climax. Although I feel all

this so vividly, I still live on amid the depravity and sins of rich society;

and I cannot leave it, because I have neither the knowledge nor the

strength to do so. I cannot. I do not know how to change my life so that

my physical needs—food, sleep, clothing, my going to and fro—may be

satisfied without a sense of shame and wrongdoing in the position which

I fill.

There was a time when I tried to change my position, which was not

in harmony with my conscience; but the conditions created by the past,

by my family and its claims upon me, were so complicated that they

would not let me out of their grasp, or rather, I did not know how to free

myself. I had not the strength. Now that I am over eighty and have

become feeble, I have given up trying to free myself; and, strange to say,

as my feebleness increases I realise more and more strongly the

wrongfulness of my position, and it grows more and more intolerable to

me.

It has occurred to me that I do not occupy this position for nothing:

that Providence intended that I should lay bare the truth of my feelings,

so that I might atone for all that causes my suffering, and might perhaps

open the eyes of those—or at least of some of those—who are still blind

to what I see so clearly, and thus might lighten the burden of that vast

majority who, under existing conditions, are subjected to bodily and

spiritual suffering by those who deceive them and also deceive

themselves. Indeed, it may be that the position which I occupy gives me

special facilities for revealing the artificial and criminal relations which

exist between men—for telling the whole truth in regard to that position

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167

without confusing the issue by attempting to vindicate myself, and

without rousing the envy of the rich and feelings of oppression in the

hearts of the poor and downtrodden. I am so placed that I not only have

no desire to vindicate myself; but, on the contrary, I find it necessary to

make an effort lest I should exaggerate the wickedness of the great

among whom I live, of whose society I am ashamed, whose attitude

towards their fellow-men I detest with my whole soul, though I find it

impossible to separate my lot from theirs. But I must also avoid the error

of those democrats and others who, in defending the oppressed and the

enslaved, do not see their failings and mistakes, and who do not make

sufficient allowance for the difficulties created, the mistakes inherited

from the past, which in a degree lessens the responsibility of the upper

classes.

Free from desire for self-vindication, free from fear of an emancipated

people, free from that envy and hatred which the oppressed feel for their

oppressors, I am in the best possible position to see the truth and to tell it.

Perhaps that is why Providence placed me in such a position. I will do

my best to turn it to account.

II

ALEXANDER Ivanovich Volgin, a bachelor and a clerk in a Moscow

bank at a salary of eight thousand roubles a year, a man much respected

in his own set, was staying in a country-house. His host was a wealthy

landowner, owning some twenty-five hundred acres, and had married his

guest‟s cousin. Volgin, tired after an evening spent in playing vint for

small stakes with members of the family, went to his room and placed his

watch, silver cigarette-case, pocket-book, big leather purse, and pocket-

brush and comb on a small table covered with a white cloth, and then,

taking off his coat, waistcoat, shirt, trousers, and underclothes, his silk

socks and English boots, put on his nightshirt and dressing-gown. His

watch pointed to midnight. Volgin smoked a cigarette, lay on his face for

about five minutes reviewing the day‟s impressions; then, blowing out

his candle, he turned over on his side and fell asleep about one o‟clock,

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168

in spite of a good deal of restlessness. Awaking next morning at eight he

put on his slippers and dressing-gown, and rang the bell.

The old butler, Stephen, the father of a family and the grandfather of

six grandchildren, who had served in that house for thirty years, entered

the room hurriedly, with bent legs, carrying in the newly blackened boots

which Volgin had taken off the night before, a well-brushed suit, and a

clean shirt. The guest thanked him, and then asked what the weather was

like (the blinds were drawn so that the sun should not prevent anyone

from sleeping till eleven o‟clock if he were so inclined), and whether his

hosts had slept well. He glanced at his watch—it was still early—and

began to wash and dress. His water was ready, and everything on the

washing-stand and dressing-table was ready for use and properly laid

out—his soap, his tooth and hair brushes, his nail scissors and files. He

washed his hands and face in a leisurely fashion, cleaned and manicured

his nails, pushed back the skin with the towel, and sponged his stout

white body from head to foot. Then he began to brush his hair. Standing

in front of the mirror, he first brushed his curly beard, which was

beginning to turn grey, with two English brushes, parting it down the

middle. Then he combed his hair, which was already showing signs of

getting thin, with a large tortoise-shell comb. Putting on his underlinen,

his socks, his boots, his trousers—which were held up by elegant

braces—and his waistcoat, he sat down coatless in an easy chair to rest

after dressing, lit a cigarette, and began to think where he should go for a

walk that morning—to the park or to Littleports (what a funny name for

a wood!). He thought he would go to Littleports. Then he must answer

Simon Nicholaevich‟s letter; but there was time enough for that. Getting

up with an air of resolution, he took out his watch. It was already five

minutes to nine. He put his watch into his waistcoat pocket, and his

purse—with all that was left of the hundred and eighty roubles he had

taken for his journey, and for the incidental expenses of his fortnight‟s

stay with his cousin—and then he placed into his trouser pocket his

cigarette-case and electric cigarette-lighter, and two clean handkerchiefs

into his coat pockets, and went out of the room, leaving as usual the mess

and confusion which he had made to be cleared up by Stephen, an old

man of over fifty. Stephen expected Volgin to “remunerate” him, as he

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said, being so accustomed to the work that he did not feel the slightest

repugnance for it. Glancing at a mirror, and feeling satisfied with his

appearance, Volgin went into the dining-room.

