31554	----	[ Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation; changes (corrections of spelling and punctuation) made to the original text are listed at the end of this file. ] IVAN PANIN. LECTURES ON RUSSIAN LITERATURE: PUSHKIN, GOGOL, TURGENEF, TOLSTOY. NEW YORK & LONDON: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, The Knickerbocker Press. 1889. Copyright, 1889, By Ivan Panin. TO MIRIAM PREFACE. The translations given in this volume, with the exception of the storm-scene from Tolstoy in the First Lecture, are my own. The reader will please bear in mind that these Lectures, printed here exactly as delivered, were written with a view to addressing the ear as well as the eye, otherwise the book would have been entirely different from what it now is. When delivering the Sixth Lecture, I read extracts from Tolstoy's "My Religion" and "What to Do," illustrating every position of his I there commend; but for reasons it is needless to state, I omit them in the book. I can only hope that the reader will all the more readily go to the books themselves. I. P. Grafton, Mass., 1 July, 1889. CONTENTS. LECTURE PAGE I. Introductory 1 II. Pushkin 44 III. Gogol 76 IV. Turgenef 115 V. Tolstoy the Artist 154 VI. Tolstoy the Preacher 190 LECTURE I. INTRODUCTORY. 1. I have chosen the four writers mentioned on the programme not so much because they are the four greatest names of Russian literature as because they best represent the point of view from which these lectures are to be delivered. For what Nature is to God, that is Literature unto the Soul. God ever strives to reveal himself in Nature through its manifold changes and developing forms. And the human soul ever strives to reveal itself in literature through its manifold changes and developing forms. But while to see the goal of the never resting creativeness of God is not yet given unto man, it is given unto mortal eyes to behold the promised land from Pisgah, toward which the soul ever strives, and which, let us hope, it ever is approaching. For the soul ever strives onward and upward, and whether the struggle be called progress of species, looking for the ideal, or union with God, the thing is the same. It is of this journey of the soul heavenward that literature is the record, and the various chases of literary development in every nation are only so many mile-posts on the road. 2. In its childhood the human soul only exists; it can hardly yet be said to live; but soon it becomes conscious of its existence, and the first cry it utters is that of joy. Youth is ever cheerful, and in its cheer it sings. Youth sings to the stars in the sky, to the pale moon and to the red moon, to the maiden's cheeks and to the maiden's fan; youth sings to the flower, to the bee, to the bird, and even to the mouse. And what is true of the individual is equally true of the race. The earliest voices in the literature of any nation are those of song. In Greece Homer, like his favorite cicada, chirps right gladly, and in England Chaucer and Shakespeare are first of all bards. In France and Germany it is even difficult to find the separate prominent singers, for there the whole nation, whatever hath articulate voice in it, takes to singing with its troubadours and minnesingers. In its earliest stages then the soul sings, not in plaintive regretful strain, but birdlike from an overflowing breast, with rejoicings and with mirth. 3. But the time soon arrives when the soul recognizes that life means something more than mere existence, something more than mere enjoyment, something more even than mere happiness; the time soon arrives when the soul recognizes that by the side of the Prince of Light there also dwells the Prince of Darkness; that not only is there in the Universe a great God the Good, but also a great Devil the Evil; and with the impetuosity and impassionateness of youth it gives itself up to lamentation, to indignation. The heart of the poet, the singer, is now filled with woe; he departs and leaves behind him only the lamenter, the reproacher, the rebel. Job succeeds Miriam, Æschylus succeeds Homer, Racine and Corneille take the place of the troubadours, and Byron succeeds Shakespeare. This is the stage of fruitless lamentation and protest. 4. But unlike the bear in winter, the soul cannot feed long on its own flesh, and the time soon comes when it beholds the wasteful restlessness of mere indignation, of mere protest. It sees that to overcome the ill it must go forth manfully and do battle, and attack the enemy in his most vulnerable spots, instead of fruitlessly railing against him. Literature then becomes full of purpose; becomes aggressive, attacks now the throne, now the church, now the law, now the institution, now the person. Tragedy is followed by comedy, sentiment by satire; Æschylus is followed by Aristophanes, Horace is followed by Juvenal and Martial; Racine is followed by Voltaire, and Byron by Dickens. This is the stage of war. 5. But neither is it given unto the soul to remain long in hatred, for hatred is the child of Darkness; the goal of the soul is Love, since Love is the child of Light. And the spirit of man soon discovers that the powers of darkness are not to be conquered by violence, by battle against the men possessed of them, but by faith in the final triumph of the Good, by submission to Fate, by endurance of what can be borne, by reverence towards God, and lastly by mercy towards men. The soul thus discovers its true haven; it lays down the sword; its voice calls no longer to strife, but to peace; it now inspires and uplifts, and Greek literature ends with Socrates and Plato, Rome with Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, England with Carlyle and Ruskin, America with Emerson, and Germany with Goethe. Letters indeed go on in England, in America, and in Germany, but the cycle is completed; and higher than Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Goethe, Emerson, Carlyle, and Ruskin, the soul need not seek to rise. Whatever comes henceforth can add naught new to its life; the tones may indeed vary, but the strain must remain the same. 6. The eye of the body never indeed beholds the perfect circle; however accurately the hand draw, the magnifying glass quickly reveals zigs and zags in the outline. Only unto the eye of the spirit it is given to behold things in their perfection, and the soul knows that there does exist a perfect circle, magnifying glass or no magnifying glass. So history shows indeed many an irregularity in the law just laid down for the development of the soul, but the law is still there in its perfection, and Russian literature furnishes the best illustration of this law. Every literature has to go through these four stages, but nowhere have they been passed with such regularity as in Russia. Accordingly we have in due order of time Pushkin the singer, Gogol the protester, Turgenef the warrior, who on the very threshold of his literary career vows the oath of a Hannibal not to rest until serfdom and autocracy are abolished, and lastly we have Tolstoy the preacher, the inspirer. 7. How this law has operated on Russian soil, in Russian hearts, is the purpose of these lectures to show. For while the laws of the spirit are ever the same in essence, the character of their manifestation varies with time and place, just as in Nature the same force appears in the firmament as gravitation when it binds star unto star, as attraction when it binds in the molecule atom unto atom, and in man as love when it binds heart unto heart. The phenomena therefore, natural to all literature, we shall also find here, but modified by the peculiar character of the people. 8. And the first characteristic of the Russian spirit is that it has no _originating_ force. In the economy of the Aryan household, of which the Slavic race is but a member, each member has hitherto had a special office in the discharge of which its originating force was to be spent. The German has thus done the thinking of the race, the American by his inventive faculty has done the physical comforting of the race, the Frenchman the refining of the race, the Englishman the trading of the race; but the Russian has no such force peculiar to him. The office of the Slavonic race has hitherto been passive, and its highest distinction has hitherto been solely either to serve as a sieve through which the vivifying waters of European thought shall pour upon the sleeping body of Asia, or as a dead wall to stem the wild devastating flow of Asiatic barbarism upon European civilization. The virtue of the Slavonic race is thus first of all passivity; and as the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth and hollow, so the virtue of the Russian is first of all passive receptivity. 9. Look not therefore for creative originality in Russian literature. There is not a single form of literary development that is native to the Russian soil, not a single contribution to philosophy, to art, to letters, the form of which can be said to have been born on Russian soil. Its literary forms, like its civilization (or that which passes for its civilization), have been borrowed bodily from the west. But as action and reaction are always equal, so this very limitation of the Russian national character has been the source of many virtues of spiritual life, which Europe and America might well learn to acquire, all the more now when western thought has matured to such ripeness as to be nigh decay. 10. And herein you have the explanation of the powerful hold Russian literature has suddenly gained upon thoughtful hearts. Wiseacres, marvelling at the meaning of the outburst of enthusiasm for Russian literature, mutter "fashionable craze," and henceforth rest content. But, O my friends, believe it not. Craze will go as craze has come, but the permanent force in Russian literature which now stirs the hearts of men is not to be disposed of by gossip at tea-table. Fashion can hug a corpse for a while, and proclaim its ghastly pallor to be delicacy of complexion, and the icy touch of its hand to be reserved culture, but it cannot breathe the breath of Life into what is dead. And the present enthusiasm is kept awake, rest assured, not because of fashion, but in spite of it. Craze will surely go, but with it will not go that which appeals in Russian literature to all earnest souls, because of its permanent elements over which fashion has no control. 11. For the Russians have elements in their writings quite notable in themselves at all times, but more notable now when letters everywhere else seem to run to waste and ruin,--elements without which all writing must become in due course of time so much blacking of paper, and all speech only so much empty sound; elements without which all writing is sent off, not weighted in one corner, that it may, like unto the toy, after never so much swaying to and fro, still find its upright equilibrium, but rather like unto the sky-rocket, sent up into empty space whizzing and crackling, to end in due time in total explosion and darkness. 12. And of these elements the first is Intensity. What the Russian lacks in originality he makes up in strength; what he lacks in breadth he makes up in depth. The Russian is nothing if not intense. When he loves, he loves with all his heart; when he adores, he adores with all his soul; when he submits, he submits with all his being; when he rebels, he rebels with all his force. When Peter decides to introduce western civilization into his empire, it must be done in a day and throughout the country at once; and if human nature does not yield quickly enough to the order for change from above, soldiers must march about the streets with shears in their hands to cut off the forbidden beard and long coat. When tyrant Paul dies by the hands of assassins, a scene of joy at the deliverance takes place which is only possible on Russian streets: strangers fly into each other's arms, embrace, kiss each other, amid gratulations for the relief. When the foreign invader is to be repelled, no sacrifice is too great for the Russian; and he does not shrink even from setting fire to his own Mecca, the beloved mother Moscow. When Alexander II. undertakes to liberate Russia, he crowds all reforms upon it at once,--emancipation of serfs, trial by jury, local self-government, popular education. And when an autocratic reaction arrives, it comes with the same storm-like rapidity and ubiquity. From a free country Russia is changed in one night, through the pistol-shot of a Karakozof, into a despotic country, just as if some Herman had waved his magic wand, and with his "presto, change," had conjured up the dead autocracy into life again. When finally aristocratic youth is fired with the noble desire to help the ignorant peasant, home, family, station, fortune, career, all is forsaken, and youth goes forth to live with peasant, like peasant, that it may the better instruct him. This intensity which thus permeates all life of Russia is likewise visible in its literature; but while in practical life titanesqueness is a drawback, in literature, which is the nation's ideal life, it finds its most fruitful field. Hence the Russian writer may oft, indeed, be mistaken, frequently even totally wrong, but he is never uninteresting, because always powerful. 13. In times when feebleness has become so feeble as even to invent a theory, making thinness of voice, weakness of stamina, and general emasculation literary virtues; when intellect can find adequate interest only in the chess-puzzles of a Browning, and the sense of humor can find adequate sustenance only in the table-leaping antics of a Mark Twain, and the conscience can be goaded into remorse only by the sight of actual starvation, it is well to turn to these Russians and learn that one of the secrets of their overwhelming power is their intensity. 14. Gogol, for instance, never sets you laughing explosively. Such laughter is only on the surface; but you can hardly read a page of his without feeling a general sense of mirth suffused as it were through every limb, and the cheek can laugh no more than the spinal column. So, too, Turgenef never sets you a weeping, but the sadness he feels he sends from his pages, circulating through your blood, and while the eye will not indeed drop a tear, for such grief is likewise mostly on the surface, the breast will heave a sigh. And Tolstoy never fires you to go forth and do a particularly good deed; he never, like Schiller, sends you off to embrace your friend, but on laying down his book you feel a general discontent with yourself, and a longing for a nobler life than yours is takes possession of the soul. 15. This is the result of the all-absorbing, all-devouring native intensity of the Russian spirit. 16. And this intensity accounts for the suddenness with which the Russian spirit has blazed forth on the horizon, so that the successive stages of development are scarcely visible. The darkness which overcast the letters of Russia before Pushkin disappears not slowly, but the sky is lighted up suddenly by innumerable lights. Stars of the first magnitude stud it, now here, now there, until the bewildered observer beholds not twinkling points but shining luminaries. In scarcely half a century Russia has brought forth Pushkin, Lermontof, Gogol, Dostoyefsky, Turgenef, Tolstoy; and as the institutions of Western Europe became russified by the mere wave of an imperial hand, so Russian literature became modernized as if by the wave of a magic wand. 17. This national characteristic of intensity gives Russian literature a hot-house aspect. Its atmosphere is not only fragrant, but oppressively fragrant; and as in America after the civil war generals and colonels were almost too numerous for social comfort, so in Russia great authors are in well-nigh painful abundance, and the student is embarrassed not with the difficulty of selecting from the midst of poverty, but with the difficulty of selecting from the midst of riches. And not only is its aspect that of a hot-house, but its very character has been affected. Such is the intensity of the national spirit of Russia, that it can do well but one thing at a time, and all its strength can go into only one literary form at a time. From 1800 to 1835 Russian literature is like a field on a midsummer evening, full of all manner of musical sound, and whatever hath articulate voice does nothing but sing. Batushkof sings, Pushkin sings, Lermontof sings, Koltsof sings, Turgenef versifies, and Zhukofsky, like our own poetasters, balances himself acrobatically in metrical stanzas; and where the gift of song is wanting, it shrieks and screeches, but always, observe, in well-balanced rhymes. Then comes the era of the thick periodicals, and whatever is gifted in Russia, for a time speaks only through them; lastly comes realism with an intensity unparalleled elsewhere, and everybody writes in prose, and only one kind of prose at that,--fiction. Not a drama, not a history, not an essay, not a philosophical treatise has yet grown on Russian soil; all the energy of Russia has gone into fiction, and Russia is not the country to produce, when it does produce masters, only one at a time. 18. But the great danger of intensity is extravagance; and Napoleon, who knew men well, could with justice say that the roots of Genius and Insanity are in the same tree, and indeed few are the writers of genius who have successfully coped with extravagance. It is the peculiar fortune however of the Russian writers to be comparatively free from it; and their second great virtue is the one which formed the cardinal virtue of a nation from whom we have still much to learn, the Temperance of the Greeks. 19. And of the virtues of which Temperance, Measuredness, is the parent, there are two, of which the first is Moderation and the second is Modesty: moderation with reference to things outside of the soul; modesty with reference to things inside of the soul. And for the highest example of moderation, you must read Turgenef's account of Nezhdanof's suicide in "Virgin Soil," or his account of the drowning of Marya Pavlovna in "Back Woods;" the first of which I will take the liberty to read to you. "Nezhdanof sprang up from the sofa; he went twice round the room, then stopped short for a minute lost in thought; suddenly he shook himself, took off his 'masquerading' dress, kicked it into the corner, fetched and put on his former clothes. "Then he went up to the three-legged small table and took from the drawer two sealed envelopes, and a small object which he put into his pocket, but the envelopes he left on the table. "He then leaned down and opened the door of the stove.... The stove contained a heap of ashes. This was all that was left of Nezhdanof's papers and private book of verses.... He had burned them all during the night. But in this same stove, leaning against one of the walls, was Marianne's portrait, Markelof's gift. Evidently Nezhdanof had not had the courage to burn this portrait with the rest; he took it out carefully and put it on the table by the side of the sealed papers. "Then with a determined movement of the hand he seized his cap and started for the door ... but he stopped, came back, and went into Marianne's chamber. "After standing motionless for a moment, he cast a look about him, and approaching the young girl's narrow small bed--he bent down and with one suppressed sob he placed his lips, not on the pillow, but on the foot of the bed.... Then he stood up straight, drew his cap over his forehead, and flung himself from the room. "Without meeting any one either in the entry, or on the staircase, or down below, he slipped out into the little enclosure. The day was cloudy, the sky lowering; a little damp breeze bent the tops of the grass-blades and gently waved the leaves on the trees. The mill rattled and buzzed less than usual at this hour; an odor of charcoal, of tar, and of soot came from the yard. "Nezhdanof cast around him a scrutinizing, distrustful glance, then he walked up to the old apple-tree which had attracted his attention on the day of his arrival, when he first looked out of his chamber window. The trunk of this apple-tree was covered with dry moss, its bare and knotty branches, with but a few little green and brown leaves, stuck out here and there, raised themselves crookedly towards the heavens, like the suppliant arms of an old man, with bent elbows. Nezhdanof stood firmly on the dark earth which surrounded the foot of the apple-tree, and drew from his pocket the small object which he had previously taken from the table drawer.--Then he looked attentively at the windows of the little wing. "'If some one should see me at this moment,' he thought, 'perhaps I should put off--' "But nowhere was a single human face to be seen.... Everything seemed dead, everything turned itself away from him, drawing itself away from him forever, leaving him alone to the mercy of fate. Only the factory was sending forth its rank odor, its dull uproar, and a cold rain began to fall in fine drops, pricking like needles. "Then Nezhdanof looked up, through the twisted branches of the tree beneath which he was standing, at the gray, heavy, wet, indifferent, blind sky; he gaped, shrugged his shoulders, and said to himself, 'After all there is nothing else I can do. I cannot return to Petersburg, to prison.' He threw down his cap, and with the premature feeling of a kind of agonizing, not wholly unpleasant yet powerful tension of the nerves, he put the mouth of the revolver against his breast and pulled the trigger.... "Something gave him a sudden blow not even a very hard one ... but already he lay on his back, trying to make out what had happened and how it came that he had just seen Tatyana.... He wished to call to her and say, 'Oh, there is something not right;' but already he is speechless, and over his face into his eyes, over his forehead into his brain, there rushes a whirlwind of green smoke, and a flat something oppressively heavy crushed him forever to the ground. "Nezhdanof was not mistaken in supposing he saw Tatyana; just as he pulled the trigger, she came to one of the windows of the little wing and descried him beneath the apple-tree. She had scarcely time to ask herself, 'What is he doing under the apple-tree bareheaded in such weather as this?' when he fell backward like a sheaf of wheat; but she felt at once that something tragic had happened; and she rushed downstairs, out into the enclosure.... She ran up to Nezhdanof.... 'Alexis Dimitritsh, what is the matter?' But darkness had already come over him. Tatyana stooped over him, and saw blood.... "'Paul!' she shouted in a strange voice, 'Paul!' "In a few moments Marianne, Solomin, Paul, and two factory workmen were already in the enclosure; Nezhdanof was at once raised, carried into his chamber, and placed on a sofa where he had spent his last night. "He lay on his back, his half-closed eyes remained fixed, his face was lead-colored; he breathed slowly and laboriously, catching each breath as if choking. Life had not yet left him. "Marianne and Solomin stood on each side of the couch, almost as pale as Nezhdanof himself. Both were stunned, startled, crushed, especially Marianne, but they were not surprised. 'Why did not we foresee this?' each thought; and yet at the same time it seemed to them that they ... yes, they had foreseen it. When he said to Marianne, 'Whatever I do, I warn you of it beforehand, you will not be surprised,' and again, when he had spoken of the two men that existed in him, who can yet not live together, did not something like a presentiment stir in her? Why then did she not stop at that moment and reflect upon these words and this presentiment? Why does not she dare now to look at Solomin, as if he were her accomplice ... as if he too were suffering remorse? Why was the feeling of infinite pity, of desperate regret with which Nezhdanof inspired her mingled with a kind of terror, with shame, with remorse? Might she perhaps have saved him? Why does neither of them dare to utter a word? They hardly dare to breathe; they wait; what are they waiting for, Great God? "Solomin sent for a surgeon, although there was of course no hope; upon the small black bloodless wound Tatyana had put a sponge with cold water, and moistened his hair also with cold water and vinegar; suddenly Nezhdanof ceased choking and made a slight movement. "'He is coming to himself,' muttered Solomin. "Marianne knelt beside the sofa.... Nezhdanof looked at her ... up to this moment his eyes had been fixed, like those of every dying person. "'Ah! I am still ... alive,' he said with a hardly audible voice. 'Unsuccessful as ever.... I am detaining you.' "'Aliosha,' Marianne contrived to groan out. "'Yes ... soon.... You remember, Marianne, in my ... poem ... "Surround me with flowers." ... Where then are the flowers?... But you are here instead ... there, in my letter....' Suddenly he began to shiver from head to foot. "'Ah, here she is.... Give ... each other ... your hands--in my presence.... Quick ... give--' "Solomin raised Marianne's hand, her head lay on the sofa, face down, close to the very wound. As for Solomin, he stood straight and rigid, black as night. "'So, that is right ... so.' "Nezhdanof began to gasp again, but this time in an entirely strange way; his chest rose and his sides contracted ... he made evident efforts to place his hand on their clasped hands, but _his_ were already dead. "'He is going,' murmured Tatyana, who was standing near the door; and she began to cross herself. The sobbing breaths became rarer, shorter; he was still seeking Marianne with his look, but a kind of threatening milky whiteness already veiled his eyes from within. "'Good!...' this was his last word. "He now was no longer, but the hands of Solomin and Marianne were still joined across his breast." 20. From this pure melancholy and measured sadness, go to Dickens and read his account of the death of little Nell, or to George Eliot and read her account of Maggie Tulliver's death. I venture to think you will need no comment of mine to perceive the difference; and the difference, I regret to say, is not in favor of the English masters. 21. But not only in the field of pathos is this moderation of the Russian striking; in the field of description of nature, of which both the English and the Russian are so fond in their literature, the two literatures offer abundant material for comparison, and I will permit myself to quote to you a passage from Dickens for the purpose of illustrating how the Russians go to work with a similar subject: "It was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go wreaking its vengeance on such poor creatures as the fallen leaves; but this wind happening to come up with a great heap of them just after venting its humor on the insulted Dragon, did so disperse and scatter them that they fled away, pell-mell, some here, some there, rolling over each other, whirling round and round upon their thin edges, taking frantic flights into the air, and playing all manner of gambols in the extremity of their distresses. Nor was this enough for its malicious fury, for not content with driving them abroad, it charged small parties of them and hunted them into the wheelwright's saw-pit and below the planks and timbers in the yard, and scattering the sawdust in the air, it looked for them underneath, and when it did meet with any, whew! how it drove them on and followed at their heels! "The scared leaves only flew the faster for all this, and a giddy chase it was; for they got into unfrequented places, where there was no outlet, and where their pursuer kept them eddying round at his pleasure, and they crept under the eaves of the houses, and clung tightly to the sides of hay-ricks, like bats, and tore in at open chamber windows, and cowered close to hedges, and, in short, went everywhere for safety."--_Martin Chuzzlewit_, ii. 22. Of which passage the principal vice is that it does not describe to you the wind, the thing Dickens really saw, but only what Dickens thought he saw. He gives you not the original but a translation, and a translation, as you will presently see, far from faithful; he gives you not the scene, but the effect of the scene on his mind; and as Dickens started out to produce not a faithful picture, but a startling emotion, his scene is accordingly gaudy, theatrical, false. For observe, the wind is a respectable wind, and yet afflicted with pettiness of tyranny, and it wreaks vengeance; and this vengeance-wreaking wind does not come up flying, as you would expect of a wind, but it _happens_ to come up leisurely, evidently taking an after-dinner stroll, as is becoming a respectable wind, which finds it not inconsistent with respectability to be vengeance-wreaking. And this respectable wind, without any motive, suddenly transforms himself into a malicious wind. Observe, he is no longer revengeful, for revenge implies something wicked done to the wind, which rouses him, while malice has no such excuse, for malice acts without cause, except from native depravity, while revenge acts always with cause. And this upright, leisurely strolling wind, now vengeance-wreaking, now malicious, again without sufficient cause changes his erect posture and kneels down, bends his head under the timbers, and the wind becomes a--peeper! 23. A conception like this may be very fine, it may be very poetic, and even very dramatic, but it is not true, for Dickens never _saw_ the wind thus, else his metaphors would have been less mixed. What we see truly with our imagination we see clearly, and the metaphors born of clear sight are ever pure. Hence such description is extravagant because untrue; hence such description is demoralizing because extravagant, immoderate. And now read Tolstoy's description of a storm during a coach-ride:-- "It was still ten versts to the nearest station; but the great, dark, purple cloud which had collected, God knows whence, without the smallest breeze, was moving swiftly upon us. The sun, which is not yet hidden by the clouds, brightly illumines its dark form, and the gray streaks which extend from it to the very horizon. From time to time, the lightning flashes in the distance; and a faint, dull roar is audible, which gradually increases in volume, approaches, and changes into broken peals which embrace the whole heavens. Vasili stands upon the box, and raises the cover of the britchka. The coachmen put on their armyaks, and, at every clap of thunder, remove their hats and cross themselves. The horses prick up their ears, puff out their nostrils as if smelling the fresh air which is wafted from the approaching thunder-cloud, and the britchka rolls faster along the dusty road. I feel oppressed, and am conscious that the blood courses more rapidly through my veins. But the advance guard of the clouds already begins to conceal the sun; now it has peeped forth for the last time, has illumined the terribly dark portion of the horizon, and vanished. The entire landscape suddenly undergoes a change, and assumes a gloomy character. The ash woods quiver; the leaves take on a kind of dull whitish hue, and stand out against the purple background of cloud, and rustle and flutter; the crowns of the great birches begin to rock, and tufts of dry grass fly across the road. The water and white-breasted swallows circle about the britchka, and fly beneath the horses, as though with the intention of stopping us; daws with ruffled wings fly sideways to the wind: the edges of the leather apron, which we have buttoned up, begin to rise, and admit bursts of moist wind, and flap and beat against the body of the carriage. The lightning seems to flash in the britchka itself, dazzles the vision, and for a moment lights up the gray cloth, the border gimp, and Volodya's figure cowering in a corner. At the same moment, directly above our heads, a majestic roar resounds, which seems to rise ever higher and higher, and to spread ever wider and wider, in a vast spiral, gradually gaining force, until it passes into a deafening crash, which causes one to tremble and hold one's breath involuntarily. The wrath of God! how much poetry there is in this conception of the common people! "The wheels whirl faster and faster. From the backs of Vasili and Philip, who is flourishing his reins, I perceive that they are afraid. The britchka rolls swiftly down the hill, and thunders over the bridge of planks. I am afraid to move, and momentarily await our universal destruction. "Tpru! the trace is broken, and in spite of the unceasing, deafening claps of thunder, we are forced to halt upon the bridge. "I lean my head against the side of the britchka, and, catching my breath with a sinking of the heart, I listen despairingly to the movements of Philip's fat black fingers, as he slowly ties a knot, and straightens out the traces, and strikes the side horse with palm and whip-handle. "The uneasy feelings of sadness and terror increase within me with the force of the storm; but when the grand moment of silence arrives, which generally precedes the thunder-clap, these feelings had reached such a point, that, if this state of things had lasted a quarter of an hour, I am convinced that I should have died of excitement. At the same moment, there appears from beneath the bridge a human form, clothed in a dirty, ragged shirt, with a bloated senseless face, a shaven, wagging, totally uncovered head, crooked, nerveless legs, and a shining red stump in place of a hand, which he thrusts out directly at the britchka. "'Ba-a-schka![1] Help-a-cripple-for-Christ's-sake!' says the beggar, beginning to repeat his petition by rote, in a weak voice, as he crosses himself at every word, and bows to his very belt. "I cannot describe the feeling of chill terror which took possession of my soul at that moment. A shudder ran through my hair, and my eyes were riveted on the beggar, in a stupor of fright. "Vasili, who bestows the alms on the journey, is giving Philip directions how to strengthen the trace; and it is only when all is ready, and Philip, gathering up the reins, climbs upon the box, that he begins to draw something from his side pocket. But we have no sooner started than a dazzling flash of lightning, which fills the whole ravine for a moment with its fiery glare, brings the horses to a stand, and is accompanied, without the slightest interval, by such a deafening clap of thunder that it seems as though the whole vault of heaven were falling in ruins upon us. The wind increases; the manes and tails of the horses, Vasili's cloak, and the edges of the apron, take one direction, and flutter wildly in the bursts of the raging gale. A great drop of rain fell heavily upon the leather hood of the britchka, then a second, a third, a fourth; and all at once it beat upon us like a drum, and the whole landscape resounded with the regular murmur of falling rain. I perceive, from the movement of Vasili's elbow, that he is untying his purse; the beggar, still crossing himself and bowing, runs close to the wheel, so that it seems as if he would be crushed. 'Give-for-Christ's-sake!' At last a copper groschen flies past us, and the wretched creature halts with surprise in the middle of the road; his smock, wet through and through, and clinging to his lean limbs, flutters in the gale, and he disappears from our sight. "The slanting rain, driving before a strong wind, poured down as from a bucket; streams trickled from Vasili's frieze back into the puddle of dirty water which had collected on the apron. The dust, which at first had been beaten into pellets, was converted into liquid mud, through which the wheels splashed; the jolts became fewer, and turbid brooks flowed in the ruts. The lightning-flashes grew broader and paler; the thunder-claps were no longer so startling after the uniform sound of the rain. "Now the rain grows less violent; the thunder-cloud begins to disperse; light appears in the place where the sun should be, and a scrap of clear azure is almost visible through the grayish-white edges of the cloud. A moment more, and a timid ray of sunlight gleams in the pools along the road, upon the sheets of fine, perpendicular rain which fall as if through a sieve, and upon the shining, newly washed verdure of the wayside grass. "The black thunder-cloud overspreads the opposite portion of the sky in equally threatening fashion, but I no longer fear it. I experience an inexpressibly joyous feeling of hope in life; which has quickly taken the place of my oppressive sensation of fear. My soul smiles, like Nature, refreshed and enlivened." [1] Imperfect pronunciation of _batiuschka_, "little father." 24. And for modesty, too, the literatures of England and Russia furnish instructive comparisons. Russia has no autobiographies of note. Men there were too busy with their art to have much time left to think of themselves. Turgenef writes Reminiscences, but only of others, and not of himself; and when he speaks of his own past, it is only incidentally, and with the delicacy of a maiden. Tolstoy gives, indeed, an autobiography as sincere as Rousseau's and as earnest as Mill's, but only because he believes that an account of the spiritual struggles _he_ went through would be helpful to other strugglers with the terrible problems of life. But of their _personal_ history there is seldom more than a trace found. Compare with this the autobiographies of Gibbon, Leigh Hunt, Mill, or even the Reminiscences of Carlyle, and the widely-branching outpourings of Ruskin in his autobiographical sketches. Not that the English over-estimate their own worth and importance, but the Russians seem to have the instinctive sense of measure in personal matters. 25. Much of this purity of taste is due to a singular circumstance in its literary history. Unlike other countries, in Russia, for a long time, literature has been the favorite solely of the educated and wealthy classes. Almost all the great names of Russian literature, Pushkin, Lermontof, Hertzen, Turgenef, Zhukofsky, Griboyedof, Karamzin, Tolstoy, were aristocrats, if not always by birth, at least by surroundings. The men of letters sprung from the people, nourished by the people, living among the people, the Burnses, the Bérangers, the Heines are unknown in Russia. I have already stated that originality must not be looked for on Russian soil; that Russian literature is essentially an imitative literature in its forms, hence imitative force must have time to look about, examine, copy, and for this leisure, wealth is necessary. 26. This absence of originality has thus proved a source of blessing to Russian literature which well-nigh makes up the loss. For literature thus being in the hands of men of leisure, free from the struggle for bread, was never governed in Russia by the law of supply and demand, and the dollar never became, as with us, the potent, even though the temporary arbiter of its destinies. Hence the singular purity of Russian literature in point of style. Dickens needs the dollars, and he therefore spins out his satires to a length of distance to be traversed only by seven-league boots, and in verbosity is equalled only by Thackeray. Gogol, however, not only compresses his chapters, but even burns the whole second part of his masterpiece, "Dead Souls," as unworthy of his best art. George Eliot, writing for a standard which requires three volumes for each novel, must fill her story with all manner of description which does not describe, and reflection which does not reflect; but Turgenef files and files until he is reproached more for omitting too much than for adding too much. And America's greatest living writer (I say greatest, because he is purest in spirit, gentlest in heart, and freest in mind) can still go on from year to year producing one novel annually with the regularity of a baker's muffin at breakfast. Compare with this his own master, Tolstoy, who for months forsakes his masterpiece, "Anna Karenina," because of a fastidious taste! Hence the question why Mrs. Astor never invites to her table literary men, which agitated them recently, could not have even been asked in Russia. Such a question is only possible in a country where the first question a publisher puts of a book is not whether it is good, but whether it is likely to pay. 27. Faithfulness of labor and finish of form are therefore characteristic of whatever has any reputation in Russia; and as works of art, there are few works of the Russian masters that are not veritable masterpieces. I say this with confidence of Turgenef, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Pushkin; but I think this remark would hold even of the lesser lights of Russian literature. A sincerity, a truthfulness, a realness, is thus found in Russian literature, which makes it _be_ a thing of beauty instead of doing some deeds of beauty. On reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin," you involuntarily ask, "What effect has this book had on slavery in America?" On reading Turgenef's Memoirs of a Sportsman, though it accomplished as much for the serf, you no longer ask, "What has the book done for the serf?" You do not think of the serf any more now that he has ceased to be. But you do think of the innumerable things of beauty that roll out from his pages before you as if from a kaleidoscope. And if to be is greater than to do, then Russian literature is truly original, even though its forms be borrowed; since instead of seeming it _is_, and whatever truly _is_, is original. 28. From this sincerity of Russian writers comes the third great virtue of Russian literature, a virtue possessed as yet by other literatures in but a small degree. The Russian writer is first of all in earnest, and he has no time to give to _mere_ entertainment, mere amusement. The Goldsmiths with their Bees and their Citizens of the World, the Addisons with their Spectators, nobly writ though these be, yet written mostly with no higher purpose than to make the breakfast-roll glide down the throat more softly,--these exist not in Russia. Things of beauty, things of entertainment, like Addison's Essays, are indeed found in Russia; but not for entertainment alone were these writ, hence not in the strain of mirth. Rather are they writ with the blood of the heart; for to the Russian, "Life is real, life is earnest," not a mere pastime, and it was given to a Russian painter to make the all-known but singularly-forgotten observation that Christ never--laughed! 29. But while the native endowment of the soul, its spiritual capital, is the chief guide of the fate of literature, other forces also affect its course, the chief among which is the political government of the people. In most countries the influence of government upon literature has been slight. Shakespeare's plays, Milton's Paradise, were not affected by the political struggles of England. The sole writing of Milton which was affected by English politics, his prose, belongs to literature only in so far as it throws light on the author of Paradise Lost. Dante's Divine Comedy, charged though it be with the political electricity of his times, was but little affected by the state of government. In other countries the government of the people was as much itself an effect of the native endowment of the soul as its literature; and government and literature flowed therefore side by side, in two parallel streams, seldom interfering with each other's course. In Russia, however, government has extended a powerful influence on literature, and the most marked effect of its influence is the short-livedness of most Russian authors. The calm, peaceful existence of the literary man has already been sung by Carlyle as a life-lengthener. In Russia, however, the same fatality which has pursued its political rulers has also pursued its spiritual rulers; and as most conquerors have died an unnatural death, so most writers have died an unnatural death, or only after an unnatural life. The witticism of Mark Twain, that the bed must be a most fatal place, since most people die in bed, is not applicable to Russian emperors and Russian writers. Few of them can be said to have died in their beds. Griboyedof is assassinated; Pushkin and Lermontof are murdered; Gogol is found dead from bodily starvation, and Byelinsky is found dead from spiritual starvation; Batushkof dies insane; Dostoyefsky and Chernishefsky are in prison the best years of their lives; Turgenef can find the length of his days only in exile, and Tolstoy the length of his in ploughing fields. For such a strange disharmony in the lives of Russian men of letters, the government is largely responsible. An autocracy which feels itself called to wrap literature tightly in swaddling-clothes, and establishes a censorship which does not shrink even from making verbal changes in the works of the artist to improve his style, can accomplish little more than the shortening of literary lives. For literature is a flower which can only wither at the touch of unhallowed hands, and the rude hands of the censor are far from being hallowed. 30. Hence Russian literature not only _is_ a mere fragment, a mere brick of the vast edifice which it is capable of becoming; it is even bound to remain a mere fragment for a long time to come. For as Socrates lived in Plato, Plato in Aristotle, and Aristotle in the Schoolmen, as Lessing lived in Goethe, Goethe in Heine, and Heine in young Germany, so great literary fathers reappear in the progeny of the next generation; the reproduction is indeed oft puny enough, still the reproduction is there. But in Russia, while Pushkin lived in Gogol, and Gogol in Turgenef, the generation which was to inherit the kingdom left by Turgenef and Tolstoy is now buried in fortresses and dungeons. And as in America mammon has so eaten away literary aspiration as to leave Emerson and Hawthorne, Prescott and Motley, intellectually childless, so in Russia, autocracy has so eaten away the literary material as to leave the great masters childless. 31. Fortunately, though deprived by despotism of all power of propagation on Russian soil, the noble spirit of Russian literature has by a force I cannot but call divine been allowed to be propagated on foreign soil; and if the literature of the west, which is now stagnating in the pools of doubt, irreverence, mammon, and cold intellectualism, misnamed culture, is to be purified, the purification must come from the breath of Life which blows from Russia. This is the true meaning of the present craze for Russian authors. There is a force in them which the mass instinctively recognizes as divine; it feels for it, gropes for it, and the Devil, as usual, is the first to seize for his purposes whatever noble impulse comes over men, and this search for the divine of the mass becomes a sham, a fashionable craze. Hence the rage, the boom. This is the inevitable stage of falsehood through which every noble aspiration must pass. By and by the stage of truth must come, and come it shall, in due time. Russian authors will then be read not because it is the fashion and the craze, but because they have a message from the very heavens to deliver unto him that hath eyes to see and ears to hear: the message of sincerity, the message of earnestness, the message of love. Then will have been reached the stage of truth. 32. Out of this crampedness of Russian literature by government developed that virtue of its masters, which with their sincerity and simplicity, or moderation, forms a most beautiful trinity of graces; I mean their freedom. You will indeed hear full many a yard-stick critic as he goes about with his load of pigeon-holed boxes to take measure of each author, and label him, and duly relegate him to convenient pigeon-hole,--such critic you will hear discourse much about classicism, and romanticism, and realism, and of their prevalence at different times in Russian literature. Believe it not! The Russian author who is at all worth classifying is slave of no school; he is free, for he is a worshipper of the truth which alone maketh men free, he is a school unto himself. Is Gogol a realist? He gives you indeed the reality, but he breathes into it a beauty only visible to idealizing eyes. Is Turgenef a realist? When thrilled with the unspeakable beauty of the sky, he depicts it so as to realize for you the ideal. And when Tolstoy is thrilled with a moral emotion, he depicts it so as to idealize the real for you. The Russians thus refuse to be classified. And they belong to only one class,--the class of those that cannot be classified. 33. Thus has it come to pass that the west, to which Russian literature owes its nourishment, is now in its old age to be nourished by its foster child. The child is to become the father of the man; and Russian literature is henceforth to be the source of the regeneration of the western spirit. As the future fighters for freedom will have to look to the Perofskayas, to the Bardines, and the Zassulitshes, and to the unnamed countless victims of the Siberian snow-fields for models of heroism, so methinks henceforth writers must look to the Russians for models in their art: to Gogol for pure humor, to Turgenef for the worship of natural beauty, to Tolstoy for the worship of moral beauty. LECTURE II. PUSHKIN. 1. I have stated in the first lecture that I should treat of Pushkin as the singer. Pushkin has indeed done much besides singing. He has written not only lyrics and ballads but also tales: tales in prose and tales in verse; he has written novels, a drama, and even a history. He has thus roamed far and wide, still he is only a singer. And even a cursory glance at his works is enough to show the place which belongs to him. I say belongs, because the place he holds has a prominence out of proportion to the merits of the writer. Among the blind the one-eyed is king, and the one-eyed Pushkin--for the moral eye is totally lacking in this man--came when there as yet was no genuine song in Russia, but mere noise, reverberation of sounding brass; and Pushkin was hailed as the voice of voices, because amidst the universal din his was at least clear. Of his most ambitious works, "Boris Godunof" is not a drama, with a central idea struggling in the breast of the poet for embodiment in art, but merely a series of well-painted pictures, and painted not for the soul, but only for the eye. His "Eugene Onyegin" contains many fine verses, much wit, much biting satire, much bitter scorn, but no indignation burning out of the righteous heart. His satire makes you smile, but fails to rouse you to indignation. In his "Onyegin," Pushkin often pleases you, but he never stirs you. Pushkin is in literature what the polished club-man is in society. In society the man who can repeat the most bon-mots, tell the most amusing anecdotes, and talk most fluently, holds the ear more closely than he that speaks from the heart. So Pushkin holds his place in literature because he is brilliant, because his verse is polished, his language chosen, his wit pointed, his prick stinging. But he has no aspiration, no hope; he has none of the elements which make the writings of the truly great helpful. Pushkin, in short, has nothing to give. Since to be able to give one must have, and Pushkin was a spiritual pauper. 2. And what is true of his more sustained works, is equally true of his lesser works. They all bear the mark of having come from the surface, and not from the depths. His "Prisoner of the Caucasus," his "Fountain of Bachtshisarai," his "Gypsies," are moreover weighted down with the additional load of having been written directly under the influence of Byron. And as health is sufficient unto itself and it is only disease which is contagious, Byron, who was sick at heart himself, could only impart disease and not health. Byron moreover had besides his gift of song the element of moral indignation against corrupt surroundings. Pushkin had not even this redeeming feature. 3. Pushkin therefore is not a poet, but only a singer; for he is not a maker, a creator. There is not a single idea any of his works can be said to stand for. His is merely a skill. No idea circulates in his blood giving him no rest until embodied in artistic form. His is merely a skill struggling for utterance because there is more of it than he can hold. Pushkin has thus nothing to give you to carry away. All he gives is pleasure, and the pleasure he gives is not that got by the hungry from a draught of nourishing milk, but that got by the satiated from a draught of intoxicating wine. He is the exponent of beauty solely, without reference to an ultimate end. Gogol uses his sense of beauty and creative impulse to protest against corruption, to give vent to his moral indignation; Turgenef uses his sense of beauty as a weapon with which to fight _his_ mortal enemy, mankind's deadly foe; and Tolstoy uses his sense of beauty to preach the ever-needed gospel of love. But Pushkin uses his sense of beauty merely to give it expression. He sings indeed like a siren, but he sings without purpose. Hence, though he is the greatest versifier of Russia,--not poet, observe!--he is among the least of its writers. 4. Towards the end of his early extinguished life he showed, indeed, signs of better things. In his "Captain's Daughter" he depicts a heroic simplicity, the sight of which is truly refreshing, and here Pushkin becomes truly noble. As a thing of purity, as a thing of calmness, as a thing of beauty, in short, the "Captain's Daughter" stands unsurpassed either in Russia or out of Russia. Only Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," Gogol's "Taras Bulba," and the Swiss clergyman's "Broom Merchant," can be worthily placed by its side. But this nobility is of the lowly, humble kind, to be indeed thankful for as all nobility must be, whether it be that of the honest farmer who tills the soil in silence, or that of the gentle Longfellow who cultivates his modest muse in equal quietness. But there is the nobility of the nightingale and the nobility of the eagle; there is the nobility of the lamb and the nobility of the lion; and beside the titanesqueness of Gogol, and Turgenef, and Tolstoy, the nobility of Pushkin, though high enough on its own plane, is relatively low. 5. Mere singer then that Pushkin is, he is accordingly at his best only in his lyrics. But the essence of a lyric is music, and the essence of music is harmony, and the essence of harmony is form; hence in beauty of form Pushkin is unsurpassed, and among singers he is peerless. His soul is a veritable Æolian harp. No sooner does the wind begin to blow than his soul is filled with music. His grace is only equalled by that of Heine, his ease by that of Goethe, and his melody by that of Tennyson. I have already said that Pushkin is not an eagle soaring in the heavens, but he is a nightingale perched singing on the tree. But this very perfection of form makes his lyrics well-nigh untranslatable, and their highest beauty can only be felt by those who can read them in the original. 