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Title: The Forged Coupon
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Date: 1911
Language: en
Topics: fiction, debt, money
Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/243

Leo Tolstoy

The Forged Coupon

Introduction

IN an age of materialism like our own the phenomenon of spiritual power

is as significant and inspiring as it is rare. No longer associated with

the “divine right” of kings, it has survived the downfall of feudal and

theocratic systems as a mystic personal emanation in place of a coercive

weapon of statecraft.

Freed from its ancient shackles of dogma and despotism it eludes

analysis. We know not how to gauge its effect on others, nor even upon

ourselves. Like the wind, it permeates the atmosphere we breathe, and

baffles while it stimulates the mind with its intangible but compelling

force.

This psychic power, which the dead weight of materialism is impotent to

suppress, is revealed in the lives and writings of men of the most

diverse creeds and nationalities. Apart from those who, like Buddha and

Mahomet, have been raised to the height of demi-gods by worshipping

millions, there are names which leap inevitably to the mind—such names

as Savonarola, Luther, Calvin, Rousseau—which stand for types and

exemplars of spiritual aspiration. To this high priesthood of the quick

among the dead, who can doubt that time will admit Leo Tolstoy—a genius

whose greatness has been obscured from us rather than enhanced by his

duality; a realist who strove to demolish the mysticism of Christianity,

and became himself a mystic in the contemplation of Nature; a man of

ardent temperament and robust physique, keenly susceptible to human

passions and desires, who battled with himself from early manhood until

the spirit, gathering strength with years, inexorably subdued the flesh.

Tolstoy the realist steps without cavil into the front rank of modern

writers; Tolstoy the idealist has been constantly derided and scorned by

men of like birth and education with himself—his altruism denounced as

impracticable, his preaching compared with his mode of life to prove him

inconsistent, if not insincere. This is the prevailing attitude of

politicians and literary men.

Must one conclude that the mass of mankind has lost touch with idealism?

On the contrary, in spite of modern materialism, or even because of it,

many leaders of spiritual thought have arisen in our times, and have won

the ear of vast audiences. Their message is a call to a simpler life, to

a recognition of the responsibilities of wealth, to the avoidance of war

by arbitration, and sinking of class hatred in a deep sense of universal

brotherhood.

Unhappily, when an idealistic creed is formulated in precise and

dogmatic language, it invariably loses something of its pristine beauty

in the process of transmutation. Hence the Positivist philosophy of

Comte, though embodying noble aspirations, has had but a limited

influence. Again, the poetry of Robert Browning, though less frankly

altruistic than that of Cowper or Wordsworth, is inherently ethical, and

reveals strong sympathy with sinning and suffering humanity, but it is

masked by a manner that is sometimes uncouth and frequently obscure.

Owing to these, and other instances, idealism suggests to the world at

large a vague sentimentality peculiar to the poets, a bloodless

abstraction toyed with by philosophers, which must remain a closed book

to struggling humanity.

Yet Tolstoy found true idealism in the toiling peasant who believed in

God, rather than in his intellectual superior who believed in himself in

the first place, and gave a conventional assent to the existence of a

deity in the second. For the peasant was still religious at heart with a

naive unquestioning faith—more characteristic of the fourteenth or

fifteenth century than of to-day—and still fervently aspired to God

although sunk in superstition and held down by the despotism of the

Greek Church. It was the cumbrous ritual and dogma of the orthodox state

religion which roused Tolstoy to impassioned protests, and led him step

by step to separate the core of Christianity from its sacerdotal shell,

thus bringing upon himself the ban of excommunication.

The signal mark of the reprobation of “Holy Synod” was slow in coming—it

did not, in fact, become absolute until a couple of years after the

publication of “Resurrection,” in 1901, in spite of the attitude of

fierce hostility to Church and State which Tolstoy had maintained for so

long. This hostility, of which the seeds were primarily sown by the

closing of his school and inquisition of his private papers in the

summer of 1862, soon grew to proportions far greater than those arising

from a personal wrong. The dumb and submissive moujik found in Tolstoy a

living voice to express his sufferings.

Tolstoy was well fitted by nature and circumstances to be the peasant’s

spokesman. He had been brought into intimate contact with him in the

varying conditions of peace and war, and he knew him at his worst and

best. The old home of the family, Yasnaya Polyana, where Tolstoy, his

brothers and sister, spent their early years in charge of two guardian

aunts, was not only a halting-place for pilgrims journeying to and from

the great monastic shrines, but gave shelter to a number of persons of

enfeebled minds belonging to the peasant class, with whom the devout and

kindly Aunt Alexandra spent many hours daily in religious conversation

and prayer.

In “Childhood” Tolstoy apostrophises with feeling one of those

“innocents,” a man named Grisha, “whose faith was so strong that you

felt the nearness of God, your love so ardent that the words flowed from

your lips uncontrolled by your reason. And how did you celebrate his

Majesty when, words failing you, you prostrated yourself on the ground,

bathed in tears” This picture of humble religious faith was amongst

Tolstoy’s earliest memories, and it returned to comfort him and uplift

his soul when it was tossed and engulfed by seas of doubt. But the

affection he felt in boyhood towards the moujiks became tinged with

contempt when his attempts to improve their condition—some of which are

described in “Anna Karenina” and in the “Landlord’s Morning”—ended in

failure, owing to the ignorance and obstinacy of the people. It was not

till he passed through the ordeal of war in Turkey and the Crimea that

he discovered in the common soldier who fought by his side an

unconscious heroism, an unquestioning faith in God, a kindliness and

simplicity of heart rarely possessed by his commanding officer.

The impressions made upon Tolstoy during this period of active service

gave vivid reality to the battle-scenes in “War and Peace,” and are

traceable in the reflections and conversation of the two heroes, Prince

Andre and Pierre Besukhov. On the eve of the battle of Borodino, Prince

Andre, talking with Pierre in the presence of his devoted

soldier-servant Timokhine, says,—“‘Success cannot possibly be, nor has

it ever been, the result of strategy or fire-arms or numbers.’

“‘Then what does it result from?’ said Pierre.

“‘From the feeling that is in me, that is in him’—pointing to

Timokhine—‘and that is in each individual soldier.’”

He then contrasts the different spirit animating the officers and the

men.

“‘The former,’ he says, ‘have nothing in view but their personal

interests. The critical moment for them is the moment at which they are

able to supplant a rival, to win a cross or a new order. I see only one

thing. To-morrow one hundred thousand Russians and one hundred thousand

Frenchmen will meet to fight; they who fight the hardest and spare

themselves the least will win the day.’

“‘There’s the truth, your Excellency, the real truth,’ murmurs

Timokhine; ‘it is not a time to spare oneself. Would you believe it, the

men of my battalion have not tasted brandy? “It’s not a day for that,”

they said.’”

During the momentous battle which followed, Pierre was struck by the

steadfastness under fire which has always distinguished the Russian

soldier.

“The fall of each man acted as an increasing stimulus. The faces of the

soldiers brightened more and more, as if challenging the storm let loose

on them.”

In contrast with this picture of fine “morale” is that of the young

white-faced officer, looking nervously about him as he walks backwards

with lowered sword.

In other places Tolstoy does full justice to the courage and patriotism

of all grades in the Russian army, but it is constantly evident that his

sympathies are most heartily with the rank and file. What genuine

feeling and affection rings in this sketch of Plato, a common soldier,

in “War and Peace!”

“Plato Karataev was about fifty, judging by the number of campaigns in

which he had served; he could not have told his exact age himself, and

when he laughed, as he often did, he showed two rows of strong, white

teeth. There was not a grey hair on his head or in his beard, and his

bearing wore the stamp of activity, resolution, and above all, stoicism.

His face, though much lined, had a touching expression of simplicity,

youth, and innocence. When he spoke, in his soft sing-song voice, his

speech flowed as from a well-spring. He never thought about what he had

said or was going to say next, and the vivacity and the rhythmical

inflections of his voice gave it a penetrating persuasiveness. Night and

morning, when going to rest or getting up, he said, ‘O God, let me sleep

like a stone and rise up like a loaf.’ And, sure enough, he had no

sooner lain down than he slept like a lump of lead, and in the morning

on waking he was bright and lively, and ready for any work. He could do

anything, just not very well nor very ill; he cooked, sewed, planed

wood, cobbled his boots, and was always occupied with some job or other,

only allowing himself to chat and sing at night. He sang, not like a

singer who knows he has listeners, but as the birds sing to God, the

Father of all, feeling it as necessary as walking or stretching himself.