There, thanks to the efforts of the housekeeper, the footman, and

under-butler—the latter had risen at dawn in order to run home to

sharpen his son‟s scythe—breakfast was ready. On a spotless white cloth

stood a boiling, shiny, silver samovar (at least it looked like silver), a

coffee-pot, hot milk, cream, butter, and all sorts of fancy white bread and

biscuits. The only persons at table were the second son of the house, his

tutor (a student), and the secretary. The host, who was an active member

of the Zemstvo and a great farmer, had already left the house, having

gone at eight o‟clock to attend to his work. Volgin, while drinking his

coffee, talked to the student and the secretary about the weather, and

yesterday‟s vint, and discussed Theodorite‟s peculiar behaviour the night

before, as he had been very rude to his father without the slightest cause.

Theodorite was the grown-up son of the house, and a ne‟er-do-well. His

name was Theodore, but some one had once called him Theodorite either

as a joke or to tease him; and, as it seemed funny, the name stuck to him,

although his doings were no longer in the least amusing. So it was now.

He had been to the university, but left it in his second year, and joined a

regiment of horse guards; but he gave that up also, and was now living in

the country, doing nothing, finding fault, and feeling discontented with

everything. Theodorite was still in bed: so were the other members of the

household—Anna Mikhailovna, its mistress; her sister, the widow of a

general; and a landscape painter who lived with the family.

Volgin took his panama hat from the hall table (it had cost twenty

roubles) and his cane with its carved ivory handle, and went out.

Crossing the veranda, gay with flowers, he walked through the flower

garden, in the centre of which was a raised round bed, with rings of red,

white, and blue flowers, and the initials of the mistress of the house done

in carpet bedding in the centre. Leaving the flower garden Volgin entered

the avenue of lime trees, hundreds of years old, which peasant girls were

tidying and sweeping with spades and brooms. The gardener was busy

measuring, and a boy was bringing something in a cart. Passing these

Volgin went into the park of at least a hundred and twenty-five acres,

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filled with fine old trees, and intersected by a network of well-kept

walks. Smoking as he strolled Volgin took his favourite path past the

summer-house into the fields beyond. It was pleasant in the park, but it

was still nicer in the fields. On the right some women who were digging

potatoes formed a mass of bright red and white colour; on the left were

wheat fields, meadows, and grazing cattle; and in the foreground, slightly

to the right, were the dark, dark oaks of Littleports. Volgin took a deep

breath, and felt glad that he was alive, especially here in his cousin‟s

home, where he was so thoroughly enjoying the rest from his work at the

bank.

“Lucky people to live in the country,” he thought. “True, what with

his farming and his Zemstvo, the owner of the estate has very little peace

even in the country, but that is his own lookout.” Volgin shook his head,

lit another cigarette, and, stepping out firmly with his powerful feet clad

in his thick English boots, began to think of the heavy winter‟s work in

the bank that was in front of him. “I shall be there every day from ten to

two, sometimes even till five. And the board meetings . . . And private

interviews with clients. . . . Then the Duma. Whereas here. . . . It is

delightful. It may be a little dull, but it is not for long.” He smiled. After

a stroll in Littleports he turned back, going straight across a fallow field

which was being ploughed. A herd of cows, calves, sheep, and pigs,

which belonged to the village community, was grazing there. The

shortest way to the park was to pass through the herd. He frightened the

sheep, which ran away one after another, and were followed by the pigs,

of which two little ones stared solemnly at him. The shepherd boy called

to the sheep and cracked his whip. “How far behind Europe we are,”

thought Volgin, recalling his frequent holidays abroad. “You would not

find a single cow like that anywhere in Europe.” Then, wanting to find

out where the path which branched off from the one he was on led to and

who was the owner of the herd, he called to the boy.

“Whose herd is it?”

The boy was so filled with wonder, verging on terror, when he gazed

at the hat, the well-brushed beard, and above all the gold-rimmed

eyeglasses, that he could not reply at once. When Volgin repeated his

question the boy pulled himself together, and said, “Ours.” “But whose is

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„ours‟?” said Volgin, shaking his head and smiling. The boy was wearing

shoes of plaited birch bark, bands of linen round his legs, a dirty,

unbleached shirt ragged at the shoulder, and a cap the peak of which had

been torn.

“Whose is „ours‟?”

“The Pirogov village herd.”

“How old are you?

“I don‟t know.”

“Can you read?”

“No, I can‟t.”

“Didn‟t you go to school?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Couldn‟t you learn to read?”

“No.”

“Where does that path lead?”

The boy told him, and Volgin went on towards the house, thinking

how he would chaff Nicholas Petrovich about the deplorable condition of

the village schools in spite of all his efforts.

On approaching the house Volgin looked at his watch, and saw that it

was already past eleven. He remembered that Nicholas Petrovich was

going to drive to the nearest town, and that he had meant to give him a

letter to post to Moscow; but the letter was not written. The letter was a

very important one to a friend, asking him to bid for him for a picture of

the Madonna which was to be offered for sale at an auction. As he

reached the house he saw at the door four big, well-fed, well-groomed,

thoroughbred horses harnessed to a carriage, the black lacquer of which

glistened in the sun. The coachman was seated on the box in a kaftan,

with a silver belt, and the horses were jingling their silver bells from time

to time.

A bare-headed, barefooted peasant in a ragged kaftan stood at the

front door. He bowed. Volgin asked what he wanted.

“I have come to see Nicholas Petrovich.”

“What about?”

“Because I am in distress—my horse has died.”

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172

Volgin began to question him. The peasant told him how he was

situated. He had five children, and this had been his only horse. Now it

was gone. He wept.

“What are you going to do?”

“To beg.” And he knelt down, and remained kneeling in spite of

Volgin‟s expostulations.

“What is your name?”

“Mitri Sudarikov,” answered the peasant, still kneeling.