6. In endeavoring therefore to present Pushkin to you, I shall present to you not the nine tenths of his works which were written only by his hands,--his dramas, his tales, his romances, whether in prose or verse,--but the one tithe of his works which was writ from his heart. For Pushkin was essentially a lyric singer, and whatever comes from this side of his being is truly original; all else, engrafted upon him as it is from without, either from ambition or from imitation, cannot be called _his_ writing, that which he alone and none others had to deliver himself of. What message Pushkin had to deliver at all to his fellow-men is therefore found in his lyrics. 7. Before proceeding, however, to look at this singer Pushkin, it is necessary to establish a standard by which his attainment is to be judged. And that we may ascertain how closely Pushkin approaches the highest, I venture to read to you the following poem, as the highest flight which the human soul is capable of taking heavenward on the wings of song. HYMN TO FORCE. BY WM. R. THAYER. I am eternal! I throb through the ages; I am the Master Of each of Life's stages. I quicken the blood Of the mate-craving lover; The age-frozen heart With daisies I cover. Down through the ether I hurl constellations; Up from their earth-bed I wake the carnations. I laugh in the flame As I kindle and fan it; I crawl in the worm; I leap in the planet. Forth from its cradle I pilot the river; In lightning and earthquake I flash and I quiver. My breath is the wind; My bosom the ocean; My form's undefined; My essence is motion. The braggarts of science Would weigh and divide me; Their wisdom evading, I vanish and hide me. My glances are rays From stars emanating; My voice through the spheres Is sound, undulating. I am the monarch Uniting all matter: The atoms I gather; The atoms I scatter. I pulse with the tides-- Now hither, now thither; I grant the tree sap; I bid the bud wither. I always am present, Yet nothing can bind me; Like thought evanescent, They lose me who find me. 8. I consider a poem of this kind (and I regret that there are very few such in any language) to stand at the very summit of poetic aspiration. For not only is it perfect in form, and is thus a thing of beauty made by the hands of man, but its subject is of the very highest, since it is a hymn, a praise of God, even though the name of the Most High be not there. For what is heaven? Heaven is a state where the fellowship of man with man is such as to leave no room for want to the one while there is abundance to the other. Heaven is a state where the wants of the individual are so cared for that he needs the help of none. But if there be no longer any need of toiling, neither for neighbor nor for self, what is there left for the soul to do but to praise God and glorify creation? A hymn like the above, then, is the outflow of a spirit which hath a heavenly peace. And this is precisely the occupation with which the imagination endows the angels; the highest flight of the soul is therefore that in which it is so divested of the interests of the earth as to be filled only with reverence and worship. And this hymn to Force seems to me to have come from a spirit which, at the time of its writing at least, attained such freedom from the earthly. 9. Such a poem being then at one end of the scale, the highest because it gratifies the soul's highest need, on the opposite end, on the lowest, is found that which gratifies the soul's lowest need, its need for novelty, its curiosity. And this is done by purely narrative writing, of which the following is a good example:-- THE BLACK SHAWL. I gaze demented on the black shawl, And my cold soul is torn by grief. When young I was and full of trust I passionately loved a young Greek girl. The charming maid, she fondled me, But soon I lived the black day to see. Once as were gathered my jolly guests, A detested Jew knocked at my door. Thou art feasting, he whispered, with friends, But betrayed thou art by thy Greek maid. Moneys I gave him and curses, And called my servant, the faithful. We went; I flew on the wings of my steed, And tender mercy was silent in me. Her threshold no sooner I espied, Dark grew my eyes, and my strength departed. The distant chamber I enter alone-- An Armenian embraces my faithless maid. Darkness around me: flashed the dagger; To interrupt his kiss the wretch had no time. And long I trampled the headless corpse,-- And silent and pale at the maid I stared. I remember her prayers, her flowing blood, But perished the girl, and with her my love. The shawl I took from the head now dead, And wiped in silence the bleeding steel. When came the darkness of eve, my serf Threw their bodies into the billows of the Danube. Since then I kiss no charming eyes, Since then I know no cheerful days. I gaze demented on the black shawl, And my cold soul is torn by grief. 10. The purpose of the author here was only to tell a story; and as success is to be measured by the ability of a writer to adapt his means to his ends, it must be acknowledged that Pushkin is here eminently successful. For the story is here well told; well told because simply told; the narrative moves, uninterrupted by excursions into side-fields. In its class therefore this poem must stand high, but it is of the lowest class. 11. For well told though this story be, it is after all only a story, with no higher purpose than merely to gratify curiosity, than merely to amuse. Its art has no higher purpose than to copy faithfully the event, than to be a faithful photograph; and moreover it is the story not of an emotion, but of a passion, and an ignoble passion at that; the passion is jealousy,--in itself an ugly thing, and the fruit of this ugly thing is a still uglier thing,--a murder. The subject therefore is not a thing of beauty, and methinks that the sole business of art is first of all to deal with things of beauty. Mediocrity, meanness, ugliness, are fit subjects for art only when they can be made to serve a higher purpose, just as the sole reason for tasting wormwood is the improvement of health. But this higher purpose is here wanting. Hence I place such a poem on the lowest plane of art. THE OUTCAST. On a rainy autumn evening Into desert places went a maid; And the secret fruit of unhappy love In her trembling hands she held. All was still: the woods and the hills Asleep in the darkness of the night; And her searching glances In terror about she cast. And on this babe, the innocent, Her glance she paused with a sigh: "Asleep thou art, my child, my grief, Thou knowest not my sadness. Thine eyes will ope, and though with longing, To my breast shalt no more cling. No kiss for thee to-morrow From thine unhappy mother. Beckon in vain for her thou wilt, My everlasting shame, my guilt! Me forget thou shalt for aye, But thee forget shall not I; Shelter thou shalt receive from strangers; Who'll say: Thou art none of ours! Thou wilt ask: Where are my parents? But for thee no kin is found. Hapless one! with heart filled with sorrow, Lonely amid thy mates, Thy spirit sullen to the end Thou shalt behold the fondling mothers. A lonely wanderer everywhere, Cursing thy fate at all times, Thou the bitter reproach shalt hear ... Forgive me, oh, forgive me then! Asleep! let me then, O hapless one, To my bosom press thee once for all; A law unjust and terrible Thee and me to sorrow dooms. While the years have not yet chased The guiltless joy of thy days, Sleep, my darling; let no bitter griefs Mar thy childhood's quiet life!" But lo, behind the woods, near by, The moon brings a hut to light. Forlorn, pale, trembling To the doors she came nigh; She stooped, and gently laid down The babe on the strange threshold. In terror away she turned her eyes And disappeared in the darkness of the night. 12. This also is a narrative poem; but it tells something more than a story. A new element is here added. For it not only gratifies our curiosity about the mother and the babe, but it also moves us. And it moves not our low passion, but it stirs our high emotion. Not our anger is here roused, as against the owner of the black shawl, but our pity is stirred for the innocent babe; and even the mother, though guilty enough, stirs our hearts. Here, too, as in the "Black Shawl," the art of the narrator is perfect. The few touches of description are given only in so far as they vivify the scene and furnish a fit background for the mother and child. But the theme is already of a higher order, and in rank I therefore place the "Outcast" one plane above the "Black Shawl." 13. The two poems I have just read you are essentially ballads; they deal indeed with emotion, but only incidentally. Their chief purpose is the telling of the story. I shall now read you some specimens of a higher order of poetry,--of that which reflects the pure emotion which the soul feels when beholding beauty in Nature. I consider such poetry as on a higher plane, because this emotion is at bottom a reverence before the powers of Nature, hence a worship of God. It is at bottom a confession of the soul of its humility before its Creator. It is the constant presence of this emotion which gives permanent value to the otherwise tame and commonplace writings of Wordsworth. Wordsworth seldom climbs the height he attains in those nine lines, the first of which are:-- "My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky." But here Pushkin is always on the heights. And the first I will read you shall be one in which the mere sense of Nature's beauty finds vent in expression without any conscious ethical purpose. It is an address to the last cloud. THE CLOUD. O last cloud of the scattered storm, Alone thou sailest along the azure clear; Alone thou bringest the darkness of shadow; Alone thou marrest the joy of the day. Thou but recently hadst encircled the sky, When sternly the lightning was winding about thee. Thou gavest forth mysterious thunder, Thou hast watered with rain the parched earth. Enough; hie thyself. Thy time hath passed. The earth is refreshed, and the storm hath fled, And the breeze, fondling the leaves of the trees, Forth chases thee from the quieted heavens. 14. Observe, here the poet has no ultimate end but that of giving expression to the overflowing sense of beauty which comes over the soul as he beholds the last remnant of a thunder-storm floating off into airy nothingness. But it is a beauty which ever since the days of Noah and his rainbow has filled the human soul with marvelling and fearing adoration. Beautiful, then, in a most noble sense this poem indeed is. Still, I cannot but consider the following few lines to the Birdlet, belonging as the poem does to the same class with "The Cloud," as still superior. THE BIRDLET. God's birdlet knows Nor care nor toil; Nor weaves it painfully An everlasting nest; Through the long night on the twig it slumbers; When rises the red sun, To the voice of God listens birdie, And it starts and it sings. When spring, nature's beauty, And the burning summer have passed, And the fog and the rain By the late fall are brought, Men are wearied, men are grieved; But birdie flies into distant lands, Into warm climes, beyond the blue sea,-- Flies away until the spring. 15. For a poem of this class this is a veritable gem; for not only is its theme a thing of beauty, but it is a thing of tender beauty. Who is there among my hearers that can contemplate this birdlet, this wee child of God, as the poet hath contemplated it, and not feel a gentleness, a tenderness, a meltedness creep into every nook and corner of his being? But the lyric beauty of the form, and the tender emotion roused in our hearts by this poem, form by no means its greatest merit. To me the well-nigh inexpressible beauty of these lines lies in the spirit which shineth from them,--the spirit of unreserved trust in the fatherhood of God. "When fog and rain by the late fall are brought, men are wearied, men are grieved, but birdie--" My friends, the poet has written here a commentary on the heavenly words of Christ, which may well be read with immeasurable profit by our wiseacres of supply-and-demand economy, and the consequence-fearing Associated or Dissociated Charity. For if I mistake not, it was Christ that uttered the strangely unheeded words, "Be not anxious for the morrow.... Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feedeth them." Fine words these, to be read reverently from the pulpit on Sunday, but to be laughed at in the counting-room and in the charity-office on Monday. But the singer was stirred by this trustfulness of birdie, all the more beautiful because unconscious, and accordingly celebrates it in lines of well-nigh unapproachable tenderness and grace! 16. There is, however, one realm of creation yet grander and nobler than that visible to the eye of the body. Higher than the visible stands the invisible; and when the soul turns from the contemplation of the outward universe to the contemplation of the inward universe, to the contemplation of affection and aspiration, its flight must of necessity be higher. Hence the high rank of those strains of song which the soul gives forth when stirred by affection, by love to the children of God, whether they be addressed by Wordsworth to a butterfly, by Burns to a mouse, or by Byron to a friend. You have in English eight brief lines which for this kind of song are a model from their simplicity, tenderness, and depth. LINES IN AN ALBUM. As over the cold, sepulchral stone Some name arrests the passer-by, Thus when thou viewest this page alone May mine attract thy pensive eye. And when these lines by thee are read Perchance in some succeeding year, Reflect on me as on the dead, And think my heart is buried here! 17. It is this song of love for one's kind which makes Burns, Heine, and Goethe pre-eminently the singers of the human heart when it finds itself linked to one other heart. And it is this strain which gives everlasting life to the following breath of Pushkin's muse: TO A FLOWER. A floweret, withered, odorless, In a book forgot I find; And already strange reflection Cometh into my mind. Bloomed where? When? In what spring? And how long ago? And plucked by whom? Was it by a strange hand, was it by a dear hand? And wherefore left thus here? Was it in memory of a tender meeting? Was it in memory of a fated parting? Was it in memory of a lonely walk In the peaceful fields, or in the shady woods? Lives he still? lives she still? And where is their nook this very day? Or are they too withered, Like unto this unknown floweret? 18. But from the love of the individual the growing soul comes in time to the love of the race; or rather, we only love an individual because he is to us the incorporation of some ideal. And let the virtue for which we love him once be gone, he may indeed keep our good will, but our love for him is clean gone out. This is because the soul in its ever-upward, heavenward flight alights with its love upon individuals solely in the hope of finding here its ideal, its heaven realized. But it is not given unto one person to fill the whole of a heaven-searching soul. Only the ideal, God alone, can wholly fill it. Hence the next strain to that of love for the individual is this longing for the ideal, a longing for what is so vague to most of us, a longing to which therefore not wholly inappropriately the name has been given of a longing for the Infinite. 19. And of this longing, Heine has given in eight lines immeasurably pathetic expression: "Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam Im Norden auf kahler Höh'. Ihn schläfert; mit weisser Decke Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee. Er träumt von einer Palme, Die, fern im Morgenland, Einsam und schweigend trauert Auf brennender Felsenwand." Heine has taken the evergreen pine in the cold clime, as the emblem of this longing, and a most noble emblem it is. But I cannot help feeling that in choosing a fallen angel, as Pushkin has on the same subject, he was enabled to give it a zenith-like loftiness and a nadir-like depth not to be found in Heine. THE ANGEL. At the gates of Eden a tender Angel With drooping head was shining; A demon gloomy and rebellious Over the abyss of hell was flying. The spirit of Denial, the spirit of Doubt, The spirit of purity espied; And unwittingly the warmth of tenderness He for the first time learned to know. Adieu, he spake. Thee I saw; Not in vain hast thou shone before me. Not all in the world have I hated, Not all in the world have I scorned. 20. Hitherto we have followed Pushkin only through his unconscious song; only through that song of which his soul was so full as to find an outlet, as it were, without any deliberate effort on his part. But not even unto the bard is it given to remain in this childlike health. For Nature ever works in circles. Starting from health, the soul indeed in the end arrives at health, but only through the road of disease. And a good portion of the conscious period in the life of the soul is taken up by doubt, by despair, by disease. Hence when the singer begins to reflect, to philosophize, his song is no longer that of health. This is the reason why Byron and Shelley have borne so little fruit. Their wail is the cry not of a mood, but of their whole being; it is not the cry of health temporarily deranged, but the cry of disease. With the healthy Burns, on the other hand, his poem, "Man was made to Mourn," reflects only a stage which all growing souls must pass. So Pushkin, too, in his growth, at last arrives at a period when he writes the following lines, not the less beautiful for being the offspring of disease, as all lamentation must needs be:-- "Whether I roam along the noisy streets, Whether I enter the peopled temple, Or whether I sit by thoughtless youth, My thoughts haunt me everywhere. "I say, swiftly go the years by: However great our number now, Must all descend the eternal vaults,-- Already struck has some one's hour. "And if I gaze upon the lonely oak, I think: The patriarch of the woods Will survive my passing age As he survived my father's age. "And if a tender babe I fondle, Already I mutter, Fare thee well! I yield my place to thee; For me 'tis time to decay, to bloom for thee. "Thus every day, every year, With death I join my thought Of coming death the day, Seeking among them to divine "Where will Fortune send me death,-- In battle, in my wanderings, or on the waves? Or shall the neighboring valley Receive my chilled dust? "But though the unfeeling body Can equally moulder everywhere, I, still, my birthland nigh, Would have my body lie. "Let near the entrance to my grave Cheerful youth be engaged in play, And let indifferent creation Shine there with beauty eternally." 21. Once passed through its mumps and measles, the soul of the poet now becomes conscious of its heavenly gift, and begins to have a conscious purpose. The poet becomes moralized, and the song becomes ethical. This is the beginning of the final stage, which the soul, if its growth continue healthy, must reach; and Pushkin, when singing, does retain his health. Accordingly in his address to the Steed, the purpose is already clearly visible. THE HORSE. Why dost thou neigh, O spirited steed; Why thy neck so low, Why thy mane unshaken, Why thy bit not gnawed? Do I then not fondle thee; Thy grain to eat art thou not free; Is not thy harness ornamented, Is not thy rein of silk, Is not thy shoe of silver, Thy stirrup not of gold? The steed, in sorrow, answer gives: Hence am I still, Because the distant tramp I hear, The trumpet's blow, and the arrow's whiz; And hence I neigh, since in the field No longer shall I feed, Nor in beauty live, and fondling, Nor shine with the harness bright. For soon the stern enemy My harness whole shall take, And the shoes of silver From my light feet shall tear. Hence it is that grieves my spirit; That in place of my chaprak With thy skin shall cover he My perspiring sides. 22. It is thus that the singer lifts up his voice against the terrors of war. It is thus that he protests against the struggle between brother and brother; and the effect of the protest is all the more potent that it is put into the mouth, not as Nekrassof puts it, of the singer, but into that of a dumb, unreasoning beast. 23. We have now reached the last stage of the development of Pushkin's singing soul. For once conscious of a moral purpose, he cannot remain long on the plane of mere protest; this is mere negation. What is to him the truth must likewise be sung, and he utters the note of affirmation; this in his greatest poem,-- THE PROPHET. Tormented by the thirst for the Spirit, I was dragging myself in a sombre desert, And a six-winged seraph appeared Unto me on the parting of the roads; With fingers as light as a dream He touched mine eyes; And mine eyes opened wise, Like unto the eyes of a frightened eagle. He touched mine ears, And they filled with din and ringing. And I heard the trembling of the heavens, And the flight of the angels' wings, And the creeping of the polyps in the sea, And the growth of the vine in the valley. And he took hold of my lips, And out he tore my sinful tongue, With its empty and false speech. And the fang of the wise serpent Between my terrified lips he placed With bloody hand. And ope he cut my breast with a sword, And out he took my trembling heart, And a coal blazing with flame He shoved into the open breast. Like a corpse I lay in the desert; And the voice of the Lord called unto me: "Arise! O prophet and guide, and listen,-- Be thou filled with my will, And going over land and sea, Burn with the Word the hearts of men!" 24. This is the highest flight of Pushkin. He knew that the poet comes to deliver the message. But _what_ the message was, was not given unto him to utter. For God only speaks through those that speak for him, and Pushkin's was not yet a God-filled soul. Hence the last height left him yet to climb, the height from which the "Hymn of Force" is sung, Pushkin did not climb. Pushkin's song, in short, was so far only an utterance of a gift, it had not become as yet a part of his life. And the highest is only attainable not when our lives are guided by our gifts, but when our gifts are guided by our lives. How this thus falling short of a natively richly endowed soul became possible, can be told only from a study of his life. To Pushkin his poetic ideal bore the same relation to his practical life that the Sunday religion of the business-man bears to his Monday life. To the ordinary business man, Christ's words are a seeing guide to be followed in church, but a blind enough guide, not to be followed on the street. Hence Pushkin's life is barren as a source of inspiration towards what life ought to be; but it is richly fruitful as a terrifying warning against what life ought not to be. 25. Pushkin died at the age of thirty-eight, at a time when he may be said to have just begun to live. Once more then we have before us a mere fragment, a mere possibility, a mere promise of what the great soul was capable of becoming, of what the great soul was perhaps destined to become. Pushkin is thus a typical example of the fate of the Slavonic soul. And the same phases we had occasion to observe as gone through by the race, we now find here likewise gone through by the individual. It is this which makes Pushkin eminently a national singer, a Russian singer. The satire of Gogol, the synthesis of Turgenef, the analysis of Tolstoy, might have indeed flourished on any other soil. Nay, Turgenef and Tolstoy are men before they are Russians; but the strength of Pushkin as a force in Russian literature comes from this his very weakness. Pushkin is a Russian before he is a man, his song is a Russian song; hence though many have been the singers in Russia since his day, none has yet succeeded in filling his place. For many are indeed called, but few are chosen; and the chosen Russian bard was--Alexander Pushkin. LECTURE III. GOGOL. 1. With the departure of the eighteenth century there also disappeared from Russia that dazzling glitter which for well-nigh half a century had blinded the eyes of Europe. Catherine was now dead, Potyomkin was dead, Suvorof was living an exile in a village, and Panin was idle on his estates. And now stripped of its coat of whitewash, autocracy stood bare in all its blackness. Instead of mother-Catherine, Paul was now ruling, and right fatherly he ruled! Such terror was inspired by this emperor, that at the sight of their father-Tsar his subjects at last began to scamper in all directions like a troop of mice at the sight of a cat. For half a decade Russia was thus held in terror, until the rule of the maniac could no longer be endured. At last Panin originates, Pahlen organizes, and Benigsen executes a plan, the accomplishment of which finds Paul on the morrow lying in state with a purple face, and the marks of the shawl which strangled him carefully hid by a high collar. "His Majesty died of apoplexy," the populace is told. Alexander the Benign comes upon the throne, greeted, indeed, by his subjects, in the ecstasy of the delivery, like an angel, but cursed by them as a demon ere the five-and-twenty years of his rule have passed. The Holy Alliance, Shishkof and Arakcheyef were more than even Russians could endure, and formidable protest is at last made by the armed force of the Decembrists. The protest fails; five bodies swinging from the gallows, and a hundred exiles buried in Siberia alive, leave a monument of such failure terrible in its ghastliness even for Russian history. The iron hand of Nicholas now rests on the country, and for thirty years the autocrat can proudly say that now order reigns in Russia. Order? Yes; but it is the order and quiet of the graveyard, the peace of death. 2. But not all is quiet. Defeated on the field of arms, the spirit of protest seeks and at last finds a battle-field where neither the trampling hoofs of horses nor the shot of cannon can avail. The spirit of man intrenches itself behind ideas, behind letters, and here it proves impregnable even against the autocracy of a Nicholas. Defeated on the field of war, the spirit of man protests in literature. The times call for the voice, and the voice is soon heard. This voice is the voice of Nicolai Gogol. 3. Gogol is the protester, the merciless critic of the weakness of autocracy. I have placed Pushkin, the greatest of Russia's singers, as among the least of its writers, because he hath no purpose. I place Gogol far above Pushkin, because Gogol is the first master of Russian literature in whom purpose is not only visible, but is also shown. Gogol's art protests not unconsciously; but the man Gogol uses the artist Gogol as a means for giving voice to the protest against what his noble soul rebels. 4. For, O my friends, I cannot emphasize it too strongly that our gifts--whether they consist in wealth, or in the ability to sing, to paint, to build, or to count--are not given unto us to be used for our pleasure merely, or as means of our advancement, whether social or intellectual. But they are given unto us that we may use them for helping those who need help. Talk not therefore of art for its own sake; that art needs no purpose, but is an end unto itself. Such talk is only a convenient way of evading the Heaven-imposed responsibility of _using for others_ those gifts with which a merciful power hath endowed their undeserving possessors. Art, therefore, to be truly worthy, must have a purpose, and, execution being equal, that art is highest, which hath the highest purpose; that art lowest, which hath the lowest purpose. 5. But it was not given to Gogol to announce the loftiest message, the message of peace, of love, of submission, the message of Tolstoy; the times of Gogol were not ripe for this; the times of Gogol called for indignation, for protest, and Gogol is the indignant protester. 6. Hitherto, whatever force has been exerted towards protesting against the misrule of Russia by autocracy has come from the South. Stenka Rasin, Pugatchef, came not from the North but from the South. And the most formidable division of the Decembrist conspirators of 1825 was that of Pestel and Muraviof, with their headquarters in the South. And even the policy of terrorizing the autocracy by assassination, which was adopted in our own day by the most formidable opponents of the government, by the revolutionists miscalled Nihilists, also originated in the South,--with Ossinsky and his comrades in Kief. Gogol, the protester in literature, was likewise a Southerner. And it will be worth while to cast a glance at this country and see what therein is to make it thus a hot-bed of protest. 7. Beyond the waterfalls of the Dnieper there extends a to the eye boundless land of prairie which for ages has been the rendezvous of all manner of wild, lawless, but sturdy folk. Of this land Gogol himself has given a description glowingly beautiful as only the love of a Little Russian for the Steppe could give. Taras Bulba had just started out with his two sons to join the camp of the Cossaks. "Meanwhile the steppe had already received them all into its green embrace, and the high grass surrounding them hid them, and the black Cossaks' caps alone now gleamed between its stalks. "'Aye, aye, fellows, what is the matter; why so quiet?' said at last Bulba, waking up from his revery. 'One would think you were a crowd of Tartars. Well, well, to the Evil One with your thoughts! Just take your pipes between your teeth, and let us have a smoke, and give our horses the spurs. Then we will fly that even a bird could not catch us!' "And the Cossaks, leaning over their horses, were lost in the grass. Now even their black caps could no longer be seen; only a track of trampled-down grass traced their swift flight. "The sun had long been looking forth on the cleared heavens, and poured over the whole steppe its refreshing warmth-breathing light. Whatever was dim and sleepy in the Cossaks' souls suddenly fled; their hearts began to beat faster, like birds'. "The farther they went, the more beautiful the steppe grew. In those days the vast expanse which now forms New Russia, to the very shores of the Black Sea, was green, virgin desert. The plough had never passed along the immeasurable waves of the wild plants. Horses alone, whom they hid, were trampling them down. Nothing in Nature could be more beautiful. The whole surface of the land presented a greenish-golden ocean, on which were sparkling millions of all manner of flowers. Through the thin high stalks of the grass were reaching forth the light-blue, dark-blue, and lilac-colored flowers; the yellow broom-plant jumped out above, with its pyramid-like top. The white clover, with its parasol-shaped little caps, shone gayly on the surface. A halm of wheat, brought hither God knows whence, was playing the lonely dandy. By the thin roots of the grasses were gliding the prairie-chicks, stretching out their necks. The air was filled with a thousand different whistles of birds. In the sky floated immovably hawks, their wings spread wide, their eyes steadily fixed on the grass. The cry of a cloud of wild geese moving on the side was heard on a lake, Heaven knows how far off. With measured beating of its wings there rose from the grass a gull, and bathed luxuriously in the blue waves of the atmosphere. Now she is lost in the height, now she gleams as a dark point; there, she has turned on her wings, and has sparkled in the sun!... The Devil take ye, ye steppes, how beautiful you are!" 8. If the height of the mount, swelling as it does the breast of the mountaineer, makes his spirit free by filling his lungs to their very roots, how much more must the steppe liberate the spirit of man by giving the eye an ever-fleeing circle to behold whithersoever it turn! How much more free than the mountaineer must the son of the steppe feel, for whom distance hath no terror, since go he never so far, he beholds the same sky, the same horizon, the same grass, and his cheek is fanned by the same breeze! To jump upon his faithful steed, to prick her sides with the spur, to be off in the twinkling of an eye with the swiftness of the wind, at the least discontent, is therefore as natural to the Russian of the South as it is for the Russian of the North to endure patiently in his place of birth whatever Fortune hath in store for him. The Cossak has therefore for ages been on land what the sailor is on sea,--light-hearted, jolly when with comrades, melancholy when alone; but whether with his mates or alone, of a spirit indomitably free. And Gogol was a Cossak. Southern Russia had not as yet produced a single great voice, because Southern Russia, New Russia, had as yet no aristocracy. Gogol is thus the only great Russian writer who sprang not from an autocracy whitewashed with Western culture, but from the genuine Russian people. It is this which makes Gogol the most characteristic of Russian writers. 9. Gogol was born in the province of Poltava, in 1810. His grandfather was an honored member of the government of the Cossak Republic, which at that time formed almost a state within the state. It was he that entertained his grandson with the stories of the life of the Cossaks, their adventures, their wars, as well as with the tales of devils, of apparitions, of which that country is full, and which form the principal amusement of the people during their long winter evenings. 10. We shall see later that the essential characteristic of Gogol's art was his wonderful power as a teller of a story. This came to him directly from the grandfather through the father. But the father was already a man of a certain degree of culture. He was fond of reading, subscribed to the magazines, loved to entertain, and more than once had even private theatricals at his house. 11. The boy grew up at home till he was twelve years old. But at that age he was sent away to school at Nyezhin, with results questionable enough. The only signs of promise he showed were a strong memory and an honest but intense dislike of those studies which are only useful when forgotten. The problem as to the necessity of making children familiar with Timbuctoo, Popocatepetl, parallelopipeds, and relative dative and absolute ablative, the boy settled for himself in clear-headed boyish fashion. He hated mathematics, he hated the ancient languages. Accordingly, though he stayed three years under the professor of Latin, all he could learn was the first paragraph of a Latin Reader which begins with the instructive sentence: Universus mundus in duas distribuitur partes; from which circumstance poor Gogol was ever after known among his mates under the name of Universus Mundus. Teachers and scholars therefore scorned poor Universus Mundus; but the boy faithfully kept a book under his desk during recitations, and read most diligently, leaving Universus Mundus to run its own course. 12. But if the boy did not lead his fellow-pupils in familiarity with Popocatepetl and parallelopiped, he did lead them in intellectual energy and practical life; a voracious reader, a passionate student of Zhukofsky and Pushkin, he founded not only a college review, which he filled mostly with his own contributions, but also a college theatre, which furnished entertainment not only to the boys themselves, but even to the citizens of the town. Nor did the boy rest until he saw his efforts towards founding a college library crowned with success. 13. This public spirit, which became in time all-absorbing to him, thus showed itself even in his boyhood. It was not long before the purpose of his life which hitherto manifested itself unconsciously now became the conscious part of his existence; and when in 1828 the boy left the Nyezhin Gymnasium, he was already filled with conscious desire to serve God with all his soul and man with all his heart. But as the body on its entrance into life must go through a baptism of water, so the soul on its entrance into life must go through a baptism of fire, and the fire to poor Gogol was scorching enough. Deeply religious towards God, nobly enthusiastic towards men, the boy in his simplicity, innocence, and trustfulness found himself repelled by an unsympathetic and hampered by a misunderstanding world, which instead of encouraging the sympathy-hungry youth, was only too ready to laugh to scorn with its superior wisdom the dreams of the visionary. The home, the province, now becomes too narrow for the rapidly unfolding soul. To St. Petersburg he must go, the capital of talent, of aspiration, of hope, where are published the magazines so eagerly devoured in the days gone by,--to the capital, where dwell Zhukofsky and Pushkin. There his talents shall be recognized, and an appreciating world shall receive the new-comer with open arms. The arms of the world do indeed open on his arrival at St. Petersburg, but it is the cold embrace of want, of friendlessness. In St. Petersburg begins for him a struggle for existence which well-nigh ruins him forever. Bread is not easily earned. Congenial society does not readily seek him out, and the sympathetic appreciation his starving soul craves is still as far as ever. Inevitable disappointment of hero-worship also quickly comes. When he calls at the door of the idolized Pushkin late in the morrow, he is told by the valet that the great man is deigning to be asleep at this late hour. "Ah, your master has been composing some heavenly song all night!" "Not at all; he has been playing cards till seven in the morning!" And to complete his doom, his tender susceptible heart begins to flutter with right serious ado at the sight of a dame of high social position who hardly deigns to cast even a glance at the moneyless, ill-clad, clumsy, rustic lad,--sorrows enough for a soul far better equipped for battle with Fortune than this poor Cossak lad. Total ruin is now dangerously nigh. And here Gogol becomes high-handed. He must be off, away from this suffocation of disappointment and despair. He must seek new fields; if Fortune is not to be found in St. Petersburg, then it shall be sought beyond St. Petersburg; and if not in Russia, then out of Russia. Not him shall sportive Fortune flee; not him, the youth of merit, the youth of promise. In the days of yore he had charmed the good folk of Nyezhin by his acting from the stage the part of an old woman. Wherefore not conquer Fortune as an old woman, if she favor not the young man? In a foreign land he might yet find his goal as an actor, and he decides to exile himself. Of moneys there are indeed none. Fortunately his mother, now already a widow, sends him some moneys wherewith to pay off their pledged estate. But the dutiful son keeps the moneys, advises his mother to take in return his share of his father's estate, and departs for the promised land. He goes to Germany, to Lubeck, to conquer Fortune as an actor. 14. Conquer Fortune he indeed did. For in less than a month he found himself back in St. Petersburg, now a sober, a wiser man. The period of stress, of storm, was at an end, and henceforth letters were chosen as his life-long occupation. Bread, indeed, has to be earned by all manner of makeshifts,--now by serving as a scribe in some dreary government hall, now by reading off mechanically to university students what officially passes as lectures; but the life of his soul, whatever his body might busy itself with, was henceforth given unto letters. 15. Henceforth, in order to make his life most fruitful unto men, which is his constant purpose, he is to write. But write what? Gogol gazes into his heart, and there finds the memories of the steppe, of the valiant Cossaks, their prowess and their freedom. His soul is filled at the sight of these with a tenderness and beauty which give him no rest until he pours them out over the pages of his book, and "Taras Bulba" is covered with a glory well-nigh unattained in any language since the days of Homer. For "Taras Bulba," though only one of several stories in "Evenings on a Farm," is among them what the star Sirius is in the already glorious heavens of a November midnight. As a thing of beauty, of simple grandeur, of wild strength, of heroic nobility, as a song, in short, I do not hesitate to affirm that it finds its like only in the Iliad. It is an epic song, and a song not of an individual soul but of a whole nation. Written down it was indeed by the hands of Gogol, but composed it was by the whole of Little Russia. As the whole of heroic Greece sings in the wrath of Achilles, so the whole of Cossakdom, which in its robust truth and manly simplicity is not unlike heroic Greece, sings in "Taras Bulba." 16. The poem is introduced as follows:-- "'Just turn round, sonny! Well, I declare if you are not ridiculous! What kind of a rig have you on? Why, you look like priests! Are they all dressed thus in the academy?' "With these words old Bulba met his two sons who came home from the Kief seminary to their father. His sons had just got down from their horses. They were two sturdy fellows, still looking out from under their brows just like fresh seminary graduates. Their strong, healthy faces were covered with the first down, as yet untouched by a razor. They were much embarrassed at such reception by their father, and they stood motionless, with eyes fixed on the ground. "'Stand still, stand still; just let me get a good look at you,' he continued, as he turned them about. 'What long jackets you have on! What a jacket! Who ever heard of such jackets before! Just let one of you take a run, and see whether he would not tumble over, entangled in his coat-tails.' "'Don't laugh, father, don't laugh,' said at last the eldest. "'See how touchy he is! And why, pray, shall not I laugh?' "'Because! For even if you are my father, but if you laugh, by God, I will thrash you!' "'Well, well, well, did you ever! Is this the kind of a son you are? How? Your father?' said Taras Bulba, stepping back in surprise. "'Yes, even if you are my father. An insult I will stand from none.' "'How then do you wish to fight me? Boxing?' "'I don't care; any way.' "'Well then, let us box,' said Bulba, rolling up his sleeves. 'I would like to see what sort of a boxer you are.' "And father and son, instead of greeting each other after the long separation, began to give each other blows, now in the sides, now in the ribs, now in the breast, now stepping back and looking about, now coming forward again. "'Just see, good people, the old fool has become crazy,' said the pale, thin, good mother, who was standing on the threshold and had not been able to embrace her darling boys. 'The children come home after an absence of over a year, and he gets it into his head, God knows what, to box with them.' "'Yes, he fights finely,' said Bulba, stopping. 'Good, by God!' he continued, catching a little breath. 'So, yes, he will make a fine Cossak, even without preliminary trial. Well, welcome, sonny; come kiss me.' And father and son began to kiss each other. 'Good, my son. Thrash everybody as you have given it to me. Don't let him go! But I must insist, yours is a ridiculous rig. What rope is this, dangling down there!'" 17. Bulba is so pleased with his boys that he decides to take them the very next day to the syetch, the republic of the Cossaks, and there initiate them in the wild, glorious service. The mother's grief at the unexpected loss of her boys, as well as the parting itself, is thus described by Gogol:-- "Night had just enclosed the sky in its embrace; but Bulba always retired early. He spread himself out on the mat and covered himself with the sheep-skin; for the night air was quite fresh, and Bulba, moreover, was fonder of warmth when at home. He soon began to snore, and it was not long before the entire household did the like. Whatever lay in the various corners of the court began to snore and to whiz. Before everybody else fell asleep the watchman; for in honor of the return of the young Cossaks he had drunk more than the rest. "The poor mother alone was awake. She nestled herself close to the heads of her dear boys, who were lying side by side. She combed their young, carelessly bunched-up locks, and moistened them with her tears. She gazed upon them with all her eyes, with all her feelings; she was transformed into nothing but sight, and yet she could not look enough at them. She had fed them from her own breast. She had raised them, had fondled them, and now she sees them again only for a moment! 'My boys, my darling boys, what is to become of ye, what is in store for ye?' she spake, and the tears halted on her wrinkles, which had changed her once handsome face. In truth, she was to be pitied, as every woman of that rough age was to be pitied. Only a moment had she lived in love, only in the first fever of passion, in the first fever of youth, and already her rough charmer had forsaken her for the sword, for his companions, for the wild excitement of war. During the year she saw her husband perhaps two--three times, and then again for some years there was not even a trace of him. And when they did come together, when they did live together, what sort of life was hers! She suffered insult, even blows. She received her fondlings as a kind of alms; she felt herself a strange creature in this assemblage of wifeless knights, to whom the loose life of the Cossaks had given a coloring sombre enough. Youth flashed by her joylessly, and her beautiful fresh cheeks and fingers had withered away without kisses, and were covered with premature wrinkles. All her love, all her tenderness, whatever was soft and passionate in woman, was merged in her into the one feeling of a mother. With heat, with passion, with tears, like a gull of the steppe, she was circling about her babes. Her boys, her darling boys, are to be taken from her,--taken from her never to be seen again. Who knows, perhaps at the very first battle the Tartar shall cut off their heads, and she shall not know where their castaway bodies are lying to be pecked in pieces by the bird of prey, while for every drop of their blood she would have given up her whole life. Groaning, she looked into their eyes, when almighty sleep began to close them, and she thought to herself, 'Perhaps Bulba will change his mind when he wakes, and put off the departure for a day or two; perhaps he has decided to go off so soon because he had taken a little too much.' "The moon had for some time been shining from the high heavens upon the whole court, its sleeping folk, the thick clump of willows and the high wild oats in which was drowned the fence surrounding the court. Still she was sitting at the head-side of her darling boys, not taking her eyes off them for a moment, and not even thinking of sleep. The horses, already feeling the morrow, had all lain down in the grass, and ceased feeding. The upper leaves of the willows began to whisper, and little by little a whispering wave descended along them to the very bottom. But she was still sitting up till daybreak, not at all tired, but inwardly wishing that the night might last only longer. From the steppe came up the loud neighing of a colt; red bars gleamed brightly along the sky.... "When the mother saw that at last her sons also were now seated on their horses, she rushed to the youngest, in whose features there seemed to be more of a certain tenderness, seized his spur, clung to his saddle, and with despair in her eyes, she held fast to him. Two robust Cossaks took gently hold of her and carried her into the house. But when they rode out beyond the gates, with the lightness of a wild stag, incompatible with her years, she ran out beyond the gates, and with incomprehensible strength she stopped the horse and embraced one of her sons with a kind of crazy, feelingless feverishness. Again she was carried off. "The young Cossaks rode in silence, and held back their tears in fear of their father, who, however, was for his part not wholly at ease, though he tried not to betray himself. The sky was gray; the green was sparkling with a glare; the birds were singing as if in discord. The Cossaks, after riding some distance, looked back. Their farm-house seemed to have gone down into the ground. Above ground were seen only the two chimneys of their modest house, and the tops of the trees, along whose branches they had been leaping like squirrels [in their childhood.] There still was stretched before them that prairie which held for them the whole history of their life, from the years when they made somersaults on its thick grass, to the years when they would await there the black-browed Cossak dame as she was tripping swiftly along with her fresh light step. Now they see only the pole over the well, and the cart-wheel, tied to its top, alone sticks out on the sky. And now the plain they had just passed seems a distant mount, hiding everything behind it.... Farewell, childhood, and play, and all, and all!..." 18. I had hoped at first to be able to give you a few passages from this noblest of epic poems which might give you some idea of its wild, thrilling beauty: the jolly life at the syetch; the sudden transformation of the frolicking, dancing, gambling crowd into a well-disciplined army of fierce warriors, which strikes terrors into the hearts of the Poles. I hoped to be able to give you Gogol's own account of the slaying of Andrei, his youngest son, by Bulba himself, because, bewitched by a pair of fair eyes, he became traitor to the Cossaks. I wished to quote to you the stoic death, under the very eyes of his father, of Ostap, the oldest son, torn as he is alive to pieces, not a sound escaping his lips, but at the very last moment, disheartened at the sea of hostile faces about him, crying only, "Father, seest thou all this?" I wished to quote to you Bulba's own terrible death, nailed alive to a tree, which is set on fire under him; the old hero, still intent on the salvation of his little band, while the smoke envelops him, cries, as he beholds the movement of the enemy, "To the shore, comrades, to the shore! Take the path to the left!" But I found I should have to quote to you the entire book; for there is not a single page of this poem from which beauty does not shine forth with dazzling radiance. Homer often nods in the Iliad, but in "Taras Bulba" Gogol never nods. And as the painter of old on being asked to remove the curtain that the picture might be seen replied, "The curtain _is_ the picture," so can I only say to you, "Read 'Taras Bulba,' and it shall be its own commentary unto you!" 19. With "Taras Bulba," Gogol had reached the height as a singer. On this road there was no longer any progress for his soul, and to remain a cheerful, right-glad singer in the midst of the sorrowing, overburdened country was impossible to a man of Gogol's earnestness. For his first and last end was to serve his country. 'Tis well, if he could serve it by letters, equally well, if he could serve it by his simple life. Gogol, therefore, now decided to devote the rest of his days to the unveiling of the ills to which the Russian Colossus was subject, in the hope that the sight of the ugly cancer would help its removal. Thus he became the conscious protester, the critic of autocracy; and he became such because his gifts were best fitted for such labor. For coupled with his unsurpassed gift of story-telling was another distinct trait of the Cossak in him,--the ability of seeing good-humoredly the frailties of man; and his humor, undefiled by the scorn of the cynic, proved a most powerful weapon in his hands. Ridicule has ever proved a terror to corruption. But in the hands of Gogol this ridicule became a weapon all the more powerful because it took the shape of impersonal humor where the indignation of the author was kept out of sight, so that even stern Nicolas himself, the indirect source of the very corruption satirized in "The Revisor," could laugh, while a listener to the play, until the tears ran down his cheeks and his sides ached. The corruption of provincial officials, which is the natural sore following all autocratic blood-poisoning, found merciless treatment at the hands of Gogol in his comedy "The Revisor." Its plot is briefly as follows:-- 20. The mayor of a small city receives suddenly the news that a revisor, a secret examiner, is on the way from the capital to investigate his administration. Quickly he assembles all the worthies of the town, the director of schools, of prisons, of hospitals, all of whom have but too guilty consciences, and they all decide on measures of escape from his wrath. They march in file to the hotel where the supposed Revisor lodges. There for some days had been dwelling a young penniless good-for-nothing whom the officials mistake for the dreaded Revisor. The young man is surprised, but soon accepts the situation, and plays his part admirably. Presents and bribes are sent him from all sides; he borrows money right and left, makes love to the mayor's wife as well as to his daughter, and finally engages to marry the--daughter. The mayor is happy and honored as never before, and relying upon the protection of the Revisor outrages the community now more than ever. At last the pseudo-revisor departs with all the gifts and loans, and in a few days the real Revisor actually arrives, to the astonishment and dismay of the officials, who till now had felt secure in their misdeeds. 