His singing was tender, sweet, plaintive, almost feminine, in keeping

with his serious countenance. When, after some weeks of captivity his

beard had grown again, he seemed to have got rid of all that was not his

true self, the borrowed face which his soldiering life had given him,

and to have become, as before, a peasant and a man of the people. In the

eyes of the other prisoners Plato was just a common soldier, whom they

chaffed at times and sent on all manner of errands; but to Pierre he

remained ever after the personification of simplicity and truth, such as

he had divined him to be since the first night spent by his side.”

This clearly is a study from life, a leaf from Tolstoy’s “Crimean

Journal.” It harmonises with the point of view revealed in the “Letters

from Sebastopol” (especially in the second and third series), and shows,

like them, the change effected by the realities of war in the intolerant

young aristocrat, who previously excluded all but the comme-il-faut from

his consideration. With widened outlook and new ideals he returned to

St. Petersburg at the close of the Crimean campaign, to be welcomed by

the elite of letters and courted by society. A few years before he would

have been delighted with such a reception. Now it jarred on his awakened

sense of the tragedy of existence. He found himself entirely out of

sympathy with the group of literary men who gathered round him, with

Turgenev at their head. In Tolstoy’s eyes they were false, paltry, and

immoral, and he was at no pains to disguise his opinions. Dissension,

leading to violent scenes, soon broke out between Turgenev and Tolstoy;

and the latter, completely disillusioned both in regard to his great

contemporary and to the literary world of St. Petersburg, shook off the

dust of the capital, and, after resigning his commission in the army,

went abroad on a tour through Germany, Switzerland, and France.

In France his growing aversion from capital punishment became

intensified by his witnessing a public execution, and the painful

thoughts aroused by the scene of the guillotine haunted his sensitive

spirit for long. He left France for Switzerland, and there, among

beautiful natural surroundings, and in the society of friends, he

enjoyed a respite from mental strain.

“A fresh, sweet-scented flower seemed to have blossomed in my spirit; to

the weariness and indifference to all things which before possessed me

had succeeded, without apparent transition, a thirst for love, a

confident hope, an inexplicable joy to feel myself alive.”

Those halcyon days ushered in the dawn of an intimate friendship between

himself and a lady who in the correspondence which ensued usually styled

herself his aunt, but was in fact a second cousin. This lady, the

Countess Alexandra A. Tolstoy, a Maid of Honour of the Bedchamber, moved

exclusively in Court circles. She was intelligent and sympathetic, but

strictly orthodox and mondaine, so that, while Tolstoy’s view of life

gradually shifted from that of an aristocrat to that of a social

reformer, her own remained unaltered; with the result that at the end of

some forty years of frank and affectionate interchange of ideas, they

awoke to the painful consciousness that the last link of mutual

understanding had snapped and that their friendship was at an end.

But the letters remain as a valuable and interesting record of one of

Tolstoy’s rare friendships with women, revealing in his unguarded

confidences fine shades of his many-sided nature, and throwing light on

the impression he made both on his intimates and on those to whom he was

only known as a writer, while his moral philosophy was yet in embryo.

They are now about to appear in book form under the auspices of M.

Stakhovich, to whose kindness in giving me free access to the originals

I am indebted for the extracts which follow. From one of the countess’s

first letters we learn that the feelings of affection, hope, and

happiness which possessed Tolstoy in Switzerland irresistibly

communicated themselves to those about him.

“You are good in a very uncommon way,” she writes, “and that is why it

is difficult to feel unhappy in your company. I have never seen you

without wishing to be a better creature. Your presence is a consoling

idea ... know all the elements in you that revive one’s heart, possibly

without your being even aware of it.”

A few years later she gives him an amusing account of the impression his

writings had already made on an eminent statesman.

“I owe you a small episode. Not long ago, when lunching with the

Emperor, I sat next our little Bismarck, and in a spirit of mischief I

began sounding him about you. But I had hardly uttered your name when he

went off at a gallop with the greatest enthusiasm, firing off the list

of your perfections left and right, and so long as he declaimed your

praises with gesticulations, cut and thrust, powder and shot, it was all

very well and quite in character; but seeing that I listened with

interest and attention my man took the bit in his teeth, and flung

himself into a psychic apotheosis. On reaching full pitch he began to

get muddled, and floundered so helplessly in his own phrases! all the

while chewing an excellent cutlet to the bone, that at last I realised

nothing but the tips of his ears—those two great ears of his. What a

pity I can’t repeat it verbatim! but how? There was nothing left but a

jumble of confused sounds and broken words.”

Tolstoy on his side is equally expansive, and in the early stages of the

correspondence falls occasionally into the vein of self-analysis which

in later days became habitual.

“As a child I believed with passion and without any thought. Then at the

age of fourteen I began to think about life and preoccupied myself with

religion, but it did not adjust itself to my theories and so I broke

with it. Without it I was able to live quite contentedly for ten years

... everything in my life was evenly distributed, and there was no room

for religion. Then came a time when everything grew intelligible; there

were no more secrets in life, but life itself had lost its

significance.”

He goes on to tell of the two years that he spent in the Caucasus before

the Crimean War, when his mind, jaded by youthful excesses, gradually

regained its freshness, and he awoke to a sense of communion with Nature

which he retained to his life’s end.

“I have my notes of that time, and now reading them over I am not able

to understand how a man could attain to the state of mental exaltation

which I arrived at. It was a torturing but a happy time.”

Further on he writes,—“In those two years of intellectual work, I

discovered a truth which is ancient and simple, but which yet I know

better than others do. I found out that immortal life is a reality, that

love is a reality, and that one must live for others if one would be

unceasingly happy.”

At this point one realises the gulf which divides the Slavonic from the

English temperament. No average Englishman of seven-and-twenty (as

Tolstoy was then) would pursue reflections of this kind, or if he did,

he would in all probability keep them sedulously to himself.

To Tolstoy and his aunt, on the contrary, it seemed the most natural

thing in the world to indulge in egoistic abstractions and to expatiate

on them; for a Russian feels none of the Anglo-Saxon’s mauvaise honte in

describing his spiritual condition, and is no more daunted by

metaphysics than the latter is by arguments on politics and sport.

To attune the Anglo-Saxon reader’s mind to sympathy with a mentality so

alien to his own, requires that Tolstoy’s environment should be

described more fully than most of his biographers have cared to do. This

prefatory note aims, therefore, at being less strictly biographical than

illustrative of the contributory elements and circumstances which

sub-consciously influenced Tolstoy’s spiritual evolution, since it is

apparent that in order to judge a man’s actions justly one must be able

to appreciate the motives from which they spring; those motives in turn

requiring the key which lies in his temperament, his associations, his

nationality. Such a key is peculiarly necessary to English or American

students of Tolstoy, because of the marked contrast existing between the

Russian and the Englishman or American in these respects, a contrast by

which Tolstoy himself was forcibly struck during the visit to

Switzerland, of which mention has been already made. It is difficult to

restrain a smile at the poignant mental discomfort endured by the

sensitive Slav in the company of the frigid and silent English

frequenters of the Schweitzerhof (“Journal of Prince D. Nekhludov,”

Lucerne, 1857), whose reserve, he realised, was “not based on pride, but

on the absence of any desire to draw nearer to each other”; while he

looked back regretfully to the pension in Paris where the table d’ hote

was a scene of spontaneous gaiety. The problem of British taciturnity

passed his comprehension; but for us the enigma of Tolstoy’s temperament

is half solved if we see him not harshly silhouetted against a blank

wall, but suffused with his native atmosphere, amid his native

surroundings. Not till we understand the main outlines of the Russian

temperament can we realise the individuality of Tolstoy himself: the

personality that made him lovable, the universality that made him great.

So vast an agglomeration of races as that which constitutes the Russian

empire cannot obviously be represented by a single type, but it will

suffice for our purposes to note the characteristics of the inhabitants

of Great Russia among whom Tolstoy spent the greater part of his

lifetime and to whom he belonged by birth and natural affinities.

It may be said of the average Russian that in exchange for a precocious

childhood he retains much of a child’s lightness of heart throughout his

later years, alternating with attacks of morbid despondency. He is

usually very susceptible to feminine charm, an ardent but unstable

lover, whose passions are apt to be as shortlived as they are violent.