Volgin took three roubles from his purse and gave them to the

peasant, who showed his gratitude by touching the ground with his

forehead, and then went into the house. His host was standing in the hall.

“Where is your letter?” he asked, approaching Volgin; “I am just

off.”

“I‟m awfully sorry, I‟ll write it this minute, if you will let me. I

forgot all about it. It‟s so pleasant here that one can forget anything.”

“All right, but do be quick. The horses have already been standing a

quarter of an hour, and the flies are biting viciously. Can you wait,

Arsenty?” he asked the coachman.

“Why not?” said the coachman, thinking to himself, “why do they

order the horses when they aren‟t ready? The rush the grooms and I

had—just to stand here and feed the flies.”

“Directly, directly,” Volgin went towards his room, but turned back

to ask Nicholas Petrovich about the begging peasant.

“Did you see him?—He‟s a drunkard, but still he is to be pitied. Do

be quick!”

Volgin got out his case, with all the requisites for writing, wrote the

letter, made out a cheque for a hundred and eighty roubles, and, sealing

down the envelope, took it to Nicholas Petrovich.

“Good-bye.”

Volgin read the newspapers till luncheon. He only read the Liberal

papers: The Russian Gazette, Speech, sometimes The Russian Word—

but he would not touch The New Times, to which his host subscribed.

While he was scanning at his ease the political news, the Tsar‟s

doings, the doings of President, and ministers and decisions in the Duma,

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and was just about to pass on to the general news, theatres, science,

murders and cholera, he heard the luncheon bell ring.

Thanks to the efforts of upwards of ten human beings—counting

laundresses, gardeners, cooks, kitchen-maids, butlers and footmen—the

table was sumptuously laid for eight, with silver waterjugs, decanters,

kvass, wine, mineral waters, cut glass, and fine table linen, while two

men-servants were continually hurrying to and fro, bringing in and

serving, and then clearing away the hors d‟oeuvre and the various hot

and cold courses.

The hostess talked incessantly about everything that she had been

doing, thinking, and saying; and she evidently considered that everything

that she thought, said, or did was perfect, and that it would please

everyone except those who were fools. Volgin felt and knew that

everything she said was stupid, but it would never do to let it be seen,

and so he kept up the conversation. Theodorite was glum and silent; the

student occasionally exchanged a few words with the widow. Now and

again there was a pause in the conversation, and then Theodorite

interposed, and every one became miserably depressed. At such

moments the hostess ordered some dish that had not been served, and the

footman hurried off to the kitchen, or to the housekeeper, and hurried

back again. Nobody felt inclined either to talk or to eat. But they all

forced themselves to eat and to talk, and so luncheon went on.

The peasant who had been begging because his horse had died was

named Mitri Sudarikov. He had spent the whole day before he went to

the squire over his dead horse. First of all he went to the knacker, Sanin,

who lived in a village near. The knacker was out, but he waited for him,

and it was dinner-time when he had finished bargaining over the price of

the skin. Then he borrowed a neighbour‟s horse to take his own to a field

to be buried, as it is forbidden to bury dead animals near a village.

Adrian would not lend his horse because he was getting in his potatoes,

but Stephen took pity on Mitri and gave way to his persuasion. He even

lent a hand in lifting the dead horse into the cart. Mitri tore off the shoes

from the forelegs and gave them to his wife. One was broken, but the

other one was whole. While he was digging the grave with a spade which

was very blunt, the knacker appeared and took off the skin; and the

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carcass was then thrown into the hole and covered up. Mitri felt tired,

and went into Matrena‟s hut, where he drank half a bottle of vodka with

Sanin to console himself. Then he went home, quarrelled with his wife,

and lay down to sleep on the hay. He did not undress, but slept just as he

was, with a ragged coat for a coverlet. His wife was in the hut with the

girls—there were four of them, and the youngest was only five weeks

old. Mitri woke up before dawn as usual. He groaned as the memory of

the day before broke in upon him—how the horse had struggled and

struggled, and then fallen down. Now there was no horse, and all he had

was the price of the skin, four roubles and eighty kopeks. Getting up he

arranged the linen bands on his legs, and went through the yard into the

hut. His wife was putting straw into the stove with one hand, with the

other she was holding a baby girl to her breast, which was hanging out of

her dirty chemise.

Mitri crossed himself three times, turning towards the corner in

which the ikons hung, and repeated some utterly meaningless words,

which he called prayers, to the Trinity and the Virgin, the Creed and our

Father.

“Isn‟t there any water?”

“The girl‟s gone for it. I‟ve got some tea. Will you go up to the

squire?”

“Yes, I‟d better.” The smoke from the stove made him cough. He

took a rag off the wooden bench and went into the porch. The girl had

just come back with the water. Mitri filled his mouth with water from the

pail and squirted it out on his hands, took some more in his mouth to

wash his face, dried himself with the rag, then parted and smoothed his

curly hair with his fingers and went out. A little girl of about ten, with

nothing on but a dirty shirt, came towards him. “Good-morning, Uncle

Mitri,” she said; “you are to come and thrash.” “All right, I‟ll come,”

replied Mitri. He understood that he was expected to return the help

given the week before by Kumushkir, a man as poor as he was himself,

when he was thrashing his own corn with a horse-driven machine.

“Tell them I‟ll come—I‟ll come at lunch time. I‟ve got to go to

Ugrumi.” Mitri went back to the hut, and changing his birch-bark shoes

and the linen bands on his legs, started off to see the squire. After he had

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got three roubles from Volgin, and the same sum from Nicholas

Petrovich, he returned to his house, gave the money to his wife, and went

to his neighbour‟s. The thrashing machine was humming, and the driver

was shouting. The lean horses were going slowly round him, straining at

their traces. The driver was shouting to them in a monotone, “Now,

there, my dears.” Some women were unbinding sheaves, others were

raking up the scattered straw and ears, and others again were gathering

great armfuls of corn and handing them to the men to feed the machine.