21. "The Revisor" is indeed a great comedy, the equal of Griboyedof's "Misfortune from Brains." As a comedy it is therefore the inferior of none,--neither of Terence, nor of Molière. But as a work of art it cannot rank as high as "Taras Bulba," because no comedy can ever be as great a thing of beauty as an epic poem. What rouses laughter cannot rank as high as what rouses tender emotion. Moreover, with the passing away of the generation familiar with the corruption it satirizes, the comedy often becomes unintelligible save to scholars. Hence the utter valuelessness to us of to-day of the comedies of Aristophanes as works of wit. Their only value to-day is as fragmentary records of Greek manners. The comedy is thus writ not for all times, but only for _a_ time; while "Taras Bulba," though generations come and generations go, will ever appeal unto men as a thing of imperishable beauty. But while "The Revisor" is below "Taras Bulba" as a work of art, it is far above it as a work of purpose, and has accordingly accomplished a greater result. For "Taras Bulba" can only give pleasure, though it be read for thousands of years after "The Revisor" has been forgotten. It will indeed give a noble pleasure, at which the soul need not blush, still it is only a pleasure. But "The Revisor" has helped to abolish corruption, has fought the Evil One, has therefore done work which, transient though it be, _must_ be done to bring about the one result which alone is permanent,--the kingdom of heaven upon earth; the kingdom of truth, the kingdom of love, the kingdom of worship. And whatever helps towards the establishment of that on earth must be of a higher rank than what only gives pleasure unto the soul. 22. The success of "The Revisor" spurred the young Gogol on to further effort, and he now resolved to give utterance to protest against another crying wrong of Russian life, which in its consequences was far more disastrous to the country than official corruption. Gogol now undertook to lay bare the ills of serfdom. His soul had long since been searching for its activity a field as wide as life itself. With Gogol, as with all lofty souls before they find their truest self, aspiration ever soared above execution. Now, however, the time had arrived when his gifts could execute whatever his soul conceived; and his mighty spirit at last found fitting expression in "Dead Souls." Accordingly "Dead Souls" is not so much a story, a story of an event or of a passion, as a panorama of the whole country. In his search for Dead Souls, Tchichikof has to travel through the length and breadth of the land; through village and through town, through sunshine and through storm, by day and by night, through the paved imperial post-road as well as through the forsaken cross-lane. This enables Gogol to place before the reader not only the governor of the province, the judge, and the rich landowner, the possessor of hundreds of souls, but also the poverty-stricken, well-nigh ruined landowner; not only the splendor of the city, but also the squalor of the hamlet; not only the luxury of an invited guest, but also the niggardliness of the hotel-boarder. "Dead Souls" is thus a painting in literature,--what Kaulbach's "Era of the Reformation" is in history. And the originality of the execution lies in the arrangement which presents Russia in a view unseen as yet even by Pushkin, who knew his country but too well. Gogol may be said to have discovered Russia for the Russian, as Haxthausen discovered it for the West, and as De Tocqueville discovered America for the Americans. "Great God!" exclaimed Pushkin, on reading "Dead Souls," "I had no idea Russia was such a dark country!" And this is the characteristic of this among the greatest of paintings of Russian life,--the faithful gloom which overhangs the horizon. In spite of its humor, the impression left on the mind by "Dead Souls" is that of the sky during an equinoctial storm; and on closing the book, in spite of your laughter, you feel as if you had just returned from a funeral. The work is conceived in humor, designed to rouse laughter, but it is laughter which shines through tears. It is the laughter of a soul which can no longer weep outwardly, but inwardly. It is the same laughter which Lessing indulged in when his wife and child were snatched from him both at once. For six long weary years he had battled with poverty, disappointment, and despair, to reach at last in joy the goal of his life; he weds at last his beloved dame, and lo, the close of the first year of his paradise finds mother and babe lying side by side--lifeless. Lessing laughs. He writes to a friend: "The poor little fellow hath early discovered the sorrows of this earth, so he quickly hied himself hence, and lest he be lonely, took his mother along." There is laughter here, indeed, but the soul here laughs with a bleeding, torn, agonized heart. It is the same laughter which was roused among the disciples of Christ when they heard their Master utter the grim joke, "Verily, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." Such laughter is Gogol's in "Dead Souls." Gogol had now learned to comprehend the words of his friend Ivanof,--"Christ never laughed." 23. I dwell on this phase of Gogol's laughter, because Gogol in his "Dead Souls" unconsciously recognized that behind everything laughable there is at bottom not a comedy but a tragedy; that at bottom it is the cold head only which laughs, and not the warm heart. Think, and thou shalt laugh; feel, and thou shalt weep. Judgment laughs, sympathy weeps. Sin, wickedness, O my friends, is not a thing to laugh at, but a thing to weep at; and your English humorists have not yet learned, when they must laugh at vice and sin, to laugh at it with a heart full of woe. Swift is steeped in vinegar; Fielding's humor is oiled and sugar-coated; Dickens can never laugh unless with convulsive explosion; Thackeray sneers, and George Eliot is almost malicious with her humor; and the only man in English literature who is sick at heart while he laughs is not even counted among the humorists,--Carlyle. In English literature the laughter of Cervantes in Don Quixote is unknown; but the humor of Cervantes is nearest that of Gogol. Gogol's laughter is the laughter of a man who so loves his fellow-men that their weakness is his pain; and the warmest corner in all Russia for the very men Gogol satirizes would doubtless have been found in his own heart. It is this spirit in which "Dead Souls" is writ which makes "Dead Souls" a model for all humorous writing. 24. I can give you, however, no nobler example of this laughter through tears by Gogol than the following closing passage from his "Memoirs of a Maniac." You remember that during his stay at St. Petersburg, Gogol fell in love with a woman far above his social rank. In this piece of only twenty pages Gogol paints the mental condition of an humble office-scribe, who, falling in hopeless love with the daughter of his chief, loses his poor mind. After various adventures he at last imagines himself King Ferdinand of Spain, is locked up in an asylum, and is beaten whenever he speaks of himself as the king. And this is the last entry in the poor maniac's diary:-- "No, I no longer can endure it. God, what are they doing to me! They pour cold water on my head! They neither mind me, nor do they see me, nor do they hear me. What have I done to them? What do they wish of poor me? What can I give them? I have nothing. I have no more strength. I no longer can endure all their torment; my head is afire, and all around me is in a whirl. Save me! Take me! Give me a span of horses swift as the wind! Get up, driver; ring, little bell; off ye horses, and carry me off from this world! Away, away, that I see nothing more,--nothing. Ha! there is the sky vaulting before me; a star sparkles in the distance; there rushes the forest with its dark trees, and the moon. A gray fog spreads under my feet; a string resounds in the fog; on one side is the sea, on the other Italy; now Russian huts are already in sight. Is this my home which rises blue in the distance? Is it my mother sitting at the window? Dear mother, save your poor boy; drop a tearlet on his sick head. See how they torment him; press your poor orphan to your breast! There is no place for him on this wide earth! He is chased! Dear mother, have pity on your sick babe!... By the way, do you know, the Emperor of Algeria has a wart under his very nose!" 25. With the completion of the first part of "Dead Souls," Gogol had reached the height as a protester. He had now exhausted this side of his life,--the side which was the essence of his being, the side which made him the individual person as distinct from the rest of men. After the first part of "Dead Souls" his message unto men was a thing of the past. Henceforth, whatever he could do, could only be a repetition of his former burning words, and hence only a weaker utterance. This is precisely what happens to most men of letters when they persist in speech after naught is left them to say. You need only be reminded of Bryant in this country, who had exhausted all the music of his soul in his younger days, and of Tennyson in England, who as shadowy Lord Tennyson can only ignobly borrow of marrowy Alfred Tennyson. But Gogol was too conscientious an artist to allow himself to become prey of such literary sin. If produce he must, it shall be no repetition of his former self, but in a still higher field than mere protest. Accordingly, he attempted in his second part of "Dead Souls" to paint an ideal Russia, just as in the first part he had painted the real Russia. Here, however, he undertook what was above his genius: the skylark is indeed a noble bird, but is unfit for the flight of the eagle. Who was by nature only a protester could not by sheer force of will be transformed into the idealizing constructor. And of this, Gogol himself soon became aware. To the very end he was discontented with his second part, and finally, before his death, gave it over to the flames. 26. The heavenly spark which gleamed within him could not, however, be put out. Letters proper he at last indeed forsook, but he now became profoundly religious; he gave up all his possessions to the poor, and when he needed moneys wherewith to make a pilgrimage to what was to him a veritably Holy Land, he had to publish some of his intimate correspondence. 27. This work proved the bitterness of the rest of his days. It roused a clamor against the poor author altogether out of proportion to the slight merit of the work. Gogol was denounced on all sides as a renegade; the relentless accuser of autocracy in "The Revisor" could not be forgiven for the spirit of Christian humility and resignation to the will of God which breathed from these letters. It was in the forties. Those were the days when a Hegelian wave went over Russian minds. God had been philosophized away to make place for the Absolute, and even school-boys came home to announce the astounding news that there was no longer any God. Who was not a doubter, a disbeliever, was unhesitatingly declared an imbecile; and Gogol's correspondence, breathing as it does the spirit of the deepest godfulness, came upon his friends like a note of discord at a concert. His friends declared him insane, and all manner of advice offered, which could not fail to make him truly insane. The already melancholy Gogol now became lonely, dejected, and sought consolation now more than ever in fasting and prayer. Poor Gogol had not yet learned that complete salvation is found not in praying, but in doing. While his ills therefore increased his devotion, his devotion likewise in turn increased his ills; his body became emaciated, his mind was wrecked, and early in 1852 he was found one morning starved to death, prostrated before the holy images, in front of which he had spent his last days. 28. Next to Tolstoy, Gogol is perhaps the most lovable figure in Russian literature. I say lovable, because he was at bottom a hapless man,--a man who had fed on his own mighty heart. There is a Carlylesqueness about his woe that makes his life immeasurably pitiful. Pushkin's sorrow one finds it difficult to lament deeply, since it was mostly of his own making; but Gogol's was the sorrowful lot of all heaven-aspiring souls who have not yet attained the last, safest haven of rest in God,--that haven from which the soul no longer cries in agony of spirit, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" but rather, "Father, thou knowest wherefore all this is; thy will be done!" His soul in its loneliness and restlessness knew nor sympathy nor appreciation of what was to him _his_ deepest life; and this the loving soul ever craves most hungeringly. When the great soul had departed, gone irrevocably, men readily enough recognized that the light of Israel had gone out; but the recognition came too late, the love came when it could no longer heal his wounded spirit. 29. My friends, "Taras Bulba" will thrill your soul with inexpressible beauty. Gogol's "Revisor" will amuse you. His "Dead Souls" will instruct you; but his life, if you study it faithfully, should prove his greatest work unto you, for it should stir you,--stir you to tenderness, stir you to sympathy, stir you to compassion for those sufferers, the like of Gogol, who are never wanting, in whatever age, in whatever clime, in whatever walk of life. Would to God, my friends, you could carry away from Gogol's life with you this lesson: In your very midst, perhaps this very day, there doubtless walks among you some mighty spirit, some hungry soul. Seek him out, find him out, that not of ye at least shall be said those immeasurably sorrowful words which could be said of the countless friends of Gogol,--they came with their sympathy--too late! LECTURE IV. TURGENEF. 1. In the history of Russian letters, Ivan Turgenef is the most complex figure. Nay, with the exception of Shakespeare he is perhaps the most complex figure in all literature. He is universal, he is provincial; he is pathetic, he is sneering; he is tender, he is merciless; he is sentimental, he is frigid. He can be as compact as Tacitus, and as prolix as Thackeray. He can be as sentimental as Werther, and as heartless as Napoleon. He can cry with the bird, grow with the grass, and hum with the bee; he can float with the spirits, and dream with the fevered. He is everywhere at home: in the novel, in the story, in the sketch, in the diary, in the epistle. Whatever form of composition he touches, let once his genius be mature, and it turns to gold under his hands. On reading through his ten volumes you leave him with the feeling that you have just emerged from the virgin forests of South America; your head is full of monkeys frolicking about, with an occasional cocoanut shot at you, your head is full of the birds with their variegated plumage, of the fragrance of the flowers, of the dusk about you, and of the primeval stillness of the forest. And the collective impression of the writer, the man, left upon you is that of some invisible but consummate artist who had been passing before you all manner of photographs made lurid by the glare of the stereopticon: photograph now of sunset cloud, now of lover's scene in the lane, now of a dyspeptic, long-haired, wrinkled old man. The writer Turgenef has thus been for years an enigma. Katkof, the pillar of Russian autocracy, claims him as his, and the revolutionists claim him as theirs; the realists point to him as one of the apostles of their new gospel, and the idealists point to him as the apostle of theirs. Now he defies public opinion by befriending an obnoxious exile, now he shrinks before it by disclaiming almost his acquaintance. Between the contending parties, poor Turgenef shared the fate of the child of the women who did _not_ come to King Solomon for advice in their dispute about its mother. The poor child was pulled by each until disfigured for life. So Turgenef between the different parties, each claiming him as its own, remained homeless, almost friendless, to the end of his days, belonging to none; and though surrounded by all manner of society and companionship which fame, wealth, and position could give, he was yet at bottom solitary, for he went through the world a man who was misunderstood. 2. His position in letters is therefore anomalous. Russians blame him, but read him; and Americans praise him, and read him not. Englishmen quote him, Frenchmen write essays on him, and Germans write books about him; but all agree in wondering at him, all agree in not comprehending him. And yet Turgenef's life and the purpose of his books is plain enough to him that comes to view him with eyes as yet uncovered by partisan glasses. Turgenef the realist, Turgenef the idealist, is enigmatic enough; but once understood that Turgenef was the literary warrior against what was to him a mortal enemy, and his whole life and all his important works at once become explicable, consistent. 3. For man is something more than the mere sum of his abilities. Behind all the forces of the man, whether of body or of mind, there stands the soul, which uses them for purposes of its own, be they for better or for worse. And of these there is always one which in time becomes the absorbent of all its life, the essence of all its being; and such purpose is soon found in the life of every man who lives, and not merely exists; such purpose is soon found in the mightiest as well as in the frailest, in the loftiest as well as in the lowest. And till such purpose is understood, the life of the man is to beholders what the flower is to the eye when looked at through a microscope,--an expanse of mere tissue, rough, formless, confusing; but such purpose once understood, the soul is transformed to the beholder as if made of glass, transparent, uniform, simple. 4. Such purpose runs like a woof through the whole being of Turgenef. He is a hunter, he is a clubman, he is a philanthropist, he is an artist; but he is first of all a warrior, because he is first of all a lover of his country, and a hater of what oppresses it. He does indeed much else besides fighting for the emancipation of the land of his birth; but he does it in the same spirit in which sensible folk go to dinners not for the sake of eating, to receptions not for the sake of being received, and wear kid gloves in summer not for the sake of keeping the hands warm; these things, meaningless in themselves, are only incidentals in the life of the spirit, which alone can be said to have any meaning. 5. Turgenef, then, is the fighter. This accounts for what is otherwise a strange phenomenon in Turgenef's art. In his "Memoirs of a Sportsman," in which he first aimed his blows consciously against serfdom, his muse busies itself not with life normal, but with life abnormal; not with every-day characters, but with such as are seen rarely; not with frequented places, but with unfrequented places. The "Memoirs of a Sportsman" is a collection of sketches which form a sort of variety museum of all manner of bizarre and even grotesque figures. Critics naturally marvelled at this; and as in the days of old, men explained the effects of morphine by saying that it contained the soporific principle, and the action of the pump by nature's abhorring a vacuum, so critics explained this fact, so strange in the healthy, clear-eyed, measure-loving Turgenef, by saying that he had a natural fondness for the fantastic and the strange. In truth, however, the choice of his subjects was part of his very art as a warrior. He wished to strike, to rouse; and here the extraordinary is ever more effective than the ordinary. It was the same design which made the otherwise generous, tender Wendell Phillips adopt a personal mode of warfare in his struggle against slavery with a bitterness almost Mephistophelian. And the same purpose made Turgenef, against the dictates of his muse, choose strange characters for his sketches. Both Phillips and Turgenef here sacrificed their feelings to their cause: the one sacrificed to his purpose even his love for his fellow-men; the other, even his love for his art. 6. One other strange fact in the art of Turgenef is explained by this fighting essence of his being. There is no growth, development, visible in Turgenef. He lived to what is for Russian men of letters an advanced age: he died when over sixty years old; yet, beginning with his first great work of art, "Rudin," and ending with his last great work of art, "Virgin Soil," through all his masterpieces, he remains the same. His six great novels, "Rudin," "A Nest of Noblemen," "On the Eve," "Fathers and Sons," "Smoke," and "Virgin Soil," form indeed an ascending scale, but not as works of art; as such, they are all on the same highest plane. And it would be difficult to find any canon of art according to which one could be placed above the other. Only when viewed as different modes of warfare, do they represent the different stages of his soul's life; but this only in so far as they reflect at the same time the state of the enemy's forces, against whom he found it necessary to re-equip himself from time to time. As an artist, then, Turgenef is not progressive; when his art comes to him, it comes like Minerva from Jupiter's head,--fully made, fully armed; and had it even come undeveloped, it would have had, in his case, to remain thus. For growth, development, needs time, needs leisure, needs reflection, needs rest; and of all this, on the field of battle, there is none to be had. Onward or backward, conquer or perish, but stand still on the field of battle thou must not. And while it was not given to Turgenef to conquer, neither was it given to the enemy to conquer him. Turgenef, therefore, as he lived a fighter, so he died a fighter. 7. Turgenef, then, had a life-long enemy; this enemy was Russian autocracy. 8. Born in 1818, in the same year with the autocrat of Russia, who afterwards dreaded him as his _bête noir_, he already in his childhood had the opportunity to learn the weight of the iron hand of Nicolas. Scarcely was he seven years old when the news came to his father's household that the family name so dear to them, and hitherto a synonym of honor both in and out of Russia, had been disgraced; that Nicolai Turgenef, one of the most faithful servants of the country under Alexander I., the younger of the two celebrated brothers, and a near relative of Ivan, had been sentenced to Siberian hard labor for life,--sentenced under circumstances which could not but shock the sense of justice not only of the trustful boy, but also of those whom maturer age had accustomed to the methods of the government. Nicolai Turgenef was condemned as one of the Decembrists, and the days of the youth of Ivan were the days when the Decembrists were looked up to as the first martyrs of Russian liberty. Pushkin, the friend of the leaders of the insurrection, and the singer of the "Ode to Liberty," was then worshipped by the youth of Russia as poet was worshipped never before; to be related to the Decembrists was therefore a privilege, and to oppose autocracy in thought at least thus became a kind of family pride. Moreover, contrary to most Russian aristocrats, Sergei Turgenef conducted the early education of his gifted son himself; and the son of the conscientious father, when taken out into the world, could not but feel the discord between the peaceful life, rigid conduct, and high ideals of his home on the one hand, and the gloomy struggle for existence, lax morals of the officials, and the low standards of the world about him on the other. When Turgenef therefore was introduced into society, he was already saturated with revolutionary ideas, and it was not long before he found the atmosphere of his native land stifling; and already, at the age of nineteen, he had to face the question whether to stay and endure, or--to flee. The boy of nineteen cannot endure; go then from Russia he must, but go--whither? Fortunately, just beyond the western border there lay a country which had already proved the promised land of others equally defiant with Turgenef. Germany already harbored Stankevitch, Granofsky, Katkof, and Bakunin. The youth of Russia of those days had metaphorically cried to the Germans what a thousand years before them the Slavs had cried literally to the Varangians: "Our land is wide, and overflowing with abundance; but of order in it there is none. Come ye, therefore; and rule over us, and restore order among us!" Germany thus became the land of milk and honey for the Russians hungry in spirit. Whatever had any ambition looked to a visit to Germany with the same longing with which a Mohammedan looks to the shrines of Mecca. 9. Berlin was the first halting-station of the pilgrims; Böck was lecturing there on Greek literature, Zumpt on Roman antiquities, and Werder was expounding the philosophy of the man who boasted or complained of being understood by only one man, and that one misunderstood him. To these masters in the education of hair-splitting flocked almost all who became celebrated afterwards in Russia's public life, and even the government was sending students to Berlin at public expense. To these masters Turgenef also went, hearing Greek literature and Roman antiquities by day, and committing to memory the elements of Greek and Latin grammar by night. For in the Russian university, where Turgenef had hitherto spent two years, the professors were appointed not because of their knowledge of Latin and Greek, but because of their knowledge of military tactics. 10. When after two years Turgenef returned to his native land, he brought back with him, indeed, a high knowledge of Latin grammar, but a total ignorance of the highest aims of life. He brought back with him a religious scepticism, and a metaphysical pessimism, which colored henceforth his whole life, and therefore his artistic works. For those were the days when men yet believed that the great problems of the soul in its relation to the gods and to men could be solved not so much by living and by doing, as by disputing and by talking; those were the days when the philosopher's stone, turning all things into gold, was sought not in a rule for the conduct of life, such as "Love thy neighbor," or "Do unto others," but rather in the barren, egg-dancing, acrobatically-balanced formula, "What is, is right." Those were the days when Hegel was supreme in philosophy because of his obscurity, as Browning is now supreme in poetry because of his; the shrivelled, evaporated, dead grain of wheat was prized all the more because it had been searched out with painful toil from the heap of chaff. "By their fruits ye shall know them." The fruit of the deep study of Browning is an intimate knowledge of the use of English particles; and the fruit of the devoted study of Hegel was an intimate knowledge of metaphysical verbiage: being, substance, essence, and absolute. But of life-giving nourishment there was none to be had. The barrenness of all this, Turgenef indeed soon did perceive, but when the disenchantment came, his blood was already poisoned; his very being was eaten into by doubt, and almost to the very end of his days Turgenef remained a fatalistic sceptic, a godless pessimist; not till his old age did he espy the promised land. It was only when he witnessed with his own eyes the boundless self-sacrifice of the revolutionists, when the old man was moved by the heroism of the young Sophie Bardine even to the kissing of the very sheet upon which the girl's burning words to her judges were printed,--then, indeed, he regained his faith. He now hoped for his country, and stood even ready to become the head of the revolutionary movement in Russia; but for his artistic career all this came too late. In fact, his faith in God he never regained, though his hope for man did come back at last in his old age with the glow of his younger days. 11. This fundamental philosophic scepticism which had poisoned Turgenef's mind throughout the best years of his life accounts for a striking change which in time took place in the method of his art. Hitherto his art had been photographic of individuals. His "Memoirs of a Sportsman" is a gallery, not of ideals, not of types, but of actual men,--a gallery put on exhibition for the same end for which the rogues' gallery is exposed at the police headquarters. It is a means towards the welfare of the country. But after that book, when the scepticism had become part of his being, his method changes. For he now becomes convinced that the misrule of Russia is not so much due to the government as to the people themselves; that existence is in itself evil; that salvation, therefore, if it can come at all, must come not from without, but from within; that reform, therefore, was needed not so much for the institution, as for the men themselves. And to him men are diseased. He no longer therefore paints individual men, but henceforth he paints types; just as the physician first studies the disease not as affecting this patient or that, but as likely to affect all men, every man. 12. For much of this scepticism before life and irreverence before God Turgenef had to thank the paternal government of his fatherland. There are indeed those to whom sorrow comes like a messenger from the skies above, and lifts them heavenward on its wings. Turgenef alas! was not one of these. His was one of those souls whom sorrow deprives not only of the joys of the present, but also of the hopes of the future; and the government saw to it that of sorrows poor Turgenef have enough. Homelessness is an affliction to all sons of Adam, but to none is the sorrow of exile so intense as to the Russian. And to exile Turgenef was soon driven. Hid under glowing pictures of nature and fascinating figures of men, the real meaning of the "Memoirs of a Sportsman," while they appeared in detached sketches, eluded readily enough the Argus-eyed censor. But when these sketches were gathered into a living book, then whatever had eye could behold, and whatever had ear could hear, their heavenly message. The book therefore creates a sensation, the censor is astir, hurried consultation takes place, his Majesty himself is roused; but all this too late; the living book can no longer be strangled. The government saw that the monster was hydra-headed, and resolved to let it alone rather than by cutting one of its heads to rouse twenty in its stead. The book then was spared, but the writer was henceforth doomed; and the occasion for the final blow is soon enough at hand. The great Gogol had at last departed. The enthusiastic Turgenef writes a letter about the dead master, and calls him a great man. "In my land only he is great with whom I speak, and only while I am speaking with him," had said Paul the father; and Nicolas proved a worthy son. "In Russia there shall be no great men," saith the Tsar; and Turgenef is arrested. High-stationed dame indeed intercedes for the gifted culprit. "But remember, madame," she is told, "he called Gogol a great man." "Ah," high-stationed protectress replies, "I knew not that he committed _that_ crime!" Which crime, accordingly, Turgenef expiates with one month's imprisonment in the dungeon, and two years' banishment to his estates. Only when the heir to the throne himself appeased his enraged sire was Turgenef allowed to go in peace. Once master over himself again, Turgenef hesitated no longer. He loved, indeed, his country much, but he loved freedom more; and like a bird fresh from the cage away flew Turgenef beyond the sea. The migrating bird returns, indeed, in the spring; but for Turgenef there was no longer any spring on Russian soil, and once abroad, he became an exile for life. 13. I have said that the heroes of his six great novels are not photographs, but types. I venture to say that neither Turgenef himself nor any other Russian ever knew _a_ Bazarof, _a_ Paul Kirsanof, _a_ Rudin, _a_ Nezhdanof. But as in the generic image of Francis Galton the traits of all the individuals are found whose faces entered into the production of the image, so in the traits of Turgenef's types every one can recognize some one of _his_ acquaintance. And such is the life which the master breathes into his creations, that they become not only possible to the reader, but they actually gain flesh and blood in his very presence. 14. And of these types, Turgenef, in harmony with the advance of his own warfare, has furnished a progressive series. Accordingly the earliest depicted under the impression of profound despair is the type of the superfluous man,--the man, who not only _does_ nothing, but _can_ do nothing, struggle he never so hard. And the superfluous man not only _is_ impotent, but he _knows_ his impotence, so that he is dead in soul as well as in body. This brief sketch of a living corpse, written as early as 1850, forms thus the prologue, as it were, to all his future tragedies. From this depth of nothingness Turgenef, however, soon rises to at least the semblance of strength; and while Rudin is at bottom as impotent as Tchulkaturin, he at least pretends to strength. Rudin, then, is the hero of phrases, the boaster; he promises marvels, he charms, he captivates; but it all ends in words, and Rudin perishes as needlessly as he lived needlessly. In "Fathers and Sons," however, Bazarof is no longer a talker; he already rises to indignation and rebellion; he _lives out_ his spirit, and stubbornly resists society, religion, institutions. From Bazarof Turgenef ascends still higher to Nezhdanof in "Virgin Soil," whose aggressive attitude is already unmistakable. Nezhdanof no longer indulges in tirades against government, but he glumly organizes the revolutionary forces for actual battle. Lastly, Turgenef arrives at the highest type of the warrior, at Sophia Perofskya; and this his last type he paints in brief epilogue, just as his first type he had painted in brief prologue. What this his last type meant to Turgenef is best seen from the short prose-poem itself. THE THRESHOLD. I see a huge building; in its front wall a narrow door opens wide; behind the door gloomy darkness. At the high threshold stands a girl, a Russian girl. Frost waves from that impenetrable darkness, and with the icy breeze comes forth from the depth of the building a slow, hollow voice. "O thou, eager to step across this threshold, knowest thou what awaits thee?" "I know," answers the girl. "Cold, hunger, hatred, ridicule, scorn, insolence, prison, illness, death itself!" "I know it." "Complete isolation, loneliness." "I know it.... But I am ready. I shall endure all the sorrows, all the blows." "Not only at the hands of your enemies, but also at the hands of your family and friends." "Yes, even at the hands of these." "'Tis well.... Are you ready for the sacrifice?" "Yes." "For nameless sacrifice? Thou shalt perish; and not one, not one even shall know whose memory to honor." "I need no gratitude nor pity; I need no name." "And art thou ready even for--crime?" The girl dropped her head. "Yes, even for crime am I ready." The voice renewed not its questionings forthwith. "Knowest thou," spake the voice for the last time, "that thou mayest be disenchanted in thy ideals, that thou yet mayest come to see that thou wert misguided, and that thy young life has been wasted in vain?" "This also I know, and yet I am ready to enter." "Enter, then." The girl stepped over the threshold, and the heavy curtain dropped behind her. "Fool!" some one muttered behind her. "Saint!" came from somewhere in reply. 15. These, then, were the two leading traits of this man Turgenef. He had the fighting temperament of the warrior in his heart, and the doubting temperament of the philosopher in his head: to the first he owed the choice of his road; to the second, the manner of traversing it. His six great works of art are all tragedies. Rudin dies a needless death on a barricade; Insarof dies before he even reaches the land he is to liberate; Bazarof dies from accidental blood-poisoning and Nezhdanof dies by his own hand. Here again critics are at hand with an explanation which does not explain. Turgenef, the artist, the poet, the creator, does not know, they say, how to dispose of his heroes at the end of his stories, and he therefore kills them off. The truth, however, is that the sceptic, pessimistic Turgenef could not as an artist faithful to his belief do aught else with his heroes than to let them perish. For to him cruel fate, merciless destiny, was not mere figure of speech, but reality of realities. To Turgenef, life was at bottom a tragedy; and whatever the auspices under which he sent forth his heroes, he felt that sooner or later they must become victims of blind fate, brute force, of the relentlessly grinding, crushing mill of the gods. 16. I have thus attempted to give you an interpretation of Turgenef which perhaps explains not only his life but also the peculiar direction of his works; not only the vices of his intellect, but also the virtues of his art. 17. For the first great virtue of Turgenef's art is his matchless sense of form, as of a builder, a constructor, an architect. As works of architecture, of design, with porch and balcony, and central body, and roof, all in harmonious proportion, his six novels are unapproachable. There is a perfection of form in them which puts to shame the hopelessly groping attempts at beauty of harmonious form of even the greatest of English men of letters. As a work of architecture, for instance, "Virgin Soil" bears the same relation to the "Mill on the Floss" that the Capitol at Washington bears to the Capitol at Albany. The one is a rounded-out thing of beauty, the other an angular monstrosity. Walter Scott in England, and Mr. Howells in America, are the only English writers of fiction who possess that sense of form which makes Turgenef's art consummate; unfortunately, Walter Scott has long since been discarded as a literary model, and Mr. Howells is not yet even accepted. 18. And the second great virtue of Turgenef's art is the skill with which he contrives to tell the most with the least number of words, the skill with which he contrives to produce the greatest effect with the least expenditure of force. There is a compactness in his stories which I can only describe as Emersonian. Of his six great novels, only one has as many as three hundred pages; of the other five, not one has over two hundred. Turgenef's art is thus in striking contrast with that required by the English standard of three volumes for every novel. For what is to English and American society the greatest of social virtues was to Turgenef the greatest of artistic vices. As an artist, Turgenef detested above all cleverness,--that accomplishment which possesses to perfection the art of smuggling in a whole cartload of chaff under the blinding glare of a single phosphorescent thoughtlet; that cleverness which like all phosphorescent glows can only change into a sickly paleness at the slightest approach of God's true sunlight, of the soul's true force. Of this virtue of compactness his works offer examples on almost every page; but nowhere are its flowers strewn in such abundance as in his "Diary of a Superfluous Man." 19. This work, though only covering some sixty pages, written as it was at the age of thirty-two, when Turgenef stood as yet at the threshold of his artistic career, is in fact, as it were, an epitome of all Turgenef's forces as an artist. While in power of impression it is the peer of Tolstoy's "Ivan Ilyitsh," with which it has a striking family resemblance, it surpasses Tolstoy's sketch in the wealth of delicately shaded gems of workmanship, which glow throughout the worklet. (1) In the small provincial town, for instance, the lion from St. Petersburg, Prince N., captures the hearts of all. A ball is given in his honor, and the prince, says Turgenef, "was encircled by the host, yes, encircled as England is encircled by the sea." My ball-giving, my lion-hunting friend, _thou_ knowest the singular felicity of that one word here,--encircled! (2) The superfluous man's beloved is at last seduced by the lionized prince, and she becomes the talk of the town. A good-natured lieutenant, now first introduced by Turgenef, calls on the wretched man to console him, and the unhappy lover writes in his Diary: "I feared lest he should mention Liza. But my good lieutenant was not a gossip, and, moreover, he despised all women, calling them, God knows why, salad." This is all the description Turgenef devotes to this lieutenant; but this making him despise women under the appellation of half-sour, half-sweet conglomerate of egg-and-vegetable salad, describes the lieutenant in two lines more faithfully than pages of scientific, realistic photography. (3) Before the ruin of poor Liza becomes known, and while the prince, her seducer, is still on the height of lionization, he is challenged to a duel by Liza's faithful lover. The superfluous man wounds the prince's cheek; the prince, who deems his rival unworthy of even a shot, retaliates by firing into the air. Superfluous man is of course crushed, annihilated, and he describes his feelings thus: "Evidently this man was bound to crush me; with this magnanimity of his he slammed me in, just as the lid of the coffin is slammed down over the corpse." (4) You think, then, that the sufferings of the despairing lover as he sees his beloved going to ruin, into the arms of the seducer, are indescribable? But not to Turgenef. Says again the superfluous man in his Diary: "When our sorrows reach a phase in which they force our whole inside to quake and to squeak like an overloaded cart, then they cease to be ridiculous." Verily, only those who have been shaken to the very depths of their being can understand the marvellous fidelity of this image, the soul quaking and squeaking like an overloaded cart,--all the more faithful because of its very homeliness. Do not wonder, therefore, when the last, intensest grief, the consciousness of being crushed by his rival, finds in his Diary the following expression: (5) "And so I suffered," says the superfluous man, "like a dog whose hind parts had been crushed in by the cart-wheel as it passed over him." A more powerful description of agony, methinks, is not found even in Gogol's laughter through tears. 20. And the third great virtue of Turgenef's art is his love of Nature; and here I know not where to look for the like of him, unless to another great master of Russian letters,--to Tolstoy. For Gogol is indeed also a painter, but only a landscape-painter, while Turgenef makes you feel even the breeze of a summer eve. 21. So thrilled is his being with the love of Nature, that all her moods find a ready response in his sensitive soul. The joy of the sunshine, the melancholy of the sky shut down by huge cloud, the grandeur of the thunder, the quiver of the lightning, the glow of the dawn, the babble of the brook, and even the waving of the grass-blade,--all these he reproduces with the fidelity of one who _reveres_ Nature. Turgenef has thus at least one element of the highest religiousness,--reverence towards the powers of Nature superior to man; a reverence the possession of which he himself would perhaps have been the first to deny, since consciously he was an irreverent agnostic. But his soul was wiser than his logic; and however dead his head might declare the universe to be, his hand painted it as if alive. This, for instance, is how he describes a storm:-- "Meanwhile, along with the evening was approaching a thunder-storm. Already ever since noon the air had been close, and from the distance there was coming a low grumbling. But now the broad cloud that had long been resting like a layer of lead on the very edge of the horizon began to grow, and to be visible from behind the trees: the stifling atmosphere began to tremble more visibly, shaken stronger and stronger by the approaching thunder; the wind rose, howled abruptly through the trees, became still, howled again protractedly, and now it whistled. A sombre darkness ran over the ground, chasing swiftly away the last glimmer of the dawn; the thick clouds breaking to pieces suddenly began to float, and drove through the sky; now, a slight shower began to sprinkle, the lightning flared up with a red flame, and the thunder growled angrily and heavily." 22. Observe here the felicity of the metaphor: the cloud rests, the air trembles and is soon shaken, the darkness _runs_ over the ground, and the thunder growls in anger. Only the eye which sees at bottom life in Nature's forces could see them in such vivifying images. 23. Lastly, the fourth great virtue of Turgenef's art is his intense power of sympathy. 24. In the universality of his sympathies he is equalled again only by Tolstoy. Like him he can depict the feelings of a dog, of a bird, with a self-attesting fidelity, as if his nature were at one with theirs; and the one child of creation which man has repeatedly been declared unable to paint truthfully, namely, woman, Turgenef has painted with a grace and faithfulness unapproached even by George Eliot or by George Sand. For Turgenef loved woman as no woman could love her, and his faith in her was unbounded. Hence, when in his "On the Eve" he wishes to give expression to his despair over the _men_ of Russia, so that he has to seek the ideal of a patriot not in a Russian, but in a Bulgarian, he still rests the hope of the country on its women; and Helen, Turgenef's noblest conception among women, as Insarof is among men, is not like him a foreigner, but a Russian. And this is how Turgenef paints the noblest moment in the life of the noblest of his women. 25. The poor, prospectless foreigner Insarof discovers that he loves the rich, high-stationed Helen. He does not know that he is loved in return, and he decides to depart without taking even leave of her. They meet, however, unexpectedly. "'You come from our house, don't you?' Helen asked. "'No, ... not from your house.' "'No?' repeated Helen, and tried to smile. 'And is it thus you keep your promise? I have been expecting you all the morning.' "'Helen Nikolayevna, I promised nothing yesterday.' "Helen tried to smile again, and passed her hand across her face. Both face and hand were very pale. 'You intended, then, to depart without taking leave of us?' "'Yes,' he muttered, almost fiercely. "'How, after our acquaintance, after our talks, after all ... So, if I had not then met you here accidentally (her voice began to ring, and she stopped for a moment) ... you would have gone off, and would not have even shaken my hand in parting; gone off without regret?' "Insarof turned away. 'Helen Nikolayevna, please don't speak thus. I am, as it is, already not cheerful. Believe me, my decision has cost me great effort. If you knew ...' "'I don't wish to know why you depart,' Helen interrupted him, frightened. 'This is evidently necessary. We must evidently part. You would not grieve your friends without cause. But do friends part thus? We are of course friends, are not we?' "'No,' said Insarof. "'How?' muttered Helen, and her cheeks colored slightly. "'Why, that is exactly why I go away, because we are not friends. Don't oblige me to say what I do not wish to tell, what I shall not tell.' "'Formerly you used to be frank with me,' Helen spoke up with a slight reproach. 'Do you remember?' "'Then I could be frank; then I had nothing to hide. But now--' "'But now?' asked Helen. "'But now ... But now I must go. Good-by!' "Had Insarof at this moment raised his eyes to Helen, he would have seen that her whole face shone,--shone the more, the more his face grew gloomy and dark; but his eyes were stubbornly fixed on the floor. "'Well, good-by, Dimitry Nikanorovitch,' she began. 'But since we have met, give me now at least your hand.' "Insarof started to give her his hand. 'No, I cannot even do that,' he said, and again turned away. "'You cannot?' "'I cannot. Good-by!' And he started to go out. "'Just wait a moment,' she said. 'It seems you are afraid of me. Now, I am braver than you,' she added, with a sudden slight tremor along her whole frame. 'I can tell you ... do you wish me to tell ... why you found me here? Do you know where I was going?' "Insarof looked in surprise at Helen. "'I was going to your house.' "'To my house?' "Helen covered her face. 'You wished to compel me to say that I love you,' she whispered--'there, I have said it.' "'Helen!' exclaimed Insarof. "She took his hands, looked at him, and fell upon his breast. "He embraced her firmly, and remained silent. There was no need of telling her that he loved her. From his one exclamation, from this instantaneous transformation of the whole man, from the manner in which rose and fell that breast to which she clung so trustfully, from the manner in which the tips of his fingers touched her hair, Helen could see that she was loved. He was silent, but she needed no words. 'He is here, he loves; what more is there needed?' The calm of blessedness, the quiet of the undisturbed haven, of the attained goal, that heavenly calm which lends a meaning and a beauty to death itself, filled her whole being with a godly wave. She wished nothing, because she possessed everything. 'O my brother, my friend, my darling!' her lips whispered; and she herself knew not whose heart it was, his or hers, which was so sweetly beating and melting away in her breast. "But he stood motionless, enclosing in his firm embrace the young life which had just given itself entire unto him; he felt on his breast this new, priceless burden; a feeling of tenderness, a feeling of gratitude inexpressible, shivered into dust his hard soul, and tears, hitherto unknown to him, came to his eyes. "But she wept not; she only kept repeating: 'O my friend! O my brother!' "'Then you will go with me everywhere,' he said to her, some fifteen minutes later, as before enclosing and supporting her in his embrace. "'Everywhere, to the end of the earth; wherever you are, there shall I be.' "'And you are sure you do not deceive yourself? You know your parents will never consent to our marriage?' "'I am not deceiving myself; I know it.' "'You know I am poor, almost a beggar?' "'I know it.' "'That I am not a Russian, that I am fated to live beyond Russia, that you will have to break all your ties with your country and your family?' "'I know it, I know it.' "'You know also that I have devoted my life to a difficult, thankless task; that I ... that we shall have to expose ourselves not only to dangers, but to deprivation, and to degradation perhaps?' "'I know, I know it all ... but I love you.' "'That you will have to give up all your habits; that there alone, among strangers, you will perhaps have to toil?' "She put her hands on his lips. 'I love you, darling.' "He began to kiss warmly her narrow, rosy hand. Helen did not take her hand from his lips, and with a kind of childish joy, with laughing curiosity, she watched him covering with kisses now her hand, now her fingers. "Suddenly she blushed, and hid her face on his breast. "He gently raised up her head and looked firmly into her eyes. "'So God be with you,' he said; 'be thou my wife both before men and before God.'" 26. These, then, were the numerous great virtues of Turgenef; and they have made him the most enjoyable of artists. But his one great vice, the vice of doubt, the vice of hopelessness, has made him, as a nourisher of the spirit, among the least profitable as a writer. 27. For, O my friends, it cannot be stated too often that whatever puts new strength into the spirit is from the great God, the Good; and whatever takes strength from the spirit is from the great Devil, the Evil. And the things that have ever proved the inexhaustible sources of strength to the soul have been not doubt and despair, but faith and hope,--faith that the destinies of men are guided by love even though guided through the agony of sorrow; faith that behind this appearance of discord and blind fate and brute force there is after all to be found the substance of harmony, of wise forethought, of tender love; hope, that however terrible the present, the future will yet be one of joy, one of peace. If reason with its logic can strengthen this faith, this hope, then welcome reason, blessed be reason; but if reason with its logic can only make me doubt the presence of wisdom, the presence of love, then begone reason, cursed be reason. Verily, by their fruits ye shall know them! 28. Turgenef therefore was incapable of creating a Levin, because he had not the faith which makes the Levins of Tolstoy possible. He was filled with the pessimistic woe of the world, believed at bottom that man, born in sorrow, must also live in sorrow. With the sublimity of a prophet, Turgenef cries: "From the inmost depths of the virgin forest, from the eternal depth of the waters, resounds the same cry of Nature to man: 'I have naught to do with thee. I rule, but thou--look to thy life, O worm!'" While personally he indeed contributed what lay in his power to alleviate the present ills of men, he could do naught towards alleviating the future ills of men; for he could not inspire men with hope, since he had none himself. For hope comes from faith, and Turgenef was devoid of faith. Turgenef, like another great master of fiction, George Eliot, was a veritable child of the immature age, not of science, of knowledge, but of nescience, of ignorance, of agnosticism; for it is only ignorance that doubts, and it is true science that believes. 29. I cannot therefore ask you to take leave with me of Turgenef without at least urging you to profit by this one fact in his life. Turgenef failed to reach the highest, the height of Tolstoy, because he failed to free himself from that alone which must forever trammel the soul. He failed to free himself from that fundamental distrust of God which is at bottom of all despair. You, too, my friends, have that distrust. O ye in society who dread the consequences of having one kind word to say, or even one glance of recognition to cast at a brother because forsooth he has not been properly introduced to you, are not ye doubting your own God in your breasts, which acts not in fear of your fellow-men, but in trust of them? And, O ye who refuse to help a begging brother for fear lest he prove an impostor, are not ye likewise at bottom doubting the God within you which acts through pity to a brother, even though he _do_ deceive? Turgenef fell short of the highest because he did not cast off the scepticism of his intellect. Are not ye, my friends, likewise in danger of falling short of the highest because you too do not cast off the scepticism of the heart? LECTURE V. TOLSTOY THE ARTIST. 