Story-telling and long-winded discussions give him keen enjoyment, for

he is garrulous, metaphysical, and argumentative. In money matters

careless and extravagant, dilatory and venal in affairs; fond,

especially in the peasant class, of singing, dancing, and carousing; but

his irresponsible gaiety and heedlessness of consequences balanced by a

fatalistic courage and endurance in the face of suffering and danger.

Capable, besides, of high flights of idealism, which result in epics,

but rarely in actions, owing to the Slavonic inaptitude for sustained

and organised effort. The Englishman by contrast appears cold and

calculating, incapable of rising above questions of practical utility;

neither interested in other men’s antecedents and experiences nor

willing to retail his own. The catechism which Plato puts Pierre through

on their first encounter (“War and Peace”) as to his family,

possessions, and what not, are precisely similar to those to which I

have been subjected over and over again by chance acquaintances in

country-houses or by fellow travellers on journeys by boat or train. The

naivete and kindliness of the questioner makes it impossible to resent,

though one may feebly try to parry his probing. On the other hand he

offers you free access to the inmost recesses of his own soul, and

stupefies you with the candour of his revelations. This, of course,

relates more to the landed and professional classes than to the peasant,

who is slower to express himself, and combines in a curious way a firm

belief in the omnipotence and wisdom of his social superiors with a

rooted distrust of their intentions regarding himself. He is like a

beast of burden who flinches from every approach, expecting always a

kick or a blow. On the other hand, his affection for the animals who

share his daily work is one of the most attractive points in his

character, and one which Tolstoy never wearied of

emphasising—describing, with the simple pathos of which he was master,

the moujik inured to his own privations but pitiful to his horse,

shielding him from the storm with his own coat, or saving him from

starvation with his own meagre ration; and mindful of him even in his

prayers, invoking, like Plato, the blessings of Florus and Laura, patron

saints of horses, because “one mustn’t forget the animals.”

The characteristics of a people so embedded in the soil bear a closer

relation to their native landscape than our own migratory populations,

and patriotism with them has a deep and vital meaning, which is

expressed unconsciously in their lives.

This spirit of patriotism which Tolstoy repudiated is none the less the

animating power of the noble epic, “War and Peace,” and of his

peasant-tales, of his rare gift of reproducing the expressive Slav

vernacular, and of his magical art of infusing his pictures of Russian

scenery not merely with beauty, but with spiritual significance. I can

think of no prose writer, unless it be Thoreau, so wholly under the

spell of Nature as Tolstoy; and while Thoreau was preoccupied with the

normal phenomena of plant and animal life, Tolstoy, coming near to

Pantheism, found responses to his moods in trees, and gained spiritual

expansion from the illimitable skies and plains. He frequently brings

his heroes into touch with Nature, and endows them with all the innate

mysticism of his own temperament, for to him Nature was “a guide to

God.” So in the two-fold incident of Prince Andre and the oak tree (“War

and Peace”) the Prince, though a man of action rather than of sentiment

and habitually cynical, is ready to find in the aged oak by the

roadside, in early spring, an animate embodiment of his own despondency.

“‘Springtime, love, happiness?—are you still cherishing those deceptive

illusions?’ the old oak seemed to say. ‘Isn’t it the same fiction ever?

There is neither spring, nor love, nor happiness! Look at those poor

weather-beaten firs, always the same ... look at the knotty arms issuing

from all up my poor mutilated trunk—here I am, such as they have made

me, and I do not believe either in your hopes or in your illusions.’”

And after thus exercising his imagination, Prince Andre still casts

backward glances as he passes by, “but the oak maintained its obstinate

and sullen immovability in the midst of the flowers and grass growing at

its feet. ‘Yes, that oak is right, right a thousand times over. One must

leave illusions to youth. But the rest of us know what life is worth; it

has nothing left to offer us.’”

Six weeks later he returns homeward the same way, roused from his

melancholy torpor by his recent meeting with Natasha.

“The day was hot, there was storm in the air; a slight shower watered

the dust on the road and the grass in the ditch; the left side of the

wood remained in the shade; the right side, lightly stirred by the wind,

glittered all wet in the sun; everything was in flower, and from near

and far the nightingales poured forth their song. ‘I fancy there was an

oak here that understood me,’ said Prince Andre to himself, looking to

the left and attracted unawares by the beauty of the very tree he

sought. The transformed old oak spread out in a dome of deep, luxuriant,

blooming verdure, which swayed in a light breeze in the rays of the

setting sun. There were no longer cloven branches nor rents to be seen;

its former aspect of bitter defiance and sullen grief had disappeared;

there were only the young leaves, full of sap that had pierced through

the centenarian bark, making the beholder question with surprise if this

patriarch had really given birth to them. ‘Yes, it is he, indeed!’ cried

Prince Andre, and he felt his heart suffused by the intense joy which

the springtime and this new life gave him ... ‘No, my life cannot end at

thirty-one! ... It is not enough myself to feel what is within me,

others must know it too! Pierre and that “slip” of a girl, who would

have fled into cloudland, must learn to know me! My life must colour

theirs, and their lives must mingle with mine!’”

In letters to his wife, to intimate friends, and in his diary, Tolstoy’s

love of Nature is often-times expressed. The hair shirt of the ascetic

and the prophet’s mantle fall from his shoulders, and all the poet in

him wakes when, “with a feeling akin to ecstasy,” he looks up from his

smooth-running sledge at “the enchanting, starry winter sky overhead,”

or in early spring feels on a ramble “intoxicated by the beauty of the

morning,” while he notes that the buds are swelling on the lilacs, and

“the birds no longer sing at random,” but have begun to converse.

But though such allusions abound in his diary and private

correspondence, we must turn to “The Cossacks,” and “Conjugal Happiness”

for the exquisitely elaborated rural studies, which give those early

romances their fresh idyllic charm.

What is interesting to note is that this artistic freshness and joy in

Nature coexisted with acute intermittent attacks of spiritual lassitude.

In “The Cossacks,” the doubts, the mental gropings of Olenine—whose

personality but thinly veils that of Tolstoy—haunt him betimes even

among the delights of the Caucasian woodland; Serge, the fatalistic hero

of “Conjugal Happiness,” calmly acquiesces in the inevitableness of

“love’s sad satiety” amid the scent of roses and the songs of

nightingales.

Doubt and despondency, increased by the vexations and failures attending

his philanthropic endeavours, at length obsessed Tolstoy to the verge of

suicide.

“The disputes over arbitration had become so painful to me, the

schoolwork so vague, my doubts arising from the wish to teach others,

while dissembling my own ignorance of what should be taught, were so

heartrending that I fell ill. I might then have reached the despair to

which I all but succumbed fifteen years later, if there had not been a

side of life as yet unknown to me which promised me salvation: this was

family life” (“My Confession”).

In a word, his marriage with Mademoiselle Sophie Andreevna Bers

(daughter of Dr. Bers of Moscow) was consummated in the autumn of

1862—after a somewhat protracted courtship, owing to her extreme

youth—and Tolstoy entered upon a period of happiness and mental peace

such as he had never known. His letters of this period to Countess A. A.

Tolstoy, his friend Fet, and others, ring with enraptured allusions to

his new-found joy. Lassitude and indecision, mysticism and altruism, all

were swept aside by the impetus of triumphant love and of all-sufficing

conjugal happiness. When in June of the following year a child was born,

and the young wife, her features suffused with “a supernatural beauty”

lay trying to smile at the husband who knelt sobbing beside her, Tolstoy

must have realised that for once his prophetic intuition had been

unequal to its task. If his imagination could have conceived in

prenuptial days what depths of emotion might be wakened by fatherhood,

he would not have treated the birth of Masha’s first child in “Conjugal

Happiness” as a trivial material event, in no way affecting the mutual

relations of the disillusioned pair. He would have understood that at

this supreme crisis, rather than in the vernal hour of love’s avowal,

the heart is illumined with a joy which is fated “never to return.”

The parting of the ways, so soon reached by Serge and Masha, was in fact

delayed in Tolstoy’s own life by his wife’s intelligent assistance in

his literary work as an untiring amanuensis, and in the mutual anxieties

and pleasures attending the care of a large family of young children.

Wider horizons opened to his mental vision, his whole being was

quickened and invigorated. “War and Peace,” “Anna Karenina,” all the

splendid fruit of the teeming years following upon his marriage, bear

witness to the stimulus which his genius had received. His dawning

recognition of the power and extent of female influence appears

incidentally in the sketches of high society in those two masterpieces

as well as in the eloquent closing passages of “What then must we do?”