The work was in full swing. In the kitchen garden, which Mitri had to

pass, a girl, clad only in a long shirt, was digging potatoes which she put

into a basket.

“Where‟s your grandfather?” asked Mitri. “He‟s in the barn.” Mitri

went to the barn and set to work at once. The old man of eighty knew of

Mitri‟s trouble. After greeting him, he gave him his place to feed the

machine.

Mitri took off his ragged coat, laid it out of the way near the fence,

and then began to work vigorously, raking the corn together and

throwing it into the machine. The work went on without interruption

until the dinner-hour. The cocks had crowed two or three times, but no

one paid any attention to them; not because the workers did not believe

them, but because they were scarcely heard for the noise of the work and

the talk about it. At last the whistle of the squire‟s steam thrasher

sounded three miles away, and then the owner came into the barn. He

was a straight old man of eighty. “It‟s time to stop,” he said; “it‟s dinner-

time.” Those at work seemed to redouble their efforts. In a moment the

straw was cleared away; the grain that had been thrashed was separated

from the chaff and brought in, and then the workers went into the hut.

The hut was smoke-begrimed, as its stove had no chimney, but it had

been tidied up, and benches stood round the table, making room for all

those who had been working, of whom there were nine, not counting the

owners. Bread, soup, boiled potatoes, and kvass were placed on the table.

An old one-armed beggar, with a bag slung over his shoulder, came

in with a crutch during the meal.

“Peace be to this house. A good appetite to you. For Christ‟s sake

give me something.”

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176

“God will give it to you,” said the mistress, already an old woman,

and the daughter-in-law of the master. “Don‟t be angry with us.” An old

man, who was still standing near the door, said, “Give him some bread,

Martha. How can you?”

“I am only wondering whether we shall have enough.” “Oh, it is

wrong, Martha. God tells us to help the poor. Cut him a slice.”

Martha obeyed. The beggar went away. The man in charge of the

thrashing-machine got up, said grace, thanked his hosts, and went away

to rest.

Mitri did not lie down, but ran to the shop to buy some tobacco. He

was longing for a smoke. While he smoked he chatted to a man from

Demensk, asking the price of cattle, as he saw that he would not be able

to manage without selling a cow. When he returned to the others, they

were already back at work again; and so it went on till the evening.

Among these downtrodden, duped, and defrauded men, who are

becoming demoralised by overwork, and being gradually done to death

by underfeeding, there are men living who consider themselves

Christians; and others so enlightened that they feel no further need for

Christianity or for any religion, so superior do they appear in their own

esteem. And yet their hideous, lazy lives are supported by the degrading,

excessive labour of these slaves, not to mention the labour of millions of

other slaves, toiling in factories to produce samovars, silver, carriages,

machines, and the like for their use. They live among these horrors,

seeing them and yet not seeing them, although often kind at heart—old

men and women, young men and maidens, mothers and children—poor

children who are being vitiated and trained into moral blindness.

Here is a bachelor grown old, the owner of thousands of acres, who

has lived a life of idleness, greed, and over-indulgence, who reads The

New Times, and is astonished that the government can be so unwise as to

permit Jews to enter the university. There is his guest, formerly the

governor of a province, now a senator with a big salary, who reads with

satisfaction that a congress of lawyers has passed a resolution in favor of

capital punishment. Their political enemy, N. P., reads a liberal paper,

and cannot understand the blindness of the government in allowing the

union of Russian men to exist.

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177

Here is a kind, gentle mother of a little girl reading a story to her

about Fox, a dog that lamed some rabbits. And here is this little girl.

During her walks she sees other children, barefooted, hungry, hunting for

green apples that have fallen from the trees; and, so accustomed is she to

the sight, that these children do not seem to her to be children such as she

is, but only part of the usual surroundings—the familiar landscape.

Why is this?

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178

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179

The Young Tsar

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180

THE young Tsar had just ascended the throne. For five weeks he had

worked without ceasing, in the way that Tsars are accustomed to work.

He had been attending to reports, signing papers, receiving ambassadors

and high officials who came to be presented to him, and reviewing

troops. He was tired, and as a traveller exhausted by heat and thirst longs

for a draught of water and for rest, so he longed for a respite of just one

day at least from receptions, from speeches, from parades—a few free

hours to spend like an ordinary human being with his young, clever, and

beautiful wife, to whom he had been married only a month before.

It was Christmas Eve. The young Tsar had arranged to have a

complete rest that evening. The night before he had worked till very late

at documents which his ministers of state had left for him to examine. In

the morning he was present at the Te Deum, and then at a military

service. In the afternoon he received official visitors; and later he had

been obliged to listen to the reports of three ministers of state, and had

given his assent to many important matters. In his conference with the

Minister of Finance he had agreed to an increase of duties on imported

goods, which should in the future add many millions to the State

revenues. Then he sanctioned the sale of brandy by the Crown in various

parts of the country, and signed a decree permitting the sale of alcohol in

villages having markets. This was also calculated to increase the

principal revenue to the State, which was derived from the sale of spirits.