1. I have stated in the first lecture that the soul of man ever strives onward and upward; that its goal is the establishment of the kingdom of heaven, which consists in reverence before God above, and in love towards man here below. I have stated that of this journey of the soul heavenward, literature is the record; that the various phases of literary development are only so many mile-posts on the road; that after the voices of the singer, of the protester, of the warrior, are hushed, there must be heard what must remain forever the loftiest voice in letters,--the voice of the preacher, the prophet, the inspirer. And I have stated that just as Pushkin is the singer, Gogol the protester, and Turgenef the fighter, so is Tolstoy in Russian literature the preacher, the inspirer. 2. But just because he is the prophet, the uplifter, the proclaimer, Tolstoy is no longer the _merely_ Russian writer. Pushkin is the _Russian_ singer, Gogol is the _Russian_ protester, and Turgenef is the _Russian_ fighter; but Tolstoy is not the inspirer of Russia alone, but of all mankind. Tolstoy has the least of the Russian in him, because he has the most of the man in him; he has the least of the son of the Slav in him, because he has the most of the Son of God in him. The voice of Leo Tolstoy is not the voice of the nineteenth century, but of all centuries; the voice of Leo Tolstoy is not the voice of one land, but of all lands; for the voice of Leo Tolstoy, in short, is the voice of God speaking through man. 3. For, O my friends, there _is_ a God in heaven, even though the voices of pessimism and agnosticism be raised never so high against him. There is a God who ruleth over the heavens and over the earth; and he is boundless with space, and everlasting with time; and he is sublime with the sky, and he twinkleth with the star; and he smileth with the sun, and he beameth with the moon; and he floateth with the cloud, and he saileth with the wind; he flasheth with the lightning, and resoundeth with the thunder, he heaveth with the sea, and he dasheth with the surf; he floweth with the river, and he rusheth with the torrent; he babbleth with the brook, and he sparkleth with the dew-drop; he reposeth with the landscape, and he laugheth with the meadow; he waveth with the tree, and he quivereth with the leaf; he singeth with the bird, and he buzzeth with the bee; he roareth with the lion, and he pranceth with the steed; he crawleth with the worm, and he soareth with the eagle; he darteth with the porpoise, and he diveth with the fish; he dwelleth with the loving, and he pleadeth with the hating; he shineth with the merciful, and he aspireth with the prayerful. He is ever nigh unto men,--he, the Prince of Light! 4. And I say unto ye that the Lord God hath not hid himself from the hearts of men; he that spake unto Moses and the prophets, and through them,--he is still nigh. He that spake unto Jesus and the Apostles, and through them,--he is still nigh. He that spake to Mohammed and Luther, and through them,--he is still nigh. He recently spake through Carlyle and through Emerson, and their voices are not yet hushed. And he still speaketh, my friends, through Ruskin in England and through Tolstoy in Russia, as he ever shall speak through all earnest souls who love him with all their heart because they know him, who seek him with all their heart because they know him not. Think not therefore the Lord God hath ceased to speak unto men through men; verily, if men but see to it that there be enough inspired, God will see to it that there be enough inspirers. 5. And of these Heaven-sent inspirers, Tolstoy is the latest. But do not believe that in saying that he is Heaven-sent I attempt to explain aught. The highest is ever inexplicable, and it is the bane of modern science that it is ever ready to explain what cannot be explained. Before the highest we can only stand dumb; and this has been the feeling of the greatest, because of the humblest, of spirits. The Greek painter, therefore, when about to depict the highest grief of a father, gives up in despair, and veils the father's face; and Meyer von Bremen's grandmother, when confronted with the question from the children whence came that sweet babe in her arms, can only reply, "The storks brought it;" and so I can say to you only, Tolstoy is sent unto men from Heaven. 6. I say he is Heaven-sent, because he came to proclaim not what is ephemeral and perishing, but what is permanent and everlasting. He came to proclaim not the latest theory of gravitation, of molecular vibration, of modes of heat and manners of cold, nor of struggle for existence, nor of supply and demand, nay, not even of scientific charity. He came to proclaim that which was as true in the days of Jesus as it is true in the days of Darwin,--that the life of man can have no meaning, unless when guided by obedience to God and love to man. Gravitation, struggle for existence! The earth has been spinning round its parent for ages before man's brain-kin made the marvellous discovery that God's mysterious impulse which set the earth whirling through the abysses of space is explained in right scientific fashion by labelling it gravitation. This green earth has rolled on, this green earth will roll on, label or no label; and the mystery of God men knew not before gravitation, nor do they know it now with gravitation. Men have for ages been multiplying under the blessing of God, and loving one another, long before that marvellous discovery was made that man, sprung from a monkey, and bred in struggle for existence, is destined at last, under fine progress of species, to become brutalized with Malthusian law as a cannibal living on the flesh of his brother, with self-respect and scientific charity in most abundant supply and demand. Tolstoy came to proclaim not the new gospel of death, but the old gospel of life; not the new gospel of struggle for existence, but the old gospel of helpfulness for existence; not the new gospel of competition, but the old gospel of brotherhood. Tolstoy came to proclaim the gospel of God, the gospel of man, the gospel of Christ, the gospel of Socrates, the gospel of Epictetus, of Aurelius, of Carlyle, of Emerson,--the gospel of reverence before God and love to man, which is indeed ever old, but which, alas! the sons of Darkness see to it that it remain forever new. 7. These, then, are the men among whom Tolstoy belongs: which of these the greater, which of these the less? My friends, when we arrive at these, we are no longer among the measurable planets, but among the immeasurable fixed stars. Sirius flashes indeed with greater splendor than Vega, and Vega than Arcturus, and Arcturus than Capella, and Capella flashes with greater splendor than Aldebaran; but who shall undertake to say which of these suns is the greater, which is the less? The difference of splendor is not in the stars themselves, but in our eyes. And at this our immeasurable distance from these souls who are nighest unto the throne of the Most High, it is not for me, the worm, as I stand before you, to presume to measure which is the greater, which is the less. Rather than spending our time in profitless weighing and measuring, let me beseech you to bow your heads in awe and gratitude, praising God for the mercy which sendeth now and then unto men the living voice, the helping voice. 8. Tolstoy, therefore, is one of those spirits whom I cannot approach with the dissecting-knife, as the critic does the author, in order to "account" for him. To do this, that total freedom from sentiment is required which was possessed by the enterprising reporter who on the death of a prominent citizen forthwith requested an interview with "corpse's uncle." In an age when sentiment has become a byword of impotence, and the heart has become a mere force-pump for the blood; in an age when charity has to be put in swaddling-clothes lest it injure a brother by helping him; when the poor are preached to by their rich visiting friends, not to make a home for themselves when their love for a mate is born in the heart, but only when it is born in the purse,--in such an age that reporter's freedom from sentiment is indeed a most valuable acquisition; but I, alas! as yet possess it not! I shall therefore neither judge the preacher Tolstoy, nor measure him. I shall only point out to you to-day wherein he differs, as he must needs differ, from the rest of that noble band of the chosen messengers of God to which he belongs. 9. And the first striking difference is that Tolstoy is a consummate artist, a creator, in addition to the great preacher. For Marcus Aurelius is no artist. He is merely a speaker; he delivers his message in plain tongue, unadorned, often even unpolished. Epictetus, equally simple, equally direct with Marcus Aurelius, comes, however, already adorned with a certain humor which now and then sparkles through his serious pages. Ruskin brings with him quite a respectable load of artistic baggage; he brings an incisiveness, a sarcasm, often a piquancy with him, which makes him entertaining besides inspiring. Emerson and Carlyle bring with them much that, as artistic work; might, under more favorable auspices, have been worth saving for its own sake: the one brings a grace, a sportiveness, and a brilliancy which fascinates, the other a fervor, an imagination, a grim-humor, a lightning-flashing, which dazzles. But none of these live in letters because of their art. Were they to depend on this alone, they would quickly perish. They live because of the spirit which worketh through them; so that were you to take the Jeremiah out of Carlyle, the John the Baptist out of Ruskin, and the Solomon out of Emerson, you would deprive them of their literary life. Tolstoy, however, even though the preacher be gone from him, still remains a mighty power in letters because of his art. For not only are his works filled with the highest purpose,--they are also created with the highest art. And I cannot show you this difference any better than by quoting two passages, one from Carlyle, the other from Tolstoy, both treating of the soul's well-nigh noblest emotion,--Repentance. "On the whole, we make too much of faults. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible, above all, one would think, might know better. Who is called there 'the man according to God's own heart'? David, the Hebrew king, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And therefore the unbelievers sneer, and ask, 'Is this the man according to God's own heart?' The sneer, I must say, seems to be but a shallow one. "What are faults, what are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-battled, never-ending struggle of it be forgotten? 'It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, _repentance_ the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were the same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact,--is dead; it is 'pure,' as dead dry sand is pure. "David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest men will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul toward what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore battled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that,--'a succession of falls'? Man can do no other. In this wild element of Life, he has to struggle onward; now fallen, deep abased; and ever with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onward. That his struggle _be_ a faithful, unconquerable one; that is the question of questions. We will put up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true. Details by themselves will never teach us what it is." 10. Powerful as this passage is, I cannot help feeling that Tolstoy has treated the same subject more artistically than Carlyle, by embodying his lesson in objective shape, where Carlyle treats it subjectively. And now listen to Tolstoy:-- THE REPENTING SINNER. There lived in the world a man for seventy years, and all his life he lived in sin. And this man fell ill, and still he did not repent. But when death was nigh, at the last hour, he began to weep, and said, "Lord, as thou hast forgiven the thief on the cross, so do thou forgive me!" He had scarcely spoken, and away flew his soul. And the sinner's soul began to love God, and, trusting his mercy, came to the gates of heaven. And the sinner began to knock, and to ask admission into the kingdom of heaven. And from behind the door he heard a voice: "Who is this knocking for admission into the gates of heaven, and what are the deeds this man in his lifetime has done?" And the voice of the accuser gave answer, and recounted all the sinful deeds of this man; and of good deeds he named none. And the voice from behind the door answered: "Sinners cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Get thee hence!" Said the sinner: "Lord, I hear thy voice, but I see not thy countenance and know not thy name." And the voice gave in reply: "I am Peter the Apostle." Said the sinner: "Have mercy upon me, Apostle Peter; remember the weakness of man, and the mercy of God. Was it not you who was a disciple of Christ, and was it not you who heard from his own lips his teaching, and saw the example of his life? And now remember, when he was weary and sad in spirit, and thrice asked thee not to slumber, but to pray, you slept, because your eyes were heavy, and thrice he found you sleeping. The same of me. "And remember likewise how thou hast promised to him not to renounce him until thy dying day, and yet thou didst renounce him thrice when they led him away. The same of me. "And remember likewise how crowed the cock, and thou hast gone forth and wept bitterly. The same of me. Not for thee 'tis to refuse me entrance." And the voice from behind the gates of heaven was hushed. And after standing some time, again knocked the sinner, and asked admittance into the kingdom of heaven. And from behind the doors there was heard another voice which spake: "Who is this, and how has he lived on earth?" And the voice of the accuser gave answer, and repeated all the evil deeds of the sinner; and of the good deeds he named none. And the voice from behind the door called: "Get thee hence. Sinners such as thou cannot live with us in Paradise." Said the sinner: "Lord, thy voice I hear, but thy face I see not, and thy name I know not." And the voice said unto him: "I am David, the king and the prophet." But the sinner despaired not, nor went he away from the gates of heaven, but spake as follows: "Have mercy upon me, King David, and think of the weakness of man and the mercy of God. God loved thee and raised thee up before men. Thine was all,--a kingdom, and glory, and riches, and wives, and children; yet when thou didst espy from thy roof the wife of a poor man, sin betook thee, and thou hast taken the wife of Uriah, and himself hast thou slain by the sword of the Ammonites. Thou, a rich man, hast taken his last lamb from the poor man, and hast slain the owner himself. The same of me! "And think further how thou hast repented, and said: 'I confess my guilt, and repent of my sin.' The same of me. Not for thee 'tis to refuse me entrance." And the voice behind the door was hushed. And after standing some time, again knocked the sinner, and asked admission into the kingdom of heaven. And from behind the doors was heard a third voice which spake: "Who is this, and how hath he lived on earth?" And for the third time the voice of the accuser recounted the evil deeds of the man, but of the good he named none. And the voice from behind the door gave in answer: "Get thee hence! The kingdom of heaven not by a sinner can be entered." And replied the sinner: "Thy voice I hear, but thy face I see not, and thy name I know not." Answered the voice: "I am John, the beloved disciple of Christ." And rejoiced the sinner, and spake: "Now verily shall I be let in. Peter and David shall admit me because they know the weakness of man, and the grace of God; but thou shalt admit me because thou hast much love. For hast thou not writ in thy book, O John, that God is Love, and that whosoever knoweth not Love, knoweth not God? Wert not thou he that spake in his old age unto men only this one word: 'Brethren, love ye one another'? How then shalt thou now hate me and drive me hence? Either renounce thine own words, or learn to love me, and admit me into the kingdom of heaven." And the gates of heaven opened, and John embraced the repenting sinner, and admitted him into the kingdom of heaven. 11. Tolstoy, then, is the sole example among men of the harmonious combination of loftiest aspiration with highest artistic skill. Tolstoy sees in himself only the preacher, and therefore at the age of sixty he does not hesitate to repudiate all those works of his which are not those of the preacher, however great their value as works of art. Turgenef sees in him only the artist, and therefore beseeches from his death-bed his fellow-craftsman to give himself back to the forsaken art. Both are here right, both are here wrong. For each sees only one side, while Tolstoy is neither the preacher alone nor the artist alone. Tolstoy, like Janus of old, is two-faced,--the artist, when his soul is in a state of war; the preacher, when his soul is in a state of peace. Turgenef looks only upon the face of the artist; Tolstoy looks out into the world with the face of the preacher. 12. This noble combination of the preacher and the artist has accordingly determined the character of Tolstoy's art. For the first question Tolstoy asks of every event, of every phenomenon he has to depict, is, What effect has this on the soul of man; what bearing has this on the life of man; what, in short, is its moral meaning? Hence when Tolstoy paints, he paints not only objectively, but also subjectively. In the storm-scene, for instance, which I have read you at the first lecture, Tolstoy is not satisfied to give you merely the outward appearance of the storm, its appearance in Nature, he rests not until he has painted also its effect on the soul; and the progress of the terror inspired keeps pace with the advance of the cloud. Hence the sudden introduction of the beggar from under the bridge, with his horrible stump of hand stretched out as he runs beside the carriage begging for alms. This incident is as much part of the storm, and as terrifying to the little Katenka and the little Lubotshka as the glare of the lightning and the crash of the thunder. Tolstoy the artist never sees Nature with the eyes of the body, but with the eyes of the spirit, he never sees matter without the underlying mind; he never sees the object without its complement, the subject. Tolstoy, therefore, is the first great artist (and if the one-eyed prophets of the merely _objective_ art prevail, who now clamor so loudly, he promises, alas! to remain also the last) who has painted Nature entire. Tolstoy is the first great artist, therefore, into whose pictures enter not only the details visible, but also the details invisible. To Tolstoy, the vibration of the string is not described in completeness until he has also shown how its music has made to vibrate not only the air, but also the soul. Painter then of the inward universe as well as of the outward, of the spiritual as well as of the natural, of the things unseen as well as of those seen, Tolstoy has exhausted Nature. He has plunged into her nethermost depths, like Schiller's diver, and lo! forth he comes from the abyss with her swallowed-up treasure. Verily, here Tolstoy is unapproachable. Only one other man of letters hath here even distant fellowship with him, and this is Ralph Waldo Emerson. 13. That an art which is born of such a union of the preacher with the worshipper of beauty as it exists in Tolstoy, can only be of the highest, and must be of the highest, I therefore no longer hesitate to affirm. Read, therefore, in this light the successive chapters in Book VII. of "Anna Karenina," where is told the birth of a son of Kitty and Levin. Our modern apostles of the gospel of fidelity at all hazards, even though it be the fidelity of dirt, would have here made you look at the blood, at the towels, at the bowls, at the bottles, would have made you smell the odors,--they would have recounted to you all those details which, however pathetic to those doomed to be by-standers in the sick-room, can only be nauseating to those out of the sick-room. Tolstoy the preacher is impressed with the immeasurable pain which attends the entrance into the world of a newly-born human soul,--agony unendurable, all the more unendurable because inexplicable, inscrutable. His great artistic soul rests not until it hath relieved itself with at least a cry over such sorrow. Paint it therefore he must; but he paints it, observe, not directly, by photographing the tortures of Kitty, but indirectly, by picturing the agony of Levin; for the one would have only nauseated, the other stirs the reader to his very depths. The husband suffers more than the wife, because he sees her not with the eyes of the head, but with the eyes of the heart; the groans of Kitty, which reach him from the neighboring chamber, can indeed be silenced by the physician's drug; but no drug can silence the groan of Levin, for it is pressed out by the agony, not of the body, but by the agony of the soul. And as love, sympathy, is ever an eye-opener, so here Tolstoy, the consummate artist, has reproduced the scene of the sick-room with the highest fidelity, because he has reproduced it not with the arts of cold mechanical photography, but with those of warm, sympathetic imagination. Tolstoy reproduces therefore with the highest faithfulness because he too sees not with the eye of the head, but with the eye of the heart. 14. And for the highest example of such art I will venture to read to you the passage in which Tolstoy tells of Anna Karenina's fall. Until the reader comes to this passage, there is not a syllable to tell him that she _has_ fallen. Observe then Tolstoy's manner of telling it. I venture to think it far more faithful than any realistic art could have made it by furnishing details not necessarily more true because less delicate:-- "That in which during almost a whole year consisted the one, exclusive longing of Vronsky's life, that which had supplanted all his former wishes, that which to Anna had been a dream of impossible, terrible, yet for this reason all the more fascinating happiness,--this wish was at last gratified. Pale, with his lower jaw trembling, he stood over her and begged her to quiet herself, not knowing himself how and what. "'Anna, Anna,' he spake with trembling voice. 'Anna, for God's sake!' "But the louder he spake, the lower sank her head, once proud and glad, now abased; she now crouched, and was sinking from the sofa, where she had been sitting, to the floor, at his feet. She would have fallen on the carpet had he not supported her. 'O my God, forgive me!' she sobbed, and pressed his hands to her breast. "So criminal and so guilty she felt herself, that the only thing left her was to humiliate herself and to beg forgiveness. But now she had no one in life left her but him, and to him she turns with prayer for forgiveness. As she gazed at him she physically felt her degradation, and she could say nothing more. And he on his part felt what a murderer must feel when beholding the body he has just deprived of its life. This body, deprived by him of its life, was their love, the first period of their love. There was something horrible and repulsive in the memory of that which was purchased at the terrible price of shame. The shame of her moral nakedness was stifling to her, and this stifling feeling communicated itself also to him. But, in spite of all the horror before the body of the slain, the body must be cut into pieces, must be hidden away, and use must be made of what the murderer had obtained by his murder. "And as the murderer with fierceness, almost with passion, throws himself upon the body and drags it and hacks it, so he too kept covering with kisses her face and her shoulders. She kept his hand and moved not. Yes, these kisses,--this it was which was bought with this her shame. 'Yes, and this one hand which will always be mine is the hand of my--confederate.' She raised this hand and kissed it. He dropped on his knees and wished to see her face, but she hid her face and said naught. At last, as if making an effort over herself, she rose and pushed him away. Her face was indeed as handsome as ever, but it was now pitiful all the more. "''Tis all ended,' she said. 'I have nothing left but thee. Remember this.' "'I cannot help remembering what constitutes my life. For one minute of this blessedness ...' "'Blessedness!' she uttered with terror and disgust, and her terror communicated itself to him. 'For God's sake, not a word, not one word more!' "She quickly rose and turned away from him. "'Not another word,' she repeated; and with an expression strange to him, with an expression of cold despair on her face, she parted from him. She felt that at this moment she could not express in words her feeling of shame, joy, and terror before this entrance into a new life, and she did not wish to speak of it, to lower that feeling with inexact words. But even later, on the morrow, and on the third day, she not only could find no words for expressing the whole complexity of these feelings, but she could not find even thoughts, in revolving which she might clearly define to herself whatever was going on in her soul. "She said to herself, 'No, I cannot think this out now; later, when I shall be more calm.' But this calmness for her thoughts never came; whenever the thought came to her of what she had done, and of what was to become of her, and of what she must do, terror came upon her, and she drove away these thoughts. "'Later, later,' she repeated, 'when I am more calm.' "But in sleep, when she had no control over her thoughts, her situation appeared to her in all its ugly nakedness. One dream came to her almost nightly. She dreamed that both were her husbands, that both were spending upon her their caresses. Alexei Alexandrovitsh cried as he kissed her hands, and said, 'Ah, how good this is!' And Alexei Vronsky was there, and he also was her husband. And she wondered why all this had hitherto seemed to her impossible, and explained to them laughingly how simple all this was, and that now they were both content and happy. But the dream oppressed her like an Alp, and she awoke every time in terror." 15. And of such unapproachable art the examples in Tolstoy are well-nigh innumerable. There is hardly a single work of Tolstoy in which he does not display that marvellous fidelity which has made Mr. Howells exclaim: "This is not a picture of life, but life itself!" And this fidelity Tolstoy attains not so much by depicting the event itself as by depicting its effect on the soul; just as the silent sight of the wounded on the field tells of the battle more loudly than the thunder of the cannon. I say this is the highest art, because its method is universal, where all others are only particular; for men may indeed differ in the language of the tongue, but they do not differ in the language of the spirit. 16. Read in the same light, then, his unparalleled gallery of life-scenes in "Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth." Read in the same light the death-scene of Count Bezukhoi in "War and Peace;" read the war-scene on the bridge, the wounding of Balkonsky; read the skating-scene in "Anna Karenina," the racing-scene, the meeting between Anna and her darling Seriozha. My friends, in the presence of such art words fail me; I can only cry to you, "Read, read, and read!" Read humbly, read admiringly. The reading of Tolstoy in this spirit shall in itself be unto you an education of your highest artistic sense. And when your souls have become able to be thrilled to their very depths by the unspeakable beauty of Tolstoy's art, you will then learn to be ashamed of thought that for years you sensible folk of Boston have been capable of allowing,--the Stevensons with their Hydes, and the Haggards with their Shes, and even the clumsy Wards with their ponderous Elsmeres, to steal away under the flag of literature your thoughtful moments. You will then learn to understand how it comes to pass that the artistically cold passionless Mr. Howells even, the apostle of heartlessness in art,--however brave and full of heart the noble man be in actual life,--can be struck with awe before the mighty presence of Tolstoy, and how it is possible that the only words he can whisper is, "I cannot say aught!" The preface of Mr. Howells to Tolstoy's "Sebastopol" has been declared by wiseacres to be the symptom of his decadence. My friends, believe it not. This admiration of Mr. Howells for Tolstoy is verily not the symptom that he is beginning to fall, but rather that he is just beginning to rise. 17. I consider this double-faced presentation, this combination of the subjective method with the objective, as the highest in art, because it is the most comprehensive. Not that Tolstoy is incapable of employing the objective method alone with the highest success; when he does employ it he is here second to none, not even to Turgenef. Witness for example the following description of the arrival of a railway-train; still, the essence of Tolstoy's art is the universality with which he grasps whatever comes under his creative impulse. 18. Vronsky, engaged in a conversation, suddenly breaks off. "However," says he, "here is already the train." "In truth, in the distance was already whistling the engine. In a few minutes the platform began to tremble, and puffing with steam driven downward by the frost, in rolled the engine with the connecting-rod of its centre wheel slowly and rhythmically bending in and stretching out, and with its bowing, well-muffled, frost-covered engineer. Behind the tender, ever more slowly, and shaking the platform still more, the express car came with its baggage and a howling dog. Lastly, slightly trembling before coming to a full stop, came up the passenger coaches. "A smartish, brisk conductor, whistling, before the train came to a full stop jumped off; and following him began to descend one by one the impatient passengers,--an officer of the guard with military bearing and frigid gaze, a smiling, lively small tradesman with a bag in his hand, and a peasant with a sack over his shoulder." 19. And from the same union of the mighty preacher with the mighty artist springs the second great characteristic of Tolstoy's art, that which in contrast to Turgenef's architectural manner I must call Tolstoy's panoramic manner. I have spoken in the last lecture of Turgenef as the great architect in the art of fiction. Tolstoy is the great panorama painter of fiction. Of architectural regularity there is little to be found in him, but not because he lacks the line sense of proportion of Turgenef, and the sense of beauty of form, but because his art is of a nature in which regularity of progress and rigid outline of form are not required. 20. Tolstoy's masterpieces therefore are panoramas, and his art instinctively seeks that material which easiest lends itself to such purpose. Hence his "Cossaks," hence his "Scenes before Sebastopol," hence his "Nekhludof." But a panorama needs no plot. Hence his "Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth" contains not even a trace of a plot. It is merely a series of pictures, each indeed in itself a thing of unspeakable beauty, but all grouped in such a manner as to give collectively a panorama of the entire growth of a human soul from the moment it ceases to be animal until it becomes man. In a panorama it matters little where each particular group is placed; just as in Kaulbach's "Era of the Reformation" it matters little whether the figure of Luther is on the left or on the right. "War and Peace" is thus like the Battle of Gettysburg, a vast panorama, and "Anna Karenina" is a vast panorama; the one is a panorama of the political life of the State, the other is a panorama of the spiritual life of the individual. But a panorama requires not so much plots as groups; hence "War and Peace" is not one story, but three stories; and each is the story not of one person or of one pair, but of a group of persons, of a group of pairs. And the same necessity we see in "Anna Karenina;" here again Tolstoy's materials are not persons but groups. Viewed as a work of architecture, the book seems to lack form, the author seems to lack the sense of proportion; for the book could be easily split into two different novels,--the novel of Levin and Kitty on the one hand, and the novel of Vronsky and Anna on the other. As works of architecture, neither would suffer if severed from the other. But as a panorama of the unfolding of heaven in the soul of Levin, and of hell in the soul of Anna, the story of Kitty and Levin cannot be read apart from the story of Anna and Vronsky and still remain a unit, and still remain intelligible. 21. This fact of Tolstoy's art being essentially panoramic and not architectural, accounts for the vast expanse of his two great works, "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina." For it is the very nature of a panorama to be on an extensive scale. The objection therefore made to these two masterpieces that they are too voluminous would indeed be relevant, if they had been conceived as works of architecture; but it is totally irrelevant when applied to a panorama. Which form of art is superior, which inferior,--the concise, compact, rigid severity of the architect's art, or the overflowing, expanding, hence unshackled art of the panorama? Methinks you can best answer this question yourselves by asking another. Which is higher as a work of art, that tender song without words by Mendelssohn, called "Regret," or that indescribably affecting capriccio of his marked as "Opus 33"? Which is higher as a work of art,--that in its sadness unparalleled song of Shakespeare, "Blow, blow, thou Winter wind," or his "Othello"? Or again; which is a higher work of art, a nocturne by Chopin, or a sonata by Beethoven; an Essay by Macaulay, or a "Decline and Fall" by Gibbon? Lastly, which is higher as a work of art,--the wonderfully accurate spiritedness of Schreyer's painting of a horse, or the indescribable power of Wagner's Race in a Roman Circus? On its plane each of the above is indeed of the highest; but that the one is on a higher plane than the other few can fail to observe. For, execution of design being equal, the broader the scene, the wider the horizon, the more comprehensive the view, the higher must be the art. The less extended, because more easily comprehended, may indeed at first give more pleasure than the second; but if the final arbiter in art be the amount of immediate pleasure to be got from it, then Barnum's Circus is indeed a greater work of art than Emerson's Book, and Mark Twain a greater writer than Carlyle. But if creative power be the final measure of art, execution in the different planes being equal, then Beethoven must rank higher than Chopin, Shakespeare higher than Blanco White, Wagner than Meyer von Bremen, and Tolstoy than Turgenef. 22. "Have you seen any of my later writings?" Tolstoy inquired of a visitor who came to him as the admirer of "The Cossaks," of "War and Peace," of "Anna Karenina." The question referred to his religious writings. When he was told no, Tolstoy could only exclaim, "Ah, then you do not know me at all. We must then become acquainted." In his "Confession," he is no less emphatic; there he boldly declares the art of which he has been a noble follower for some twenty years,--"balovstvô," foolish waste of time. 23. A most wonderful spectacle is thus presented: on the one hand a writer gaining Shakespearian renown for works he repudiates; on the other, a public reading and admiring him because of the very art he thus repudiates. For 'tis idle to assert that Tolstoy's religious writings are what draws readers unto him. Had he published _only_ his religious writings, they might have indeed been bought, they might have found their place on parlor table, they might have even occasionally been glanced into; but read and studied and pondered they would not have been. For Tolstoy's religious writings, in their spirit, are not one whit different from that of _The_ Book which has indeed been for ages lying in the parlors of almost every Christian household; but it is _not_ read, it is _not_ discussed, it is _not_ talked about, like the latest somersaulting performance of some popular magazine-scribe. Nay, the surest way to make one's self unavailable nowadays at social gathering of the parlor sort would be to talk therein solemnly of the very book which in so many houses forms such indispensable part of parlor outfit. Nay, has it not come in society to such a pass that the very presence of _The_ Book on parlor table is already an evidence that the host is _not_ a member of the circle which looks upon itself as _the_ circle,--the select, the exclusive, the highest, in short? 24. The public, then, is interested in Tolstoy the artist more than in the preacher, for the same reason that when Emerson lands in England only a handful of mortals greet him; while when Mr. Sullivan lands in England the streets cannot hold the thousands who flock to receive him. Tolstoy, on the other hand, protests that whosoever looks to him as the artist, sees not him, knows not him; that he is aught else now; that mere art, in fact, is to him a business no longer worthy of a serious soul. The public again, in its ever-confident patronizingness, says unto him: "But for thy great artistic genius, O Leo, son of Nicolas, with thy latest religious antics and somersaultings, we would call thee--a crank. But as to a great genius we shall be merciful unto thee, and bear with many a confession, many a cobbled shoe, if thou givest us only more of Olenins, more of Karenins." 25. Who is here right, who is here wrong,--the public with its millions, Tolstoy in his loneliness? 26. That genius should often misunderstand its own strength, and seek it where it is weakest, is indeed no new phenomenon in its history. Frederick the Great prides himself more on his flute-playing than on his kingship; and it is not so very long ago that in our very midst a university professor called the happiest day of his life not that on which he discovered a new Greek particle, but that on which the crew of his university won the boat-race. And a mere chance tour on a Sunday through our churches would quickly show the lamentably frequent misapprehension of genius by itself; for many a fine genius for the actor's art is spoiled by an imaginary call to the pulpit. The presumption therefore is indeed against the great Tolstoy in his dispute with the great public. Still, I venture to side with Tolstoy. I too venture to think that Tolstoy's greatest work is found not so much in his works of pure art as in his works of pure religion; and with God's blessing, my friends, I trust you will see it with me in the next lecture. LECTURE VI. TOLSTOY THE PREACHER. 1. I have stated in the last lecture that Tolstoy is the preacher, not of the new gospel of death, but of the old gospel of life. Tolstoy is to be revered as one of the greatest teachers among men, not so much because he has proved indisputably that only by love alone can men be said truly to live, nor wholly because he shows by logic inexorable that man can be truly blessed only when he devotes his life to the service of his fellow-men. His logic may be bad, his proof may be faulty. To be skilled in the art of lighting with words is no more essential to a noble soul than to be skilled in the art of fighting with lists. Both can indeed knock down an opponent; but knocking down is not the business of life, but raising up. And Tolstoy is to be revered among teachers because he first of all raises up; because he preaches what those who have raised men up have for ages preached; because he preaches what Christ has preached, what Emerson has preached, what Carlyle has preached, what Ruskin is still preaching, and what will ever continue to be preached as long as there is a God in heaven, and a human soul on earth yearning for the possession of that God. "Socialism, Communism!" men bellow to Tolstoy, and think to confound him with the hateful name. "Would you have us give up," they say, "the fruit of civilization and progress, and return to the primitive life of the days of yore?" But read Emerson's "Miscellanies," Carlyle's "Past and Present," Ruskin's "Fors Clavigera," and see for yourselves whether Tolstoy preaches aught different from these. And if this be communism, if this be socialism, then welcome communism, welcome socialism, because ever welcome brotherhood. 2. Tolstoy is indeed a Russian of the Russians, but he is a man before he is a Russian; the greatest of Russians, he is more than a Russian, just as Socrates, the greatest of the Greeks, was more than a Greek; just as Christ, the greatest of Hebrews, was more than a Hebrew. Socrates was sent not for Greece alone, but for us likewise; Jesus was sent not for the Jews alone, but for us likewise; and so Tolstoy is sent not to the Russians alone, but to us likewise. 3. Tolstoy, then, came to deliver a message; but _the_ message of messages has already been delivered well-nigh nineteen hundred years ago. Not one word is there, indeed, to be added to the law laid down in the Sermon on the Mount; and were men to live out the gospel of Christ, there would be no need of new messengers, the kingdom of heaven would then be veritably established, and the Master would once more dwell with men as he hath foretold. But Christianity, alas! has been on trial for well-nigh nineteen hundred years, while the religion of Christ still remains to be tried. There is therefore ever need of new apostles to preach the kingdom of heaven, the gospel of Christ; and it is Tolstoy's distinction that he came to preach not the new gospel of the nineteenth century, but the old gospel of the first century. For God sees to it that the way to blessedness for men be ever open; that the kingdom of heaven be ever within their reach, if they but choose to enter it, if they but choose not to give themselves over to the Powers of Darkness. 4. I have affirmed in my last lecture, with what articulateness of voice the great God hath seen fit to endow me, that there is a God in heaven who is the Good. And it now, alas! becomes my duty to affirm likewise that beside the great God the Good in heaven, there is also the great Devil the Evil on earth; that beside the great Prince of Light there is also the great Prince of Darkness. And he ruleth neither over the heavens nor over the earth, but he ruleth solely over man. And he graspeth with the greedy, and he splitteth hairs with the lawyers; and he is flirting with scientific charities, and is fortune-hunting with land-grabbers; and he discourseth with politicians, and he puffeth up with men of science; and he balances himself on ropes with theologians; and he preacheth from pulpits through mouths that have Christ only on their tongues; and he prayeth through lips that know God only through hymns; and he danceth at balls, and he sparkleth through diamonds; and he shineth through gold, and he foameth through wine; and he chatteth insincerely at receptions, and he figureth in society-columns of the public prints; and he shrieketh through steam-whistles, and he rusheth sixty miles an hour, and he edits sensational magazines, and he dwelleth with the hating; and he is ever after victims,--he, the Prince of Darkness. 5. And the servants of the Prince of Light are few; and the servants of the Prince of Darkness are many. Yet the Lord God is ever nigh; and he ever sendeth his messengers to call together his wandering, his erring flock. Tolstoy is a messenger sent out to gather together the erring flock back to the fold of Christ. 6. Tolstoy, then, is a teacher of men. Observe, however, this fundamental difference between Tolstoy and the other great teachers. To Socrates, the great enemy of mankind was ignorance; to him, therefore, to know virtue is to be virtuous, and the central idea of his teaching is--knowledge. The seat of the soul with Socrates, therefore, is not so much in the heart as in the head. To Epictetus, the great enemy of mankind is passion, and the central idea of his teaching is self-control; to Epictetus, then, the seat of the soul is not so much in the head as in the will. To Emerson, the great enemy of mankind is authority, and the central idea of his teaching, therefore, is self-reliance; to Emerson, then, the seat of the soul is not so much in man's will as in man's pride. To Carlyle, the great enemy of mankind is consciousness of self, and the central idea of his teaching is unconsciousness of self, the forgetting, the drowning of self in work. To Carlyle, therefore, the seat of the soul is not so much in man's pride as in his hands. Tolstoy has no such central idea of his own. His central idea is that of his Master, Jesus, which is love. To Jesus, the great enemy of man was hatred, and the seat of the soul to him was neither in the head, nor in the will, nor in the pride, nor in the hands. To Jesus, the seat of the soul was solely in the heart. And Tolstoy proclaims above all the doctrine of Jesus, not because he thinketh lightly of ignorance, not because he thinketh lightly of passion, not because he thinketh lightly of authority, not because he thinketh lightly of self-consciousness, but because he believes that Love conquereth _all_ the children of Darkness. Hence the burden of his message is the ever-recurring, Brethren, follow Christ! Follow Christ with your heads, and your metaphysics will take care of themselves; follow Christ with your will, and your passions will take care of themselves; follow Christ with your hopes, and your self-respect will take care of itself; lastly, follow Christ with your hands, and your work will take care of itself. Tolstoy's book is therefore only the fifth gospel of Christ, and Tolstoy himself is therefore only the thirteenth apostle of Jesus. 7. I must emphasize this fact, my friends, because church-societies are still discussing the propriety of admitting his book into their libraries; I must emphasize this fact, because hitherto not one preacher of the gospel of Christ has yet ventured to utter one word of greeting, one word of fellowship, to Tolstoy. I must emphasize this fact, because Tolstoy having forsaken art and having betaken himself to the cobbling of shoes, the wise world, that ever knoweth the duty of another better than he doth himself, is forthwith at hand with its estimate, its disapproval, its condemnation. Turgenef therefore gently remonstrates with his fellow-craftsman for his new departure, and beseeches him to return to the forsaken higher field,--to the art of amusing folk already over-amused. The Rev. Mr. Savage, the only servant of God in the pulpits of this great God-fearing city who has even dared to make Tolstoy the subject of a Sunday discourse, respects indeed his character, but boldly declares the man Tolstoy and his Master Jesus of Nazareth to have been teaching impracticable teachings; impracticable, indeed, in an age when bank-stock and a grandfather, and foam and froth, and social fireworks are the only acceptable signs of strength. Mr. Savage, however, follows at least Pope's direction, and damns with faint praise, while that wee, tiny manikin from that State of Indiana does not even think this necessary, and therefore, standing on tiptoe, screeches at the top of his voicelet to Tolstoy, "Crank, crank!" 8. But what if in God's eyes there be no higher work, nor lower work, but merely work? What if in God's eyes there be no higher duty, nor lower duty, but merely duty? If it be necessary to chop wood, and sift ashes, and mend shoes, wherefore should this be a lower occupation than to thump on the piano, and read poetry, and write books, and even listen unto lectures? But the artist is held in higher esteem than the house-drudge! What, then! shalt thou make the esteem of thy fellows, which is as changeable as the wind, thy motive for doing, rather than the esteem of thyself, thy conscience, thy God? To do all we ought, be it never so humble, this is doing the highest work, God's work. But chopping wood and mending shoes brings no recognition, no esteem, no applause in gorgeously-lighted parlors, as does the reading and the singing and the writing for select audiences. What, shalt thou do thy duty for the sake of the reward, the mess of pottage it brings, O wretch? 9. Crank, indeed! My friends, was there ever a time when the great souls on whom we must feed, if we are to live at all, were proclaimed aught else but cranks and nuisances? The children of Darkness are ever abroad, and the messengers of Light are never welcome unto them. Such a nuisance was the noblest of the Greeks to his countrymen, that they could not wait for his peaceful departure, even though he was already on the brink of the grave; and the old man of seventy had to drink the poison to rid his fellow-citizens of the burden of his presence. Of the two noblest sons of Boston, which it has yet produced in all the two hundred and fifty years of its existence, one was dragged through its streets with a rope round his neck, not by a mob of unkempt anarchists, but by a mob of well-shaven, broadcloth-clad citizens,--by the ancestors, perhaps, of the very men who now can watch the statue of that same Garrison from their plate-glass windows on Commonwealth Avenue. And the other was shunned as an ill-balanced intellect, and abused by those who look upon themselves as _the_ best of his townsmen, so that a monument to Wendell Phillips cannot even be thought of at this late day. England's noblest living voice, the voice of John Ruskin, is at this very moment engaged in crying unto his countrymen, "Good my friends, if ye keep on howling at me as ye have done, I shall indeed become insane; but I assure ye, up to this hour, maugre your vociferous clamoring, I am still in possession of my senses, thank God!" And of America's greatest inspirer, while his gentle spirit was still walking on earth, Jeremiah Mason, the clear-headed man, the far-seeing judge, the practical statesman, could only utter the joke, '_I_ don't read Emerson; my gals do!' And, O ye good people, tell me, I pray ye, what reception would Christ himself be likely to receive at the hands of your swallow-tailed butlers, were he to appear at your doors without silver-headed cane, without Parisian kid gloves, without engraved pasteboard announcing him to be the Scion of his Majesty King David? Would not a mere glance at his bare feet, his flowing garment, and his untrimmed hair be sufficient to convince Mr. Butler that for such folk the lady of the house is never at home, or if at home, is just about to dress for dinner or to go out for a drive, and therefore begs to be excused? Yes, my friends, of the greatest, of the noblest souls, it has ever been the lot to be scorned, since their message of light is ever unwelcome to the children of darkness; and if against their characters not a word can be said, recourse must be had to the abuse at least of their intellects; and Christ and Tolstoy are declared to be weak intellects! This is the meaning of the cry raised against Tolstoy as unbalanced, in this latest change of his life from riches unto poverty. 10. Tolstoy, then, is nothing but a preacher of Christ; and the first articulate utterance in his message is therefore that of boundless faith in the practicability of living according to Christ; that of insistence upon the literal following of the words of Christ as a _practical_ guide of life. 11. And out of this emphasis of the supremacy of Love comes the second articulate utterance in the message of Tolstoy, which is the supremacy of heart over head as a metaphysical guide of life. For God ever revealeth himself unto men, but he speaketh unto them not through their cold intellects, but through their warm hearts; not through logic, but through love. The reasoner searches God without man and finds him not; the lover finds God within man in his heart, and hath no need of searching him. Hence the following significant utterance of Tolstoy in his "Confession." In his search for the answer to the ever-recurring question, "Wherefore shall I live?" he at last goes abroad to find light:-- "My life abroad, and the intercourse with Europe's most advanced scholars, still more confirmed my faith in perfection as such; for the same faith I now found in them likewise. In me this faith took the same form which it takes in most of the educated men of our time. Its watchword was--progress. Then I thought that this word meant something. Its utter meaninglessness I then could not yet understand. Here I was tormented, like every living soul, with the question, 'How can I better my life?' and I answer, 'Live in accordance with progress.' But this is exactly the answer of a man borne along by wind and tide in a boat. He puts the to him all-important question, 'What direction must I steer for my safety?' and he receives in answer, 'Oh, we are borne along somewhither!' "All this I did not perceive at the time. Only rarely not my reason but my feeling rebelled against this universal superstition with which men shield themselves against their failure to comprehend the meaning of life. Thus while in Paris the sight of capital punishment revealed to me all the ghastliness of this superstition of progress. When I beheld how the head was severed from the body, and how the one and the other each in turn thumped in the box, I understood not with my reason, but with my whole soul, that no theory of progress, no theory of the reasonableness of our present mode of living, could justify this one deed; that even if all men ever since creation, on whatever theory, had found that _this_ must be, I know that this need not be; that this is evil; that the judge of all this, what is good and needful, is not what men say and do, is not the theory of progress, but I with my heart." 