(1886). Having affirmed that “it is women who form public opinion, and

in our day women are particularly powerful,” he finally draws a picture

of the ideal wife who shall urge her husband and train her children to

self-sacrifice. “Such women rule men and are their guiding stars. O

women—mothers! The salvation of the world lies in your hands!” In that

appeal to the mothers of the world there lurks a protest which in later

writings developed into overwhelming condemnation. True, he chose

motherhood for the type of self-sacrificing love in the treatise “On

Life,” which appeared soon after “What then must we do?” but maternal

love, as exemplified in his own home and elsewhere, appeared to him as a

noble instinct perversely directed.

The roots of maternal love are sunk deep in conservatism. The child’s

physical well-being is the first essential in the mother’s eyes—the

growth of a vigorous body by which a vigorous mind may be fitly

tenanted—and this form of materialism which Tolstoy as a father

accepted, Tolstoy as idealist condemned; while the penury he courted as

a lightening of his soul’s burden was averted by the strenuous exertions

of his wife. So a rift grew without blame attaching to either, and

Tolstoy henceforward wandered solitary in spirit through a wilderness of

thought, seeking rest and finding none, coming perilously near to

suicide before he reached haven.

To many it will seem that the finest outcome of that period of mental

groping, internal struggle, and contending with current ideas, lies in

the above-mentioned “What then must we do?” Certain it is that no human

document ever revealed the soul of its author with greater sincerity.

Not for its practical suggestions, but for its impassioned humanity, its

infectious altruism, “What then must we do?” takes its rank among the

world’s few living books. It marks that stage of Tolstoy’s evolution

when he made successive essays in practical philanthropy which filled

him with discouragement, yet were “of use to his soul” in teaching him

how far below the surface lie the seeds of human misery. The slums of

Moscow, crowded with beings sunk beyond redemption; the famine-stricken

plains of Samara where disease and starvation reigned, notwithstanding

the stream of charity set flowing by Tolstoy’s appeals and

notwithstanding his untiring personal devotion, strengthened further the

conviction, so constantly affirmed in his writings, of the impotence of

money to alleviate distress. Whatever negations of this dictum our own

systems of charitable organizations may appear to offer, there can be no

question but that in Russia it held and holds true.

The social condition of Russia is like a tideless sea, whose sullen

quiescence is broken from time to time by terrific storms which spend

themselves in unavailing fury. Reaction follows upon every forward

motion, and the advance made by each succeeding generation is barely

perceptible.

But in the period of peace following upon the close of the Crimean War

the soul of the Russian people was deeply stirred by the spirit of

Progress, and hope rose high on the accession of Alexander II.

The emancipation of the serfs was only one among a number of projected

reforms which engaged men’s minds. The national conscience awoke and

echoed the cry of the exiled patriot Herzen, “Now or never!” Educational

enterprise was aroused, and some forty schools for peasant children were

started on the model of that opened by Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana

(1861). The literary world throbbed with new life, and a brilliant

company of young writers came to the surface, counting among them names

of European celebrity, such as Dostoevsky, Nekrassov, and Saltykov.

Unhappily the reign of Progress was short. The bureaucratic circle

hemming in the Czar took alarm, and made haste to secure their

ascendancy by fresh measures of oppression. Many schools were closed,

including that of Tolstoy, and the nascent liberty of the Press was

stifled by the most rigid censorship.

In this lamentable manner the history of Russia’s internal misrule and

disorder has continued to repeat itself for the last sixty years,

revolving in the same vicious circle of fierce repression and

persecution and utter disregard of the rights of individuals, followed

by fierce reprisals on the part of the persecuted; the voice of protest

no sooner raised than silenced in a prison cell or among Siberian

snow-fields, yet rising again and again with inextinguishable

reiteration; appeals for political freedom, for constitutional

government, for better systems and wider dissemination of education, for

liberty of the Press, and for an enlightened treatment of the masses,

callously received and rejected. The answer with which these appeals

have been met by the rulers of Russia is only too well known to the

civilised world, but the obduracy of Pharoah has called forth the

plagues of Egypt. Despite the unrivalled agrarian fertility of Russia,

famines recur with dire frequency, with disease and riot in their train,

while the ignominious termination of the Russo-Japanese war showed that

even the magnificent morale of the Russian soldier had been undermined

and was tainted by the rottenness of the authorities set over him. What

in such circumstances as these can a handful of philanthropists achieve,

and what avails alms-giving or the scattering of largesse to a people on

the point of spiritual dissolution?

In these conditions Tolstoy’s abhorrence of money, and his assertion of

its futility as a panacea for human suffering, appears not merely

comprehensible but inevitable, and his renunciation of personal property

the strictly logical outcome of his conclusions. The partition of his

estates between his wife and children, shortly before the outbreak of

the great famine in 1892, served to relieve his mind partially; and the

writings of Henry George, with which he became acquainted at this

critical time, were an additional incentive to concentrate his thoughts

on the land question. He began by reading the American propagandist’s

“Social Problems,” which arrested his attention by its main principles

and by the clearness and novelty of his arguments. Deeply impressed by

the study of this book, no sooner had he finished it than he possessed

himself of its forerunner, “Progress and Poverty,” in which the essence

of George’s revolutionary doctrines is worked out.

The plan of land nationalisation there explained provided Tolstoy with

well thought-out and logical reasons for a policy that was already more

than sympathetic to him. Here at last was a means of ensuring economic

equality for all, from the largest landowner to the humblest peasant—a

practical suggestion how to reduce the inequalities between rich and

poor.

Henry George’s ideas and methods are easy of comprehension. The land was

made by God for every human creature that was born into the world, and

therefore to confine the ownership of land to the few is wrong. If a man

wants a piece of land, he ought to pay the rest of the community for the

enjoyment of it. This payment or rent should be the only tax paid into

the Treasury of the State. Taxation on men’s own property (the produce

of their own labour) should be done away with, and a rent graduated

according to the site-value of the land should be substituted.

Monopolies would cease without violently and unjustly disturbing society

with confiscation and redistribution. No one would keep land idle if he

were taxed according to its value to the community, and not according to

the use to which he individually wished to put it. A man would then

readily obtain possession of land, and could turn it to account and

develop it without being taxed on his own industry. All human beings

would thus become free in their lives and in their labour. They would no

longer be forced to toil at demoralising work for low wages; they would

be independent producers instead of earning a living by providing

luxuries for the rich, who had enslaved them by monopolising the land.

The single tax thus created would ultimately overthrow the present

“civilisation” which is chiefly built up on wage-slavery.

Tolstoy gave his whole-hearted adhesion to this doctrine, predicting a

day of enlightenment when men would no longer tolerate a form of slavery

which he considered as revolting as that which had so recently been

abolished. Some long conversations with Henry George, while he was on a

visit to Yasnaya Polyana, gave additional strength to Tolstoy’s

conviction that in these theories lay the elements essential to the

transformation and rejuvenation of human nature, going far towards the

levelling of social inequalities. But to inoculate the landed

proprietors of Russia as a class with those theories was a task which

even his genius could not hope to accomplish.

He recognised the necessity of proceeding from the particular to the

general, and that the perfecting of human institutions was impossible

without a corresponding perfection in the individual. To this end

therefore the remainder of his life was dedicated. He had always held in

aversion what he termed external epidemic influences: he now endeavoured

to free himself not only from all current conventions, but from every

association which he had formerly cherished. Self-analysis and general

observation had taught him that men are sensual beings, and that

sensualism must die for want of food if it were not for sex instincts,

if it were not for Art, and especially for Music. This view of life he

forcibly expressed in the “Kreutzer Sonata,” in which Woman and Music,

the two magnets of his youth, were impeached as powers of evil. Already,

in “War and Peace” and in “Anna Karenina,” his descriptions of female

charms resembled catalogues of weapons against which a man must arm

himself or perish. The beautiful Princess Helena, with her gleaming

shoulders, her faultless white bosom, and her eternal smile is evidently

an object of aversion to her creator; even as the Countess Betsy, with

her petty coquetries and devices for attracting attention at the Opera

and elsewhere, is a target for his contempt. “Woman is a stumbling-block

in a man’s career,” remarks a philosophical husband in “Anna Karenina.”

“It is difficult to love a woman and do any good work, and the only way

to escape being reduced to inaction is to marry.”