He had also approved of the issuing of a new gold loan required for a

financial negotiation. The Minister of justice having reported on the

complicated case of the succession of the Baron Snyders, the young Tsar

confirmed the decision by his signature; and also approved the new rules

relating to the application of Article 1830 of the penal code, providing

for the punishment of tramps. In his conference with the Minister of the

Interior he ratified the order concerning the collection of taxes in arrears,

signed the order settling what measures should be taken in regard to the

persecution of religious dissenters, and also one providing for the

continuance of martial law in those provinces where it had already been

established. With the Minister of War he arranged for the nomination of

a new Corps Commander for the raising of recruits, and for punishment

of breach of discipline. These things kept him occupied till dinner-time,

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181

and even then his freedom was not complete. A number of high officials

had been invited to dinner, and he was obliged to talk to them: not in the

way he felt disposed to do, but according to what he was expected to say.

At last the tiresome dinner was over, and the guests departed.

The young Tsar heaved a sigh of relief, stretched himself and retired

to his apartments to take off his uniform with the decorations on it, and

to don the jacket he used to wear before his accession to the throne. His

young wife had also retired to take off her dinner-dress, remarking that

she would join him presently.

When he had passed the row of footmen who were standing erect

before him, and reached his room; when he had thrown off his heavy

uniform and put on his jacket, the young Tsar felt glad to be free from

work; and his heart was filled with a tender emotion which sprang from

the consciousness of his freedom, of his joyous, robust young life, and of

his love. He threw himself on the sofa, stretched out his legs upon it,

leaned his head on his hand, fixed his gaze on the dull glass shade of the

lamp, and then a sensation which he had not experienced since his

childhood,—the pleasure of going to sleep, and a drowsiness that was

irresistible—suddenly came over him.

“My wife will be here presently and will find me asleep. No, I must

not go to sleep,” he thought. He let his elbow drop down, laid his cheek

in the palm of his hand, made himself comfortable, and was so utterly

happy that he only felt a desire not to be aroused from this delightful

state.

And then what happens to all of us every day happened to him—he

fell asleep without knowing himself when or how. He passed from one

state into another without his will having any share in it, without even

desiring it, and without regretting the state out of which he had passed.

He fell into a heavy sleep which was like death. How long he had slept

he did not know, but he was suddenly aroused by the soft touch of a hand

upon his shoulder.

“It is my darling, it is she,” he thought. “What a shame to have dozed

off!”

But it was not she. Before his eyes, which were wide open and

blinking at the light, she, that charming and beautiful creature whom he

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182

was expecting, did not stand, but he stood. Who he was the young Tsar

did not know, but somehow it did not strike him that he was a stranger

whom he had never seen before. It seemed as if he had known him for a

long time and was fond of him, and as if he trusted him as he would trust

himself. He had expected his beloved wife, but in her stead that man

whom he had never seen before had come. Yet to the young Tsar, who

was far from feeling regret or astonishment, it seemed not only a most

natural, but also a necessary thing to happen.

“Come!” said the stranger.

“Yes, let us go,” said the young Tsar, not knowing where he was to

go, but quite aware that he could not help submitting to the command of

the stranger. “But how shall we go?” he asked.

“In this way.”

The stranger laid his hand on the Tsar‟s head, and the Tsar for a

moment lost consciousness. He could not tell whether he had been

unconscious a long or a short time, but when he recovered his senses he

found himself in a strange place. The first thing he was aware of was a

strong and stifling smell of sewage. The place in which he stood was a

broad passage lit by the red glow of two dim lamps. Running along one

side of the passage was a thick wall with windows protected by iron

gratings. On the other side were doors secured with locks. In the passage

stood a soldier, leaning up against the wall, asleep. Through the doors the

young Tsar heard the muffled sound of living human beings: not of one

alone, but of many. He was standing at the side of the young Tsar, and

pressing his shoulder slightly with his soft hand, pushed him to the first

door, unmindful of the sentry. The young Tsar felt he could not do

otherwise than yield, and approached the door. To his amazement the

sentry looked straight at him, evidently without seeing him, as he neither

straightened himself up nor saluted, but yawned loudly and, lifting his

hand, scratched the back of his neck. The door had a small hole, and in

obedience to the pressure of the hand that pushed him, the young Tsar

approached a step nearer and put his eye to the small opening. Close to

the door, the foul smell that stifled him was stronger, and the young Tsar

hesitated to go nearer, but the hand pushed him on. He leaned forward,

put his eye close to the opening, and suddenly ceased to perceive the

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183

odour. The sight he saw deadened his sense of smell. In a large room,

about ten yards long and six yards wide, there walked unceasingly from

one end to the other, six men in long grey coats, some in felt boots, some

barefoot. There were over twenty men in all in the room, but in that first

moment the young Tsar only saw those who were walking with quick,

even, silent steps. It was a horrid sight to watch the continual, quick,

aimless movements of the men who passed and overtook each other,

turning sharply when they reached the wall, never looking at one

another, and evidently concentrated each on his own thoughts. The

young Tsar had observed a similar sight one day when he was watching a

tiger in a menagerie pacing rapidly with noiseless tread from one end of

his cage to the other, waving its tail, silently turning when it reached the

bars, and looking at nobody. Of these men one, apparently a young

peasant, with curly hair, would have been handsome were it not for the

unnatural pallor of his face, and the concentrated, wicked, scarcely

human, look in his eyes. Another was a Jew, hairy and gloomy. The third

was a lean old man, bald, with a beard that had been shaven and had

since grown like bristles. The fourth was extraordinarily heavily built,

with well-developed muscles, a low receding forehead and a flat nose.

The fifth was hardly more than a boy, long, thin, obviously consumptive.

The sixth was small and dark, with nervous, convulsive movements. He

walked as if he were skipping, and muttered continuously to himself.