12. Trust ye, therefore, your heart ere you trust your logic. Whatever the heart dictates must be from God, logic or no logic; whatever the heart rebels against must be from the Devil, reason or no reason. Time never yet was when the Devil lacked reasons; and if he can find reasons nowhere else, he at last finds them in science and in Scripture. Next to the slaveholders themselves, the last to forsake the sinking ship of slavery, were the preachers of the gospel of the brotherhood of man, who argued finely from Scripture twisted for the purpose, that the great God having made Mr. Preacher white and Mr. Negro black, had therefore intended that black shall be the minion of white. Time never was when reason and logic most inexorable could not find excuse most sufficient for the shedding of blood of brother by brother, for the burning of village and town, for the erecting of luxurious palace within stone's-throw of the homeless. Time never was when logic could not show the fine propriety, nay, the utmost necessity, for competition and struggle for existence; when men, who might create a paradise of this green earth of ours, if they but chose to help one another, transform themselves into pigs, jostling and pushing one another at the trough, and grunting with satisfaction abundant at having driven the weaker piglet off into starvation,--all of which is our modern, _necessary_ competition in business; and this is logical, reasonable, scientific struggle for existence! 13. No, no, my friends, let logic cry never so loudly at the necessity of struggle for existence, and competition for bread between men, when the great God hath provided enough for a hundredfold of the present number of men if they but chose to help one another. The heart saith it is wrong; and whatever logic makes it out to be right is accursed, is from the Devil; and it is for ye, if ye are to become the children of the Prince of Light, and not the children of the Prince of Darkness, to have none of such logic, and trust the God within you, who dwelleth not in your heads, but in your hearts. 14. And once more, out of this fundamental idea of the supremacy of love and the brotherhood of _all_ men,--of all men, observe,--follows the insistence of Tolstoy upon the words of Christ,--"Give to him that asketh." For it is not for man to judge his neighbor, but for God. To Tolstoy, therefore, all men are his brothers, the unworthy as well as the worthy; or rather, he never asks whether they be worthy. To him therefore the law of Christ stands not for utility, nor for fear of consequence, but for mercy and trust in God. Hence Tolstoy would never fear to help from what are branded as sentimental motives. And the third articulate utterance in the message of Tolstoy is therefore the supremacy in charity of the sentiment which comes from God over the logic which comes from the Devil. 15. Relief given from sentimental motives (from mere love of helping for its own sake) only keeps the pauper population alive, we are told by our scientific charities. Heinous, indeed, is the awful crime of keeping pauper population alive; and heinous, indeed, is the crime of having _any_ sentiment of heart in an age of progress of species and self-respecting supply and demand. Then the great God who sendeth his sunshine and his rain upon members of Associated Charities as well as upon members of Dissociated Charities, upon the worthy as well as upon the unworthy, upon the properly introduced as well as upon the improperly introduced,--then his beneficence is verily sentimental. Yes, my friends, the great God is the great sentimentalist, for he blesseth men and bestoweth his mercy upon them not because they are deserving, but because he loveth to be merciful. When the flower buddeth forth in the spring with matchless beauty, no label is tacked on to its stem with ominous reminder: "Not to be gazed at by the eyes of the unworthy. All worthy persons, of good moral character, can obtain tickets by applying to Archangel Michael." When under His eternal laws the cooling spring babbleth forth merrily from the cave, whispering to the weary, heated wanderer, "Come thou hither, and be refreshed," no sign-board is placed at its entrance: "Beware! this spring is only for the worthy; members of the pauper population are warned, under penalty of law, not to trespass on these premises." Verily, I say unto ye, the Lord God is the sentimentalist of sentimentalists! 16. And the Son of God, like unto his Father, was also a sentimentalist. When the sinner came unto him in her distress, he did not inquire for her letters of introduction; he did not inquire whether she was indorsed in most acceptable society-fashion by the leading ministers of the town. He did not lift the skirts of his garments in scorn of the person unworthy of _his_ company; he gave no orders to his butlers that when Madame Sinner calls next he is not at home for her. Nay, Christ did not even send down to the Central Office of the Associated Charities to look up poor sinner's record. Without much parley he stretched forth his holy hand, gave it to his pauper sister, and with a voice of love spake, "Go thy ways in peace, thou art forgiven!" Verily, I say unto you, Christ was a sentimentalist of sentimentalists. 17. And the father of the prodigal son was only increasing pauperism when he received the unworthy youth with open arms; he had set a premium (in the words of our scientific charities) upon other sons becoming likewise prodigal. 18. And so is a sentimentalist every noble soul that believeth in God's wisdom more than in man's wisdom; that believeth more in the power of trust than in the power of fear; more in mercy than in calculation; more in charity than in justice; more in love than in political economy; more in Christ than in Octavia Hill; more in the Gospels than in Parliamentary Poor Reports. By their fruits ye shall judge them. If the fear of pauperism result in excusing that vilest of sins, the withholding of help by one brother from another, then away with scientific charity and its talked-of diminution of pauperism; and if the lending of a helping hand even to the unworthy be the result of sentimentalism, then welcome sentimentalism, blessed be sentimentalism! 19. The obedience to the commands of Christ has thus furnished Tolstoy with a basis for existence which he had hitherto sought in vain from science and metaphysics; the obedience to the commands of Christ has thus furnished Tolstoy a solution of social problems which he had hitherto sought in vain in ethics and sociology; and lastly, obedience to the commands of Christ has furnished Tolstoy a solution of financial problems found neither in political economy nor in statistics. And the fourth articulate utterance in the message of Tolstoy is his merciless distinction between the money of the poor, which they have earned by their toil, and the money of the rich, which they have forfeited by their idleness. 20. Tolstoy is thus the preacher, the cause of a change in the hearts of men; but while he is thus a cause unto others, he himself is likewise an effect of the change which has begun to take place in the hearts of men. The possibility of a Tolstoy in the nineteenth century is the most hopeful sign of the times with regard to the social brotherhood of men. In theology, the feeling of the equality of men before God has so permeated the minds of men, that the claim of superiority which formerly each made over the other, though still tacitly implied, is now no longer upheld by sober thinking folk; in politics, too, equality of men before the law has at last become acknowledged, if not always in practice, at least in theory. And if monarchies and aristocracies still do exist, it is not because all concerned in the decision have deliberately decided for them, but because it is safer to endure irrational institutions that are old, than to undertake the sudden establishment of rational institutions that are new. Only in the social field the feeling of the equality of men has not yet permeated them enough to rouse their souls against the present division of society into industrial lords on the one hand, and industrial slaves on the other. That two men born on the same day, at the same hour, in the same nakedness, one in a palace without his merit, the other in a hovel without his fault, should each pass his lifetime, the one in luxury and idleness, the other in want and toil, is still looked upon by thinking men, by feeling men, as something that must be, as something that should be, since Providence evidently meant men to be thus divided. The idle thus go on enjoying their unearned idleness; the toiling thus go on enduring their unearned hardship, and all is quiet. 21. Quiet? Alas! no. Burglars, robbers, tramps, beggars, forgers, defaulters in abundance, jails, prisons, reform-houses, stand out palatially amid lawns and green woods and winding rivers. The silent darkness is occasionally lighted up by the lurid torch of the incendiary, and now and then we are treated to spectacular fireworks with powder and dynamite and bomb. 22. Of course men have _preached_ reform ever since God had resolved that however men may refuse to do his will, they shall at least not fail to hear his voice as uttered by his messengers. But though political freedom had been preached by every thinking soul from Plato to Rousseau, it required an American and a French Revolution to open a path for the entrance of their ideas into practical life. Religious freedom, too, had been preached from the mouth of every soul that had the genuine love for its kind in its heart. From Christ to Emerson in our world, to say naught of the heathen world, the burden of the song of all saints has been, "Love your neighbor as ye love yourselves." Your neighbor, observe! Not your Baptist neighbor, nor your Methodist neighbor, nor even your infidel neighbor, but your neighbor. Plain as this teaching is, it still required Inquisitions, Bartholomew nights, and Thirty-Year-Wars, to establish not even religious brotherhood, but only religious toleration. 23. Social brotherhood, too, has been preached for ages, beginning with John the Baptist, who in answer to the question, What are we to do? can only say, "Whosoever hath two coats, let him give one to him that hath none," and ending with John Ruskin, who, smarting under the unequal distribution of wealth, founds his Company of St. George. Preached then social brotherhood has been, as all else has been preached; but acted out, even under the guise of hypocrisy, it has not yet been. Will this change of heart likewise have to be brought about by blood and slaughter? 24. Tolstoy, in the feeble way of a single man, but in the mighty way of a single soul, giveth unmistakable answer to this question. We must begin the revolution, says he, not without us, with others, but within us, with ourselves; not by force of arms, but by force of love. Of what use are alms handed out with one hand, when with the other we uphold idleness which is the creator of the need of alms? Let each one work, he says, as much as he can, and if he produce more than his own needs, there will ever be enough of the unfortunate and the ailing who cannot produce enough for their own needs. Not leisure, then, idleness, is the haven to be steered for, but work; and work, too, not such as shall pander to the wants of the lazy, but to the wants of the industrious,--work, in short, which shall enable others to enjoy that labor of the body and that rest of the soul which alone in their union make the perfect life. * * * * * 25. In his Introduction to "My Religion," Tolstoy says that he has at last tasted that joy and happiness which even death could not take away. He has thus attained true blessedness, that heavenly peace which falls to the lot of all souls from whom love of self and pride of intellect have forever fled. But such heaven can be attained by human soul only through struggle,--struggle often for life and death with sin, with doubt, with faithlessness, with despair. For the fable of Sisyphus is not mere fable; this ever rolling back of the stone to the hill-top for the tenth, for the hundredth, for the thousandth time, is only the history of the soul on its journey heavenward; the gold, ere it be freed from the dross, must be scorched, burnt, melted, dissolved; and the soul, to be made pure in its turn, must be likewise burnt, melted, fused. Think not, therefore, that Shakespeare, ere he wrote "To be or not to be," had been perching on the tree and warbling right gladly all his days. His sorrow is not indeed found in his plays, but surely it was found in his life. Think not, therefore, that the sportive, merry, joking Socrates was gay through all the seventy years of his life. Not from a gay heart came those words spoken at the end of his days, "We approach truth only in so far as we are removed from life." And lastly, my friends, not from a gay heart flowed that gentle spirit, that boundless love, of the possessor of whom not once, in all the four Gospels, is recorded the fact that he ever laughed! Verily, only through sorrow can be reached the haven of the soul, that union with God which is free from pride of intellect and love of self. And so Tolstoy's life too, ere he attained that heavenly peace, was filled with sorrow immeasurable, sorrow unspeakable. For fifteen years of his life the thought of suicide was not out of his mind for a day; he upon whom Fortune had lavished every gift which in the opinion of the world can alone make man happy, he who had riches, fame, friends, position, admiration, appreciation,--this man Tolstoy has for years to hide his gun lest he shoot himself, and his towel lest he hang himself. Wherefore, then, such misery? Because, my friends, he was natively endowed with a heaven-aspiring soul, between which and the doctrine of the world there can be no peace. One must perish, or the other,--either the doctrine of the world, or his soul. His soul, indeed, was destined not to perish; but the devil in man dies hard, and for fifty years the doctrine of the world held in him the upper hand. 26. Hence though the essence of Tolstoy is the preacher, he was during these fifty years never the preacher alone; but this very struggle in his soul between the powers of Light on the one hand and the powers of Darkness on the other is also the reason why he never remained the artist alone. Like the thread of Theseus in the labyrinth of Minos, the preacher's vein is seldom, if ever, absent from Tolstoy. Hence his "Morning of a Proprietor," written in 1852, at the age of twenty-four, is as faithful an account of his experience as a visitor among the poor as his "Census of Moscow," written twenty-five years later; hence his "Lutzen," written when he was yet under thirty, is as powerful a plea for the beggar as his "What to Do," written at the end of his career. The final detaching of the preacher from the artist is not therefore a sudden resolve, but the outcome of the life-long struggle of his spirit. The detaching of the preacher from the artist took place therefore in Tolstoy as the detaching of the nourishing kernel takes place from the castaway shell. When he found his haven and saw that the only meaning of life can be found solely in love of man, and in living and in toiling for him, when the doctrine of the world, in short, was defeated by the soul, then the severance of the preacher from the artist becomes complete, the shell is burst, and in all its native nourishingness there at last lies before us what is eternal of Tolstoy,--the writings, not of the artist Tolstoy, but the writings of the preacher Tolstoy. * * * * * 27. My hearers, my friends, I have now spoken unto ye for well-nigh six hours. From the manner in which you have listened unto me, I judge that ye have been entertained, perhaps even instructed. And yet I should feel that I have spoken unto ye to but little purpose, if my words have merely entertained, merely instructed you; for mere entertainment you can find already in abundance elsewhere,--in the circus, in the play-house, in the concert-room, in the magazine, in the wit of the diner-out, and not unto me is it given to compete with these. And mere instruction likewise you can find already in abundance elsewhere,--in the cyclopædias, in the universities, in the libraries, in the Browning-reader; and neither is it given wholly unto me to compete with these. Not, therefore, to amuse, not even wholly to instruct ye, have I come before ye these successive evenings, and asked you to lend me your ear. But I had hoped that on parting from me, as you will this evening, perhaps for aye, you might perhaps carry away with ye also that earnestness of purpose, the absence of which made so barren the muse of Pushkin; that sympathy for a soul struggling upward, the want of which made so cheerless the life of Gogol; that faith in God, the lack of which made so incomplete the life of Turgenef; and lastly, that faith in the commands of Christ, the living out of which makes so inspiring the life of Tolstoy. 28. Would to God, my friends, ye might carry away with ye all these things besides the entertainment, besides even the instruction you may have found here. In the days of old the great God was ready to save from perdition a whole city of sinners if only ten righteous men could be found within its walls; and so shall I feel amply repaid for my toil, if of the large number who have listened unto me at least ten leave me with the feeling that they have got from my words something more than mere entertainment, something more than mere instruction. THE END. [ Transcriber's Note: The following is a list of corrections made to the original. The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. himself, took off his "masquerading" dress, kicked it into the himself, took off his 'masquerading' dress, kicked it into the Im Norden auf kahler Höh' Im Norden auf kahler Höh'. was enabled to give it a zenith-like loftiness and a nadir like depth was enabled to give it a zenith-like loftiness and a nadir-like depth Unto me on the parting of the roads Unto me on the parting of the roads; horses. They were two sturdy follows, still looking out from under horses. They were two sturdy fellows, still looking out from under Cossak, even without preliminary trial. 'Well, welcome, sonny; come Cossak, even without preliminary trial. Well, welcome, sonny; come "I know, I know it all ... but I love you.' "'I know, I know it all ... but I love you.' with the pessimistic woe of the the world, believed at bottom that man, with the pessimistic woe of the world, believed at bottom that man, ] 
9619	----	Distributed Proofreaders WHO CAN BE HAPPY AND FREE IN RUSSIA? BY NICHOLAS NEKRASSOV Translated by Juliet M. Soskice With an Introduction by Dr. David Soskice 1917 [Illustration: Nicholas Nekrassov] NICHOLAS ALEXEIEVITCH NEKRASSOV Born, near the town Vinitza, province of Podolia, November 22, 1821 Died, St. Petersburg, December 27, 1877. _'Who can be Happy and Free in Russia?' was first published in Russia in 1879. In 'The World's Classics' this translation was first published in 1917._ CONTENTS: NICHOLAS NEKRASSOV: A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE PROLOGUE PART I. CHAP. I. THE POPE II. THE VILLAGE FAIR III. THE DRUNKEN NIGHT IV. THE HAPPY ONES V. THE POMYÉSHCHICK PART II.--THE LAST POMYÉSHCHICK PROLOGUE I. THE DIE-HARD II. KLIM, THE ELDER PART III.--THE PEASANT WOMAN PROLOGUE I. THE WEDDING II. A SONG III. SAVYÉLI IV. DJÓMUSHKA V. THE SHE-WOLF VI. AN UNLUCKY YEAR VII. THE GOVERNOR'S LADY VIII. THE WOMAN'S LEGEND PART IV.--A FEAST FOR THE WHOLE VILLAGE PROLOGUE I. BITTER TIMES--BITTER SONGS II. PILGRIMS AND WANDERERS III. OLD AND NEW EPILOGUE NICHOLAS NEKRASSOV: A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE Western Europe has only lately begun to explore the rich domain of Russian literature, and is not yet acquainted with all even of its greatest figures. Treasures of untold beauty and priceless value, which for many decades have been enlarging and elevating the Russian mind, still await discovery here. Who in England, for instance, has heard the names of Saltykov, Uspensky, or Nekrassov? Yet Saltykov is the greatest of Russian satirists; Uspensky the greatest story-writer of the lives of the Russian toiling masses; while Nekrassov, "the poet of the people's sorrow," whose muse "of grief and vengeance" has supremely dominated the minds of the Russian educated classes for the last half century, is the sole and rightful heir of his two great predecessors, Pushkin and Lermontov. Russia is a country still largely mysterious to the denizen of Western Europe, and the Russian peasant, the _moujik_, an impenetrable riddle to him. Of all the great Russian writers not one has contributed more to the interpretation of the enigmatical soul of the _moujik_ than Russia's great poet, Nekrassov, in his life-work the national epic, _Who can be Happy in Russia?_ There are few literate persons in Russia who do not know whole pages of this poem by heart. It will live as long as Russian literature exists; and its artistic value as an instrument for the depiction of Russian nature and the soul of the Russian people can be compared only with that of the great epics of Homer with regard to the legendary life of ancient Greece. Nekrassov seemed destined to dwell from his birth amid such surroundings as are necessary for the creation of a great national poet. Nicholas Alexeievitch Nekrassov was the descendant of a noble family, which in former years had been very wealthy, but subsequently had lost the greater part of its estates. His father was an officer in the army, and in the course of his peregrinations from one end of the country to the other in the fulfilment of his military duties he became acquainted with a young Polish girl, the daughter of a wealthy Polish aristocrat. She was seventeen, a type of rare Polish beauty, and the handsome, dashing Russian officer at once fell madly in love with her. The parents of the girl, however, were horrified at the notion of marrying their daughter to a "Muscovite savage," and her father threatened her with his curse if ever again she held communication with her lover. So the matter was secretly arranged between the two, and during a ball which the young Polish beauty was attending she suddenly disappeared. Outside the house the lover waited with his sledge. They sped away, and were married at the first church they reached. The bride, with her father's curse upon her, passed straight from her sheltered existence in her luxurious home to all the unsparing rigours of Russian camp-life. Bred in an atmosphere of maternal tenderness and Polish refinement she had now to share the life of her rough, uncultured Russian husband, to content herself with the shallow society of the wives of the camp officers, and soon to be crushed by the knowledge that the man for whom she had sacrificed everything was not even faithful to her. During their travels, in 1821, Nicholas Nekrassov the future poet was born, and three years later his father left military service and settled in his estate in the Yaroslav Province, on the banks of the great river Volga, and close to the Vladimirsky highway, famous in Russian history as the road along which, for centuries, chained convicts had been driven from European Russia to the mines in Siberia. The old park of the manor, with its seven rippling brooklets and mysterious shadowy linden avenues more than a century old, filled with a dreamy murmur at the slightest stir of the breeze, stretched down to the mighty Volga, along the banks of which, during the long summer days, were heard the piteous, panting songs of the _burlaki_, the barge-towers, who drag the heavy, loaded barges up and down the river. The rattling of the convicts' chains as they passed; the songs of the _burlaki_; the pale, sorrowful face of his mother as she walked alone in the linden avenues of the garden, often shedding tears over a letter she read, which was headed by a coronet and written in a fine, delicate hand; the spreading green fields, the broad mighty river, the deep blue skies of Russia,--such were the reminiscences which Nekrassov retained from his earliest childhood. He loved his sad young mother with a childish passion, and in after years he was wont to relate how jealous he had been of that letter[1] she read so often, which always seemed to fill her with a sorrow he could not understand, making her at moments even forget that he was near her. The sight and knowledge of deep human suffering, framed in the soft voluptuous beauty of nature in central Russia, could not fail to sow the seed of future poetical powers in the soul of an emotional child. His mother, who had been bred on Shakespeare, Milton, and the other great poets and writers of the West, devoted her solitary life to the development of higher intellectual tendencies in her gifted little son. And from an early age he made attempts at verse. His mother has preserved for the world his first little poem, which he presented to her when he was seven years of age, with a little heading, roughly to the following effect: My darling Mother, look at this, I did the best I could in it, Please read it through and tell me if You think there's any good in it. The early life of the little Nekrassov was passed amid a series of contrasting pictures. His father, when he had abandoned his military calling and settled upon his estate, became the Chief of the district police. He would take his son Nicholas with him in his trap as he drove from village to village in the fulfilment of his new duties. The continual change of scenery during their frequent journeys along country roads, through forests and valleys, past meadows and rivers, the various types of people they met with, broadened and developed the mind of little Nekrassov, just as the mind of the child Ruskin was formed and expanded during his journeys with his father. But Ruskin's education lacked features with which young Nekrassov on his journeys soon became familiar. While acquiring knowledge of life and accumulating impressions of the beauties of nature, Nekrassov listened, perforce, to the brutal, blustering speeches addressed by his father to the helpless, trembling peasants, and witnessed the cruel, degrading corporal punishments he inflicted upon them, while his eyes were speedily opened to his father's addiction to drinking, gambling, and debauchery. These experiences would most certainly have demoralised and depraved his childish mind had it not been for the powerful influence the refined and cultured mother had from the first exercised upon her son. The contrast between his parents was so startling that it could not fail to awaken the better side of the child's nature, and to imbue him with pure and healthy notions of the truer and higher ideals of humanity. In his poetical works of later years Nekrassov repeatedly returns to and dwells upon the memory of the sorrowful, sweet image of his mother. The gentle, beautiful lady, with her wealth of golden hair, with an expression of divine tenderness in her blue eyes and of infinite suffering upon her sensitive lips, remained for ever her son's ideal of womanhood. Later on, during years of manhood, in moments of the deepest moral suffering and despondency, it was always of her that he thought, her tenderness and spiritual consolation he recalled and for which he craved. When Nekrassov was eleven years of age his father one day drove him to the town nearest their estate and placed him in the local grammar-school. Here he remained for six years, gradually, though without distinction, passing upwards from one class to another, devoting a moderate amount of time to school studies and much energy to the writing of poetry, mostly of a satirical nature, in which his teachers figured with unfortunate conspicuity. One day a copy-book containing the most biting of these productions fell into the hands of the headmaster, and young Nekrassov was summarily ejected from the school. His angry father, deciding in his own mind that the boy was good for nothing, despatched him to St. Petersburg to embark upon a military career. The seventeen-year-old boy arrived in the capital with a copy-book of his poems and a few roubles in his pocket, and with a letter of introduction to an influential general. He was filled with good intentions and fully prepared to obey his father's orders, but before he had taken the final step of entering the nobleman's regiment he met a young student, a former school-mate, who captivated his imagination by glowing descriptions of the marvellous sciences to be studied in the university, and the surpassing interest of student life. The impressionable boy decided to abandon the idea of his military career, and to prepare for his matriculation in the university. He wrote to his father to this effect, and received the stern and laconic reply: "If you disobey me, not another farthing shall you receive from me." The youth had made his mind up, however, and entered the university as an unmatriculated student. And that was the beginning of his long acquaintance with the hardships of poverty. "For three years," said Nekrassov in after life, "I was hungry all day, and every day. It was not only that I ate bad food and not enough of that, but some days I did not eat at all. I often went to a certain restaurant in the Morskaya, where one is allowed to read the paper without ordering food. You can hold the paper in front of you and nibble at a piece of bread behind it...." While sunk in this state of poverty, however, Nekrassov got into touch with some of the richest and most aristocratic families in St. Petersburg; for at that time there existed a complete comradeship and equality among the students, whether their budget consisted of a few farthings or unlimited wealth. Thus here again Nekrassov was given the opportunity of studying the contrasts of life. For several years after his arrival in St. Petersburg the true gifts of the poet were denied expression. The young man was confronted with a terrible uphill fight to conquer the means of bare subsistence. He had no time to devote to the working out of his poems, and it would not have "paid" him. He was obliged to accept any literary job that was offered him, and to execute it with a promptitude necessitated by the requirements of his daily bill of fare. During the first years of his literary career he wrote an amazing number of prose reviews, essays, short stories, novels, comedies and tragedies, alphabets and children's stories, which, put together, would fill thirty or forty volumes. He also issued a volume of his early poems, but he was so ashamed of them that he would not put his name upon the fly-leaf. Soon, however, his poems, "On the Road" and "My Motherland," attracted the attention of Byelinsky, when the young poet brought some of his work to show the great critic. With tears in his eyes Byelinsky embraced Nekrassov and said to him: "Do you know that you are a poet, a true poet?" This decree of Byelinsky brought fame to Nekrassov, for Byelinsky's word was law in Russia then, and his judgement was never known to fail. His approval gave Nekrassov the confidence he lacked, and he began to devote most of his time to poetry. The epoch in which Nekrassov began his literary career in St. Petersburg, the early forties of last century, was one of a great revival of idealism in Russia. The iron reaction of the then Emperor Nicholas I. made independent political activity an impossibility. But the horrible and degrading conditions of serfdom which existed at that time, and which cast a blight upon the energy and dignity of the Russian nation, nourished feelings of grief and indignation in the noblest minds of the educated classes, and, unable to struggle for their principles in the field of practical politics, they strove towards abstract idealism. They devoted their energies to philosophy, literature, and art. It was then that Tolstoy, Turgenieff, and Dostoyevsky embarked upon their phenomenal careers in fiction. It was then that the impetuous essayist, Byelinsky, with his fiery and eloquent pen, taught the true meaning and objects of literature. Nekrassov soon joined the circles of literary people dominated by the spirit of Byelinsky, and he too drank at the fountain of idealism and imbibed the gospel of altruistic toil for his country and its people, that gospel of perfect citizenship expounded by Byelinsky, Granovsky, and their friends. It was at this period that his poetry became impregnated with the sadness which, later on, was embodied in the lines: My verses! Living witnesses of tears Shed for the world, and born In moments of the soul's dire agony, Unheeded and forlorn, Like waves that beat against the rocks, You plead to hearts that scorn. Nekrassov's material conditions meanwhile began to improve, and he actually developed business capacities, and soon the greatest writers of the time were contributing to the monthly review _Sovremenik_ (the Contemporary) which Nekrassov bought in 1847. Turgenieff, Herzen, Byelinsky, Dostoyevsky gladly sent their works to him, and Nekrassov soon became the intellectual leader of his time. His influence became enormous, but he had to cope with all the rigours of the censorship which had become almost insupportable in Russia, as the effect of the Tsar's fears aroused by the events of the French Revolution of 1848. Byelinsky died in that year from consumption in the very presence of the gendarmes who had come to arrest him for some literary offence. Dostoyevsky was seized, condemned to death, and when already on the scaffold, with the rope around his neck, reprieved and sent for life to the Siberian mines. The rigours still increased during the Crimean War, and it was only after the death of Nicholas I., the termination of the war, and the accession of the liberal Tsar, Alexander II., that Nekrassov and Russian literature in general began to breathe more freely. The decade which followed upon 1855 was one of the bright periods of Russian history. Serfdom was abolished and many great reforms were passed. It was then that Nekrassov's activity was at its height. His review _Sovremenik_ was a stupendous success, and brought him great fame and wealth. During that year some of his finest poems appeared in it: "The Peasant Children," "Orina, the Mother of a Soldier," "The Gossips," "The Pedlars," "The Rail-way," and many others. Nekrassov became the idol of Russia. The literary evenings at which he used to read his poems aloud were besieged by fervent devotees, and the most brilliant orations were addressed to him on all possible occasions. His greatest work, however, the national epic, _Who can be Happy in Russia?_ was written towards the latter end of his life, between 1873 and 1877. Here he suffered from the censor more cruelly than ever. Long extracts from the poem were altogether forbidden, and only after his death it was allowed, in 1879, to appear in print more or less in its entirety. When gripped in the throes of his last painful illness, and practically on his deathbed, he would still have found consolation in work, in the dictation of his poems. But even then his sufferings were aggravated by the harassing coercions of the censor. His last great poem was written on his deathbed, and the censor peremptorily forbade its publication. Nekrassov one day greeted his doctor with the following remark: "Now you see what our profession, literature, means. When I wrote my first lines they were hacked to pieces by the censor's scissors--that was thirty-seven years ago; and now, when I am dying, and have written my last lines, I am again confronted by the scissors." For many months he lay in appalling suffering. His disease was the outcome, he declared, of the privations he had suffered in his youth. The whole of Russia seemed to be standing at his bedside, watching with anguish his terrible struggle with death. Hundreds of letters and telegrams arrived daily from every corner of the immense empire, and the dying poet, profoundly touched by these tokens of love and sympathy, said to the literary friends who visited him: "You see! We wonder all our lives what our readers think of us, whether they love us and are our friends. We learn in moments like this...." It was a bright, frosty December day when Nekrassov's coffin was carried to the grave on the shoulders of friends who had loved and admired him. The orations delivered above it were full of passionate emotion called forth by the knowledge that the speakers were expressing not only their own sentiments, but those of a whole nation. Nekrassov is dead. But all over Russia young and old repeat and love his poetry, so full of tenderness and grief and pity for the Russian people and their endless woe. Quotations from the works of Nekrassov are as abundant and widely known in Russia as those from Shakespeare in England, and no work of his is so familiar and so widely quoted as the national epic, now presented to the English public, _Who can be Happy in Russia?_ DAVID SOSKICE. PROLOGUE The year doesn't matter, The land's not important, But seven good peasants Once met on a high-road. From Province "Hard-Battered," From District "Most Wretched," From "Destitute" Parish, From neighbouring hamlets-- "Patched," "Barefoot," and "Shabby," "Bleak," "Burnt-Out," and "Hungry," From "Harvestless" also, 11 They met and disputed Of who can, in Russia, Be happy and free? Luká said, "The pope," [2] And Román, "The Pomyéshchick," [3] Demyán, "The official," "The round-bellied merchant," Said both brothers Goóbin, Mitródor and Ívan. 20 Pakhóm, who'd been lost In profoundest reflection, Exclaimed, looking down At the earth, "'Tis his Lordship, His most mighty Highness, The Tsar's Chief Adviser," And Prov said, "The Tsar." Like bulls are the peasants: Once folly is in them You cannot dislodge it 30 Although you should beat them With stout wooden cudgels: They stick to their folly, And nothing can move them. They raised such a clamour That those who were passing Thought, "Surely the fellows Have found a great treasure And share it amongst them!" They all had set out 40 On particular errands: The one to the blacksmith's, Another in haste To fetch Father Prokóffy To christen his baby. Pakhóm had some honey To sell in the market; The two brothers Goóbin Were seeking a horse Which had strayed from their herd. 50 Long since should the peasants Have turned their steps homewards, But still in a row They are hurrying onwards As quickly as though The grey wolf were behind them. Still further, still faster They hasten, contending. Each shouts, nothing hearing, And time does not wait. 60 In quarrel they mark not The fiery-red sunset Which blazes in Heaven As evening is falling, And all through the night They would surely have wandered If not for the woman, The pox-pitted "Blank-wits," Who met them and cried: "Heh, God-fearing peasants, 70 Pray, what is your mission? What seek ye abroad In the blackness of midnight?" So shrilled the hag, mocking, And shrieking with laughter She slashed at her horses And galloped away. The peasants are startled, Stand still, in confusion, Since long night has fallen, 80 The numberless stars Cluster bright in the heavens, The moon gliding onwards. Black shadows are spread On the road stretched before The impetuous walkers. Oh, shadows, black shadows, Say, who can outrun you, Or who can escape you? Yet no one can catch you, 90 Entice, or embrace you! Pakhóm, the old fellow, Gazed long at the wood, At the sky, at the roadway, Gazed, silently searching His brain for some counsel, And then spake in this wise: "Well, well, the wood-devil Has finely bewitched us! We've wandered at least 100 Thirty versts from our homes. We all are too weary To think of returning To-night; we must wait Till the sun rise to-morrow." Thus, blaming the devil, The peasants make ready To sleep by the roadside. They light a large fire, And collecting some farthings 110 Send two of their number To buy them some vodka, The rest cutting cups From the bark of a birch-tree. The vodka's provided, Black bread, too, besides, And they all begin feasting: Each munches some bread And drinks three cups of vodka-- But then comes the question 120 Of who can, in Russia, Be happy and free? Luká cries, "The pope!" And Román, "The Pomyéshchick!" And Prov shouts, "The Tsar!" And Demyán, "The official!" "The round-bellied merchant!" Bawl both brothers Goóbin, Mitródor and Ívan. Pakhóm shrieks, "His Lordship, 130 His most mighty Highness, The Tsar's Chief Adviser!" The obstinate peasants Grow more and more heated, Cry louder and louder, Swear hard at each other; I really believe They'll attack one another! Look! now they are fighting! Román and Pakhom close, 140 Demyán clouts Luká, While the two brothers Goóbin Are drubbing fat Prov, And they all shout together. Then wakes the clear echo, Runs hither and thither, Runs calling and mocking As if to encourage The wrath of the peasants. The trees of the forest 150 Throw furious words back: "The Tsar!" "The Pomyéshchick!" "The pope!" "The official!" Until the whole coppice Awakes in confusion; The birds and the insects, The swift-footed beasts And the low crawling reptiles Are chattering and buzzing And stirring all round. 160 The timid grey hare Springing out of the bushes Speeds startled away; The hoarse little jackdaw Flies off to the top Of a birch-tree, and raises A harsh, grating shriek, A most horrible clamour. A weak little peewit Falls headlong in terror 170 From out of its nest, And the mother comes flying In search of her fledgeling. She twitters in anguish. Alas! she can't find it. The crusty old cuckoo Awakes and bethinks him To call to a neighbour: Ten times he commences And gets out of tune, 180 But he won't give it up.... Call, call, little cuckoo, For all the young cornfields Will shoot into ear soon, And then it will choke you-- The ripe golden grain, And your day will be ended![4] From out the dark forest Fly seven brown owls, And on seven tall pine-trees 190 They settle themselves To enjoy the disturbance. They laugh--birds of night-- And their huge yellow eyes gleam Like fourteen wax candles. The raven--the wise one-- Sits perched on a tree In the light of the fire, Praying hard to the devil That one of the wranglers, 200 At least, should be beaten To death in the tumult. A cow with a bell Which had strayed from its fellows The evening before, Upon hearing men's voices Comes out of the forest And into the firelight, And fixing its eyes, Large and sad, on the peasants, 210 Stands listening in silence Some time to their raving, And then begins mooing, Most heartily moos. The silly cow moos, The jackdaw is screeching, The turbulent peasants Still shout, and the echo Maliciously mocks them-- The impudent echo 220 Who cares but for mocking And teasing good people, For scaring old women And innocent children: Though no man has seen it We've all of us heard it; It lives--without body; It speaks--without tongue. The pretty white owl Called the Duchess of Moscow 230 Comes plunging about In the midst of the peasants, Now circling above them, Now striking the bushes And earth with her body. And even the fox, too, The cunning old creature, With woman's determined And deep curiosity, Creeps to the firelight 240 And stealthily listens; At last, quite bewildered, She goes; she is thinking, "The devil himself Would be puzzled, I know!" And really the wranglers Themselves have forgotten The cause of the strife. But after awhile Having pummelled each other 250 Sufficiently soundly, They come to their senses; They drink from a rain-pool And wash themselves also, And then they feel sleepy. And, meanwhile, the peewit, The poor little fledgeling, With short hops and flights Had come fluttering towards them. Pakhóm took it up 260 In his palm, held it gently Stretched out to the firelight, And looked at it, saying, "You are but a mite, Yet how sharp is your claw; If I breathed on you once You'd be blown to a distance, And if I should sneeze You would straightway be wafted Right into the flames. 270 One flick from my finger Would kill you entirely. Yet you are more powerful, More free than the peasant: Your wings will grow stronger, And then, little birdie, You'll fly where it please you. Come, give us your wings, now, You frail little creature, And we will go flying 280 All over the Empire, To seek and inquire, To search and discover The man who in Russia-- Is happy and free." "No wings would be needful If we could be certain Of bread every day; For then we could travel On foot at our leisure," 290 Said Prov, of a sudden Grown weary and sad. "But not without vodka, A bucket each morning," Cried both brothers Goóbin, Mitródor and Ívan, Who dearly loved vodka. "Salt cucumbers, also, Each morning a dozen!" The peasants cry, jesting. 300 "Sour qwass,[5] too, a jug To refresh us at mid-day!" "A can of hot tea Every night!" they say, laughing. But while they were talking The little bird's mother Was flying and wheeling In circles above them; She listened to all, And descending just near them 310 She chirruped, and making A brisk little movement She said to Pakhóm In a voice clear and human: "Release my poor child, I will pay a great ransom." "And what is your offer?" "A loaf each a day And a bucket of vodka, Salt cucumbers also, 320 Each morning a dozen. At mid-day sour qwass And hot tea in the evening." "And where, little bird," Asked the two brothers Goóbin, "And where will you find Food and drink for all seven?" "Yourselves you will find it, But I will direct you To where you will find it." 330 "Well, speak. We will listen." "Go straight down the road, Count the poles until thirty: Then enter the forest And walk for a verst. By then you'll have come To a smooth little lawn With two pine-trees upon it. Beneath these two pine-trees Lies buried a casket 340 Which you must discover. The casket is magic, And in it there lies An enchanted white napkin. Whenever you wish it This napkin will serve you With food and with vodka: You need but say softly, 'O napkin enchanted, Give food to the peasants!' 350 At once, at your bidding, Through my intercession The napkin will serve you. And now, free my child." "But wait. We are poor, And we're thinking of making A very long journey," Pakhóm said. "I notice That you are a bird Of remarkable talent. 360 So charm our old clothing To keep it upon us." "Our coats, that they fall not In tatters," Román said. "Our laputs,[6] that they too May last the whole journey," Demyan next demanded. "Our shirts, that the fleas May not breed and annoy us," Luká added lastly. 370 The little bird answered, "The magic white napkin Will mend, wash, and dry for you. Now free my child." Pakhóm then spread open His palm, wide and spacious, Releasing the fledgeling, Which fluttered away To a hole in a pine-tree. The mother who followed it 380 Added, departing: "But one thing remember: Food, summon at pleasure As much as you fancy, But vodka, no more Than a bucket a day. If once, even twice You neglect my injunction Your wish shall be granted; The third time, take warning: 390 Misfortune will follow." The peasants set off In a file, down the road, Count the poles until thirty And enter the forest, And, silently counting Each footstep, they measure A verst as directed. They find the smooth lawn With the pine-trees upon it, 400 They dig all together And soon reach the casket; They open it--there lies The magic white napkin! They cry in a chorus, "O napkin enchanted, Give food to the peasants!" Look, look! It's unfolding! Two hands have come floating From no one sees where; 410 Place a bucket of vodka, A large pile of bread On the magic white napkin, And dwindle away. "The cucumbers, tea, And sour qwass--where are they then?" At once they appear! The peasants unloosen Their waistbelts, and gather Around the white napkin 420 To hold a great banquet. In joy, they embrace One another, and promise That never again Will they beat one another Without sound reflection, But settle their quarrels In reason and honour As God has commanded; That nought shall persuade them 430 To turn their steps homewards To kiss wives and children, To see the old people, Until they have settled For once and forever The subject of discord: Until they've discovered The man who, in Russia, Is happy and free. They swear to each other 440 To keep this, their promise, And daybreak beholds them Embosomed in slumber As deep and as dreamless As that of the dead. PART I. CHAPTER I. THE POPE[7] The broad sandy high-road With borders of birch-trees Winds sadly and drearily Into the distance; On either hand running Low hills and young cornfields, Green pastures, and often-- More often than any-- Lands sterile and barren. And near to the rivers 10 And ponds are the hamlets And villages standing-- The old and the new ones. The forests and meadows And rivers of Russia Are lovely in springtime, But O you spring cornfields, Your growth thin and scanty Is painful to see. "'Twas not without meaning 20 That daily the snow fell Throughout the long winter," Said one to another The journeying peasants:-- "The spring has now come And the snow tells its story: At first it is silent-- 'Tis silent in falling, Lies silently sleeping, But when it is dying 30 Its voice is uplifted: The fields are all covered With loud, rushing waters, No roads can be traversed For bringing manure To the aid of the cornfields; The season is late For the sweet month of May Is already approaching." The peasant is saddened 40 At sight of the dirty And squalid old village; But sadder the new ones: The new huts are pretty, But they are the token Of heartbreaking ruin.[8] As morning sets in They begin to meet people, But mostly small people: Their brethren, the peasants, 50 And soldiers and waggoners, Workmen and beggars. The soldiers and beggars They pass without speaking. Not asking if happy Or grievous their lot: The soldier, we know, Shaves his beard with a gimlet, Has nothing but smoke In the winter to warm him,-- 60 What joy can be his? As evening is falling Appears on the high-road A pope in his cart. The peasants uncover Their heads, and draw up In a line on the roadway, Thus barring the passage In front of the gelding. The pope raised his head, 70 Looked inquiringly at them. "Fear not, we won't harm you," Luká said in answer. (Luká was thick-bearded, Was heavy and stolid, Was obstinate, stupid, And talkative too; He was like to the windmill Which differs in one thing Alone from an eagle: 80 No matter how boldly It waves its broad pinions It rises no higher.) "We, orthodox peasants, From District 'Most Wretched,' From Province 'Hard Battered,' From 'Destitute' Parish, From neighbouring hamlets, 'Patched,' 'Barefoot,' and 'Shabby,' 'Bleak,' 'Burnt-Out,' and 'Hungry,' 90 From 'Harvestless' also, Are striving to settle A thing of importance; A trouble torments us, It draws us away From our wives and our children, Away from our work, Kills our appetites too. Pray, give us your promise To answer us truly, 100 Consulting your conscience And searching your knowledge, Not feigning nor mocking The question we put you. If not, we will go Further on." "I will promise If you will but put me A serious question To answer it gravely, 110 With truth and with reason, Not feigning nor mocking, Amen!" "We are grateful, And this is our story: We all had set out On particular errands, And met in the roadway. Then one asked another: Who is he,--the man 120 Free and happy in Russia? And I said, 'The pope,' And Román, 'The Pomyéshchick,' And Prov said, 'The Tsar,' And Demyán, 'The official'; 'The round-bellied merchant,' Said both brothers Goóbin, Mitródor and Ívan; Pakhóm said, 'His Lordship, The Tsar's Chief Adviser.' 130 "Like bulls are the peasants; Once folly is in them You cannot dislodge it Although you should beat them With stout wooden cudgels, They stick to their folly And nothing can move them. We argued and argued, While arguing quarrelled, While quarrelling fought, 140 Till at last we decided That never again Would we turn our steps homeward To kiss wives and children, To see the old people, Until we have found The reply to our question, Until we've discovered For once and forever The man who, in Russia, 150 Is happy and free. Then say, in God's truth, Is the pope's life a sweet one? Would you, honoured father, Proclaim yourself happy?" The pope in his cart Cast his eyes on the roadway, Fell thoughtful and answered: "Then, Christians, come, hear me: I will not complain 160 Of the cross that I carry, But bear it in silence. I'll tell you my story, And you try to follow As well as you can." "Begin." "But first tell me The gifts you consider As true earthly welfare; Peace, honour, and riches,-- 170 Is that so, my children?" They answer, "It is so." "And now let us see, friends, What peace does the pope get? In truth, then, I ought To begin from my childhood, For how does the son Of the pope gain his learning, And what is the price That he pays for the priesthood? 180 'Tis best to be silent." [9] * * * * * "Our roadways are poor And our parishes large, And the sick and the dying, The new-born that call us, Do not choose their season: In harvest and hay-time, In dark nights of autumn, Through frosts in the winter, Through floods in the springtime, 190 Go--where they may call you. You go without murmur, If only the body Need suffer alone! But no,--every moment The heart's deepest feelings Are strained and tormented. Believe me, my children, Some things on this earth One can never get used to: 200 No heart there exists That can bear without anguish The rattle of death, The lament for the lost one, The sorrow of orphans, Amen! Now you see, friends, The peace that the pope gets." Not long did the peasants Stand thinking. They waited To let the pope rest, 210 Then enquired with a bow: "And what more will you tell us?" "Well, now let us see If the pope is much honoured; And that, O my friends, Is a delicate question-- I fear to offend you.... But answer me, Christians, Whom call you, 'The cursed Stallion breed?' Can you tell me?" The peasants stand silent 221 In painful confusion; The pope, too, is silent. "Who is it you tremble To meet in the roadway[10] For fear of misfortune?" The peasants stand shuffling Their feet in confusion. "Of whom do you make Little scandalous stories? 