Even in his correspondence with the Countess A. A. Tolstoy this

slighting tone prevails. “A woman has but one moral weapon instead of

the whole male arsenal. That is love, and only with this weapon is

feminine education successfully carried forward.” Tolstoy, in fact,

betrayed a touch of orientalism in his attitude towards women. In part

no doubt as a result of his motherless youth, in part to the fact that

his idealism was never stimulated by any one woman as it was by

individual men, his views retained this colouring on sex questions while

they became widened and modified in almost every other field of human

philosophy. It was only that, with a revulsion of feeling not seldom

experienced by earnest thinkers, attraction was succeeded by a repulsion

which reached the high note of exasperation when he wrote to a man

friend, “A woman in good health—why, she is a regular beast of prey!”

None the less, he showed great kindness and sympathy to the women who

sought his society, appealing to him for guidance. One of these (an

American, and herself a practical philanthropist), Miss Jane Addams,

expressed with feeling her sense of his personal influence. “The glimpse

of Tolstoy has made a profound impression on me, not so much by what he

said, as the life, the gentleness, the soul of him. I am sure you will

understand my saying that I got more of Tolstoy’s philosophy from our

conversations than I had gotten from our books.” (Quoted by Aylmer Maude

in his “Life of Tolstoy.”)

As frequently happens in the lives of reformers, Tolstoy found himself

more often in affinity with strangers than with his own kin. The

estrangement of his ideals from those of his wife necessarily affected

their conjugal relations, and the decline of mutual sympathy inevitably

induced physical alienation. The stress of mental anguish arising from

these conditions found vent in pages of his diaries (much of which I

have been permitted to read), pages containing matter too sacred and

intimate to use. The diaries shed a flood of light on Tolstoy’s ideas,

motives, and manner of life, and have modified some of my opinions,

explaining many hitherto obscure points, while they have also enhanced

my admiration for the man. They not only touch on many delicate

subjects—on his relations to his wife and family—but they also give the

true reasons for leaving his home at last, and explain why he did not do

so before. The time, it seems to me, is not ripe for disclosures of this

nature, which so closely concern the living.

Despite a strong rein of restraint his mental distress permeates the

touching letter of farewell which he wrote some sixteen years before his

death. He, however, shrank from acting upon it, being unable to satisfy

himself that it was a right step. This letter has already appeared in

foreign publications,[1] but it is quoted here because “I have suffered

long, dear Sophie, from the discord between my life and my beliefs.

“I cannot constrain you to alter your life or your accustomed ways.

Neither have I had the strength to leave you ere this, for I thought my

absence might deprive the little ones, still so young, of whatever

influence I may have over them, and above all that I should grieve you.

But I can no longer live as I have lived these last sixteen years,

sometimes battling with you and irritating you, sometimes myself giving

way to the influences and seductions to which I am accustomed and which

surround me. I have now resolved to do what I have long desired: to go

away ... Even as the Hindoos, at the age of sixty, betake themselves to

the jungle; even as every aged and religious-minded man desires to

consecrate the last years of his life to God and not to idle talk, to

making jokes, to gossiping, to lawn-tennis; so I, having reached the age

of seventy, long with all my soul for calm and solitude, and if not

perfect harmony, at least a cessation from this horrible discord between

my whole life and my conscience.

“If I had gone away openly there would have been entreaties,

discussions: I should have wavered, and perhaps failed to act on my

decision, whereas it must be so. I pray of you to forgive me if my

action grieves you. And do you, Sophie, in particular let me go, neither

seeking me out, nor bearing me ill-will, nor blaming me ... the fact

that I have left you does not mean that I have cause of complaint

against you ... I know you were not able, you were incapable of thinking

and seeing as I do, and therefore you could not change your life and

make sacrifices to that which you did not accept. Besides, I do not

blame you; on the contrary, I remember with love and gratitude the

thirty-five long years of our life in common, and especially the first

half of the time when, with the courage and devotion of your maternal

nature, you bravely bore what you regarded as your mission. You have

given largely of maternal love and made some heavy sacrifices ... but

during the latter part of our life together, during the last fifteen

years, our ways have parted. I cannot think myself the guilty one; I

know that if I have changed it is not owing to you, or to the world, but

because I could not do otherwise; nor can I judge you for not having

followed me, and I thank you for what you have given me and will ever

remember it with affection.

“Adieu, my dear Sophie, I love you.”

The personal isolation he craved was never to be his; but the isolation

of spirit essential to leadership, whether of thought or action, grew

year by year, so that in his own household he was veritably “in it but

not of it.”

At times his loneliness weighed upon him, as when he wrote: “You would

find it difficult to imagine how isolated I am, to what an extent my

true self is despised by those who surround me.” But he must, none the

less, have realised, as all prophets and seers have done, that

solitariness of soul and freedom from the petty complexities of social

life are necessary to the mystic whose constant endeavour is to simplify

and to winnow, the transient from the eternal.

Notwithstanding the isolation of his inner life he remained—or it might

more accurately be said he became—the most accessible of men.

Appeals for guidance came to him from all parts of the world—America,

France, China, Japan—while Yasnaya Polyana was the frequent resort of

those needing advice, sympathy, or practical assistance. None appealed

to him in vain; at the same time, he was exceedingly chary of explicit

rules of conduct. It might be said of Tolstoy that he became a spiritual

leader in spite of himself, so averse was he from assuming authority.

His aim was ever to teach his followers themselves to hear the inward

monitory voice, and to obey it of their own accord. “To know the meaning

of Life, you must first know the meaning of Love,” he would say; “and

then see that you do what love bids you.” His distrust of “epidemic

ideas” extended to religious communities and congregations.

“We must not go to meet each other, but go each of us to God. You say it

is easier to go all together? Why yes, to dig or to mow. But one can

only draw near to God in isolation ... I picture the world to myself as

a vast temple, in which the light falls from above in the very centre.

To meet together all must go towards the light. There we shall find

ourselves, gathered from many quarters, united with men we did not

expect to see; therein is joy.”

The humility which had so completely supplanted his youthful arrogance,

and which made him shrink from impelling others to follow in his steps,

endued him also with the teachableness of a child towards those whom he

accepted as his spiritual mentors. It was a peasant nonconformist

writer, Soutaev, who by conversing with him on the revelations of the

Gospels helped him to regain his childhood’s faith, and incidentally

brought him into closer relations with religious, but otherwise

untaught, men of the people. He saw how instead of railing against fate

after the manner of their social superiors, they endured sickness and

misfortune with a calm confidence that all was by the will of God, as it

must be and should be. From his peasant teachers he drew the watchwords

Faith, Love, and Labour, and by their light he established that concord

in his own life without which the concord of the universe remains

impossible to realise. The process of inward struggle—told with

unsparing truth in “Confession”—is finely painted in “Father Serge,”

whose life story points to the conclusion at which Tolstoy ultimately

arrived, namely, that not in withdrawal from the common trials and

temptations of men, but in sharing them, lies our best fulfilment of our

duty towards mankind and towards God. Tolstoy gave practical effect to

this principle, and to this long-felt desire to be of use to the poor of

the country, by editing and publishing, aided by his friend Chertkov,[2]

modern literature has awakened so universal a sense of sympathy and

admiration, perhaps because none has been so entirely a labour of love.

The series of educational primers which Tolstoy prepared and published

concurrently with the “Popular Tales” have had an equally large, though

exclusively Russian, circulation, being admirably suited to their

purpose—that of teaching young children the rudiments of history,

geography, and science. Little leisure remained for the service of Art.

The history of Tolstoy as a man of letters forms a separate page of his

biography, and one into which it is not possible to enter in the brief

compass of this introduction. It requires, however, a passing allusion.

Tolstoy even in his early days never seems to have approached near to

that manner of life which the literary man leads: neither to have shut

himself up in his study, nor to have barred the entrance to disturbing

friends. On the one hand, he was fond of society, and during his brief

residence in St. Petersburg was never so engrossed in authorship as to

forego the pleasure of a ball or evening entertainment. Little wonder,

when one looks back at the brilliant young officer surrounded and petted

by the great hostesses of Russia. On the other hand, he was no devotee

at the literary altar. No patron of literature could claim him as his

constant visitor; no inner circle of men of letters monopolised his idle

hours. Afterwards, when he left the capital and settled in the country,

he was almost entirely cut off from the association of literary men, and

never seems to have sought their companionship. Nevertheless, he had all

through his life many fast friends, among them such as the poet Fet, the

novelist Chekhov, and the great Russian librarian Stassov, who often

came to him. These visits always gave him pleasure. The discussions,

whether on the literary movements of the day or on the merits of Goethe

or the humour of Gogol, were welcome interruptions to his ever-absorbing

metaphysical studies. In later life, also, though never in touch with

the rising generation of authors, we find him corresponding with them,

criticising their style and subject matter. When Andreev, the most

modern of all modern Russian writers, came to pay his respects to

Tolstoy some months before his death, he was received with cordiality,

although Tolstoy, as he expressed himself afterwards, felt that there

was a great gulf fixed between them.