They were all walking rapidly backwards and forwards past the hole

through which the young Tsar was looking. He watched their faces and

their gait with keen interest. Having examined them closely, he presently

became aware of a number of other men at the back of the room,

standing round, or lying on the shelf that served as a bed. Standing close

to the door he also saw the pail which caused such an unbearable stench.

On the shelf about ten men, entirely covered with their cloaks, were

sleeping. A red-haired man with a huge beard was sitting sideways on

the shelf, with his shirt off. He was examining it, lifting it up to the light,

and evidently catching the vermin on it. Another man, aged and white as

snow, stood with his profile turned towards the door. He was praying,

crossing himself, and bowing low, apparently so absorbed in his

devotions as to be oblivious of all around him.

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184

“I see—this is a prison,” thought the young Tsar. “They certainly

deserve pity. It is a dreadful life. But it cannot be helped. It is their own

fault.”

But this thought had hardly come into his head before he, who was

his guide, replied to it.

“They are all here under lock and key by your order. They have all

been sentenced in your name. But far from meriting their present

condition which is due to your human judgment, the greater part of them

are far better than you or those who were their judges and who keep them

here. This one”—he pointed to the handsome, curly-headed fellow—“is

a murderer. I do not consider him more guilty than those who kill in war

or in duelling, and are rewarded for their deeds. He had neither education

nor moral guidance, and his life had been cast among thieves and

drunkards. This lessens his guilt, but he has done wrong, nevertheless, in

being a murderer. He killed a merchant, to rob him. The other man, the

Jew, is a thief, one of a gang of thieves. That uncommonly strong fellow

is a horse-stealer, and guilty also, but compared with others not as

culpable. Look!”—and suddenly the young Tsar found himself in an

open field on a vast frontier. On the right were potato fields; the plants

had been rooted out, and were lying in heaps, blackened by the frost; in

alternate streaks were rows of winter corn. In the distance a little village

with its tiled roofs was visible; on the left were fields of winter corn, and

fields of stubble. No one was to be seen on any side, save a black human

figure in front at the border-line, a gun slung on his back, and at his feet a

dog. On the spot where the young Tsar stood, sitting beside him, almost

at his feet, was a young Russian soldier with a green band on his cap, and

with his rifle slung over his shoulders, who was rolling up a paper to

make a cigarette. The soldier was obviously unaware of the presence of

the young Tsar and his companion, and had not heard them. He did now

turn round when the Tsar, who was standing directly over the soldier,

asked, “Where are we?” “On the Prussian frontier,” his guide answered.

Suddenly, far away in front of them, a shot was fired. The soldier jumped

to his feet, and seeing two men running, bent low to the ground, hastily

put his tobacco into his pocket, and ran after one of them. “Stop, or I‟ll

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185

shoot!” cried the soldier. The fugitive, without stopping, turned his head

and called out something evidently abusive or blasphemous.

“Damn you!” shouted the soldier, who put one foot a little forward

and stopped, after which, bending his head over his rifle, and raising his

right hand, he rapidly adjusted something, took aim, and, pointing the

gun in the direction of the fugitive, probably fired, although no sound

was heard. “Smokeless powder, no doubt,” thought the young Tsar, and

looking after the fleeing man saw him take a few hurried steps, and

bending lower and lower, fall to the ground and crawl on his hands and

knees. At last he remained lying and did not move. The other fugitive,

who was ahead of him, turned round and ran back to the man who was

lying on the ground. He did something for him and then resumed his

flight.

“What does all this mean?” asked the Tsar.

“These are the guards on the frontier, enforcing the revenue laws.

That man was killed to protect the revenues of the State.”

“Has he actually been killed?”

The guide again laid his hand upon the head of the young Tsar, and

again the Tsar lost consciousness. When he had recovered his senses he

found himself in a small room—the customs office. The dead body of a

man, with a thin grizzled beard, an aquiline nose, and big eyes with the

eyelids closed, was lying on the floor. His arms were thrown asunder, his

feet bare, and his thick, dirty toes were turned up at right angles and

stuck out straight. He had a wound in his side, and on his ragged cloth

jacket, as well as on his blue shirt, were stains of clotted blood, which

had turned black save for a few red spots here and there. A woman stood

close to the wall, so wrapped up in shawls that her face could scarcely be

seen. Motionless she gazed at the aquiline nose, the upturned feet, and

the protruding eyeballs; sobbing and sighing, and drying her tears at

long, regular intervals. A pretty girl of thirteen was standing at her

mother‟s side, with her eyes and mouth wide open. A boy of eight clung

to his mother‟s skirt, and looked intensely at his dead father without

blinking.

From a door near them an official, an officer, a doctor, and a clerk

with documents, entered. After them came a soldier, the one who had

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186

shot the man. He stepped briskly along behind his superiors, but the

instant he saw the corpse he went suddenly pale, and quivered; and

dropping his head stood still. When the official asked him whether that

was the man who was escaping across the frontier, and at whom he had

fired, he was unable to answer. His lips trembled, and his face twitched.

“The s—s—s—” he began, but could not get out the words which he

wanted to say. “The same, your excellency.” The officials looked at each

other and wrote something down.

“You see the beneficial results of that same system!”

In a room of sumptuous vulgarity two men sat drinking wine. One of

them was old and grey, the other a young Jew. The young Jew was

holding a roll of bank-notes in his hand, and was bargaining with the old

man. He was buying smuggled goods.

“You‟ve got „em cheap,” he said, smiling.

“Yes—but the risk—”

“This is indeed terrible,” said the young Tsar; “but it cannot be

avoided. Such proceedings are necessary.”