230 Of whom do you sing Rhymes and songs most indecent? The pope's honoured wife, And his innocent daughters, Come, how do you treat them? At whom do you shout Ho, ho, ho, in derision When once you are past him?" The peasants cast downwards Their eyes and keep silent. 240 The pope too is silent. The peasants stand musing; The pope fans his face With his hat, high and broad-rimmed, And looks at the heavens.... The cloudlets in springtime Play round the great sun Like small grandchildren frisking Around a hale grandsire, And now, on his right side 250 A bright little cloud Has grown suddenly dismal, Begins to shed tears. The grey thread is hanging In rows to the earth, While the red sun is laughing And beaming upon it Through torn fleecy clouds, Like a merry young girl Peeping out from the corn. 260 The cloud has moved nearer, The rain begins here, And the pope puts his hat on. But on the sun's right side The joy and the brightness Again are established. The rain is now ceasing.... It stops altogether, And God's wondrous miracle, Long golden sunbeams, 270 Are streaming from Heaven In radiant splendour. * * * * * "It isn't our own fault; It comes from our parents," Say, after long silence, The two brothers Goóbin. The others approve him: "It isn't our own fault, It comes from our parents." The pope said, "So be it! 280 But pardon me, Christians, It is not my meaning To censure my neighbours; I spoke but desiring To tell you the truth. You see how the pope Is revered by the peasants; The gentry--" "Pass over them, Father--we know them." 290 "Then let us consider From whence the pope's riches. In times not far distant The great Russian Empire Was filled with estates Of wealthy Pomyéshchicks.[11] They lived and increased, And they let us live too. What weddings were feasted! What numbers and numbers 300 Of children were born In each rich, merry life-time! Although they were haughty And often oppressive, What liberal masters! They never deserted The parish, they married, Were baptized within it, To us they confessed, And by us they were buried. 310 And if a Pomyéshchick Should chance for some reason To live in a city, He cherished one longing, To die in his birthplace; But did the Lord will it That he should die suddenly Far from the village, An order was found In his papers, most surely, 320 That he should be buried At home with his fathers. Then see--the black car With the six mourning horses,-- The heirs are conveying The dead to the graveyard; And think--what a lift For the pope, and what feasting All over the village! But now that is ended, 330 Pomyéshchicks are scattered Like Jews over Russia And all foreign countries. They seek not the honour Of lying with fathers And mothers together. How many estates Have passed into the pockets Of rich speculators! O you, bones so pampered 340 Of great Russian gentry, Where are you not buried, What far foreign graveyard Do you not repose in? "Myself from dissenters[12] (A source of pope's income) I never take money, I've never transgressed, For I never had need to; Because in my parish 350 Two-thirds of the people Are Orthodox churchmen. But districts there are Where the whole population Consists of dissenters-- Then how can the pope live? "But all in this world Is subjected to changes: The laws which in old days Applied to dissenters 360 Have now become milder; And that in itself Is a check to pope's income. I've said the Pomyéshchicks Are gone, and no longer They seek to return To the home of their childhood; And then of their ladies (Rich, pious old women), How many have left us 370 To live near the convents! And nobody now Gives the pope a new cassock Or church-work embroidered. He lives on the peasants, Collects their brass farthings, Their cakes on the feast-days, At Easter their eggs. The peasants are needy Or they would give freely-- 380 Themselves they have nothing; And who can take gladly The peasant's last farthing? "Their lands are so poor, They are sand, moss, or boggy, Their cattle half-famished, Their crops yield but twofold; And should Mother Earth Chance at times to be kinder, That too is misfortune: 390 The market is crowded, They sell for a trifle To pay off the taxes. Again comes a bad crop--- Then pay for your bread Three times higher than ever, And sell all your cattle! Now, pray to God, Christians, For this year again A great misery threatens: 400 We ought to have sown For a long time already; But look you--the fields Are all deluged and useless.... O God, have Thou pity And send a round[13] rainbow To shine in Thy heavens!" Then taking his hat off He crossed himself thrice, And the peasants did likewise. "Our village is poor 411 And the people are sickly, The women are sad And are scantily nourished, But pious and laborious; God give them courage! Like slaves do they toil; 'Tis hard to lay hands On the fruits of such labour. "At times you are sent for 420 To pray by the dying, But Death is not really The awful thing present, But rather the living-- The family losing Their only support. You pray by the dead. Words of comfort you utter, To calm the bereaved ones; And then the old mother 430 Comes tottering towards you, And stretching her bony And toil-blistered hand out; You feel your heart sicken, For there in the palm Lie the precious brass farthings! Of course it is only The price of your praying. You take it, because It is what you must live on; 440 Your words of condolence Are frozen, and blindly, Like one deep insulted, You make your way homeward. Amen...." * * * * * The pope finished His speech, and touched lightly The back of the gelding. The peasants make way, And they bow to him deeply. 450 The cart moves on slowly, Then six of the comrades As though by agreement Attack poor Luká With indignant reproaches. "Now, what have you got?-- You great obstinate blockhead, You log of the village! You too must needs argue; Pray what did you tell us? 460 'The popes live like princes, The lords of the belfry, Their palaces rising As high as the heavens, Their bells set a-chiming All over God's world. "'Three years,' you declared, 'Did I work as pope's servant. It wasn't a life-- 'Twas a strawberry, brethren; 470 Pope's kasha[14] is made And served up with fresh butter. Pope's stchee[14] made with fish, And pope's pie stuffed to bursting; The pope's wife is fat too, And white the pope's daughter, His horse like a barrel, His bees are all swollen And booming like church bells.' "Well, there's your pope's life,-- 480 There's your 'strawberry,' boaster! For that you've been shouting And making us quarrel, You limb of the Devil! Pray is it because Of your beard like a shovel You think you're so clever? If so, let me tell you The goat walked in Eden With just such another 490 Before Father Adam, And yet down to our time The goat is considered The greatest of duffers!" The culprit was silent, Afraid of a beating; And he would have got it Had not the pope's face, Turning sadly upon them, Looked over a hedge 500 At a rise in the road. CHAPTER II THE VILLAGE FAIR No wonder the peasants Dislike a wet spring-tide: The peasant needs greatly A spring warm and early. This year, though he howl Like a wolf, I'm afraid That the sun will not gladden The earth with his brightness. The clouds wander heavily, Dropping the rain down 10 Like cows with full udders. The snow has departed, Yet no blade of grass, Not a tiny green leaflet, Is seen in the meadows. The earth has not ventured To don its new mantle Of brightest green velvet, But lies sad and bare Like a corpse without grave-clothes Beneath the dull heavens. 21 One pities the peasant; Still more, though, his cattle: For when they have eaten The scanty reserves Which remain from the winter, Their master will drive them To graze in the meadows, And what will they find there But bare, inky blackness? 30 Nor settled the weather Until it was nearing The feast of St. Nichol, And then the poor cattle Enjoyed the green pastures. The day is a hot one, The peasants are strolling Along 'neath the birch-trees. They say to each other, "We passed through one village, 40 We passed through another, And both were quite empty; To-day is a feast-day, But where are the people?" They reach a large village; The street is deserted Except for small children, And inside the houses Sit only the oldest Of all the old women. 50 The wickets are fastened Securely with padlocks; The padlock's a loyal And vigilant watch-dog; It barks not, it bites not, But no one can pass it. They walk through the village And see a clear mirror Beset with green framework-- A pond full of water; 60 And over its surface Are hovering swallows And all kinds of insects; The gnats quick and meagre Skip over the water As though on dry land; And in the laburnums Which grow on the banksides The landrails are squeaking. A raft made of tree-trunks 70 Floats near, and upon it The pope's heavy daughter Is wielding her beetle, She looks like a hay-stack, Unsound and dishevelled, Her skirts gathered round her. Upon the raft, near her, A duck and some ducklings Are sleeping together. And hark! from the water 80 The neigh of a horse comes; The peasants are startled, They turn all together: Two heads they see, moving Along through the water-- The one is a peasant's, A black head and curly, In one ear an ear-ring Which gleams in the sunlight; A horse's the other, 90 To which there is fastened A rope of some yards length, Held tight in the teeth Of the peasant beside it. The man swims, the horse swims; The horse neighs, the man neighs; They make a fine uproar! The raft with the woman And ducklings upon it Is tossing and heaving. 100 The horse with the peasant Astride has come panting From out of the water, The man with white body And throat black with sunburn; The water is streaming From horse and from rider. "Say, why is your village So empty of people? Are all dead and buried?" 110 "They've gone to Kousminsky; A fair's being held there Because it's a saint's day." "How far is Kousminsky?" "Three versts, I should fancy." "We'll go to Kousminsky," The peasants decided, And each to himself thought, "Perhaps we shall find there The happy, the free one." 120 The village Kousminsky Is rich and commercial And terribly dirty. It's built on a hill-side, And slopes down the valley, Then climbs again upwards,-- So how could one ask of it Not to be dirty?[15] It boasts of two churches. The one is "dissenting," 130 The other "Established." The house with inscription, "The School-House," is empty, In ruins and deserted; And near stands the barber's, A hut with one window, From which hangs the sign-board Of "Barber and Bleeder." A dirty inn also There is, with its sign-board 140 Adorned by a picture: A great nosy tea-pot With plump little tea-cups Held out by a waiter, Suggesting a fat goose Surrounded by goslings. A row of small shops, too, There is in the village. The peasants go straight To the market-place, find there 150 A large crowd of people And goods in profusion. How strange!--notwithstanding There's no church procession The men have no hats on, Are standing bare-headed, As though in the presence Of some holy Image: Look, how they're being swallowed-- The hoods of the peasants.[16] 160 The beer-shop and tavern Are both overflowing; All round are erected Large tents by the roadside For selling of vodka. And though in each tent There are five agile waiters, All young and most active, They find it quite hopeless To try to get change right. 170 Just look how the peasants Are stretching their hands out, With hoods, shirts, and waistcoats! Oh, you, thirst of Russia, Unquenchable, endless You are! But the peasant, When once he is sated, Will soon get a new hood At close of the fair.... The spring sun is playing 180 On heads hot and drunken, On boisterous revels, On bright mixing colours; The men wear wide breeches Of corduroy velvet, With gaudy striped waistcoats And shirts of all colours; The women wear scarlet; The girls' plaited tresses Are decked with bright ribbons; 190 They glide about proudly, Like swans on the water. Some beauties are even Attired in the fashion Of Petersburg ladies; Their dresses spread stiffly On wide hoops around them; But tread on their skirts-- They will turn and attack you, Will gobble like turkeys! 200 Blame rather the fashion Which fastens upon you Great fishermen's baskets! A woman dissenter Looks darkly upon them, And whispers with malice: "A famine, a famine Most surely will blight us. The young growths are sodden, The floods unabated; 210 Since women have taken To red cotton dresses The forests have withered, And wheat--but no wonder!" "But why, little Mother, Are red cotton dresses To blame for the trouble? I don't understand you." "The cotton is _French_, And it's reddened in dog's blood! 220 D'you understand now?" The peasants still linger Some time in the market, Then go further upward, To where on the hill-side Are piled ploughs and harrows, With rakes, spades, and hatchets, And all kinds of iron-ware, And pliable wood To make rims for the cart-wheels. 230 And, oh, what a hubbub Of bargaining, swearing, Of jesting and laughter! And who could help laughing? A limp little peasant Is bending and testing The wood for the wheel-rims. One piece does not please him; He takes up another And bends it with effort; 240 It suddenly straightens, And whack!--strikes his forehead. The man begins roaring, Abusing the bully, The duffer, the block-head. Another comes driving A cart full of wood-ware, As tipsy as can be; He turns it all over! The axle is broken, 250 And, trying to mend it, He smashes the hatchet. He gazes upon it, Abusing, reproaching: "A villain, a villain, You are--not a hatchet. You see, you can't do me The least little service. The whole of your life You spend bowing before me, 260 And yet you insult me!" Our peasants determine To see the shop windows, The handkerchiefs, ribbons, And stuffs of bright colour; And near to the boot-shop Is fresh cause for laughter; For here an old peasant Most eagerly bargains For small boots of goat-skin 270 To give to his grandchild. He asks the price five times; Again and again He has turned them all over; He finds they are faultless. "Well, Uncle, pay up now, Or else be off quickly," The seller says sharply. But wait! The old fellow Still gazes, and fondles 280 The tiny boots softly, And then speaks in this wise: "My daughter won't scold me, Her husband I'll spit at, My wife--let her grumble-- I'll spit at my wife too. It's her that I pity-- My poor little grandchild. She clung to my neck, And she said, 'Little Grandfather, 290 Buy me a present.' Her soft little ringlets Were tickling my cheek, And she kissed the old Grand-dad. You wait, little bare-foot, Wee spinning-top, wait then, Some boots I will buy you, Some boots made of goat-skin." And then must old Vavil Begin to boast grandly, 300 To promise a present To old and to young. But now his last farthing Is swallowed in vodka, And how can he dare Show his eyes in the village? "My daughter won't scold me, Her husband I'll spit at, My wife--let her grumble-- I'll spit at my wife too. 310 It's her that I pity-- My poor little grandchild." And then he commences The story again Of the poor little grandchild. He's very dejected. A crowd listens round him, Not laughing, but troubled At sight of his sorrow. If they could have helped him 320 With bread or by labour They soon would have done so, But money is money, And who has got tenpence To spare? Then came forward Pavlóosha Varénko, The "gentleman" nicknamed. (His origin, past life, Or calling they knew not, But called him the 'Barin'.) 330 He listened with pleasure To talk and to jesting; His blouse, coat, and top-boots Were those of a peasant; He sang Russian folk-songs, Liked others to sing them, And often was met with At taverns and inns. He now rescued Vavil, And bought him the boots 340 To take home to his grandchild. The old man fled blindly, But clasping them tightly, Forgetting to thank him, Bewildered with joy. The crowd was as pleased, too, As if had been given To each one a rouble. The peasants next visit The picture and book stall; 350 The pedlars are buying Their stock of small pictures, And books for their baskets To sell on the road. "'Tis generals, _you_ want!" The merchant is saying. "Well, give us some generals; But look--on your conscience-- Now let them be real ones, Be fat and ferocious." 360 "Your notions are funny," The merchant says, smiling; "It isn't a question Of looks...." "Well, of what, then? You want to deceive us, To palm off your rubbish, You swindling impostor! D'you think that the peasants Know one from another? 370 A shabby one--he wants An expert to sell him, But trust me to part with The fat and the fierce." "You don't want officials?" "To Hell with officials!" However they took one Because he was cheap: A minister, striking In view of his stomach 380 As round as a barrel, And seventeen medals. The merchant is serving With greatest politeness, Displaying and praising, With patience unyielding,-- A thief of the first-class He is, come from Moscow. Of Blücher he sells them A hundred small pictures, 390 As many of Fótyi[17] The archimandrite, And of Sipko[17] the brigand; A book of the sayings Of droll Balakireff[17] The "English Milord," too. The books were put into The packs of the pedlars; The pictures will travel All over great Russia, 400 Until they find rest On the wall of some peasant-- The devil knows why! Oh, may it come quickly The time when the peasant Will make some distinction Between book and book, Between picture and picture; Will bring from the market, Not picture of Blücher, 410 Not stupid "Milord," But Belinsky and Gógol! Oh, say, Russian people, These names--have you heard them? They're great. They were borne By your champions, who loved you, Who strove in your cause, 'Tis _their_ little portraits Should hang in your houses! "I'd walk into Heaven 420 But can't find the doorway!" Is suddenly shouted By some merry blade. "What door do you want, man?" "The puppet-show, brothers!" "I'll show you the way!" The puppet-show tempted The journeying peasants; They go to inspect it. A farce is being acted, 430 A goat for the drummer; Real music is playing-- No common accordion. The play is not too deep, But not stupid, either. A bullet shot deftly Right into the eye Of the hated policeman. The tent is quite crowded, The audience cracking 440 Their nuts, and exchanging Remarks with each other. And look--there's the vodka! They're drinking and looking, And looking and drinking, Enjoying it highly, With jubilant faces, From time to time throwing A right witty word Into Peterkin's speeches, 450 Which _you'd_ never hit on, Although you should swallow Your pen and your pad!... Some folk there are always Who crowd on the platform (The comedy ended), To greet the performers, To gossip and chat. "How now, my fine fellows, And where do you come from?" 460 "As serfs we used only To play for the masters,[18] But now we are free, And the man who will treat us Alone is our Master!" "Well spoken, my brothers; Enough time you've wasted Amusing the nobles; Now play for the peasants! Here, waiter, bring vodka, 470 Sweet wine, tea, and syrup, And see you make haste!" The sweet sparkling river Comes rolling to meet them; They'll treat the musicians More handsomely, far, Than their masters of old. It is not the rushing Of furious whirlwinds, Not Mother Earth shaking-- 480 'Tis shouting and singing And swearing and fighting And falling and kissing-- The people's carouse! It seems to the peasants That all in the village Was reeling around them! That even the church With the very tall, steeple Had swayed once or twice! 490 When things are in this state, A man who is sober Feels nearly as awkward As one who is naked.... The peasants recrossing The market-place, quitted The turbulent village At evening's approach. CHAPTER III THE DRUNKEN NIGHT This village did not end, As many in Russia, In windmill or tavern, In corn-loft or barn, But in a large building Of wood, with iron gratings In small narrow windows. The broad, sandy high-road, With borders of birch-trees, Spread out straight behind it-- 10 The grim étape--prison.[19] On week-days deserted It is, dull and silent, But now it is not so. All over the high-road, In neighbouring pathways, Wherever the eye falls, Are lying and crawling, Are driving and climbing, The numberless drunkards; 20 Their shout fills the skies. The cart-wheels are screeching, And like slaughtered calves' heads Are nodding and wagging The pates limp and helpless Of peasants asleep. They're dropping on all sides, As if from some ambush An enemy firing Is shooting them wholesale. 30 The quiet night is falling, The moon is in Heaven, And God is commencing To write His great letter Of gold on blue velvet; Mysterious message, Which neither the wise man Nor foolish can read. The high-road is humming Just like a great bee-hive; 40 The people's loud clamour Is swelling and falling Like waves in the ocean. "We paid him a rouble-- The clerk, and he gave us A written petition To send to the Governor." "Hi, you with the waggon, Look after your corn!" "But where are you off to, 50 Olyénushka? Wait now-- I've still got some cakes. You're like a black flea, girl, You eat all you want to And hop away quickly Before one can stroke you!" "It's all very fine talk, This Tsar's precious Charter, It's not writ for us!" "Give way there, you people!" 60 The exciseman dashes Amongst them, his brass plate Attached to his coat-front, And bells all a-jangle. "God save us, Parasha, Don't go to St. Petersburg! _I_ know the gentry: By day you're a maid, And by night you're a mistress. You spit at it, love...." 70 "Now, where are you running?" The pope bellows loudly To busy Pavloósha, The village policeman. "An accident's happened Down here, and a man's killed." "God pardon our sins!" "How thin you've got, Dashka!" "The spinning-wheel fattens By turning forever; 80 I work just as hard, But I never get fatter." "Heh, you, silly fellow, Come hither and love me! The dirty, dishevelled, And tipsy old woman. The f--i--ilthy o--l--d woman!" Our peasants, observing, Are still walking onwards. They see just before them 90 A meek little fellow Most busily digging A hole in the road. "Now, what are you doing?" "A grave I am digging To bury my mother!" "You fool!--Where's your mother? Your new coat you've buried! Roll into the ditch, Dip your snout in the water. 100 'Twill cool you, perhaps." "Let's see who'll pull hardest!" Two peasants are squatting, And, feet to feet pressing, Are straining and groaning, And tugging away At a stick held between them. This soon fails to please them: "Let's try with our beards!" And each man then clutches 110 The jaw of the other, And tugs at his beard! Red, panting, and writhing, And gasping and yelping, But pulling and pulling! "Enough there, you madmen!"... Cold water won't part them! And in the ditch near them Two women are squabbling; One cries, "To go home now 120 Were worse than to prison!" The other, "You braggart! In my house, I tell you, It's worse than in yours. One son-in-law punched me And left a rib broken; The second made off With my big ball of cotton; The cotton don't matter, But in it was hidden 130 My rouble in silver. The youngest--he always Is up with his knife out. He'll kill me for sure!" "Enough, enough, darling! Now don't you be angry!" Is heard not far distant From over a hillock-- "Come on, I'm all right!" A mischievous night, this; 140 On right hand, on left hand, Wherever the eye falls, Are sauntering couples. The wood seems to please them; They all stroll towards it, The wood--which is thrilling With nightingales' voices. And later, the high-road Gets more and more ugly, And more and more often 150 The people are falling, Are staggering, crawling, Or lying like corpses. As always it happens On feast days in Russia-- No word can be uttered Without a great oath. And near to the tavern Is quite a commotion; Some wheels get entangled 160 And terrified horses Rush off without drivers. Here children are crying, And sad wives and mothers Are anxiously waiting; And is the task easy Of getting the peasant Away from his drink? Just near to the sign-post A voice that's familiar 170 Is heard by the peasants; They see there the Barin (The same that helped Vavil, And bought him the boots To take home to his grandchild). He chats with the men. The peasants all open Their hearts to the Barin; If some song should please him They'll sing it through five times; 180 "Just write the song down, sir!" If some saying strike him; "Take note of the words!" And when he has written Enough, he says quietly, "The peasants are clever, But one thing is bad: They drink till they're helpless And lie about tipsy, It's painful to see." 190 They listen in silence. The Barin commences To write something down In the little black note-book When, all of a sudden, A small, tipsy peasant, Who up to that moment Has lain on his stomach And gazed at the speaker, Springs up straight before him 200 And snatches his pencil Right out of his hand: "Wait, wait!" cries the fellow, "Stop writing your stories, Dishonest and heartless, About the poor peasant. Say, what's your complaint? That sometimes the heart Of the peasant rejoices? At times we drink hard, 210 But we work ten times harder; Among us are drunkards, But many more sober. Go, take through a village A pailful of vodka; Go into the huts-- In one, in another, They'll swallow it gladly. But go to a third And you'll find they won't touch it! One family drinks, 221 While another drinks nothing, Drinks nothing--and suffers As much as the drunkards: They, wisely or foolishly, Follow their conscience; And see how misfortune, The peasants' misfortune, Will swallow that household Hard-working and sober! 230 Pray, have you seen ever The time of the harvest In some Russian village? Well, where were the people? At work in the tavern? Our fields may be broad, But they don't give too freely. Who robes them in spring-time, And strips them in autumn? You've met with a peasant 240 At nightfall, perchance, When the work has been finished? He's piled up great mountains Of corn in the meadows, He'll sup off a pea! Hey, you mighty monster! You builder of mountains, I'll knock you flat down With the stroke of a feather! "Sweet food is the peasant's! 250 But stomachs aren't mirrors, And so we don't whimper To see what we've eaten. "We work single-handed, But when we have finished Three partners[20] are waiting To share in the profits; A fourth[21] one there is, too, Who eats like a Tartar-- Leaves nothing behind. 260 The other day, only, A mean little fellow Like you, came from Moscow And clung to our backs. 'Oh, please sing him folk-songs' And 'tell him some proverbs,' 'Some riddles and rhymes.' And then came another To put us his questions: How much do we work for? 270 How much and how little We stuff in our bellies? To count all the people That live in the village Upon his five fingers. He did not _ask how much The fire feeds the wind with Of peasants' hard work_. Our drunkenness, maybe, Can never be measured, 280 But look at our labour-- Can that then be measured? Our cares or our woes? "The vodka prostrates us; But does not our labour, Our trouble, prostrate us? The peasant won't grumble At each of his burdens, He'll set out to meet it, And struggle to bear it; 290 The peasant does not flinch At life-wasting labour, And tremble for fear That his health may be injured. Then why should he number Each cupful of vodka For fear that an odd one May topple him over? You say that it's painful To see him lie tipsy?-- 300 Then go to the bog; You'll see how the peasant Is squeezing the corn out, Is wading and crawling Where no horse or rider, No man, though unloaded, Would venture to tread. You'll see how the army Of profligate peasants Is toiling in danger, 310 Is springing from one clod Of earth to another, Is pushing through bog-slime With backs nearly breaking! The sun's beating down On the peasants' bare heads, They are sweating and covered With mud to the eyebrows, Their limbs torn and bleeding By sharp, prickly bog-grass! 320 "Does this picture please you? You say that you suffer; At least suffer wisely. Don't use for a peasant A gentleman's judgement; We are not white-handed And tender-skinned creatures, But men rough and lusty In work and in play. "The heart of each peasant 330 Is black as a storm-cloud, Its thunder should peal And its blood rain in torrents; But all ends in drink-- For after one cupful The soul of the peasant Is kindly and smiling; But don't let that hurt you! Look round and be joyful! Hey, fellows! Hey, maidens! 340 You know how to foot it! Their bones may be aching, Their limbs have grown weary, But youth's joy and daring Is not quite extinguished, It lives in them yet!" The peasant is standing On top of a hillock, And stamping his feet, And after being silent 350 A moment, and gazing With glee at the masses Of holiday people, He roars to them hoarsely. "Hey you, peasant kingdom! You, hatless and drunken! More racket! More noise!" "Come, what's your name, uncle?" "To write in the note-book? Why not? Write it down: 360 'In Barefoot the village Lives old Jacob Naked, He'll work till he's taken, He drinks till he's crazed.'" The peasants are laughing, And telling the Barin The old fellow's story: How shabby old Jacob Had lived once in Peter,[22] And got into prison 370 Because he bethought him To get him to law With a very rich merchant; How after the prison He'd come back amongst them All stripped, like a linden, And taken to ploughing. For thirty years since On his narrow allotment He'd worked in all weathers, 380 The harrow his shelter From sunshine and storm. He lived with the sokha,[23] And when God would take him He'd drop from beneath it Just like a black clod. An accident happened One year to old Jacob: He bought some small pictures To hang in the cottage 390 For his little son; The old man himself, too, Was fond of the pictures. God's curse had then fallen; The village was burnt, And the old fellow's money, The fruit of a life-time (Some thirty-five roubles),[24] Was lost in the flames. He ought to have saved it, 400 But, to his misfortune, He thought of the pictures And seized them instead. His wife in the meantime Was saving the icons.[25] And so, when the cottage Fell in, all the roubles Were melted together In one lump of silver. Old Jacob was offered 410 Eleven such roubles For that silver lump. "O old brother Jacob, You paid for them dearly, The little chap's pictures! I warrant you've hung them Again in the new hut." "I've hung them--and more," He replied, and was silent. The Barin was looking, 420 Examining Jacob, The toiler, the earth-worm, His chest thin and meagre, His stomach as shrunk As though something had crushed it, His eyes and mouth circled By numberless wrinkles, Like drought-shrivelled earth. And he altogether Resembled the earth, 430 Thought the Barin, while noting His throat, like a dry lump Of clay, brown and hardened; His brick-coloured face; His hands--black and horny, Like bark on the tree-trunk; His hair--stiff and sandy.... The peasants, remarking That old Jacob's speech Had not angered the Barin, 440 Themselves took his words up: "Yes, yes, he speaks truly, We must drink, it saves us, It makes us feel strong. Why, if we did not drink Black gloom would engulf us. If work does not kill us Or trouble destroy us, We shan't die from drink!" "That's so. Is it not, sir?" 450 "Yes, God will protect us!" "Come, drink with us, Barin!" They go to buy vodka And drink it together. To Jacob the Barin Has offered two cups. "Ah, Barin," says Jacob, "I see you're not angry. A wise little head, yours, And how could a wise head 460 Judge falsely of peasants? Why, only the pig Glues his nose to the garbage And never sees Heaven!" Then suddenly singing Is heard in a chorus Harmonious and bold. A row of young fellows, Half drunk, but not falling, Come staggering onwards, 470 All lustily singing; They sing of the Volga, The daring of youths And the beauty of maidens ... A hush falls all over The road, and it listens; And only the singing Is heard, broadly rolling In waves, sweet and tuneful, Like wind-ruffled corn. 480 The hearts of the peasants Are touched with wild anguish, And one little woman Grows pensive and mournful, And then begins weeping And sobs forth her grief: "My life is like day-time With no sun to warm it! My life is like night With no glimmer of moon! 490 And I--the young woman-- Am like the swift steed On the curb, like the swallow With wings crushed and broken; My jealous old husband Is drunken and snoring, But even while snoring He keeps one eye open, And watches me always, Me--poor little wife!" 500 And so she lamented, The sad little woman; Then all of a sudden Springs down from the waggon! "Where now?" cries her husband, The jealous old man. And just as one lifts By the tail a plump radish, He clutches her pig-tail, And pulls her towards him. 510 O night wild and drunken, Not bright--and yet star-lit, Not hot--but fanned softly By tender spring breezes, You've not left our peasants Untouched by your sweetness; They're thinking and longing For their little women. And they are quite right too; Still sweeter 'twould be 520 With a nice little wife! Cries Ívan, "I love you," And Mariushka, "I you!" Cries Ívan, "Press closer!" And Mariushka, "Kiss me!" Cries Ívan, "The night's cold," And Mariushka, "Warm me!" They think of this song now, And all make their minds up To shorten the journey. 530 A birch-tree is growing Alone by the roadside, God knows why so lonely! And under it spreading The magic white napkin, The peasants sit round it: "Hey! Napkin enchanted! Give food to the peasants!" Two hands have come floating From no one sees where, 540 Place a bucket of vodka, A large pile of bread, On the magic white napkin, And dwindle away. The peasants feel strengthened, And leaving Román there On guard near the vodka, They mix with the people, To try to discover The one who is happy. 550 They're all in a hurry To turn towards home. CHAPTER IV THE HAPPY ONES In crowds gay and noisy Our peasants are mixing, Proclaiming their mission: "Let any man here Who esteems himself happy Stand forth! If he prove it A pailful of vodka Is at his disposal; As much as he wishes So much he shall have!" 10 This fabulous promise Sets sober folk smiling; The tipsy and wise ones Are ready to spit In the beards of the pushing Impertinent strangers! But many are willing To drink without payment, And so when our peasants Go back to the birch-tree 20 A crowd presses round them. The first to come forward, A lean discharged deacon, With legs like two matches, Lets forth a great mouthful Of indistinct maxims: That happiness lies not In broad lands, in jewels, In gold, and in sables-- "In what, then?" 30 A peaceful And undisturbed conscience. That all the dominions Of land-owners, nobles, And Tsars are but earthly And limited treasures; But he who is godly Has part in Christ's kingdom Of boundless extent: "When warm in the sun, 40 With a cupful of vodka, I'm perfectly happy, I ask nothing more!" "And who'll give you vodka?" "Why, you! You have promised." "Be off, you lean scamp!" A one-eyed old woman Comes next, bent and pock-marked, And bowing before them She says she is happy; 50 That in her allotment A thousand fine turnips Have grown, this last autumn. "Such turnips, I tell you! Such monsters! and tasty! In such a small plot, too, In length only one yard, And three yards in width!" They laugh at the woman, But give her no vodka; 60 "Go, get you home, Mother! You've vodka enough there To flavour the turnips!" A soldier with medals, Quite drunk but still thirsty, Says firmly, "I'm happy!" "Then tell us, old fellow, In what he is happy-- The soldier? Take care, though, To keep nothing back!" 70 "Well, firstly, I've been Through at least twenty battles, And yet I'm alive. And, secondly, mark you (It's far more important), In times of peace, too, Though I'm always half-famished, Death never has conquered! And, third, though they flogged me For every offence, 80 Great or small, I've survived it!" "Here, drink, little soldier! With you one can't argue; You're happy indeed!" Then comes a young mason, A huge, weighty hammer Swung over his shoulder: "I live in content," He declares, "with my wife And beloved old mother; 90 We've nought to complain of." "In what are you happy?" "In this!"--like a feather He swings the great hammer. "Beginning at sunrise And setting my back straight As midnight draws near, I can shatter a mountain! Before now, it's happened That, working one day, 100 I've piled enough stones up To earn my five roubles!" Pakhóm tries to lift it-- The "happiness." After Prodigiously straining And cracking all over, He sets it down, gladly, And pours out some vodka. "Well, weighty it is, man! But will you be able 110 To bear in old age Such a 'happiness,' think you?" "Don't boast of your strength!" Gasped a wheezing old peasant, Half stifled with asthma. (His nose pinched and shrivelled Like that of a dead man, His eyes bright and sunken, His hands like a rake-- Stiffened, scraggy, and bony, 120 His legs long and narrow Like spokes of a wheel, A human mosquito.) "I was not a worse man Than he, the young mason, And boasted of _my_ strength. God punished me for it! The manager knew I was simple--the villain! He flattered and praised me. 130 I was but a youngster, And pleased at his notice I laboured like four men. One day I had mounted Some bricks to my shoulder, When, just then, the devil Must bring him in sight. "'What's that!' he said laughing, 'Tis surely not Trifon With such a light burden? 140 Ho, does it not shame Such a strapping young fellow?' 'Then put some more bricks on, I'll carry them, master,' Said I, sore offended. For full half an hour I stood while he piled them, He piled them--the dog! I felt my back breaking, But would not give way, 150 And that devilish burden I carried right up To the high second story! He stood and looked on, He himself was astounded, And cried from beneath me: 'Well done, my brave fellow! You don't know yourself, man, What you have been doing! It's forty stone, Trifon, 160 You've carried up there!' "I _did_ know; my heart Struck my breast like a hammer, The blood stood in circles Round both of my eyeballs; My back felt disjointed, My legs weak and trembling ... 'Twas then that I withered. Come, treat me, my friends!" "But why should we treat you? In what are you happy? 171 In what you have told us?" "No, listen--that's coming, It's this: I have also, Like each of us peasants, Besought God to let me Return to the village To die. And when coming From Petersburg, after The illness I suffered 180 Through what I have told you, Exhausted and weakened, Half-dazed, half-unconscious, I got to the station. And all in the carriage Were workmen, as I was, And ill of the fever; And all yearned for one thing: To reach their own homes Before death overcame them. 190 'Twas then I was lucky; The heat then was stifling, And so many sick heads Made Hell of the waggon. Here one man was groaning, There, rolling all over The floor, like a lunatic, Shouting and raving Of wife or of mother. And many such fellows 200 Were put out and left At the stations we came to. I looked at them, thinking, Shall I be left too? I was burning and shaking, The blood began starting All over my eyeballs, And I, in my fever, Half-waking, was dreaming Of cutting of cocks' throats 210 (We once were cock-farmers, And one year it happened We fattened a thousand). They came to my thoughts, now, The damnable creatures, I tried to start praying, But no!--it was useless. And, would you believe me? I saw the whole party In that hellish waggon 220 Come quivering round me, Their throats cut, and spurting With blood, and still crowing, And I, with the knife, shrieked: 'Enough of your noise!' And yet, by God's mercy, Made no sound at all. I sat there and struggled To keep myself silent. At last the day ended, 230 And with it the journey, And God had had pity Upon His poor orphan; I crawled to the village. And now, by His mercy, I'm better again." "Is that what you boast of-- Your happiness, peasant?" Exclaims an old lackey With legs weak and gouty. 240 "Treat me, little brothers, I'm happy, God sees it! For I was the chief serf Of Prince Pereméteff, A rich prince, and mighty, My wife, the most favoured By him, of the women; My daughter, together With his, the young lady, Was taught foreign languages, 250 French and some others; And she was permitted To _sit_, and not stand, In her mistress's presence. Good Lord! How it bites!" (He stoops down to rub it, The gouty right knee-cap.) The peasants laugh loudly! "What laugh you at, stupids?" He cries, getting angry, 260 "I'm ill, I thank God, And at waking and sleeping I pray, 'Leave me ever My honoured complaint, Lord! For that makes me noble!' I've none of your low things, Your peasants' diseases, My illness is lofty, And only acquired By the most elevated, 270 The first in the Empire; I suffer, you villains, From gout, gout its name is! It's only brought on By the drinking of claret, Of Burgundy, champagne, Hungarian syrup, By thirty years' drinking! For forty years, peasants, I've stood up behind it-- 280 The chair of His Highness, The Prince Pereméteff, And swallowed the leavings In plates and in glasses, The finest French truffles, The dregs of the liquors. Come, treat me, you peasants!" "Excuse us, your Lordship, Our wine is but simple, The drink of the peasants! 290 It wouldn't suit _you_!" A bent, yellow-haired man Steals up to the peasants, A man from White Russia. He yearns for the vodka. "Oh, give me a taste!" He implores, "I am happy!" "But wait! You must tell us In what you are happy." "In bread I am happy; 300 At home, in White Russia, The bread is of barley, All gritty and weedy. At times, I can tell you, I've howled out aloud, Like a woman in labour, With pains in my stomach! But now, by God's mercy, I work for Gubónine, And there they give rye-bread, 310 I'm happy in that." A dark-looking peasant, With jaw turned and twisted, Which makes him look sideways, Says next, "I am happy. A bear-hunter I am, And six of my comrades Were killed by old Mishka;[26] On me God has mercy." "Look round to the left side." 320 He tries to, but cannot, For all his grimaces! "A bear knocked my jaw round, A savage young female." "Go, look for another, And give her the left cheek, She'll soon put it straight!" They laugh, but, however, They give him some vodka. Some ragged old beggars 330 Come up to the peasants, Drawn near by the smell Of the froth on the vodka; They say they are happy. "Why, right on his threshold The shopman will meet us! We go to a house-door, From there they conduct us Right back to the gate! When we begin singing 340 The housewife runs quickly And brings to the window A loaf and a knife. And then we sing loudly, 'Oh, give us the whole loaf, It cannot be cut And it cannot be crumbled, For you it is quicker, For us it is better!'" The peasants observe 350 That their vodka is wasted, The pail's nearly empty. They say to the people, "Enough of your chatter, You, shabby and ragged, You, humpbacked and corny, Go, get you all home!" "In your place, good strangers," The peasant, Fedócy, From "Swallow-Smoke" village, 360 Said, sitting beside them, "I'd ask Érmil Gírin. If he will not suit you, If he is not happy, Then no one can help you." "But who is this Érmil, A noble--a prince?" "No prince--not a noble, But simply a peasant." "Well, tell us about him." 370 "I'll tell you; he rented The mill of an orphan, Until the Court settled To sell it at auction. Then Érmil, with others, Went into the sale-room. The small buyers quickly Dropped out of the bidding; Till Érmil alone, With a merchant, Altérnikoff, 380 Kept up the fight. The merchant outbid him, Each time by a farthing, Till Érmil grew angry And added five roubles; The merchant a farthing And Érmil a rouble. The merchant gave in then, When suddenly something Unlooked for occurred: 390 The sellers demanded A third of the money Paid down on the spot; 'Twas one thousand roubles, And Érmil had not brought So much money with him; 'Twas either his error, Or else they deceived him. The merchant said gaily, 'The mill comes to me, then?' 400 'Not so,' replied Érmil; He went to the sellers; 'Good sirs, will you wait Thirty minutes?' he asked. "'But how will that help you?' 'I'll bring you the money.' "'But where will you find it? You're out of your senses! It's thirty-five versts To the mill; in an hour now 410 The sales will be finished.' "'You'll wait half an hour, sirs?' 'An hour, if you wish.' Then Érmil departed, The sellers exchanging Sly looks with the merchant, And grinning--the foxes! But Érmil went out And made haste to the market-place Crowded with people 420 ('Twas market-day, then), And he mounted a waggon, And there he stood crossing Himself, and low bowing In all four directions. He cried to the people, 'Be silent a moment, I've something to ask you!' The place became still And he told them the story: 430 "'Since long has the merchant Been wooing the mill, But I'm not such a dullard. Five times have I been here To ask if there _would_ be A second day's bidding, They answered, 'There will.' You know that the peasant Won't carry his money All over the by-ways 440 Without a good reason, So I have none with me; And look--now they tell me There's no second bidding And ask for the money! The cunning ones tricked me And laughed--the base heathens! And said to me sneering: 'But, what can you do In an hour? Where find money?' 450 "'They're crafty and strong, But the people are stronger! The merchant is rich-- But the people are richer! Hey! What is _his_ worth To _their_ treasury, think you? Like fish in the ocean The wealth of the people; You'll draw it and draw it-- But not see its end! 460 Now, brother, God hears me, Come, give me this money! Next Friday I'll pay you The very last farthing. It's not that I care For the mill--it's the insult! Whoever knows Érmil, Whoever believes him, Will give what he can.' "A miracle happened; 470 The coat of each peasant Flew up on the left As though blown by a wind! The peasants are bringing Their money to Érmil, Each gives what he can. Though Érmil's well lettered He writes nothing down; It's well he can count it So great is his hurry. 480 They gather his hat full Of all kinds of money, From farthings to bank-notes, The notes of the peasant All crumpled and torn. He has the whole sum now, But still the good people Are bringing him more. "'Here, take this, too, Érmil, You'll pay it back later!' 490 "He bows to the people In all four directions, Gets down from the waggon, And pressing the hat Full of money against him, Runs back to the sale-room As fast as he can. "The sellers are speechless And stare in amazement, The merchant turns green 500 As the money is counted And laid on the table. "The sellers come round him All craftily praising His excellent bargain. But Érmil sees through them; He gives not a farthing, He speaks not a word. "The whole town assembles At market next Friday, 510 When Érmil is paying His debt to the people. How can he remember To whom he must pay it? No murmur arises, No sound of discussion, As each man tells quietly The sum to be paid him. "And Érmil himself said, That when it was finished 520 A rouble was lying With no one to claim it; And though till the evening He went, with purse open, Demanding the owner, It still was unclaimed. The sun was just setting When Érmil, the last one To go from the market, Assembled the beggars 530 And gave them the rouble." ... "'Tis strange!" say the peasants, "By what kind of magic Can one single peasant Gain such a dominion All over the country?" "No magic he uses Save truthfulness, brothers! But say, have you ever Heard tell of Prince Yurloff's 540 Estate, Adovshina?" "We have. What about it?" "The manager there Was a Colonel, with stars, Of the Corps of Gendarmes. He had six or seven Assistants beneath him, And Érmil was chosen As principal clerk. He was but a boy, then, 550 Of nineteen or twenty; And though 'tis no fine post, The clerk's--to the peasants The clerk is a great man; To him they will go For advice and with questions. Though Érmil had power to, He asked nothing from them; And if they should offer He never accepted. 560 (He bears a poor conscience, The peasant who covets The mite of his brother!) Well, five years went by, And they trusted in Érmil, When all of a sudden The master dismissed him For sake of another. And sadly they felt it. The new clerk was grasping; 570 He moved not a finger Unless it was paid for; A letter--three farthings! A question--five farthings! Well, he was a pope's son And God placed him rightly! But still, by God's mercy, He did not stay long: "The old Prince soon died, And the young Prince was master. 580 He came and dismissed them-- The manager-colonel, The clerk and assistants, And summoned the peasants To choose them an Elder. They weren't long about it! And eight thousand voices Cried out, 'Érmil Gírin!' As though they were one. Then Érmil was sent for 590 To speak with the Barin, And after some minutes The Barin came out On the balcony, standing In face of the people; He cried, 'Well, my brothers, Your choice is elected With my princely sanction! But answer me this: Don't you think he's too youthful?' 600 "'No, no, little Father! He's young, but he's wise!' "So Érmil was Elder, For seven years ruled In the Prince's dominion. Not once in that time Did a coin of the peasants Come under his nail, Did the innocent suffer, The guilty escape him, 610 He followed his conscience." "But stop!" exclaimed hoarsely A shrivelled grey pope, Interrupting the speaker, "The harrow went smoothly Enough, till it happened To strike on a stone, Then it swerved of a sudden. In telling a story Don't leave an odd word out 620 And alter the rhythm! Now, if you knew Érmil You knew his young brother, Knew Mítyenka, did you?" The speaker considered, Then said, "I'd forgotten, I'll tell you about it: It happened that once Even Érmil the peasant Did wrong: his young brother, 630 Unjustly exempted From serving his time, On the day of recruiting; And we were all silent, And how could we argue When even the Barin Himself would not order The Elder's own brother To unwilling service? And only one woman, 640 Old Vlásevna, shedding Wild tears for her son, Went bewailing and screaming: 'It wasn't our turn!' Well, of course she'd be certain To scream for a time, Then leave off and be silent. But what happened then? The recruiting was finished, But Érmil had changed; 650 He was mournful and gloomy; He ate not, he drank not, Till one day his father Went into the stable And found him there holding A rope in his hands. Then at last he unbosomed His heart to his father: 'Since Vlásevna's son Has been sent to the service, 660 I'm weary of living, I wish but to die!' His brothers came also, And they with the father Besought him to hear them, To listen to reason. But he only answered: 'A villain I am, And a criminal; bind me, And bring me to justice!' 670 And they, fearing worse things, Obeyed him and bound him. The commune assembled, Exclaiming and shouting; They'd never been summoned To witness or judge Such peculiar proceedings. "And Érmil's relations Did not beg for mercy And lenient treatment, 680 But rather for firmness: 'Bring Vlásevna's son back Or Érmil will hang himself, Nothing will save him!' And then appeared Érmil Himself, pale and bare-foot, With ropes bound and handcuffed, And bowing his head He spoke low to the people: 'The time was when I was 690 Your judge; and I judged you, In all things obeying My conscience. But I now Am guiltier far Than were you. Be my judges!' He bowed to our feet, The demented one, sighing, Then stood up and crossed himself, Trembling all over; It pained us to witness 700 How he, of a sudden, Fell down on his knees there At Vlásevna's feet. Well, all was put right soon, The nobles have fingers In every small corner, The lad was brought back And young Mítyenka started; They say that his service Did not weigh too heavy, 710 The prince saw to that. And we, as a penance, Imposed upon Érmil A fine, and to Vlásevna One part was given, To Mítya another, The rest to the village For vodka. However, Not quickly did Érmil Get over his sorrow: 720 He went like a lost one For full a year after, And--though the whole district Implored him to keep it-- He left his position. He rented the mill, then, And more than of old Was beloved by the people. He took for his grinding No more than was honest, 730 His customers never Kept waiting a moment, And all men alike: The rich landlord, the workman. The master and servant, The poorest of peasants Were served as their turn came; Strict order he kept. Myself, I have not been Since long in that district, 740 But often the people Have told me about him. And never could praise him Enough. So in your place I'd go and ask Érmil." "Your time would be wasted," The grey-headed pope, Who'd before interrupted, Remarked to the peasants, "I knew Érmil Gírin, 750 I chanced in that district Some five years ago. I have often been shifted, Our bishop loved vastly To keep us all moving, So I was his neighbour. Yes, he was a peasant Unique, I bear witness, And all things he owned That can make a man happy: 760 Peace, riches, and honour, And that kind of honour Most valued and precious, Which cannot be purchased By might or by money, But only by righteousness, Wisdom and kindness. But still, I repeat it, Your time will be wasted In going to Érmil: 770 In prison he lies." "How's that?" "God so willed it. You've heard how the peasants Of 'Log' the Pomyéshchick Of Province 'Affrighted,' Of District 'Scarce-Breathing,' Of village 'Dumbfounded,' Revolted 'for causes Entirely unknown,' 780 As they say in the papers. (I once used to read them.) And so, too, in this case, The local Ispravnik,[27] The Tsar's high officials, And even the peasants, 'Dumbfounded' themselves. Never fathomed the reason Of all the disturbance. But things became bad, 790 And the soldiers were sent for, The Tsar packed a messenger Off in a hurry To speak to the people. His epaulettes rose To his ears as he coaxed them And cursed them together. But curses they're used to, And coaxing was lost, For they don't understand it: 800 'Brave orthodox peasants!' 