Literature, as literature, had lost its charm for him. “You are

perfectly right,” he writes to a friend; “I care only for the idea, and

I pay no attention to my style.” The idea was the important thing to

Tolstoy in everything that he read or wrote. When his attention was

drawn to an illuminating essay on the poet Lermontov he was pleased with

it, not because it demonstrated Lermontov’s position in the literary

history of Russia, but because it pointed out the moral aims which

underlay the wild Byronism of his works. He reproached the novelist

Leskov, who had sent him his latest novel, for the “exuberance” of his

flowers of speech and for his florid sentences—beautiful in their way,

he says, but inexpedient and unnecessary. He even counselled the younger

generation to give up poetry as a form of expression and to use prose

instead. Poetry, he maintained, was always artificial and obscure. His

attitude towards the art of writing remained to the end one of

hostility. Whenever he caught himself working for art he was wont to

reproach himself, and his diaries contain many recriminations against

his own weakness in yielding to this besetting temptation. Yet to these

very lapses we are indebted for this collection of fragments.

The greater number of stories and plays contained in these volumes date

from the years following upon Tolstoy’s pedagogic activity. Long

intervals, however, elapsed in most cases between the original synopsis

and the final touches. Thus “Father Serge,” of which he sketched the

outline to Mr. Chertkov in 1890, was so often put aside to make way for

purely ethical writings that not till 1898 does the entry occur in his

diary, “To-day, quite unexpectedly, I finished Serge.” A year previously

a dramatic incident had come to his knowledge, which he elaborated in

the play entitled “The Man who was dead.” It ran on the lines

familiarised by Enoch Arden and similar stories, of a wife deserted by

her husband and supported in his absence by a benefactor, whom she

subsequently marries. In this instance the supposed dead man was

suddenly resuscitated as the result of his own admissions in his cups,

the wife and her second husband being consequently arrested and

condemned to a term of imprisonment. Tolstoy seriously attacked the

subject during the summer of 1900, and having brought it within a

measurable distance of completion in a shorter time than was usual with

him, submitted it to the judgment of a circle of friends. The drama made

a deep impression on the privileged few who read it, and some mention of

it appeared in the newspapers.

Shortly afterwards a young man came to see Tolstoy in private. He begged

him to refrain from publishing “The Man who was dead,” as it was the

history of his mother’s life, and would distress her gravely, besides

possibly occasioning further police intervention. Tolstoy promptly

consented, and the play remained, as it now appears, in an unfinished

condition. He had already felt doubtful whether “it was a thing God

would approve,” Art for Art’s sake having in his eyes no right to

existence. For this reason a didactic tendency is increasingly evident

in these later stories. “After the Ball” gives a painful picture of

Russian military cruelty; “The Forged Coupon” traces the cancerous

growth of evil, and demonstrates with dramatic force the cumulative

misery resulting from one apparently trivial act of wrongdoing.

Of the three plays included in these volumes, “The Light that shines in

Darkness” has a special claim to our attention as an example of

autobiography in the guise of drama. It is a specimen of Tolstoy’s gift

of seeing himself as others saw him, and viewing a question in all its

bearings. It presents not actions but ideas, giving with entire

impartiality the opinions of his home circle, of his friends, of the

Church and of the State, in regard to his altruistic propaganda and to

the anarchism of which he has been accused. The scene of the

renunciation of the estates of the hero may be taken as a literal

version of what actually took place in regard to Tolstoy himself, while

the dialogues by which the piece is carried forward are more like

verbatim records than imaginary conversations.

This play was, in addition, a medium by which Tolstoy emphasised his

abhorrence of military service, and probably for this reason its

production is absolutely forbidden in Russia. A word may be said here on

Tolstoy’s so-called Anarchy, a term admitting of grave misconstruction.

In that he denied the benefit of existing governments to the people over

whom they ruled, and in that he stigmatised standing armies as

“collections of disciplined murderers,” Tolstoy was an Anarchist; but in

that he reprobated the methods of violence, no matter how righteous the

cause at stake, and upheld by word and deed the gospel of Love and

submission, he cannot be judged guilty of Anarchism in its full

significance. He could not, however, suppress the sympathy which he felt

with those whose resistance to oppression brought them into deadly

conflict with autocracy. He found in the Caucasian chieftain, Hadji

Murat, a subject full of human interest and dramatic possibilities; and

though some eight years passed before he corrected the manuscript for

the last time (in 1903), it is evident from the numbers of entries in

his diary that it had greatly occupied his thoughts so far back even as

the period which he spent in Tiflis prior to the Crimean war. It was

then that the final subjugation of the Caucasus took place, and Shamil

and his devoted band made their last struggle for freedom. After the

lapse of half a century, Tolstoy gave vent in “Hadji Murat” to the

resentment which the military despotism of Nicholas I. had roused in his

sensitive and fearless spirit.

Courage was the dominant note in Tolstoy’s character, and none have

excelled him in portraying brave men. His own fearlessness was of the

rarest, in that it was both physical and moral. The mettle tried and

proved at Sebastopol sustained him when he had drawn on himself the

bitter animosity of “Holy Synod” and the relentless anger of Czardom. In

spite of his nonresistance doctrine, Tolstoy’s courage was not of the

passive order. It was his natural bent to rouse his foes to combat,

rather than wait for their attack, to put on the defensive every

falsehood and every wrong of which he was cognisant. Truth in himself

and in others was what he most desired, and that to which he strove at

all costs to attain. He was his own severest critic, weighing his own

actions, analysing his own thoughts, and baring himself to the eyes of

the world with unflinching candour. Greatest of autobiographers, he

extenuates nothing: you see the whole man with his worst faults and best

qualities; weaknesses accentuated by the energy with which they are

charactered, apparent waste of mental forces bent on solving the

insoluble, inherited tastes and prejudices, altruistic impulses and

virile passions, egoism and idealism, all strangely mingled and

continually warring against each other, until from the death-throes of

spiritual conflict issued a new birth and a new life. In the ancient

Scripture “God is love” Tolstoy discerned fresh meaning, and strove with

superhuman energy to bring home that meaning to the world at large. His

doctrine in fact appears less as a new light in the darkness than as a

revival of the pure flame of “the Mystic of the Galilean hills,” whose

teaching he accepted while denying His divinity.

Of Tolstoy’s beliefs in regard to the Christian religion it may be said

that with advancing years he became more and more disposed to regard

religious truth as one continuous stream of spiritual thought flowing

through the ages of man’s history, emanating principally from the

inspired prophets and seers of Israel, India, and China. Finally, in

1909, in a letter to a friend he summed up his conviction in the

following words:—“For me the doctrine of Jesus is simply one of those

beautiful religious doctrines which we have received from Egyptian,

Jewish, Hindoo, Chinese, and Greek antiquity. The two great principles

of Jesus: love of God—in a word absolute perfection—and love of one’s

neighbour, that is to say, love of all men without distinction, have

been preached by all the sages of the world—Krishna, Buddha, Lao-tse,

Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and among the

moderns, Rousseau, Pascal, Kant, Emerson, Channing, and many others.

Religious and moral truth is everywhere and always the same. I have no

predilection whatever for Christianity. If I have been particularly

interested in the doctrine of Jesus it is, firstly, because I was born

in that religion and have lived among Christians; secondly, because I

have found a great spiritual joy in freeing the doctrine in its purity

from the astounding falsifications wrought by the Churches.”