His companion made no response, saying merely, “Let us move on,”

and laid his hand again on the head of the Tsar. When the Tsar recovered

consciousness, he was standing in a small room lit by a shaded lamp. A

woman was sitting at the table sewing. A boy of eight was bending over

the table, drawing, with his feet doubled up under him in the armchair. A

student was reading aloud. The father and daughter of the family entered

the room noisily.

“You signed the order concerning the sale of spirits,” said the guide

to the Tsar.

“Well?” said the woman.

“He‟s not likely to live.”

“What‟s the matter with him?”

“They‟ve kept him drunk all the time.”

“It‟s not possible!” exclaimed the wife.

“It‟s true. And the boy‟s only nine years old, that Vania

Moroshkine.”

“What did you do to try to save him?” asked the wife.

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187

“I tried everything that could be done. I gave him an emetic and put a

mustard-plaster on him. He has every symptom of delirium tremens.”

“It‟s no wonder—the whole family are drunkards. Annisia is only a

little better than the rest, and even she is generally more or less drunk,”

said the daughter.

“And what about your temperance society?” the student asked his

sister.

“What can we do when they are given every opportunity of drinking?

Father tried to have the public-house shut up, but the law is against him.

And, besides, when I was trying to convince Vasily Ermiline that it was

disgraceful to keep a public-house and ruin the people with drink, he

answered very haughtily, and indeed got the better of me before the

crowd: „But I have a license with the Imperial eagle on it. If there was

anything wrong in my business, the Tsar wouldn‟t have issued a decree

authorising it.‟ Isn‟t it terrible? The whole village has been drunk for the

last three days. And as for feast-days, it is simply horrible to think of! It

has been proved conclusively that alcohol does no good in any case, but

invariably does harm, and it has been demonstrated to be an absolute

poison. Then, ninety-nine per cent of the crimes in the world are

committed through its influence. We all know how the standard of

morality and the general welfare improved at once in all the countries

where drinking has been suppressed—like Sweden and Finland, and we

know that it can be suppressed by exercising a moral influence over the

masses. But in our country the class which could exert that influence—

the Government, the Tsar and his officials—simply encourage drink.

Their main revenues are drawn from the continual drunkenness of the

people. They drink themselves—they are always drinking the health of

somebody: „Gentlemen, the Regiment!‟ The preachers drink, the bishops

drink—”

Again the guide touched the head of the young Tsar, who again lost

consciousness. This time he found himself in a peasant‟s cottage. The

peasant—a man of forty, with red face and blood-shot eyes—was

furiously striking the face of an old man, who tried in vain to protect

himself from the blows. The younger peasant seized the beard of the old

man and held it fast.

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188

“For shame! To strike your father—!”

“I don‟t care, I‟ll kill him! Let them send me to Siberia, I don‟t

care!”

The women were screaming. Drunken officials rushed into the

cottage and separated father and son. The father had an arm broken and

the son‟s beard was torn out. In the doorway a drunken girl was making

violent love to an old besotted peasant.

“They are beasts!” said the young Tsar.

Another touch of his guide‟s hand and the young Tsar awoke in a

new place. It was the office of the justice of the peace. A fat, bald-headed

man, with a double chin and a chain round his neck, had just risen from

his seat, and was reading the sentence in a loud voice, while a crowd of

peasants stood behind the grating. There was a woman in rags in the

crowd who did not rise. The guard gave her a push.

“Asleep! I tell you to stand up!” The woman rose.

“According to the decree of his Imperial Majesty—” the judge began

reading the sentence. The case concerned that very woman. She had

taken away half a bundle of oats as she was passing the thrashing-floor

of a landowner. The justice of the peace sentenced her to two months‟

imprisonment. The landowner whose oats had been stolen was among

the audience. When the judge adjourned the court the landowner

approached, and shook hands, and the judge entered into conversation

with him. The next case was about a stolen samovar. Then there was a

trial about some timber which had been cut, to the detriment of the

landowner. Some peasants were being tried for having assaulted the

constable of the district.

When the young Tsar again lost consciousness, he awoke to find

himself in the middle of a village, where he saw hungry, half-frozen

children and the wife of the man who had assaulted the constable broken

down from overwork.

Then came a new scene. In Siberia, a tramp is being flogged with the

lash, the direct result of an order issued by the Minister of justice. Again

oblivion, and another scene. The family of a Jewish watchmaker is

evicted for being too poor. The children are crying, and the Jew, Isaaks,

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189

is greatly distressed. At last they come to an arrangement, and he is

allowed to stay on in the lodgings.

The chief of police takes a bribe. The governor of the province also

secretly accepts a bribe. Taxes are being collected. In the village, while a

cow is sold for payment, the police inspector is bribed by a factory

owner, who thus escapes taxes altogether. And again a village court

scene, and a sentence carried into execution—the lash!

“Ilia Vasilievich, could you not spare me that?”

“No.”

The peasant burst into tears. “Well, of course, Christ suffered, and

He bids us suffer too.”

Then other scenes. The Stundists—a sect—being broken up and

dispersed; the clergy refusing first to marry, then to bury a Protestant.

Orders given concerning the passage of the Imperial railway train.

Soldiers kept sitting in the mud—cold, hungry, and cursing. Decrees

issued relating to the educational institutions of the Empress Mary

Department. Corruption rampant in the foundling homes. An undeserved

monument. Thieving among the clergy. The reinforcement of the

political police. A woman being searched. A prison for convicts who are

sentenced to be deported. A man being hanged for murdering a shop

assistant.

Then the result of military discipline: soldiers wearing uniform and

scoffing at it. A gipsy encampment. The son of a millionaire exempted

from military duty, while the only support of a large family is forced to

serve. The university: a teacher relieved of military service, while the

most gifted musicians are compelled to perform it. Soldiers and their

debauchery—and the spreading of disease.