'The Tsar--Little Father!' 'Our dear Mother Russia!' He bellowed and shouted Until he was hoarse, While the peasants stood round him And listened in wonder. "But when he was tired Of these peaceable measures Of calming the riots, 810 At length he decided On giving the order Of 'Fire' to the soldiers; When all of a sudden A bright thought occurred To the clerk of the Volost:[28] 'The people trust Gírin, The people will hear him!' "'Then let him be brought!'" [29] * * * * * A cry has arisen 820 "Have mercy! Have mercy!" A check to the story; They hurry off quickly To see what has happened; And there on a bank Of a ditch near the roadside, Some peasants are birching A drunken old lackey, Just taken in thieving. A court had been summoned, 830 The judges deciding To birch the offender, That each of the jury (About three and twenty) Should give him a stroke Turn in turn of the rod.... The lackey was up And made off, in a twinkling, He took to his heels Without stopping to argue, 840 On two scraggy legs. "How he trips it--the dandy!" The peasants cry, laughing; They've soon recognized him; The boaster who prated So much of his illness From drinking strange liquors. "Ho! where has it gone to, Your noble complaint? Look how nimble he's getting!" 850 "Well, well, Little Father, Now finish the story!" "It's time to go home now, My children,--God willing, We'll meet again some day And finish it then...." The people disperse As the dawn is approaching. Our peasants begin To bethink them of sleeping, 860 When all of a sudden A "troika" [30] comes flying From no one sees where, With its silver bells ringing. Within it is sitting A plump little Barin, His little mouth smoking A little cigar. The peasants draw up In a line on the roadway, 870 Thus barring the passage In front of the horses; And, standing bareheaded, Bow low to the Barin. CHAPTER V THE POMYÉSHCHICK The "troika" is drawing The local Pomyéshchick-- Gavríl Afanásich Obólt-Oboldoóeff. A portly Pomyéshchick, With long grey moustaches, Some sixty years old. His bearing is stately, His cheeks very rosy, He wears a short top-coat, 10 Tight-fitting and braided, Hungarian fashion; And very wide trousers. Gavríl Afanásich Was probably startled At seeing the peasants Unflinchingly barring The way to his horses; He promptly produces A loaded revolver 20 As bulky and round As himself; and directs it Upon the intruders: "You brigands! You cut-throats! Don't move, or I shoot!" "How can we be brigands?" The peasants say, laughing, "No knives and no pitchforks, No hatchets have we!" "Who are you? And what 30 Do you want?" said the Barin. "A trouble torments us, It draws us away From our wives, from our children, Away from our work, Kills our appetites too, Do give us your promise To answer us truly, Consulting your conscience And searching your knowledge, 40 Not sneering, nor feigning The question we put you, And then we will tell you The cause of our trouble." "I promise. I give you The oath of a noble." "No, don't give us that-- Not the oath of a noble! We're better content With the word of a Christian. 50 The nobleman's oaths-- They are given with curses, With kicks and with blows! We are better without them!" "Eh-heh, that's a new creed! Well, let it be so, then. And what is your trouble?" "But put up the pistol! That's right! Now we'll tell you: We are not assassins, 60 But peaceable peasants, From Government 'Hard-pressed,' From District 'Most Wretched,' From 'Destitute' Parish, From neighbouring hamlets,-- 'Patched,' 'Bare-Foot,' and 'Shabby,' 'Bleak,' 'Burnt-out,' and 'Hungry.' From 'Harvestless,' too. We met in the roadway, And one asked another, 70 Who is he--the man Free and happy in Russia? Luká said, 'The pope,' And Roman, 'The Pomyéshchick,' Demyán, 'The official.' 'The round-bellied merchant,' Said both brothers Goóbin, Mitródor and Ívan; Pakhóm said, 'His Highness, The Tsar's Chief Adviser,' 80 And Prov said, 'The Tsar.' "Like bulls are the peasants; Once folly is in them You cannot dislodge it, Although you should beat them With stout wooden cudgels, They stick to their folly, And nothing can move them! We argued and argued, While arguing quarrelled, 90 While quarrelling fought, Till at last we decided That never again Would we turn our steps homeward To kiss wives and children, To see the old people, Until we have settled The subject of discord; Until we have found The reply to our question-- 100 Of who can, in Russia, Be happy and free? "Now tell us, Pomyéshchick, Is your life a sweet one? And is the Pomyéshchick Both happy and free?" Gavríl Afanásich Springs out of the "troika" And comes to the peasants. He takes--like a doctor-- 110 The hand of each one, And carefully feeling The pulse gazes searchingly Into their faces, Then clasps his plump sides And stands shaking with laughter. The clear, hearty laugh Of the healthy Pomyéshchick Peals out in the pleasant Cool air of the morning: 120 "Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!" Till he stops from exhaustion. And then he addresses The wondering peasants: "Put on your hats, _gentlemen_, Please to be seated!" (He speaks with a bitter[31] And mocking politeness.) "But we are not gentry; We'd rather stand up 130 In your presence, your worship." "Sit down, worthy _citizens_, Here on the bank." The peasants protest, But, on seeing it useless, Sit down on the bank. "May I sit beside you? Hey, Proshka! Some sherry, My rug and a cushion!" He sits on the rug. 140 Having finished the sherry, Thus speaks the Pomyéshchick: "I gave you my promise To answer your question.... The task is not easy, For though you are highly Respectable people, You're not very learned. Well, firstly, I'll try To explain you the meaning 150 Of Lord, or Pomyéshchick. Have you, by some chance, Ever heard the expression The 'Family Tree'? Do you know what it means?" "The woods are not closed to us. We have seen all kinds Of trees," say the peasants. "Your shot has miscarried! I'll try to speak clearly; 160 I come of an ancient, Illustrious family; One, Oboldoóeff, My ancestor, is Amongst those who were mentioned In old Russian chronicles Written for certain Two hundred and fifty Years back. It is written, ''Twas given the Tartar, 170 Obólt-Oboldoóeff, A piece of cloth, value Two roubles, for having Amused the Tsaritsa Upon the Tsar's birthday By fights of wild beasts, Wolves and foxes. He also Permitted his own bear To fight with a wild one, Which mauled Oboldoóeff, 180 And hurt him severely.' And now, gentle peasants, Did you understand?" "Why not? To this day One can see them--the loafers Who stroll about leading A bear!" "Be it so, then! But now, please be silent, And hark to what follows: 190 From this Oboldoóeff My family sprang; And this incident happened Two hundred and fifty Years back, as I told you, But still, on my mother's side, Even more ancient The family is: Says another old writing: 'Prince Schépin, and one 200 Vaska Goóseff, attempted To burn down the city Of Moscow. They wanted To plunder the Treasury. They were beheaded.' And this was, good peasants, Full three hundred years back! From these roots it was That our Family Tree sprang." "And you are the ... as one 210 Might say ... little apple Which hangs on a branch Of the tree," say the peasants. "Well, apple, then, call it, So long as it please you. At least you appear To have got at my meaning. And now, you yourselves Understand--the more ancient A family is 220 The more noble its members. Is that so, good peasants?" "That's so," say the peasants. "The black bone and white bone Are different, and they must Be differently honoured." "Exactly. I see, friends, You quite understand me." The Barin continued: "In past times we lived, 230 As they say, 'in the bosom Of Christ,' and we knew What it meant to be honoured! Not only the people Obeyed and revered us, But even the earth And the waters of Russia.... You knew what it was To be One, in the centre Of vast, spreading lands, 240 Like the sun in the heavens: The clustering villages Yours, yours the meadows, And yours the black depths Of the great virgin forests! You pass through a village; The people will meet you, Will fall at your feet; Or you stroll in the forest; The mighty old trees 250 Bend their branches before you. Through meadows you saunter; The slim golden corn-stems Rejoicing, will curtsey With winning caresses, Will hail you as Master. The little fish sports In the cool little river; Get fat, little fish, At the will of the Master! 260 The little hare speeds Through the green little meadow; Speed, speed, little hare, Till the coming of autumn, The season of hunting, The sport of the Master. And all things exist But to gladden the Master. Each wee blade of grass Whispers lovingly to him, 270 'I live but for thee....' "The joy and the beauty, The pride of all Russia-- The Lord's holy churches-- Which brighten the hill-sides And gleam like great jewels On the slopes of the valleys, Were rivalled by one thing In glory, and that Was the nobleman's manor. 280 Adjoining the manor Were glass-houses sparkling, And bright Chinese arbours, While parks spread around it. On each of the buildings Gay banners displaying Their radiant colours, And beckoning softly, Invited the guest To partake of the pleasures 290 Of rich hospitality. Never did Frenchmen In dreams even picture Such sumptuous revels As we used to hold. Not only for one-day, Or two, did they last-- But for whole months together! We fattened great turkeys, We brewed our own liquors, 300 We kept our own actors, And troupes of musicians, And legions of servants! Why, I kept five cooks, Besides pastry-cooks, working, Two blacksmiths, three carpenters, Eighteen musicians, And twenty-two huntsmen.... My God!"... The afflicted 310 Pomyéshchick broke down here, And hastened to bury His face in the cushion.... "Hey, Proshka!" he cried, And then quickly the lackey Poured out and presented A glassful of brandy. The glass was soon empty, And when the Pomyéshchick Had rested awhile, 320 He again began speaking: "Ah, then, Mother Russia, How gladly in autumn Your forests awoke To the horn of the huntsman! Their dark, gloomy depths, Which had saddened and faded, Were pierced by the clear Ringing blast, and they listened, Revived and rejoiced, 330 To the laugh of the echo. The hounds and the huntsmen Are gathered together, And wait on the skirts Of the forest; and with them The Master; and farther Within the deep forest The dog-keepers, roaring And shouting like madmen, The hounds all a-bubble 340 Like fast-boiling water. Hark! There's the horn calling! You hear the pack yelling? They're crowding together! And where's the red beast? Hoo-loo-loo! Hoo-loo-loo! And the sly fox is ready; Fat, furry old Reynard Is flying before us, His bushy tail waving! 350 The knowing hounds crouch, And each lithe body quivers, Suppressing the fire That is blazing within it: 'Dear guests of our hearts, _Do_ come nearer and greet us, We're panting to meet you, We, hale little fellows! Come nearer to us And away from the bushes!' 360 "They're off! Now, my horse, Let your swiftness not fail me! My hounds, you are staunch And you will not betray me! Hoo-loo! Faster, faster! Now, _at him_, my children!"... Gavríl Afanásich Springs up, wildly shouting, His arms waving madly, He dances around them! 370 He's certainly after A fox in the forest! The peasants observe him In silent enjoyment, They smile in their beards.... "Eh ... you, mad, merry hunters! Although he forgets Many things--the Pomyéshchick-- Those hunts in the autumn Will not be forgotten. 380 'Tis not for our own loss We grieve, Mother Russia, But you that we pity; For you, with the hunting Have lost the last traces Of days bold and warlike That made you majestic.... "At times, in the autumn, A party of fifty Would start on a hunting tour; 390 Then each Pomyéshchick Brought with him a hundred Fine dogs, and twelve keepers, And cooks in abundance. And after the cooks Came a long line of waggons Containing provisions. And as we went forward With music and singing, You might have mistaken 400 Our band for a fine troop Of cavalry, moving! The time flew for us Like a falcon." How lightly The breast of the nobleman Rose, while his spirit Went back to the days Of Old Russia, and greeted The gallant Boyárin.[32] ... "No whim was denied us. 410 To whom I desire I show mercy and favour; And whom I dislike I strike dead on the spot. The law is my wish, And my fist is my hangman! My blow makes the sparks crowd, My blow smashes jaw-bones, My blow scatters teeth!"... Like a string that is broken, 420 The voice of the nobleman Suddenly ceases; He lowers his eyes To the ground, darkly frowning ... And then, in a low voice, He says: "You yourselves know That strictness is needful; But I, with love, punished. The chain has been broken, 430 The links burst asunder; And though we do not beat The peasant, no longer We look now upon him With fatherly feelings. Yes, I was severe too At times, but more often I turned hearts towards me With patience and mildness. "Upon Easter Sunday 440 I kissed all the peasants Within my domain. A great table, loaded With 'Paska' and 'Koólich'[33] And eggs of all colours, Was spread in the manor. My wife, my old mother, My sons, too, and even My daughters did not scorn To kiss[34] the last peasant: 450 'Now Christ has arisen!' 'Indeed He has risen!' The peasants broke fast then, Drank vodka and wine. Before each great holiday, In my best staterooms The All-Night Thanksgiving Was held by the pope. My serfs were invited With every inducement: 460 'Pray hard now, my children, Make use of the chance, Though you crack all your foreheads!'[35] The nose suffered somewhat, But still at the finish We brought all the women-folk Out of a village To scrub down the floors. You see 'twas a cleansing Of souls, and a strengthening 470 Of spiritual union; Now, isn't that so?" "That's so," say the peasants, But each to himself thinks, "They needed persuading With sticks though, I warrant, To get them to pray In your Lordship's fine manor!" "I'll say, without boasting, They loved me--my peasants. 480 In my large Surminsky Estate, where the peasants Were mostly odd-jobbers, Or very small tradesmen, It happened that they Would get weary of staying At home, and would ask My permission to travel, To visit strange parts At the coming of spring. 490 They'd often be absent Through summer and autumn. My wife and the children Would argue while guessing The gifts that the peasants Would bring on returning. And really, besides Lawful dues of the 'Barin' In cloth, eggs, and live stock, The peasants would gladly 500 Bring gifts to the family: Jam, say, from Kiev, From Astrakhan fish, And the richer among them Some silk for the lady. You see!--as he kisses Her hand he presents her A neat little packet! And then for the children Are sweetmeats and toys; 510 For me, the old toper, Is wine from St. Petersburg-- Mark you, the rascal Won't go to the Russian For that! He knows better-- He runs to the Frenchman! And when we have finished Admiring the presents I go for a stroll And a chat with the peasants; 520 They talk with me freely. My wife fills their glasses, My little ones gather Around us and listen, While sucking their sweets, To the tales of the peasants: Of difficult trading, Of places far distant, Of Petersburg, Astrakhan, Kazan, and Kiev.... 530 On such terms it was That I lived with my peasants. Now, wasn't that nice?" "Yes," answer the peasants; "Yes, well might one envy The noble Pomyéshchick! His life was so sweet There was no need to leave it." "And now it is past.... It has vanished for ever! 540 Hark! There's the bell tolling!" They listen in silence: In truth, through the stillness Which settles around them, The slow, solemn sound On the breeze of the morning Is borne from Kusminsky.... "Sweet peace to the peasant! God greet him in Heaven!" The peasants say softly, 550 And cross themselves thrice; And the mournful Pomyéshchick Uncovers his head, As he piously crosses Himself, and he answers: "'Tis not for the peasant The knell is now tolling, It tolls the lost life Of the stricken Pomyéshchick. Farewell to the past, 560 And farewell to thee, Russia, The Russia who cradled The happy Pomyéshchick, Thy place has been stolen And filled by another!... Heh, Proshka!" (The brandy Is given, and quickly He empties the glass.) "Oh, it isn't consoling To witness the change 570 In thy face, oh, my Motherland! Truly one fancies The whole race of nobles Has suddenly vanished! Wherever one goes, now, One falls over peasants Who lie about, tipsy, One meets not a creature But excise official, Or stupid 'Posrédnik,'[36] 580 Or Poles who've been banished. One sees the troops passing, And then one can guess That a village has somewhere Revolted, 'in thankful And dutiful spirit....' In old days, these roads Were made gay by the passing Of carriage, 'dormeuse,' And of six-in-hand coaches, 590 And pretty, light troikas; And in them were sitting The family troop Of the jolly Pomyéshchick: The stout, buxom mother, The fine, roguish sons, And the pretty young daughters; One heard with enjoyment The chiming of large bells, The tinkling of small bells, 600 Which hung from the harness. And now?... What distraction Has life? And what joy Does it bring the Pomyéshchick? At each step, you meet Something new to revolt you; And when in the air You can smell a rank graveyard, You know you are passing A nobleman's manor! 610 My Lord!... They have pillaged The beautiful dwelling! They've pulled it all down, Brick by brick, and have fashioned The bricks into hideously Accurate columns! The broad shady park Of the outraged Pomyéshchick, The fruit of a hundred years' Careful attention, 620 Is falling away 'Neath the axe of a peasant! The peasant works gladly, And greedily reckons The number of logs Which his labour will bring him. His dark soul is closed To refinement of feeling, And what would it matter To him, if you told him 630 That this stately oak Which his hatchet is felling My grandfather's hand Had once planted and tended; That under this ash-tree My dear little children, My Vera and Gánushka, Echoed my voice As they played by my side; That under this linden 640 My young wife confessed me That little Gavrióushka, Our best-beloved first-born, Lay under her heart, As she nestled against me And bashfully hid Her sweet face in my bosom As red as a cherry.... It is to his profit To ravish the park, 650 And his mission delights him. It makes one ashamed now To pass through a village; The peasant sits still And he dreams not of bowing. One feels in one's breast Not the pride of a noble But wrath and resentment. The axe of the robber Resounds in the forest, 660 It maddens your heart, But you cannot prevent it, For who can you summon To rescue your forest? The fields are half-laboured, The seeds are half-wasted, No trace left of order.... O Mother, my country, We do not complain For ourselves--of our sorrows, 670 Our hearts bleed for thee: Like a widow thou standest In helpless affliction With tresses dishevelled And grief-stricken face.... They have blighted the forest, The noisy low taverns Have risen and flourished. They've picked the most worthless And loose of the people, 680 And given them power In the posts of the Zemstvos; They've seized on the peasant And taught him his letters-- Much good may it do him! Your brow they have branded, As felons are branded, As cattle are branded, With these words they've stamped it: 'To take away with you 690 Or drink on the premises.' Was it worth while, pray, To weary the peasant With learning his letters In order to read them? The land that we keep Is our mother no longer, Our stepmother rather. And then to improve things, These pert good-for-nothings, 700 These impudent writers Must needs shout in chorus: 'But whose fault, then, is it, That you thus exhausted And wasted your country?' But I say--you duffers! Who _could_ foresee this? They babble, 'Enough Of your lordly pretensions! It's time that you learnt something, 710 Lazy Pomyéshchicks! Get up, now, and work!' "Work! To whom, in God's name, Do you think you are speaking? I am not a peasant In 'laputs,' good madman! I am--by God's mercy-- A Noble of Russia. You take us for Germans! We nobles have tender 720 And delicate feelings, Our pride is inborn, And in Russia our classes Are not taught to work. Why, the meanest official Will not raise a finger To clear his own table, Or light his own stove! I can say, without boasting, That though I have lived 730 Forty years in the country, And scarcely have left it, I could not distinguish Between rye and barley. And they sing of 'work' to me! "If we Pomyéshchicks Have really mistaken Our duty and calling, If really our mission Is not, as in old days, 740 To keep up the hunting, To revel in luxury, Live on forced labour, Why did they not tell us Before? Could I learn it? For what do I see? I've worn the Tsar's livery, 'Sullied the Heavens,' And 'squandered the treasury Gained by the people,' 750 And fully imagined To do so for ever, And now ... God in Heaven!"... The Barin is sobbing!... The kind-hearted peasants Can hardly help crying Themselves, and they think: "Yes, the chain has been broken, The strong links have snapped, And the one end recoiling 760 Has struck the Pomyéshchick, The other--the peasant." PART II. THE LAST POMYÉSHCHICK PROLOGUE The day of St. Peter-- And very hot weather; The mowers are all At their work in the meadows. The peasants are passing A tumble-down village, Called "Ignorant-Duffers," Of Volost "Old-Dustmen," Of Government "Know-Nothing.' They are approaching 10 The banks of the Volga. They come to the river, The sea-gulls are wheeling And flashing above it; The sea-hens are walking About on the sand-banks; And in the bare hayfields, Which look just as naked As any youth's cheek After yesterday's shaving, 20 The Princes Volkonsky[37] Are haughtily standing, And round them their children, Who (unlike all others) Are born at an earlier Date than their sires. "The fields are enormous," Remarks old Pakhóm, "Why, the folk must be giants." The two brothers Goóbin 30 Are smiling at something: For some time they've noticed A very tall peasant Who stands with a pitcher On top of a haystack; He drinks, and a woman Below, with a hay-fork, Is looking at him With her head leaning back. The peasants walk on 40 Till they come to the haystack; The man is still drinking; They pass it quite slowly, Go fifty steps farther, Then all turn together And look at the haystack. Not much has been altered: The peasant is standing With body bent back As before,--but the pitcher 50 Has turned bottom upwards.... The strangers go farther. The camps are thrown out On the banks of the river; And there the old people And children are gathered, And horses are waiting With big empty waggons; And then, in the fields Behind those that are finished, 60 The distance is filled By the army of workers, The white shirts of women, The men's brightly coloured, And voices and laughter, With all intermingled The hum of the scythes.... "God help you, good fellows!" "Our thanks to you, brothers!" The peasants stand noting 70 The long line of mowers, The poise of the scythes And their sweep through the sunshine. The rhythmical swell Of melodious murmur. The timid grass stands For a moment, and trembles, Then falls with a sigh.... On the banks of the Volga The grass has grown high 80 And the mowers work gladly. The peasants soon feel That they cannot resist it. "It's long since we've stretched ourselves, Come, let us help you!" And now seven women Have yielded their places. The spirit of work Is devouring our peasants; Like teeth in a ravenous 90 Mouth they are working-- The muscular arms, And the long grass is falling To songs that are strange To this part of the country, To songs that are taught By the blizzards and snow-storms, The wild savage winds Of the peasants' own homelands: "Bleak," "Burnt-Out," and "Hungry," 100 "Patched," "Bare-Foot," and "Shabby," And "Harvestless," too.... And when the strong craving For work is appeased They sit down by a haystack. "From whence have you come?" A grey-headed old peasant (The one whom the women Call Vlásuchka) asks them, "And where are you going?" 110 "We are--" say the peasants, Then suddenly stop, There's some music approaching! "Oh, that's the Pomyéshchick Returning from boating!" Says Vlásuchka, running To busy the mowers: "Wake up! Look alive there! And mind--above all things, Don't heat the Pomyéshchick 120 And don't make him angry! And if he abuse you, Bow low and say nothing, And if he should praise you, Start lustily cheering. You women, stop cackling! And get to your forks!" A big burly peasant With beard long and bushy Bestirs himself also 130 To busy them all, Then puts on his "kaftan," [38] And runs away quickly To meet the Pomyéshchick. And now to the bank-side Three boats are approaching. In one sit the servants And band of musicians, Most busily playing; The second one groans 140 'Neath a mountainous wet-nurse, Who dandles a baby, A withered old dry-nurse, A motionless body Of ancient retainers. And then in the third There are sitting the gentry: Two beautiful ladies (One slender and fair-haired, One heavy and black-browed) 150 And two moustached Barins And three little Barins, And last--the Pomyéshchick, A very old man Wearing long white moustaches (He seems to be all white); His cap, broad and high-crowned, Is white, with a peak, In the front, of red satin. His body is lean 160 As a hare's in the winter, His nose like a hawk's beak, His eyes--well, they differ: The one sharp and shining, The other--the left eye-- Is sightless and blank, Like a dull leaden farthing. Some woolly white poodles With tufts on their ankles Are in the boat too. 170 The old man alighting Has mounted the bank, Where for long he reposes Upon a red carpet Spread out by the servants. And then he arises To visit the mowers, To pass through the fields On a tour of inspection. He leans on the arm-- 180 Now of one of the Barins, And now upon those Of the beautiful ladies. And so with his suite-- With the three little Barins, The wet-nurse, the dry-nurse, The ancient retainers, The woolly white poodles,-- Along through the hayfields Proceeds the Pomyéshchick. 190 The peasants on all sides Bow down to the ground; And the big, burly peasant (The Elder he is As the peasants have noticed) Is cringing and bending Before the Pomyéshchick, Just like the Big Devil Before the high altar: "Just so! Yes, Your Highness, 200 It's done, at your bidding!" I think he will soon fall Before the Pomyéshchick And roll in the dust.... So moves the procession, Until it stops short In the front of a haystack Of wonderful size, Only this day erected. The old man is poking 210 His forefinger in it, He thinks it is damp, And he blazes with fury: "Is this how you rot The best goods of your master? I'll rot you with barschin,[39] I'll make you repent it! Undo it--at once!" The Elder is writhing In great agitation: 220 "I was not quite careful Enough, and it _is_ damp. It's my fault, Your Highness!" He summons the peasants, Who run with their pitchforks To punish the monster. And soon they have spread it In small heaps around, At the feet of the master; His wrath is appeased. 230 (In the meantime the strangers Examine the hay--It's like tinder--so dry!) A lackey comes flying Along, with a napkin; He's lame--the poor man! "Please, the luncheon is served." And then the procession, The three little Barins, The wet-nurse, the dry-nurse, 240 The ancient retainers, The woolly white poodles, Moves onward to lunch. The peasants stand watching; From one of the boats Comes an outburst of music To greet the Pomyéshchick. The table is shining All dazzlingly white On the bank of the river. 250 The strangers, astonished, Draw near to old Vlásuchka; "Pray, little Uncle," They say, "what's the meaning Of all these strange doings? And who is that curious Old man?" "Our Pomyéshchick, The great Prince Yutiátin." "But why is he fussing 260 About in that manner? For things are all changed now, And he seems to think They are still as of old. The hay is quite dry, Yet he told you to dry it!" "But funnier still That the hay and the hayfields Are not his at all." "Then whose are they?" 270 "The Commune's." "Then why is he poking His nose into matters Which do not concern him? For are you not free?" "Why, yes, by God's mercy The order is changed now For us as for others; But ours is a special case." "Tell us about it." 280 The old man lay down At the foot of the haystack And answered them--nothing. The peasants producing The magic white napkin Sit down and say softly, "O napkin enchanted, Give food to the peasants!" The napkin unfolds, And two hands, which come floating From no one sees where, 291 Place a bucket of vodka, A large pile of bread On the magic white napkin, And dwindle away.... The peasants, still wishing To question old Vlásuchka, Wisely present him A cupful of vodka: "Now come, little Uncle, 300 Be gracious to strangers, And tell us your story." "There's nothing to tell you. You haven't told me yet Who _you_ are and whence You have journeyed to these parts, And whither you go." "We will not be surly Like you. We will tell you. We've come a great distance, 310 And seek to discover A thing of importance. A trouble torments us, It draws us away From our work, from our homes, From the love of our food...." The peasants then tell him About their chance meeting, Their argument, quarrel, Their vow, and decision; 320 Of how they had sought In the Government "Tight-Squeeze" And Government "Shot-Strewn" The man who, in Russia, Is happy and free.... Old Vlásuchka listens, Observing them keenly. "I see," he remarks, When the story is finished, "I see you are very 330 Peculiar people. We're said to be strange here, But you are still stranger." "Well, drink some more vodka And tell us your tale." And when by the vodka His tongue becomes loosened, Old Vlásuchka tells them The following story. I THE DIE-HARD "The great prince, Yutiátin, The ancient Pomyéshchick, Is very eccentric. His wealth is untold, And his titles exalted, His family ranks With the first in the Empire. The whole of his life He has spent in amusement, Has known no control 10 Save his own will and pleasure. When we were set free He refused to believe it: 'They lie! the low scoundrels!' There came the posrédnik And Chief of Police, But he would not admit them, He ordered them out And went on as before, And only became 20 Full of hate and suspicion: 'Bow low, or I'll flog you To death, without mercy!' The Governor himself came To try to explain things, And long they disputed And argued together; The furious voice Of the prince was heard raging All over the house, 30 And he got so excited That on the same evening A stroke fell upon him: His left side went dead, Black as earth, so they tell us, And all over nothing! It wasn't his pocket That pinched, but his pride That was touched and enraged him. He lost but a mite 40 And would never have missed it." "Ah, that's what it means, friends, To be a Pomyéshchick, The habit gets into The blood," says Mitródor, "And not the Pomyéshchick's Alone, for the habit Is strong in the peasant As well," old Pakhóm said. "I once on suspicion 50 Was put into prison, And met there a peasant Called Sédor, a strange man, Arrested for horse-stealing, If I remember; And he from the prison Would send to the Barin His taxes. (The prisoner's Income is scanty, He gets what he begs 60 Or a trifle for working.) The others all laughed at him; 'Why should you send them And you off for life To hard labour?' they asked him. But he only said, 'All the same ... it is better.'" "Well, now, little Uncle, Go on with the story." "A mite is a small thing, 70 Except when it happens To be in the eye! The Pomyéshchick lay senseless, And many were sure That he'd never recover. His children were sent for, Those black-moustached footguards (You saw them just now With their wives, the fine ladies), The eldest of them 80 Was to settle all matters Concerning his father. He called the posrédnik To draw up the papers And sign the agreement, When suddenly--there Stands the old man before them! He springs on them straight Like a wounded old tiger, He bellows like thunder. 90 It was but a short time Ago, and it happened That I was then Elder, And chanced to have entered The house on some errand, And I heard myself How he cursed the Pomyéshchicks; The words that he spoke I have never forgotten: 'The Jews are reproached 100 For betraying their Master; But what are _you_ doing? The rights of the nobles By centuries sanctioned You fling to the beggars!' He said to his sons, 'Oh, you dastardly cowards! My children no longer! It is for small reptiles-- The pope's crawling breed-- 110 To take bribes from vile traitors, To purchase base peasants, And they may be pardoned! But you!--you have sprung From the house of Yutiátin, The Princes Yu-tiá-tin You are! Go!... Go, leave me! You pitiful puppies!' The heirs were alarmed; How to tide matters over 120 Until he should die? For they are not small items, The forests and lands That belong to our father; His money-bags are not So light as to make it A question of nothing Whose shoulders shall bear them; We know that our father Has three 'private' daughters 130 In Petersburg living, To Generals married, So how do we know That they may not inherit His wealth?... The Pomyéshchick Once more is prostrated, His death is a question Of time, and to make it Run smoothly till then An agreement was come to, 140 A plan to deceive him: So one of the ladies (The fair one, I fancy, She used at that time To attend the old master And rub his left side With a brush), well, she told him That orders had come From the Government lately That peasants set free 150 Should return to their bondage. And he quite believed it. (You see, since his illness The Prince had become Like a child.) When he heard it He cried with delight; And the household was summoned To prayer round the icons;[40] And Thanksgiving Service Was held by his orders 160 In every small village, And bells were set ringing. And little by little His strength returned partly. And then as before It was hunting and music, The servants were caned And the peasants were punished. The heirs had, of course, Set things right with the servants, 170 A good understanding They came to, and one man (You saw him go running Just now with the napkin) Did not need persuading--- He so loved his Barin. His name is Ipát, And when we were made free He refused to believe it; 'The great Prince Yutiátin 180 Be left without peasants! What pranks are you playing?' At last, when the 'Order Of Freedom' was shown him, Ipát said, 'Well, well, Get you gone to your pleasures, But I am the slave Of the Princes Yutiátin!' He cannot get over The old Prince's kindness 190 To him, and he's told us Some curious stories Of things that had happened To him in his childhood, His youth and old age. (You see, I had often To go to the Prince On some matter or other Concerning the peasants, And waited and waited 200 For hours in the kitchens, And so I have heard them A hundred times over.) 'When I was a young man Our gracious young Prince Spent his holidays sometimes At home, and would dip me (His meanest slave, mind you) Right under the ice In the depths of the Winter. 210 He did it in such A remarkable way, too! He first made two holes In the ice of the river, In one he would lower Me down in a net-- Pull me up through the other!' And when I began To grow old, it would happen That sometimes I drove 220 With the Prince in the Winter; The snow would block up Half the road, and we used To drive five-in-a-file. Then the fancy would strike him (How whimsical, mark you!) To set me astride On the horse which was leading, Me--last of his slaves! Well, he dearly loved music, 230 And so he would throw me A fiddle: 'Here! play now, Ipát.' Then the driver Would shout to the horses, And urge them to gallop. The snow would half-blind me, My hands with the music Were occupied both; So what with the jolting, The snow, and the fiddle, 240 Ipát, like a silly Old noodle, would tumble. Of course, if he landed Right under the horses The sledge must go over His ribs,--who could help it? But that was a trifle; The cold was the worst thing, It bites you, and you Can do nothing against it! 250 The snow lay all round On the vast empty desert, I lay looking up At the stars and confessing My sins. But--my friends, This is true as the Gospel-- I heard before long How the sledge-bells came ringing, Drew nearer and nearer: The Prince had remembered, 260 And come back to fetch me!' "(The tears began falling And rolled down his face At this part of the story. Whenever he told it He always would cry Upon coming to this!) 'He covered me up With some rugs, and he warmed me, He lifted me up, 270 And he placed me beside him, Me--last of his slaves-- Beside his Princely Person! And so we came home.'" They're amused at the story. Old Vlásuchka, when He has emptied his fourth cup, Continues: "The heirs came And called us together-- The peasants and servants; 280 They said, 'We're distressed On account of our father. These changes will kill him, He cannot sustain them. So humour his weakness: Keep silent, and act still As if all this trouble Had never existed; Give way to him, bow to him Just as in old days. 290 For each stroke of barschin, For all needless labour, For every rough word We will richly reward you. He cannot live long now, The doctors have told us That two or three months Is the most we may hope for. Act kindly towards us, And do as we ask you, 300 And we as the price Of your silence will give you The hayfields which lie On the banks of the Volga. Think well of our offer, And let the posrédnik Be sent for to witness And settle the matter.' "Then gathered the commune To argue and clamour; 310 The thought of the hayfields (In which we are sitting), With promises boundless And plenty of vodka, Decided the question: The commune would wait For the death of the Barin. "Then came the posrédnik, And laughing, he said: 'It's a capital notion! 320 The hayfields are fine, too, You lose nothing by it; You just play the fool And the Lord will forgive you. You know, it's forbidden To no one in Russia To bow and be silent.' "But I was against it: I said to the peasants, 'For you it is easy, 330 But how about me? Whatever may happen The Elder must come To accounts with the Barin, And how can I answer His babyish questions? And how can I do His nonsensical bidding?' "'Just take off your hat And bow low, and say nothing, 340 And then you walk out And the thing's at an end. The old man is ill, He is weak and forgetful, And nothing will stay In his head for an instant.' "Perhaps they were right; To deceive an old madman Is not very hard. But for my part, I don't want 350 To play at buffoon. For how many years Have I stood on the threshold And bowed to the Barin? Enough for my pleasure! I said, 'If the commune Is pleased to be ruled By a crazy Pomyéshchick To ease his last moments I don't disagree, 360 I have nothing against it; But then, set me free From my duties as Elder.' "The whole matter nearly Fell through at that moment, But then Klímka Lávin said, 'Let _me_ be Elder, I'll please you on both sides, The master and you. The Lord will soon take him, 370 And then the fine hayfields Will come to the commune. I swear I'll establish Such order amongst you You'll die of the fun!' "The commune took long To consider this offer: A desperate fellow Is Klímka the peasant, A drunkard, a rover, 380 And not very honest, No lover of work, And acquainted with gipsies; A vagabond, knowing A lot about horses. A scoffer at those Who work hard, he will tell you: 'At work you will never Get rich, my fine fellow; You'll never get rich,-- 390 But you're sure to get crippled!' But he, all the same, Is well up in his letters; Has been to St. Petersburg. Yes, and to Moscow, And once to Siberia, too, With the merchants. A pity it was That he ever returned! He's clever enough, 400 But he can't keep a farthing; He's sharp--but he's always In some kind of trouble. He's picked some fine words up From out of his travels: 'Our Fatherland dear,' And 'The soul of great Russia,' And 'Moscow, the mighty, Illustrious city!' 'And I,' he will shout, 410 'Am a plain Russian peasant!' And striking his forehead He'll swallow the vodka. A bottle at once He'll consume, like a mouthful. He'll fall at your feet For a bottle of vodka. But if he has money He'll share with you, freely; The first man he meets 420 May partake of his drink. He's clever at shouting And cheating and fooling, At showing the best side Of goods which are rotten, At boasting and lying; And when he is caught He'll slip out through a cranny, And throw you a jest, Or his favourite saying: 430 'A crack in the jaw Will your honesty bring you!' "Well, after much thinking The commune decided That I must remain The responsible Elder; But Klímka might act In my stead to the Barin As though he were Elder. Why, then, let him do it! 440 The right kind of Elder He is for his Barin, They make a fine pair! Like putty his conscience; Like Meenin's[41] his beard, So that looking upon him You'd think a sedater, More dutiful peasant Could never be found. The heirs made his kaftan, 450 And he put it on, And from Klímka the 'scapegrace' He suddenly changed Into Klím, Son-of-Jacob,[42] Most worthy of Elders. So that's how it is;-- And to our great misfortune The Barin is ordered A carriage-drive daily. Each day through the village 460 He drives in a carriage That's built upon springs. Then up you jump, quickly, And whip off your hat, And, God knows for what reason, He'll jump down your throat, He'll upbraid and abuse you; But you must keep silent. He watches a peasant At work in the fields, 470 And he swears we are lazy And lie-abed sluggards (Though never worked peasant With half such a will In the time of the Barin). He has not a notion That they are not _his_ fields, But ours. When we gather We laugh, for each peasant Has something to tell 480 Of the crazy Pomyéshchick; His ears burn, I warrant, When we come together! And Klím, Son-of-Jacob, Will run, with the manner Of bearing the commune Some news of importance (The pig has got proud Since he's taken to scratching His sides on the steps 490 Of the nobleman's manor). He runs and he shouts: 'A command to the commune! I told the Pomyèshchick That Widow Teréntevna's Cottage had fallen. And that she is begging Her bread. He commands you To marry the widow To Gabriel Jóckoff; 500 To rebuild the cottage, And let them reside there And multiply freely.' "The bride will be seventy, Seven the bridegroom! Well, who could help laughing? Another command: 'The dull-witted cows, Driven out before sunrise, Awoke the Pomyéshchick 510 By foolishly mooing While passing his courtyard. The cow-herd is ordered To see that the cows Do not moo in that manner!'" The peasants laugh loudly. "But why do you laugh so? We all have our fancies. Yakútsk was once governed, I heard, by a General; 520 He had a liking For sticking live cows Upon spikes round the city, And every free spot Was adorned in that manner, As Petersburg is, So they say, with its statues, Before it had entered The heads of the people That he was a madman. 530 "Another strict order Was sent to the commune: 'The dog which belongs To Sofrónoff the watchman Does not behave nicely, It barked at the Barin. Be therefore Sofrónoff Dismissed. Let Evrémka Be watchman to guard The estate of the Barin.' 540 (Another loud laugh, For Evremka, the 'simple,' Is known as the deaf-mute And fool of the village). But Klímka's delighted: At last he's found something That suits him exactly. He bustles about And in everything meddles, And even drinks less. 550 There's a sharp little woman Whose name is Orévna, And she is Klím's gossip, And finely she helps him To fool the old Barin. And as to the women, They're living in clover: They run to the manor With linen and mushrooms And strawberries, knowing 560 The ladies will buy them And pay what they ask them And feed them besides. We laughed and made game Till we fell into danger And nearly were lost: There was one man among us, Petrov, an ungracious And bitter-tongued peasant; He never forgave us 570 Because we'd consented To humour the Barin. 'The Tsar,' he would say, 'Has had mercy upon you, And now, you, yourselves Lift the load to your backs. To Hell with the hayfields! We want no more masters!' We only could stop him By giving him vodka 580 (His weakness was vodka). The devil must needs Fling him straight at the Barin. One morning Petrov Had set out to the forest To pilfer some logs (For the night would not serve him, It seems, for his thieving, He must go and do it In broadest white daylight), 590 And there comes the carriage, On springs, with the Barin! "'From whence, little peasant, That beautiful tree-trunk? From whence has it come?' He knew, the old fellow, From whence it had come. Petrov stood there silent, And what could he answer? He'd taken the tree 600 From the Barin's own forest. "The Barin already Is bursting with anger; He nags and reproaches, He can't stop recalling The rights of the nobles. The rank of his Fathers, He winds them all into Petrov, like a corkscrew. "The peasants are patient, 610 But even their patience Must come to an end. Petrov was out early, Had eaten no breakfast, Felt dizzy already, And now with the words Of the Barin all buzzing Like flies in his ears-- Why, he couldn't keep steady, He laughed in his face! 620 "'Have done, you old scarecrow!' He said to the Barin. 'You crazy old clown!' His jaw once unmuzzled He let enough words out To stuff the Pomyéshchick With Fathers and Grandfathers Into the bargain. The oaths of the lords Are like stings of mosquitoes, 630 But those of the peasant Like blows of the pick-axe. The Barin's dumbfounded! He'd safely encounter A rain of small shot, But he cannot face stones. The ladies are with him, They, too, are bewildered, They run to the peasant And try to restrain him. 640 "He bellows, 'I'll kill you! For what are you swollen With pride, you old dotard, You scum of the pig-sty? Have done with your jabber! You've lost your strong grip On the soul of the peasant, The last one you are. By the will of the peasant Because he is foolish 650 They treat you as master To-day. But to-morrow The ball will be ended; A good kick behind We will give the Pomyéshchick, And tail between legs Send him back to his dwelling To leave us in peace!' "The Barin is gasping, 'You rebel ... you rebel!' 660 He trembles all over, Half-dead he has fallen, And lies on the earth! "The end! think the others, The black-moustached footguards, The beautiful ladies; But they are mistaken; It isn't the end. "An order: to summon The village together 670 To witness the punishment Dealt to the rebel Before the Pomyéshchick.... The heirs and the ladies Come running in terror To Klím, to Petrov, And to me: 'Only save us!' Their faces are pale, 'If the trick is discovered We're lost!' 680 It is Klím's place To deal with the matter: He drinks with Petrov All day long, till the evening, Embracing him fondly. Together till midnight They pace round the village, At midnight start drinking Again till the morning. Petrov is as tipsy 690 As ever man was, And like that he is brought To the Barin's large courtyard, And all is perfection! The Barin can't move From the balcony, thanks To his yesterday's shaking. And Klím is well pleased. "He leads Petrov into The stable and sets him 700 In front of a gallon Of vodka, and tells him: 'Now, drink and start crying, ''Oh, oh, little Fathers! Oh, oh, little. Mothers! Have mercy! Have mercy!''' "Petrov does his bidding; He howls, and the Barin, Perched up on the balcony, Listens in rapture. 710 He drinks in the sound Like the loveliest music. And who could help laughing To hear him exclaiming, 'Don't spare him, the villain! The im-pu-dent rascal! Just teach him a lesson!' Petrov yells aloud Till the vodka is finished. Of course in the end 720 He is perfectly helpless, And four peasants carry him Out of the stable. His state is so sorry That even the Barin Has pity upon him, And says to him sweetly, 'Your own fault it is, Little peasant, you know!'" "You see what a kind heart 730 He has, the Pomyéshchick," Says Prov, and old Vlásuchka Answers him quietly, "A saying there is: 'Praise the grass--in the haystack, The lord--in his coffin.' "Twere well if God took him. Petrov is no longer Alive. That same evening He started up, raving, 740 At midnight the pope came, And just as the day dawned He died. He was buried, A cross set above him, And God alone knows What he died of. It's certain That we never touched him, Nay, not with a finger, Much less with a stick. Yet sometimes the thought comes: Perhaps if that accident 751 Never had happened Petrov would be living. You see, friends, the peasant Was proud more than others, He carried his head high, And never had bent it, And now of a sudden-- Lie down for the Barin! Fall flat for his pleasure! 760 The thing went off well, But Petrov had not wished it. I think he was frightened To anger the commune By not giving in, And the commune is foolish, It soon will destroy you.... The ladies were ready To kiss the old peasant, They brought fifty roubles 770 For him, and some dainties. 'Twas Klímka, the scamp, The unscrupulous sinner, Who worked his undoing.... "A servant is coming To us from the Barin, They've finished their lunch. Perhaps they have sent him To summon the Elder. I'll go and look on 780 At the comedy there." II KLÍM, THE ELDER With him go the strangers, And some of the women And men follow after, For mid-day has sounded, Their rest-time it is, So they gather together To stare at the gentry, To whisper and wonder. They stand in a row At a dutiful distance 10 Away from the Prince.... At a long snowy table Quite covered with bottles And all kinds of dishes Are sitting the gentry, The old Prince presiding In dignified state At the head of the table; All white, dressed in white, With his face shrunk awry, 20 His dissimilar eyes; In his button-hole fastened A little white cross (It's the cross of St. George, Some one says in a whisper); And standing behind him, Ipát, the domestic, The faithful old servant, In white tie and shirt-front Is brushing the flies off. 30 Beside the Pomyéshchick On each hand are sitting The beautiful ladies: The one with black tresses, Her lips red as beetroots, Each eye like an apple; The other, the fair-haired, With yellow locks streaming. (Oh, you yellow locks, Like spun gold do you glisten 40 And glow, in the sunshine!) Then perched on three high chairs The three little Barins, Each wearing his napkin Tucked under his chin, With the old nurse beside them, And further the body Of ancient retainers; And facing the Prince At the foot of the table, 50 The black-moustached footguards Are sitting together. Behind each chair standing A young girl is serving, And women are waving The flies off with branches. The woolly white poodles Are under the table, The three little Barins Are teasing them slyly. 60 Before the Pomyéshchick, Bare-headed and humble, The Elder is standing. "Now tell me, how soon Will the mowing be finished?" The Barin says, talking And eating at once. "It soon will be finished. Three days of the week Do we work for your Highness; 70 A man with a horse, And a youth or a woman, And half an old woman From every allotment. To-day for this week Is the Barin's term finished." "Tut-tut!" says the Barin, Like one who has noticed Some crafty intent On the part of another. 80 "'The Barin's term,' say you? Now, what do you mean, pray?" The eye which is bright He has fixed on the peasant. The Elder is hanging His head in confusion. "Of course it must be As your Highness may order. In two or three days, If the weather be gracious, 90 The hay of your Highness Can surely be gathered. That's so,--is it not?" (He turns his broad face round And looks at the peasants.) And then the sharp woman, Klím's gossip, Orévna, Makes answer for them: "Yes, Klím, Son-of-Jacob, The hay of the Barin 100 Is surely more precious Than ours. We must tend it As long as the weather lasts; Ours may come later." "A woman she is, But more clever than you," The Pomyéshchick says smiling, And then of a sudden Is shaken with laughter: "Ha, ha! Oh, you blockhead! 110 Ha? ha! fool! fool! fool! It's the 'Barin's term,' say you? Ha, ha! fool, ha, ha! The Barin's term, slave, Is the whole of your life-time; And you have forgotten That I, by God's mercy, By Tsar's ancient charter, By birth and by merit, Am your supreme master!" 120 The strangers remark here That Vlásuchka gently Slips down to the grass. "What's that for?" they ask him. "We may as well rest now; He's off. You can't stop him. For since it was rumoured That we should be given Our freedom, the Barin Takes care to remind us 130 That till the last hour Of the world will the peasant Be clenched in the grip Of the nobles." And really An hour slips away And the Prince is still speaking; His tongue will not always Obey him, he splutters And hisses, falls over His words, and his right eye 140 So shares his disquiet That it trembles and twitches. The left eye expands, Grows as round as an owl's eye, Revolves like a wheel. The rights of his Fathers Through ages respected, His services, merits, His name and possessions, The Barin rehearses. 150 God's curse, the Tsar's anger, He hurls at the heads Of obstreperous peasants. And strictly gives order To sweep from the commune All senseless ideas, Bids the peasants remember That they are his slaves And must honour their master. "Our Fathers," cried Klím, 160 And his voice sounded strangely, It rose to a squeak As if all things within him Leapt up with a passionate Joy of a sudden At thought of the mighty And noble Pomyéshchicks, "And whom should we serve Save the Master we cherish? And whom should we honour? 