Tolstoy’s life-work was indeed a splendid striving to free truth from

falsehood, to simplify the complexities of civilisation and demonstrate

their futility. Realists as gifted have come and gone and left but

little trace. It is conceivable that the great trilogy of “Anna

Karenina,” “War and Peace,” and “Resurrection” may one day be forgotten,

but Tolstoy’s teaching stands on firmer foundations, and has stirred the

hearts of thousands who are indifferent to the finest display of psychic

analysis. He has taught men to venture beyond the limits set by reason,

to rise above the actual and to find the meaning of life in love. It was

his mission to probe our moral ulcers to the roots and to raise moribund

ideals from the dust, breathing his own vitality into them, till they

rose before our eyes as living aspirations. The spiritual joy of which

he wrote was no rhetorical hyperbole; it was manifest in the man

himself, and was the fount of the lofty idealism which made him not only

“the Conscience of Russia” but of the civilised world.

Idealism is one of those large abstractions which are invested by

various minds with varying shades of meaning, and which find expression

in an infinite number of forms. Ideals bred and fostered in the heart of

man receive at birth an impress from the life that engenders them, and

when that life is tempest-tossed the thought that springs from it must

bear a birth-mark of the storm. That birth-mark is stamped on all

Tolstoy’s utterances, the simplest and the most metaphysical. But though

he did not pass scathless through the purging fires, nor escape with

eyes undimmed from the mystic light which flooded his soul, his ideal is

not thereby invalidated. It was, he admitted, unattainable, but none the

less a state of perfection to which we must continually aspire,

undaunted by partial failure.

“There is nothing wrong in not living up to the ideal which you have

made for yourself, but what is wrong is, if on looking back, you cannot

see that you have made the least step nearer to your ideal.”

How far Tolstoy’s doctrines may influence succeeding generations it is

impossible to foretell; but when time has extinguished what is merely

personal or racial, the divine spark which he received from his great

spiritual forerunners in other times and countries will undoubtedly be

found alight. His universality enabled him to unite himself closely with

them in mental sympathy; sometimes so closely, as in the case of J. J.

Rousseau, as to raise analogies and comparisons designed to show that he

merely followed in a well-worn pathway. Yet the similarity of Tolstoy’s

ideas to those of the author of the “Contrat Social” hardly goes beyond

a mutual distrust of Art and Science as aids to human happiness and

virtue, and a desire to establish among mankind a true sense of

brotherhood. For the rest, the appeals which they individually made to

Humanity were as dissimilar as the currents of their lives, and equally

dissimilar in effect.

The magic flute of Rousseau’s eloquence breathed fanaticism into his

disciples, and a desire to mass themselves against the foes of liberty.

Tolstoy’s trumpet-call sounds a deeper note. It pierces the heart,

summoning each man to the inquisition of his own conscience, and to

justify his existence by labour, that he may thereafter sleep the sleep

of peace.

The exaltation which he awakens owes nothing to rhythmical language nor

to subtle interpretations of sensuous emotion; it proceeds from a

perception of eternal truth, the truth that has love, faith, courage,

and self-sacrifice for the cornerstones of its enduring edifice.

List of posthumous works, giving date when each was finished or

length of time occupied in writing.

Father Serge. 1890–98.

Introduction to the History of a Mother. 1894.

Memoirs of a Mother. 1894.

The Young Czar. 1894.

Diary of a Lunatic. 1896.

Hadji Murat. 1896–1904.

The Light that shines in Darkness. 1898–1901.

The Man who was dead. 1900.

After the Ball. 1903.

The Forged Coupon. 1904.

Alexis. 1905.

Diary of Alexander I. 1905.

The Dream. 1906.

Father Vassily. 1906.

There are no Guilty People. 1909.

The Wisdom of Children. 1909.

The Cause of it All. 1910.

Chodynko. 1910.

Two Travellers. Date uncertain.

The Forged Coupon

Part First

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.”

“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 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,” 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.

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.”

“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.

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.

“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.

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.

“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.

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

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.

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.

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 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—”

“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.

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 some one

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.

He told Vassily that if any one 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 some time 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

“Hallo, 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.”

“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.”

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 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.

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

councillor 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 sympathised 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.”

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.

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

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

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.

“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.

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,

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 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.

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 every one 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.

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 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.

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?”

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 Czar—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.

“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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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?”

“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 any more. 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.

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 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.

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 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,

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.

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, 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

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

Part Second

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.”

“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 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.”

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.

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 any

more; 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 seemed to come to

his senses, looked around him, and began for the first time to talk to

the other men in the cell.

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 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 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.

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.

“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.

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.

“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?”

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.”

“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.

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.

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.

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.”

“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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 Czar alone has the right

of amnesty.”

“But how would he know?”

“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 Czar.”

“May I do it?”

“Of course you may.”

“But is it not too late?”

“Send it by telegram.”

“To the Czar himself?”

“To the Czar, 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 Czar 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 Czar could not possibly refuse it.

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 any one 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.

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 marvellous 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.

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.

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.

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 Czar. 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?

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.

XIV

EVERY one tried to look as if Isidor’s sermon contained nothing

unpleasant, and nobody mentioned it. It seemed to the Czar 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 Czar 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 Czar 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 Czar. As to acknowledging that human duties were more

obligatory than those of a Czar—he had not strength for that.

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.

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 every one 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.”

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 every one 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

After the Dance

“—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 moulded, 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!”

“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-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 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.

“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

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 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.

“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.

“‘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 every one 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.”

“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 ...”

Alyosha the Pot

ALYOSHA was the younger brother. He was called the Pot, because his

mother had once sent him with a pot of milk to the deacon’s wife, and he

had stumbled against something and broken it. His mother had beaten him,

and the children had teased him. Since then he was nicknamed the Pot.

Alyosha was a tiny, thin little fellow, with ears like wings, and a huge

nose. “Alyosha has a nose that looks like a dog on a hill!” the children

used to call after him. Alyosha went to the village school, but was not

good at lessons; besides, there was so little time to learn. His elder

brother was in town, working for a merchant, so Alyosha had to help his

father from a very early age. When he was no more than six he used to go

out with the girls to watch the cows and sheep in the pasture, and a

little later he looked after the horses by day and by night. And at

twelve years of age he had already begun to plough and to drive the

cart. The skill was there though the strength was not. He was always

cheerful. Whenever the children made fun of him, he would either laugh

or be silent. When his father scolded him he would stand mute and listen

attentively, and as soon as the scolding was over would smile and go on

with his work. Alyosha was nineteen when his brother was taken as a

soldier. So his father placed him with the merchant as a yard-porter. He

was given his brother’s old boots, his father’s old coat and cap, and

was taken to town. Alyosha was delighted with his clothes, but the

merchant was not impressed by his appearance.

“I thought you would bring me a man in Simeon’s place,” he said,

scanning Alyosha; “and you’ve brought me THIS! What’s the good of him?”

“He can do everything; look after horses and drive. He’s a good one to

work. He looks rather thin, but he’s tough enough. And he’s very

willing.”

“He looks it. All right; we’ll see what we can do with him.”

So Alyosha remained at the merchant’s.

The family was not a large one. It consisted of the merchant’s wife: her

old mother: a married son poorly educated who was in his father’s

business: another son, a learned one who had finished school and entered

the University, but having been expelled, was living at home: and a

daughter who still went to school.

They did not take to Alyosha at first. He was uncouth, badly dressed,

and had no manner, but they soon got used to him. Alyosha worked even

better than his brother had done; he was really very willing. They sent

him on all sorts of errands, but he did everything quickly and readily,

going from one task to another without stopping. And so here, just as at

home, all the work was put upon his shoulders. The more he did, the more

he was given to do. His mistress, her old mother, the son, the daughter,

the clerk, and the cook—all ordered him about, and sent him from one

place to another.

“Alyosha, do this! Alyosha, do that! What! have you forgotten, Alyosha?

Mind you don’t forget, Alyosha!” was heard from morning till night. And

Alyosha ran here, looked after this and that, forgot nothing, found time

for everything, and was always cheerful.

His brother’s old boots were soon worn out, and his master scolded him

for going about in tatters with his toes sticking out. He ordered

another pair to be bought for him in the market. Alyosha was delighted

with his new boots, but was angry with his feet when they ached at the

end of the day after so much running about. And then he was afraid that

his father would be annoyed when he came to town for his wages, to find

that his master had deducted the cost of the boots.

In the winter Alyosha used to get up before daybreak. He would chop the

wood, sweep the yard, feed the cows and horses, light the stoves, clean

the boots, prepare the samovars and polish them afterwards; or the clerk

would get him to bring up the goods; or the cook would set him to knead

the bread and clean the saucepans. Then he was sent to town on various

errands, to bring the daughter home from school, or to get some olive

oil for the old mother. “Why the devil have you been so long?” first

one, then another, would say to him. Why should they go? Alyosha can go.