Then a soldier who has made an attempt to desert. He is being tried.

Another is on trial for striking an officer who has insulted his mother. He

is put to death. Others, again, are tried for having refused to shoot. The

runaway soldier sent to a disciplinary battalion and flogged to death.

Another, who is guiltless, flogged, and his wounds sprinkled with salt till

he dies. One of the superior officers stealing money belonging to the

soldiers. Nothing but drunkenness, debauchery, gambling, and arrogance

on the part of the authorities.

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190

What is the general condition of the people: the children are half-

starving and degenerate; the houses are full of vermin; an everlasting dull

round of labour, of submission, and of sadness. On the other hand:

ministers, governors of provinces, covetous, ambitious, full of vanity,

and anxious to inspire fear.

“But where are men with human feelings?”

“I will show you where they are.”

Here is the cell of a woman in solitary confinement at Schlusselburg.

She is going mad. Here is another woman—a girl—indisposed, violated

by soldiers. A man in exile, alone, embittered, half-dead. A prison for

convicts condemned to hard labour, and women flogged. They are many.

Tens of thousands of the best people. Some shut up in prisons, others

ruined by false education, by the vain desire to bring them up as we wish.

But not succeeding in this, whatever might have been is ruined as well,

for it is made impossible. It is as if we were trying to make buckwheat

out of corn sprouts by splitting the ears. One may spoil the corn, but one

could never change it to buckwheat. Thus all the youth of the world, the

entire younger generation, is being ruined.

But woe to those who destroy one of these little ones, woe to you if

you destroy even one of them. On your soul, however, are hosts of them,

who have been ruined in your name, all of those over whom your power

extends.

“But what can I do?” exclaimed the Tsar in despair. “I do not wish to

torture, to flog, to corrupt, to kill any one! I only want the welfare of all.

Just as I yearn for happiness myself, so I want the world to be happy as

well. Am I actually responsible for everything that is done in my name?

What can I do? What am I to do to rid myself of such a responsibility?

What can I do? I do not admit that the responsibility for all this is mine.

If I felt myself responsible for one-hundredth part of it, I would shoot

myself on the spot. It would not be possible to live if that were true. But

how can I put an end, to all this evil? It is bound up with the very

existence of the State. I am the head of the State! What am I to do? Kill

myself? Or abdicate? But that would mean renouncing my duty. O God,

O God, God, help me!” He burst into tears and awoke.

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191

“How glad I am that it was only a dream,” was his first thought. But

when he began to recollect what he had seen in his dream, and to

compare it with actuality, he realised that the problem propounded to him

in dream remained just as important and as insoluble now that he was

awake. For the first time the young Tsar became aware of the heavy

responsibility weighing on him, and was aghast. His thoughts no longer

turned to the young Queen and to the happiness he had anticipated for

that evening, but became centered on the unanswerable question which

hung over him: “What was to be done?”

In a state of great agitation he arose and went into the next room. An

old courtier, a co-worker and friend of his father‟s, was standing there in

the middle of the room in conversation with the young Queen, who was

on her way to join her husband. The young Tsar approached them, and

addressing his conversation principally to the old courtier, told him what

he had seen in his dream and what doubts the dream had left in his mind.

“That is a noble idea. It proves the rare nobility of your spirit,” said

the old man. “But forgive me for speaking frankly—you are too kind to

be an emperor, and you exaggerate your responsibility. In the first place,

the state of things is not as you imagine it to be. The people are not poor.

They are well-to-do. Those who are poor are poor through their own

fault. Only the guilty are punished, and if an unavoidable mistake does

sometimes occur, it is like a thunderbolt—an accident, or the will of

God. You have but one responsibility: to fulfil your task courageously

and to retain the power that is given to you. You wish the best for your

people and God sees that. As for the errors which you have committed

unwittingly, you can pray for forgiveness, and God will guide you and

pardon you. All the more because you have done nothing that demands

forgiveness, and there never have been and never will be men possessed

of such extraordinary qualities as you and your father. Therefore all we

implore you to do is to live, and to reward our endless devotion and love

with your favour, and every one, save scoundrels who deserve no

happiness, will be happy.”

“What do you think about that?” the young Tsar asked his wife.

“I have a different opinion,” said the clever young woman, who had

been brought up in a free country. “I am glad you had that dream, and I

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192

agree with you that there are grave responsibilities resting upon you. I

have often thought about it with great anxiety, and I think there is a

simple means of casting off a part of the responsibility you are unable to

bear, if not all of it. A large proportion of the power which is too heavy

for you, you should delegate to the people, to its representatives,

reserving for yourself only the supreme control, that is, the general

direction of the affairs of State.”

The Queen had hardly ceased to expound her views, when the old

courtier began eagerly to refute her arguments, and they started a polite

but very heated discussion.

For a time the young Tsar followed their arguments, but presently he

ceased to be aware of what they said, listening only to the voice of him

who had been his guide in the dream, and who was now speaking audibly

in his heart.

“You are not only the Tsar,” said the voice, “but more. You are a

human being, who only yesterday came into this world, and will per-

chance to-morrow depart out of it. Apart from your duties as a Tsar, of

which that old man is now speaking, you have more immediate duties

not by any means to be disregarded; human duties, not the duties of a

Tsar towards his subjects, which are only accidental, but an eternal duty,

the duty of a man in his relation to God, the duty toward your own soul,

which is to save it, and also, to serve God in establishing his kingdom on

earth. You are not to be guarded in your actions either by what has been

or what will be, but only by what it is your own duty to do.”

* * *

He opened his eyes—his wife was awakening him. Which of the

three courses the young Tsar chose, will be told in fifty years.

The End

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