“Alyosha! Alyosha!” And Alyosha ran here and there. He breakfasted in

snatches while he was working, and rarely managed to get his dinner at

the proper hour. The cook used to scold him for being late, but she was

sorry for him all the same, and would keep something hot for his dinner

and supper.

At holiday times there was more work than ever, but Alyosha liked

holidays because everybody gave him a tip. Not much certainly, but it

would amount up to about sixty kopeks [1s 2d]—his very own money. For

Alyosha never set eyes on his wages. His father used to come and take

them from the merchant, and only scold Alyosha for wearing out his

boots.

When he had saved up two roubles [4s], by the advice of the cook he

bought himself a red knitted jacket, and was so happy when he put it on,

that he couldn’t close his mouth for joy. Alyosha was not talkative;

when he spoke at all, he spoke abruptly, with his head turned away. When

told to do anything, or asked if he could do it, he would say yes

without the smallest hesitation, and set to work at once.

Alyosha did not know any prayer; and had forgotten what his mother had

taught him. But he prayed just the same, every morning and every

evening, prayed with his hands, crossing himself.

He lived like this for about a year and a half, and towards the end of

the second year a most startling thing happened to him. He discovered

one day, to his great surprise, that, in addition to the relation of

usefulness existing between people, there was also another, a peculiar

relation of quite a different character. Instead of a man being wanted

to clean boots, and go on errands and harness horses, he is not wanted

to be of any service at all, but another human being wants to serve him

and pet him. Suddenly Alyosha felt he was such a man.

He made this discovery through the cook Ustinia. She was young, had no

parents, and worked as hard as Alyosha. He felt for the first time in

his life that he—not his services, but he himself—was necessary to

another human being. When his mother used to be sorry for him, he had

taken no notice of her. It had seemed to him quite natural, as though he

were feeling sorry for himself. But here was Ustinia, a perfect

stranger, and sorry for him. She would save him some hot porridge, and

sit watching him, her chin propped on her bare arm, with the sleeve

rolled up, while he was eating it. When he looked at her she would begin

to laugh, and he would laugh too.

This was such a new, strange thing to him that it frightened Alyosha. He

feared that it might interfere with his work. But he was pleased,

nevertheless, and when he glanced at the trousers that Ustinia had

mended for him, he would shake his head and smile. He would often think

of her while at work, or when running on errands. “A fine girl,

Ustinia!” he sometimes exclaimed.

Ustinia used to help him whenever she could, and he helped her. She told

him all about her life; how she had lost her parents; how her aunt had

taken her in and found a place for her in the town; how the merchant’s

son had tried to take liberties with her, and how she had rebuffed him.

She liked to talk, and Alyosha liked to listen to her. He had heard that

peasants who came up to work in the towns frequently got married to

servant girls. On one occasion she asked him if his parents intended

marrying him soon. He said that he did not know; that he did not want to

marry any of the village girls.

“Have you taken a fancy to some one, then?”

“I would marry you, if you’d be willing.”

“Get along with you, Alyosha the Pot; but you’ve found your tongue,

haven’t you?” she exclaimed, slapping him on the back with a towel she

held in her hand. “Why shouldn’t I?”

At Shrovetide Alyosha’s father came to town for his wages. It had come

to the ears of the merchant’s wife that Alyosha wanted to marry Ustinia,

and she disapproved of it. “What will be the use of her with a baby?”

she thought, and informed her husband.

The merchant gave the old man Alyosha’s wages.

“How is my lad getting on?” he asked. “I told you he was willing.”

“That’s all right, as far as it goes, but he’s taken some sort of

nonsense into his head. He wants to marry our cook. Now I don’t approve

of married servants. We won’t have them in the house.”

“Well, now, who would have thought the fool would think of such a

thing?” the old man exclaimed. “But don’t you worry. I’ll soon settle

that.”

He went into the kitchen, and sat down at the table waiting for his son.

Alyosha was out on an errand, and came back breathless.

“I thought you had some sense in you; but what’s this you’ve taken into

your head?” his father began.

“I? Nothing.”

“How, nothing? They tell me you want to get married. You shall get

married when the time comes. I’ll find you a decent wife, not some town

hussy.”

His father talked and talked, while Alyosha stood still and sighed. When

his father had quite finished, Alyosha smiled.

“All right. I’ll drop it.”

“Now that’s what I call sense.”

When he was left alone with Ustinia he told her what his father had

said. (She had listened at the door.)

“It’s no good; it can’t come off. Did you hear? He was angry—won’t have

it at any price.”

Ustinia cried into her apron.

Alyosha shook his head.

“What’s to be done? We must do as we’re told.”

“Well, are you going to give up that nonsense, as your father told you?”

his mistress asked, as he was putting up the shutters in the evening.

“To be sure we are,” Alyosha replied with a smile, and then burst into

tears.

From that day Alyosha went about his work as usual, and no longer talked

to Ustinia about their getting married. One day in Lent the clerk told

him to clear the snow from the roof. Alyosha climbed on to the roof and

swept away all the snow; and, while he was still raking out some frozen

lumps from the gutter, his foot slipped and he fell over. Unfortunately

he did not fall on the snow, but on a piece of iron over the door.

Ustinia came running up, together with the merchant’s daughter.

“Have you hurt yourself, Alyosha?”

“Ah! no, it’s nothing.”

But he could not raise himself when he tried to, and began to smile.

He was taken into the lodge. The doctor arrived, examined him, and asked

where he felt the pain.

“I feel it all over,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m only afraid

master will be annoyed. Father ought to be told.”

Alyosha lay in bed for two days, and on the third day they sent for the

priest.

“Are you really going to die?” Ustinia asked.

“Of course I am. You can’t go on living for ever. You must go when the

time comes.” Alyosha spoke rapidly as usual. “Thank you, Ustinia. You’ve

been very good to me. What a lucky thing they didn’t let us marry! Where

should we have been now? It’s much better as it is.”

When the priest came, he prayed with his bands and with his heart. “As

it is good here when you obey and do no harm to others, so it will be

there,” was the thought within it.

He spoke very little; he only said he was thirsty, and he seemed full of

wonder at something.

He lay in wonderment, then stretched himself, and died.

My Dream

“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

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, some one 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

something 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.

“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.

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 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 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 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

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

for ever 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 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.

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 instalments 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 every one knew. (And no doubt every one 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?”

“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

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.”

There Are No Guilty People

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 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 [** A game of cards similar to auction bridge.] 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, 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 any one 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 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, 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 ‘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.”

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, 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 every

one 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 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 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.”

“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.

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?

The Young Tsar

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, 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 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 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.

“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 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 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.

“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.

“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, 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.

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.

“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 centred 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 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 perchance

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.

[1] And in Birukov’s short Life of Tolstoy, 1911. of the light which it

throws on the character and disposition of the writer, the workings of

his mind being of greater moment to us than those impulsive actions by

which he was too often judged.

[2] In Russia and out of it Mr. Chertkov has been the subject of violent

attack. Many of the misunderstandings of Tolstoy’s later years have also

been attributed by critics, and by those who hate or belittle his ideas,

to the influence of this friend. These attacks are very regrettable and

require a word of protest. From tales, suited to the means and

intelligence of the humblest peasant. The undertaking was initiated in

1885, and continued for many years to occupy much of Tolstoy’s time and

energies. He threw himself with ardour into his editorial duties;

reading and correcting manuscripts, returning them sometimes to the

authors with advice as to their reconstruction, and making translations

from foreign works—all this in addition to his own original

contributions, in which he carried out the principle which he constantly

laid down for his collaborators, that literary graces must be set aside,

and that the mental calibre of those for whom the books were primarily

intended must be constantly borne in mind. He attained a splendid

fulfilment of his own theories, employing the moujik’s expressive

vernacular in portraying his homely wisdom, religious faith, and

goodness of nature. Sometimes the prevailing simplicity of style and

motive is tinged with a vague colouring of oriental legend, but the

personal accent is marked throughout. No similar achievement in the

beginning Mr. Chertkov has striven to spread the ideas of Tolstoy, and

has won neither glory nor money from his faithful and single-hearted

devotion. He has carried on his work with a rare love and sympathy in

spite of difficulties. No one appreciated or valued his friendship and

self-sacrifice more than Tolstoy himself, who was firmly attached to him

from the date of his first meeting, consulting him and confiding in him

at every moment, even during Mr. Chertkov’s long exile.