170 In whom should we hope? We feed but on sorrows, We bathe but in tear-drops, How can we rebel? "Our tumble-down hovels, Our weak little bodies, Ourselves, we are yours, We belong to our Master. The seeds which we sow In the earth, and the harvest, 180 The hair on our heads-- All belongs to the Master. Our ancestors fallen To dust in their coffins, Our feeble old parents Who nod on the oven, Our little ones lying Asleep in their cradles Are yours--are our Master's, And we in our homes 190 Use our wills but as freely As fish in a net." The words of the Elder Have pleased the Pomyéshchick, The right eye is gazing Benignantly at him, The left has grown smaller And peaceful again Like the moon in the heavens. He pours out a goblet 200 Of red foreign wine: "Drink," he says to the peasant. The rich wine is burning Like blood in the sunshine; Klím drinks without protest. Again he is speaking: "Our Fathers," he says, "By your mercy we live now As though in the bosom Of Christ. Let the peasant 210 But try to exist Without grace from the Barin!" (He sips at the goblet.) "The whole world would perish If not for the Barin's Deep wisdom and learning. If not for the peasant's Most humble submission. By birth, and God's holy Decree you are bidden 220 To govern the stupid And ignorant peasant; By God's holy will Is the peasant commanded To honour and cherish And work for his lord!" And here the old servant, Ipát, who is standing Behind the Pomyéshchick And waving his branches, 230 Begins to sob loudly, The tears streaming down O'er his withered old face: "Let us pray that the Barin For many long years May be spared to his servants!" The simpleton blubbers, The loving old servant, And raising his hand, Weak and trembling, he crosses 240 Himself without ceasing. The black-moustached footguards Look sourly upon him With secret displeasure. But how can they help it? So off come their hats And they cross themselves also. And then the old Prince And the wrinkled old dry-nurse Both sign themselves thrice, 250 And the Elder does likewise. He winks to the woman, His sharp little gossip, And straightway the women, Who nearer and nearer Have drawn to the table, Begin most devoutly To cross themselves too. And one begins sobbing In just such a manner 260 As had the old servant. ("That's right, now, start whining, Old Widow Terentevna, Sill-y old noodle!" Says Vlásuchka, crossly.) The red sun peeps slyly At them from a cloud, And the slow, dreamy music Is heard from the river.... The ancient Pomyéshchick 270 Is moved, and the right eye Is blinded with tears, Till the golden-haired lady Removes them and dries it; She kisses the other eye Heartily too. "You see!" then remarks The old man to his children, The two stalwart sons And the pretty young ladies; 280 "I wish that those villains, Those Petersburg liars Who say we are tyrants, Could only be here now To see and hear this!" But then something happened Which checked of a sudden The speech of the Barin: A peasant who couldn't Control his amusement 290 Gave vent to his laughter. The Barin starts wildly, He clutches the table, He fixes his face In the sinner's direction; The right eye is fierce, Like a lynx he is watching To dart on his prey, And the left eye is whirling. "Go, find him!" he hisses, 300 "Go, fetch him! the scoundrel!" The Elder dives straight In the midst of the people; He asks himself wildly, "Now, what's to be done?" He makes for the edge Of the crowd, where are sitting The journeying strangers; His voice is like honey: "Come one of you forward; 310 You see, you are strangers, He wouldn't touch _you_." But they are not anxious To face the Pomyéshchick, Although they would gladly Have helped the poor peasants. He's mad, the old Barin, So what's to prevent him From beating them too? "Well, you go, Román," 320 Say the two brothers Góobin, "_You_ love the Pomyéshchicks." "I'd rather you went, though!" And each is quite willing To offer the other. Then Klím looses patience; "Now, Vlásuchka, help us! Do something to save us! I'm sick of the thing!" "Yes! Nicely you lied there!" 330 "Oho!" says Klím sharply, "What lies did I tell? And shan't we be choked In the grip of the Barins Until our last day When we lie in our coffins? When we get to Hell, too, Won't they be there waiting To set us to work?" "What kind of a job 340 Would they find for us there, Klím?" "To stir up the fire While they boil in the pots!" The others laugh loudly. The sons of the Barin Come hurrying to them; "How foolish you are, Klím! Our father has sent us, He's terribly angry That you are so long, 350 And don't bring the offender." "We can't bring him, Barin; A stranger he is, From St. Petersburg province, A very rich peasant; The devil has sent him To us, for our sins! He can't understand us, And things here amuse him; He couldn't help laughing." 360 "Well, let him alone, then. Cast lots for a culprit, We'll pay him. Look here!" He offers five roubles. Oh, no. It won't tempt them. "Well, run to the Barin, And say that the fellow Has hidden himself." "But what when to-morrow comes? Have you forgotten 370 Petrov, how we punished The innocent peasant?" "Then what's to be done?" "Give me the five roubles! You trust me, I'll save you!" Exclaims the sharp woman, The Elder's sly gossip. She runs from the peasants Lamenting and groaning, And flings herself straight 380 At the feet of the Barin: "O red little sun! O my Father, don't kill me! I have but one child, Oh, have pity upon him! My poor boy is daft, Without wits the Lord made him, And sent him so into The world. He is crazy. Why, straight from the bath 390 He at once begins scratching; His drink he will try To pour into his laputs Instead of the jug. And of work he knows nothing; He laughs, and that's all He can do--so God made him! Our poor little home, 'Tis small comfort he brings it; Our hut is in ruins, 400 Not seldom it happens We've nothing to eat, And that sets him laughing-- The poor crazy loon! You may give him a farthing, A crack on the skull, And at one and the other He'll laugh--so God made him! And what can one say? From a fool even sorrow 410 Comes pouring in laughter." The knowing young woman! She lies at the feet Of the Barin, and trembles, She squeals like a silly Young girl when you pinch her, She kisses his feet. "Well ... go. God be with you!" The Barin says kindly, "I need not be angry 420 At idiot laughter, I'll laugh at him too!" "How good you are, Father," The black-eyed young lady Says sweetly, and strokes The white head of the Barin. The black-moustached footguards At this put their word in: "A fool cannot follow The words of his masters, 430 Especially those Like the words of our father, So noble and clever." And Klím--shameless rascal!-- Is wiping his eyes On the end of his coat-tails, Is sniffing and whining; "Our Fathers! Our Fathers! The sons of our Father! They know how to punish, 440 But better they know How to pardon and pity!" The old man is cheerful Again, and is asking For light frothing wine, And the corks begin popping And shoot in the air To fall down on the women, Who fly from them, shrieking. The Barin is laughing, 450 The ladies then laugh, And at them laugh their husbands, And next the old servant, Ipát, begins laughing, The wet-nurse, the dry-nurse, And then the whole party Laugh loudly together; The feast will be merry! His daughters-in-law At the old Prince's order 460 Are pouring out vodka To give to the peasants, Hand cakes to the youths, To the girls some sweet syrup; The women drink also A small glass of vodka. The old Prince is drinking And toasting the peasants; And slyly he pinches The beautiful ladies. 470 "That's right! That will do him More good than his physic," Says Vlásuchka, watching. "He drinks by the glassful, Since long he's lost measure In revel, or wrath...." The music comes floating To them from the Volga, The girls now already Are dancing and singing, 480 The old Prince is watching them, Snapping his fingers. He wants to be nearer The girls, and he rises. His legs will not bear him, His two sons support him; And standing between them He chuckles and whistles, And stamps with his feet To the time of the music; 490 The left eye begins On its own account working, It turns like a wheel. "But why aren't you dancing?" He says to his sons, And the two pretty ladies. "Dance! Dance!" They can't help themselves, There they are dancing! He laughs at them gaily, He wishes to show them 500 How things went in _his_ time; He's shaking and swaying Like one on the deck Of a ship in rough weather. "Sing, Luiba!" he orders. The golden-haired lady Does not want to sing, But the old man will have it. The lady is singing A song low and tender, 510 It sounds like the breeze On a soft summer evening In velvety grasses Astray, like spring raindrops That kiss the young leaves, And it soothes the Pomyéshchick. The feeble old man: He is falling asleep now.... And gently they carry him Down to the water, 520 And into the boat, And he lies there, still sleeping. Above him stands, holding A big green umbrella, The faithful old servant, His other hand guarding The sleeping Pomyéshchick From gnats and mosquitoes. The oarsmen are silent, The faint-sounding music 530 Can hardly be heard As the boat moving gently Glides on through the water.... The peasants stand watching: The bright yellow hair Of the beautiful lady Streams out in the breeze Like a long golden banner.... "I managed him finely, The noble Pomyéshchick," 540 Said Klím to the peasants. "Be God with you, Barin! Go bragging and scolding, Don't think for a moment That we are now free And your servants no longer, But die as you lived, The almighty Pomyéshchick, To sound of our music, To songs of your slaves; 550 But only die quickly, And leave the poor peasants In peace. And now, brothers, Come, praise me and thank me! I've gladdened the commune. I shook in my shoes there Before the Pomyéshchick, For fear I should trip Or my tongue should betray me; And worse--I could hardly 560 Speak plain for my laughter! That eye! How it spins! And you look at it, thinking: 'But whither, my friend, Do you hurry so quickly? On some hasty errand Of yours, or another's? Perhaps with a pass From the Tsar--Little Father, You carry a message 570 From him.' I was standing And bursting with laughter! Well, I am a drunken And frivolous peasant, The rats in my corn-loft Are starving from hunger, My hut is quite bare, Yet I call God to witness That I would not take Such an office upon me 580 For ten hundred roubles Unless I were certain That he was the last, That I bore with his bluster To serve my own ends, Of my own will and pleasure." Old Vlásuchka sadly And thoughtfully answers, "How long, though, how long, though, Have we--not we only 590 But all Russian peasants-- Endured the Pomyéshchicks? And not for our pleasure, For money or fun, Not for two or three months, But for life. What has changed, though? Of what are we bragging? For still we are peasants." The peasants, half-tipsy, Congratulate Klímka. 600 "Hurrah! Let us toss him!" And now they are placing Old Widow Teréntevna Next to her bridegroom, The little child Jóckoff, Saluting them gaily. They're eating and drinking What's left on the table. Then romping and jesting They stay till the evening, 610 And only at nightfall Return to the village. And here they are met By some sobering tidings: The old Prince is dead. From the boat he was taken, They thought him asleep, But they found he was lifeless. The second stroke--while He was sleeping--had fallen! 620 The peasants are sobered, They look at each other, And silently cross themselves. Then they breathe deeply; And never before Did the poor squalid village Called "Ignorant-Duffers," Of Volost "Old-Dustmen," Draw such an intense And unanimous breath.... 630 Their pleasure, however, Was not very lasting, Because with the death Of the ancient Pomyéshchick, The sweet-sounding words Of his heirs and their bounties Ceased also. Not even A pick-me-up after The yesterday's feast Did they offer the peasants. 640 And as to the hayfields-- Till now is the law-suit Proceeding between them, The heirs and the peasants. Old Vlásuchka was By the peasants appointed To plead in their name, And he lives now in Moscow. He went to St. Petersburg too, But I don't think 650 That much can be done For the cause of the peasants. PART III. THE PEASANT WOMAN PROLOGUE "Not only to men Must we go with our question, We'll ask of the women," The peasants decided. They asked in the village "Split-up," but the people Replied to them shortly, "Not here will you find one. But go to the village 'Stripped-Naked'--a woman 10 Lives there who is happy. She's hardly a woman, She's more like a cow, For a woman so healthy, So smooth and so clever, Could hardly be found. You must seek in the village Matróna Korchágin-- The people there call her 'The Governor's Lady.'" 20 The peasants considered And went.... Now already The corn-stalks are rising Like tall graceful columns, With gilded heads nodding, And whispering softly In gentle low voices. Oh, beautiful summer! No time is so gorgeous, 30 So regal, so rich. You full yellow cornfields, To look at you now One would never imagine How sorely God's people Had toiled to array you Before you arose, In the sight of the peasant, And stood before him, Like a glorious army 40 n front of a Tsar! 'Tis not by warm dew-drops That you have been moistened, The sweat of the peasant Has fallen upon you. The peasants are gladdened At sight of the oats And the rye and the barley, But not by the wheat, For it feeds but the chosen: 50 "We love you not, wheat! But the rye and the barley We love--they are kind, They feed all men alike." The flax, too, is growing So sweetly and bravely: "Ai! you little mite! You are caught and entangled!" A poor little lark In the flax has been captured; 60 It struggles for freedom. Pakhóm picks it up, He kisses it tenderly: "Fly, little birdie!" ... The lark flies away To the blue heights of Heaven; The kind-hearted peasants Gaze lovingly upwards To see it rejoice In the freedom above.... 70 The peas have come on, too; Like locusts, the peasants Attack them and eat them. They're like a plump maiden-- The peas--for whoever Goes by must needs pinch them. Now peas are being carried In old hands, in young hands, They're spreading abroad Over seventy high-roads. 80 The vegetables--how They're flourishing also! Each toddler is clasping A radish or carrot, And many are cracking The seeds of the sunflower. The beetroots are dotted Like little red slippers All over the earth. Our peasants are walking, 90 Now faster--now slower. At last they have reached it-- The village 'Stripped-Naked,' It's not much to look at: Each hut is propped up Like a beggar on crutches; The thatch from the roofs Has made food for the cattle; The huts are like feeble Old skeletons standing, 100 Like desolate rooks' nests When young birds forsake them. When wild Autumn winds Have dismantled the birch-trees. The people are all In the fields; they are working. Behind the poor village A manor is standing; It's built on the slope Of a hill, and the peasants 110 Are making towards it To look at it close. The house is gigantic, The courtyard is huge, There's a pond in it too; A watch-tower arises From over the house, With a gallery round it, A flagstaff upon it. They meet with a lackey 120 Near one of the gates: He seems to be wearing A strange kind of mantle; "Well, what are you up to?" He says to the friends, "The Pomyéshchick's abroad now, The manager's dying." He shows them his back, And they all begin laughing: A tiger is clutching 130 The edge of his shoulders! "Heh! here's a fine joke!" They are hotly discussing What kind of a mantle The lackey is wearing, Till clever Pakhóm Has got hold of the riddle. "The cunning old rascal, He's stolen a carpet, And cut in the middle 140 A hole for his head!" Like weak, straddling beetles Shut up to be frozen In cold empty huts By the pitiless peasants. The servants are crawling All over the courtyard. Their master long since Has forgotten about them, And left them to live 150 As they can. They are hungry, All old and decrepit, And dressed in all manners, They look like a crowd In a gipsy encampment. And some are now dragging A net through the pond: "God come to your help! Have you caught something, brothers?" "One carp--nothing more; 160 There used once to be many, But now we have come To the end of the feast!" "Do try to get five!" Says a pale, pregnant woman, Who's fervently blowing A fire near the pond. "And what are those pretty Carved poles you are burning? They're balcony railings, 170 I think, are they not?" "Yes, balcony railings." "See here. They're like tinder; Don't blow on them, Mother! I bet they'll burn faster Than you find the victuals To cook in the pot!" "I'm waiting and waiting, And Mítyenka sickens Because of the musty 180 Old bread that I give him. But what can I do? This life--it is bitter!" She fondles the head Of a half-naked baby Who sits by her side In a little brass basin, A button-nosed mite. "The boy will take cold there, The basin will chill him," 190 Says Prov; and he wishes To lift the child up, But it screams at him, angry. "No, no! Don't you touch him," The mother says quickly, "Why, can you not see That's his carriage he's driving? Drive on, little carriage! Gee-up, little horses! You see how he drives!" 200 The peasants each moment Observe some new marvel; And soon they have noticed A strange kind of labour Proceeding around them: One man, it appears, To the door has got fastened; He's toiling away To unscrew the brass handles, His hands are so weak 210 He can scarcely control them. Another is hugging Some tiles: "See, Yegórshka, I've dug quite a heap out!" Some children are shaking An apple-tree yonder: "You see, little Uncles, There aren't many left, Though the tree was quite heavy." "But why do you want them? 220 They're quite hard and green." "We're thankful to get them!" The peasants examine The park for a long time; Such wonders are seen here, Such cunning inventions: In one place a mountain Is raised; in another A ravine yawns deep! A lake has been made too; 230 Perhaps at one time There were swans on the water? The summer-house has some Inscriptions upon it, Demyán begins spelling Them out very slowly. A grey-haired domestic Is watching the peasants; He sees they have very Inquisitive natures, 240 And presently slowly Goes hobbling towards them, And holding a book. He says, "Will you buy it?" Demyán is a peasant Acquainted with letters, He tries for some time But he can't read a word. "Just sit down yourself On that seat near the linden, 250 And read the book leisurely Like a Pomyéshchick!" "You think you are clever," The grey-headed servant Retorts with resentment, "Yet books which are learned Are wasted upon you. You read but the labels On public-house windows, And that which is written 260 On every odd corner: 'Most strictly forbidden.'" The pathways are filthy, The graceful stone ladies Bereft of their noses. "The fruit and the berries, The geese and the swans Which were once on the water, The thieving old rascals Have stuffed in their maws. 270 Like church without pastor, Like fields without peasants, Are all these fine gardens Without a Pomyéshchick," The peasants remark. For long the Pomyéshchick Has gathered his treasures, When all of a sudden.... (The six peasants laugh, But the seventh is silent, 280 He hangs down his head.) A song bursts upon them! A voice is resounding Like blasts of a trumpet. The heads of the peasants Are eagerly lifted, They gaze at the tower. On the balcony round it A man is now standing; He wears a pope's cassock; 290 He sings ... on the balmy Soft air of the evening, The bass, like a huge Silver bell, is vibrating, And throbbing it enters The hearts of the peasants. The words are not Russian, But some foreign language, But, like Russian songs, It is full of great sorrow, 300 Of passionate grief, Unending, unfathomed; It wails and laments, It is bitterly sobbing.... "Pray tell us, good woman, What man is that singing?" Román asks the woman Now feeding her baby With steaming ukhá.[43] "A singer, my brothers, 310 A born Little Russian, The Barin once brought him Away from his home, With a promise to send him To Italy later. But long the Pomyéshchick Has been in strange parts And forgotten his promise; And now the poor fellow Would be but too glad 320 To get back to his village. There's nothing to do here, He hasn't a farthing, There's nothing before him And nothing behind him Excepting his voice. You have not really heard it; You will if you stay here Till sunrise to-morrow: Some three versts away 330 There is living a deacon, And he has a voice too. They greet one another: Each morning at sunrise Will our little singer Climb up to the watch-tower, And call to the other, 'Good-morrow to Father Ipát, and how fares he?' (The windows all shake 340 At the sound.) From the distance The deacon will answer, 'Good-morrow, good-morrow, To our little sweet-throat! I go to drink vodka, I'm going ... I'm going....' The voice on the air Will hang quivering around us For more than an hour, 350 Like the neigh of a stallion." The cattle are now Coming home, and the evening Is filled with the fragrance Of milk; and the woman, The mother of Mítyenka, Sighs; she is thinking, "If only one cow Would turn into the courtyard!" But hark! In the distance 360 Some voices in chorus! "Good-bye, you poor mourners, May God send you comfort! The people are coming, We're going to meet them." The peasants are filled With relief; because after The whining old servants The people who meet them Returning from work 370 In the fields seem such healthy And beautiful people. The men and the women And pretty young girls Are all singing together. "Good health to you! Which is Among you the woman Matróna Korchágin?" The peasants demand. "And what do you want 380 With Matróna Korchágin?" The woman Matróna Is tall, finely moulded, Majestic in bearing, And strikingly handsome. Of thirty-eight years She appears, and her black hair Is mingled with grey. Her complexion is swarthy, Her eyes large and dark 390 And severe, with rich lashes. A white shirt, and short Sarafán[44] she is wearing, She walks with a hay-fork Slung over her shoulder. "Well, what do you want With Matróna Korchágin?" The peasants are silent; They wait till the others Have gone in advance, 400 And then, bowing, they answer: "We come from afar, And a trouble torments us, A trouble so great That for it we've forsaken Our homes and our work, And our appetites fail. We're orthodox peasants, From District 'Most Wretched,' From 'Destitute Parish,' 410 From neighbouring hamlets-- 'Patched,' 'Barefoot,' and 'Shabby,' 'Bleak,' 'Burnt-Out,' and 'Hungry,' And 'Harvestless,' too. We met in the roadway And argued about Who is happy in Russia. Luká said, 'The pope,' And Demyán, 'The Pomyéshchick,' And Prov said, 'The Tsar,' 420 And Román, 'The official.' 'The round-bellied merchant,' Said both brothers Goóbin, Mitródor and Ívan. Pakhóm said, 'His Highness, The Tsar's Chief Adviser.' Like bulls are the peasants: Once folly is in them You cannot dislodge it Although you should beat them 430 With stout wooden cudgels, They stick to their folly And nothing will move them. We argued and quarrelled, While quarrelling fought, And while fighting decided That never again Would we turn our steps homewards To kiss wives and children, To see the old people, 440 Until we have found The reply to our question, Of who can in Russia Be happy and free? We've questioned the pope, We've asked the Pomyéshchick, And now we ask you. We'll seek the official, The Minister, merchant, We even will go 450 To the Tsar--Little Father, Though whether he'll see us We cannot be sure. But rumour has told us That _you're_ free and happy. Then say, in God's name, If the rumour be true." Matróna Korchágin Does not seem astonished, But only a sad look 460 Creeps into her eyes, And her face becomes thoughtful. "Your errand is surely A foolish one, brothers," She says to the peasants, "For this is the season Of work, and no peasant For chatter has time." "Till now on our journey Throughout half the Empire 470 We've met no denial," The peasants protest. "But look for yourselves, now, The corn-ears are bursting. We've not enough hands." "And we? What are we for? Just give us some sickles, And see if we don't Get some work done to-morrow!" The peasants reply. 480 Matróna sees clearly Enough that this offer Must not be rejected; "Agreed," she said, smiling, "To such lusty fellows As you, we may well look For ten sheaves apiece." "You give us your promise To open your heart to us?" "I will hide nothing." 490 Matróna Korchágin Now enters her cottage, And while she is working Within it, the peasants Discover a very Nice spot just behind it, And sit themselves down. There's a barn close beside them And two immense haystacks, A flax-field around them; 500 And lying just near them A fine plot of turnips, And spreading above them A wonderful oak-tree, A king among oaks. They're sitting beneath it, And now they're producing The magic white napkin: "Heh, napkin enchanted, Give food to the peasants!" 510 The napkin unfolds, Two hands have come floating From no one sees where, Place a pailful of vodka, A large pile of bread On the magic white napkin, And dwindle away. The two brothers Goóbin Are chuckling together, For they have just pilfered 520 A very big horse-radish Out of the garden-- It's really a monster! The skies are dark blue now, The bright stars are twinkling, The moon has arisen And sails high above them; The woman Matróna Comes out of the cottage To tell them her tale. 530 CHAPTER I THE WEDDING "My girlhood was happy, For we were a thrifty Arid diligent household; And I, the young maiden, With Father and Mother Knew nothing but joy. My father got up And went out before sunrise, He woke me with kisses And tender caresses; 10 My brother, while dressing, Would sing little verses: 'Get up, little Sister, Get up, little Sister, In no little beds now Are people delaying, In all little churches The peasants are praying, Get up, now, get up, It is time, little Sister. 20 The shepherd has gone To the field with the sheep, And no little maidens Are lying asleep, They've gone to pick raspberries, Merrily singing. The sound of the axe In the forest is ringing.' "And then my dear mother, When she had done scouring 30 The pots and the pans, When the hut was put tidy, The bread in the oven, Would steal to my bedside, And cover me softly And whisper to me: "'Sleep on, little dove, Gather strength--you will need it-- You will not stay always With Father and Mother, 40 And when you will leave them To live among strangers Not long will you sleep. You'll slave till past midnight, And rise before daybreak; You'll always be weary. They'll give you a basket And throw at the bottom A crust. You will chew it, My poor little dove, 50 And start working again....' "But, brothers, I did not Spend much time in sleeping; And when I was five On the day of St. Simon, I mounted a horse With the help of my father, And then was no longer A child. And at six years I carried my father 60 His breakfast already, And tended the ducks, And at night brought the cow home, And next--took my rake, And was off to the hayfields! And so by degrees I became a great worker, And yet best of all I loved singing and dancing; The whole day I worked 70 In the fields, and at nightfall Returned to the cottage All covered with grime. But what's the hot bath for? And thanks to the bath And boughs of the birch-tree, And icy spring water, Again I was clean And refreshed, and was ready To take out my spinning-wheel, 80 And with companions To sing half the night. "I never ran after The youths, and the forward I checked very sharply. To those who were gentle And shy, I would whisper: 'My cheeks will grow hot, And sharp eyes has my mother; Be wise, now, and leave me 90 Alone'--and they left me. "No matter how clever I was to avoid them, The one came at last I was destined to wed; And he--to my bitter Regret--was a stranger: Young Phílip Korchágin, A builder of ovens. He came from St. Petersburg. 100 Oh, how my mother Did weep: 'Like a fish In the ocean, my daughter, You'll plunge and be lost; Like a nightingale, straying Away from its nest, We shall lose you, my daughter! The walls of the stranger Are not built of sugar, Are not spread with honey, 110 Their dwellings are chilly And garnished with hunger; The cold winds will nip you, The black rooks will scold you, The savage dogs bite you, The strangers despise you.' "But Father sat talking And drinking till late With the 'swat.'[45] I was frightened. I slept not all night.... 120 "Oh, youth, pray you, tell me, Now what can you find In the maiden to please you? And where have you seen her? Perhaps in the sledges With merry young friends Flying down from the mountain? Then you were mistaken, O son of your father, It was but the frost 130 And the speed and the laughter That brought the bright tints To the cheeks of the maiden. Perhaps at some feast In the home of a neighbour You saw her rejoicing And clad in bright colours? But then she was plump From her rest in the winter; Her rosy face bloomed 140 Like the scarlet-hued poppy; But wait!--have you been To the hut of her father And seen her at work Beating flax in the barn? Ah, what shall I do? I will take brother falcon And send him to town: 'Fly to town, brother falcon, And bring me some cloth 150 And six colours of worsted, And tassels of blue. I will make a fine curtain, Embroider each corner With Tsar and Tsaritsa, With Moscow and Kiev, And Constantinople, And set the great sun Shining bright in the middle, And this I will hang 160 In the front of my window: Perhaps you will see it, And, struck by its beauty, Will stand and admire it, And will not remember To seek for the maiden....' "And so till the morning I lay with such thoughts. 'Now, leave me, young fellow,' I said to the youth 170 When he came in the evening; 'I will not be foolish Enough to abandon My freedom in order To enter your service. God sees me--I will not Depart from my home!' "'Do come,' said young Phílip, 'So far have I travelled To fetch you. Don't fear me-- 180 I will not ill-treat you.' I begged him to leave me, I wept and lamented; But nevertheless I was still a young maiden: I did not forget Sidelong glances to cast At the youth who thus wooed me. And Phílip was handsome, Was rosy and lusty, 190 Was strong and broad-shouldered, With fair curling hair, With a voice low and tender.... Ah, well ... I was won.... "'Come here, pretty fellow, And stand up against me, Look deep in my eyes-- They are clear eyes and truthful; Look well at my rosy Young face, and bethink you: 200 Will you not regret it, Won't my heart be broken, And shall I not weep Day and night if I trust you And go with you, leaving My parents forever?' "'Don't fear, little pigeon, We shall not regret it,' Said Phílip, but still I was timid and doubtful. 210 'Do go,' murmured I, and he, 'When you come with me.' Of course I was fairer And sweeter and dearer Than any that lived, And his arms were about me.... Then all of a sudden I made a sharp effort To wrench myself free. 219 'How now? What's the matter? You're strong, little pigeon!' Said Phílip astonished, But still held me tight. 'Ah, Phílip, if you had Not held me so firmly You would not have won me; I did it to try you, To measure your strength; You were strong, and it pleased me.' We must have been happy 230 In those fleeting moments When softly we whispered And argued together; I think that we never Were happy again.... "How well I remember.... The night was like this night, Was starlit and silent ... Was dreamy and tender Like this...." 240 And the woman, Matróna, sighed deeply, And softly began-- Leaning back on the haystack-- To sing to herself With her thoughts in the past: "'Tell me, young merchant, pray, Why do you love me so-- Poor peasant's daughter? I am not clad in gold, 250 I am not hung with pearls, Not decked with silver.' "'Silver your chastity, Golden your beauty shines, O my belovèd, White pearls are falling now Out of your weeping eyes, Falling like tear-drops.' "My father gave orders To bring forth the wine-cups, 260 To set them all out On the solid oak table. My dear mother blessed me: 'Go, serve them, my daughter, Bow low to the strangers.' I bowed for the first time, My knees shook and trembled; I bowed for the second-- My face had turned white; And then for the third time 270 I bowed, and forever The freedom of girlhood Rolled down from my head...." "Ah, that means a wedding," Cry both brothers Goóbin, "Let's drink to the health Of the happy young pair!" "Well said! We'll begin With the bride," say the others. "Will you drink some vodka, 280 Matróna Korchágin?" "An old woman, brothers, And not drink some vodka?" CHAPTER II A SONG Stand before your judge-- And your legs will quake! Stand before the priest On your wedding-day,-- How your head will ache! How your head will ache! You will call to mind Songs of long ago, Songs of gloom and woe: Telling how the guests 10 Crowd into the yard, Run to see the bride Whom the husband brings Homeward at his side. How his parents both Fling themselves on her; How his brothers soon Call her "wasteful one"; How his sisters next Call her "giddy one"; 20 How his father growls, "Greedy little bear!" How his mother snarls, "Cannibal!" at her. She is "slovenly" And "disorderly," She's a "wicked one"! "All that's in the song Happened now to me. Do you know the song? 30 Have you heard it sung?" "Yes, we know it well; Gossip, you begin, We will all join in." _Matróna_ So sleepy, so weary I am, and my heavy head Clings to the pillow. But out in the passage My Father-in-law Begins stamping and swearing. 40 _Peasants in Chorus_ Stamping and swearing! Stamping and swearing! He won't let the poor woman Rest for a moment. Up, up, up, lazy-head! Up, up, up, lie-abed! Lazy-head! Lie-abed! Slut! _Matróna_ So sleepy, so weary 50 I am, and my heavy head Clings to the pillow; But out in the passage My Mother-in-law Begins scolding and nagging. _Peasants in Chorus_ Scolding and nagging! Scolding and nagging! She won't let the poor woman Rest for a moment. Up, up, up, lazy-head! 60 Up, up, up, lie-abed! Lazy-head! Lie-abed! Slut! "A quarrelsome household It was--that of Philip's To which I belonged now; And I from my girlhood Stepped straight into Hell. My husband departed 70 To work in the city, And leaving, advised me To work and be silent, To yield and be patient: 'Don't splash the red iron With cold water--it hisses!' With father and mother And sisters-in-law he Now left me alone; Not a soul was among them 80 To love or to shield me, But many to scold. One sister-in-law-- It was Martha, the eldest,-- Soon set me to work Like a slave for her pleasure. And Father-in-law too One had to look after, Or else all his clothes To redeem from the tavern. 90 In all that one did There was need to be careful, Or Mother-in-law's Superstitions were troubled (One never could please her). Well, some superstitions Of course may be right; But they're most of them evil. And one day it happened That Mother-in-law 100 Murmured low to her husband That corn which is stolen Grows faster and better. So Father-in-law Stole away after midnight.... It chanced he was caught, And at daybreak next morning Brought back and flung down Like a log in the stable. "But I acted always 110 As Phílip had told me: I worked, with the anger Hid deep in my bosom, And never a murmur Allowed to escape me. And then with the winter Came Phílip, and brought me A pretty silk scarf; And one feast-day he took me To drive in the sledges; 120 And quickly my sorrows Were lost and forgotten: I sang as in old days At home, with my father. For I and my husband Were both of an age, And were happy together When only they left us Alone, but remember A husband like Phílip 130 Not often is found." "Do you mean to say That he never once beat you?" Matróna was plainly Confused by the question; "Once, only, he beat me," She said, very low. "And why?" asked the peasants. "Well, you know yourselves, friends, How quarrels arise 140 In the homes of the peasants. A young married sister Of Phílip's one day Came to visit her parents. She found she had holes In her boots, and it vexed her. Then Phílip said, 'Wife, Fetch some boots for my sister.' And I did not answer At once; I was lifting 150 A large wooden tub, So, of course, couldn't speak. But Phílip was angry With me, and he waited Until I had hoisted The tub to the oven, Then struck me a blow With his fist, on my temple. "'We're glad that you came, But you see that you'd better 160 Keep out of the way,' Said the other young sister To her that was married. "Again Philip struck me! "'It's long since I've seen you, My dearly-loved daughter, But could I have known How the baggage would treat you!'... Whined Mother-in-law. "And again Phílip struck me! 170 "Well, that is the story. 'Tis surely not fitting For wives to sit counting The blows of their husbands, But then I had promised To keep nothing back." "Ah, well, with these women-- The poisonous serpents!-- A corpse would awaken And snatch up a horsewhip," 180 The peasants say, smiling. Matróna said nothing. The peasants, in order To keep the occasion In manner befitting, Are filling the glasses; And now they are singing In voices of thunder A rollicking chorus, Of husbands' relations, 190 And wielding the knout. ... ... "Cruel hated husband, Hark! he is coming! Holding the knout...." _Chorus_ "Hear the lash whistle! See the blood spurt! Ai, leli, leli! See the blood spurt!" ... ... "Run to his father! Bowing before him-- 200 'Save me!' I beg him; 'Stop my fierce husband-- Venomous serpent!' Father-in-law says, 'Beat her more soundly! Draw the blood freely!'" _Chorus_ "Hear the lash whistle! See the blood spurt! Ai, leli, leli! See the blood spurt!" 210 ... ... "Quick--to his mother! Bowing before her-- 'Save me!' I beg her; 'Stop my cruel husband! Venomous serpent!' Mother-in-law says, 'Beat her more soundly, Draw the blood freely!'" _Chorus_ "Hear the lash whistle! See the blood spurt! 220 Ai, leli, leli! See the blood spurt!" * * * * * "On Lady-day Phílip Went back to the city; A little while later Our baby was born. Like a bright-coloured picture Was he--little Djóma; The sunbeams had given Their radiance to him, 230 The pure snow its whiteness; The poppies had painted His lips; by the sable His brow had been pencilled; The falcon had fashioned His eyes, and had lent them Their wonderful brightness. At sight of his first Angel smile, all the anger And bitterness nursed 240 In my bosom was melted; It vanished away Like the snow on the meadows At sight of the smiling Spring sun. And not longer I worried and fretted; I worked, and in silence I let them upbraid. But soon after that A misfortune befell me: 250 The manager by The Pomyéshchick appointed, Called Sitnikov, hotly Began to pursue me. 'My lovely Tsaritsa! 'My rosy-ripe berry!' Said he; and I answered, 'Be off, shameless rascal! Remember, the berry Is not in _your_ forest!' 260 I stayed from the field-work, And hid in the cottage; He very soon found me. I hid in the corn-loft, But Mother-in-law Dragged me out to the courtyard; 'Now don't play with fire, girl!' She said. I besought her To send him away, But she answered me roughly, 270 'And do you want Phílip To serve as a soldier?' I ran to Savyéli, The grandfather, begging His aid and advice. "I haven't yet told you A word of Savyéli, The only one living Of Phílip's relations Who pitied and loved me. 280 Say, friends, shall I tell you About him as well?" "Yes, tell us his tale, And we'll each throw a couple Of sheaves in to-morrow, Above what we promised." "Well, well," says Matróna, "And 'twould be a pity To give old Savyéli No place in the story; 290 For he was a happy one, Too--the old man...." CHAPTER III SAVYÉLI "A mane grey and bushy Which covered his shoulders, A huge grizzled beard Which had not seen the scissors For twenty odd years, Made Savyéli resemble A shaggy old bear, Especially when he Came out of the forest, So broad and bent double. 10 The grandfather's shoulders Were bowed very low, And at first I was frightened Whenever he entered The tiny low cottage: I thought that were he To stand straight of a sudden He'd knock a great hole With his head in the ceiling. But Grandfather could not 20 Stand straight, and they told me That he was a hundred. He lived all alone In his own little cottage, And never permitted The others to enter; He couldn't abide them. Of course they were angry And often abused him. His own son would shout at him, 30 'Branded one! Convict!' But this did not anger Savyéli, he only Would go to his cottage Without making answer, And, crossing himself, Begin reading the scriptures; Then suddenly cry In a voice loud and joyful, 'Though branded--no slave!' 40 When too much they annoyed him, He sometimes would say to them: 'Look, the swat's[46] coming!' The unmarried daughter Would fly to the window; Instead of the swat there A beggar she'd find! And one day he silvered A common brass farthing, And left it to lie 50 On the floor; and then straightway Did Father-in-law run In joy to the tavern,-- He came back, not tipsy, But beaten half-dead! At supper that night We were all very silent, And Father-in-law had A cut on his eyebrow, But Grandfather's face 60 Wore a smile like a rainbow! "Savyéli would gather The berries and mushrooms From spring till late autumn, And snare the wild rabbits; Throughout the long winter He lay on the oven And talked to himself. He had favourite sayings: He used to lie thinking 70 For whole hours together, And once in an hour You would hear him exclaiming: "'Destroyed ... and subjected!' Or, 'Ai, you toy heroes! You're fit but for battles With old men and women!' "'Be patient ... and perish, Impatient ... and perish!' "'Eh, you Russian peasant, 80 You giant, you strong man, The whole of your lifetime You're flogged, yet you dare not Take refuge in death, For Hell's torments await you!' "'At last the Korójins[47] Awoke, and they paid him, They paid him, they paid him, They paid the whole debt!' And many such sayings 90 He had,--I forget them. When Father-in-law grew Too noisy I always Would run to Savyéli, And we two, together, Would fasten the door. Then I began working, While Djómushka climbed To the grandfather's shoulder, And sat there, and looked 100 Like a bright little apple That hung on a hoary Old tree. Once I asked him: "'And why do they call you A convict, Savyéli?' "'I was once a convict,' Said he. "'You, Savyéli!' "'Yes I, little Grandchild, Yes, I have been branded. 110 I buried a German Alive--Christian Vogel.' "'You're joking, Savyéli!' "'Oh no, I'm not joking. I mean it,' he said, And he told me the story. "'The peasants in old days Were serfs as they now are, But our race had, somehow, Not seen its Pomyéshchick; 120 No manager knew we, No pert German agent. And barschin we gave not, And taxes we paid not Except when it pleased us,-- Perhaps once in three years Our taxes we'd pay.' "'But why, little Grandad?' "'The times were so blessed,-- And folk had a saying 130 That our little village Was sought by the devil For more than three years, But he never could find it. Great forests a thousand Years old lay about us; And treacherous marshes And bogs spread around us; No horseman and few men On foot ever reached us. 140 It happened that once By some chance, our Pomyéshchick, Shaláshnikov, wanted To pay us a visit. High placed in the army Was he; and he started With soldiers to find us. They soon got bewildered And lost in the forest, And had to turn back; 150 Why, the Zemsky policeman Would only come once In a year! They were good times! In these days the Barin Lives under your window; The roadways go spreading Around, like white napkins-- The devil destroy them! We only were troubled By bears, and the bears too 160 Were easily managed. Why, I was a worse foe By far than old Mishka, When armed with a dagger And bear-spear. I wandered In wild, secret woodpaths, And shouted, ''_My_ forest!'' And once, only once, I was frightened by something: I stepped on a huge 170 Female bear that was lying Asleep in her den In the heart of the forest. She flung herself at me, And straight on my bear-spear Was fixed. Like a fowl On the spit she hung twisting An hour before death. It was then that my spine snapped. It often was painful 180 When I was a young man; But now I am old, It is fixed and bent double. Now, do I not look like A hook, little Grandchild?' "'But finish the story. You lived and were not much Afflicted. What further?' "'At last our Pomyéshchick Invented a new game: 190 He sent us an order, ''Appear!'' We appeared not. Instead, we lay low In our dens, hardly breathing. A terrible drought Had descended that summer, The bogs were all dry; So he sent a policeman, Who managed to reach us, To gather our taxes, 200 In honey and fish; A second time came he, We gave him some bear-skins; And when for the third time He came, we gave nothing,-- We said we had nothing. We put on our laputs, We put our old caps on, Our oldest old coats, And we went to Korójin 210 (For there was our master now, Stationed with soldiers). ''Your taxes!'' ''We have none, We cannot pay taxes, The corn has not grown, And the fish have escaped us.'' ''Your taxes!'' ''We have none.'' He waited no longer; ''Hey! Give them the first round!'' He said, and they flogged us. 220 "'Our pockets were not Very easily opened; Shaláshnikov, though, was A master at flogging. Our tongues became parched, And our brains were set whirling, And still he continued. He flogged not with birch-rods, With whips or with sticks, But with knouts made for giants. 230 At last we could stand it No longer; we shouted, ''Enough! Let us breathe!'' We unwound our foot-rags And took out our money, And brought to the Barin A ragged old bonnet With roubles half filled. "'The Barin grew calm, He was pleased with the money; 240 He gave us a glass each Of strong, bitter brandy, And drank some himself With the vanquished Korójins, And gaily clinked glasses. ''It's well that you yielded,'' Said he, ''For I swear I was fully decided To strip off the last shred Of skins from your bodies 250 And use it for making A drum for my soldiers! Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!'' (He was pleased with the notion.) ''A fine drum indeed!'' "'In silence we left; But two stalwart old peasants Were chuckling together; They'd two hundred roubles In notes, the old rascals! 260 Safe hidden away In the end of their coat-tails. They both had been yelling, ''We're beggars! We're beggars!'' So carried them home. ''Well, well, you may cackle!'' I thought to myself, ''But the next time, be certain, You won't laugh at me!'' The others were also 270 Ashamed of their weakness, And so by the ikons We swore all together That next time we rather Would die of the beating Than feebly give way. It seems the Pomyéshchick Had taken a fancy At once to our roubles, Because after that 280 Every year we were summoned To go to Korójin, We went, and were flogged. "'Shaláshnikov flogged like A prince, but be certain The treasures he thrashed from The doughty Korójins Were not of much weight. The weak yielded soon, But the strong stood like iron 290 For the commune. I also Bore up, and I thought: ''Though never so stoutly You flog us, you dog's son, You won't drag the whole soul From out of the peasant; Some trace will be left.'' "'When the Barin was sated We went from the town, But we stopped on the outskirts 300 To share what was over. And plenty there was, too! Shaláshnikov, heh, You're a fool! It was our turn To laugh at the Barin; Ah, they were proud peasants-- The plucky Korójins! But nowadays show them The tail of a knout, And they'll fly to the Barin, 310 And beg him to take The last coin from their pockets. Well, that's why we all lived Like merchants in those days. One summer came tidings To us that our Barin Now owned us no longer, That he had, at Varna, Been killed. We weren't sorry, But somehow we thought then: 320 ''The peasants' good fortune Has come to an end!'' The heir made a new move: He sent us a German.[48] Through vast, savage forests, Through sly sucking bogs And on foot came the German, As bare as a finger. "'As melting as butter At first was the German: 330 ''Just give what you can, then,'' He'd say to the peasants. "'''We've nothing to give!'' "'''I'll explain to the Barin.'' "'''Explain,'' we replied, And were troubled no more. It seemed he was going To live in the village; He soon settled down. On the banks of the river, 340 For hour after hour He sat peacefully fishing, And striking his nose Or his cheek or his forehead. We laughed: ''You don't like The Korójin mosquitoes?'' He'd boat near the bankside And shout with enjoyment, Like one in the bath-house Who's got to the roof.[49] 350 "'With youths and young maidens He strolled in the forest (They were not for nothing Those strolls in the forest!)-- ''Well, if you can't pay You should work, little peasants.'' "'''What work should we do?'' "'''You should dig some deep ditches To drain off the bog-lands.'' We dug some deep ditches. 360 "'''And now trim the forest.'' "'''Well, well, trim the forest....'' We hacked and we hewed As the German directed, And when we look round There's a road through the forest! "'The German went driving To town with three horses; Look! now he is coming With boxes and bedding, 370 And God knows wherefrom Has this bare-footed German Raised wife and small children! And now he's established A village ispravnik,[50] They live like two brothers. His courtyard at all times Is teeming with strangers, And woe to the peasants-- The fallen Korójins! 380 He sucked us all dry To the very last farthing; And flog!--like the soul Of Shaláshnikov flogged he! Shaláshnikov stopped When he got what he wanted; He clung to our backs Till he'd glutted his stomach, And then he dropped down Like a leech from a dog's ear. 390 But he had the grip Of a corpse--had this German; Until he had left you Stripped bare like a beggar You couldn't escape.' "'But how could you bear it?' "'Ah, how could we bear it? Because we were giants-- Because by their patience The people of Russia Are great, little Grandchild. 400 You think, then, Matróna, That we Russian peasants No warriors are? Why, truly the peasant Does not live in armour, Does not die in warfare, But nevertheless He's a warrior, child. His hands are bound tight, 410 And his feet hung with fetters; His back--mighty forests Have broken across it; His breast--I will tell you, The Prophet Elijah In chariot fiery Is thundering within it; And these things the peasant Can suffer in patience. He bends--but he breaks not; 420 He reels--but he falls not; Then is he not truly A warrior, say?' "'You joke, little Grandad; Such warriors, surely, A tiny mouse nibbling Could crumble to atoms,' I said to Savyéli. "'I know not, Matróna, But up till to-day 430 He has stood with his burden; He's sunk in the earth 'Neath its weight to his shoulders; His face is not moistened With sweat, but with heart's blood. I don't know what may Come to pass in the future, I can't think what will Come to pass--only God knows. For my part, I know 440 When the storm howls in winter, When old bones are painful, I lie on the oven, I lie, and am thinking: ''Eh, you, strength of giants, On what have they spent you? On what are you wasted? With whips and with rods They will pound you to dust!''' "'But what of the German, 450 Savyéli?' "'The German? Well, well, though he lived Like a lord in his glory For eighteen long years, We were waiting our day. Then the German considered A factory needful, And wanted a pit dug. 'Twas work for nine peasants. 460 We started at daybreak And laboured till mid-day, And then we were going To rest and have dinner, When up comes the German: ''Eh, you, lazy devils! So little work done?'' He started to nag us, Quite coolly and slowly, Without heat or hurry; 470 For that was his way. "'And we, tired and hungry, Stood listening in silence. He kicked the wet earth With his boot while he scolded, Not far from the edge Of the pit. I stood near him. And happened to give him A push with my shoulder; Then somehow a second 480 And third pushed him gently.... We spoke not a word, Gave no sign to each other, But silently, slowly, Drew closer together, And edging the German Respectfully forward, We brought him at last To the brink of the hollow.... He tumbled in headlong! 490 ''A ladder!'' he bellows; Nine shovels reply. ''Naddai!''[51]--the word fell From my lips on the instant, The word to which people Work gaily in Russia; ''Naddai!'' and ''Naddai!'' And we laboured so bravely That soon not a trace Of the pit was remaining, 500 The earth was as smooth As before we had touched it; And then we stopped short And we looked at each other....' "The old man was silent. 'What further, Savyéli?' "'What further? Ah, bad times: The prison in Buy-Town (I learnt there my letters), Until we were sentenced; 510 The convict-mines later; And plenty of lashes. But I never frowned At the lash in the prison; They flogged us but poorly. And later I nearly Escaped to the forest; They caught me, however. Of course they did not Pat my head for their trouble; 520 The Governor was through Siberia famous For flogging. But had not Shaláshnikov flogged us? I spit at the floggings I got in the prison! Ah, he was a Master! He knew how to flog you! He toughened my hide so You see it has served me 530 For one hundred years, And 'twill serve me another. But life was not easy, I tell you, Matróna: First twenty years prison, Then twenty years exile. I saved up some money, And when I came home, Built this hut for myself. And here I have lived 540 For a great many years now. They loved the old grandad So long as he'd money, But now it has gone They would part with him gladly, They spit in his face. Eh, you plucky toy heroes! You're fit to make war Upon old men and women!' "And that was as much 550 As the grandfather told me." "And now for your story," They answer Matróna. "'Tis not very bright. From one trouble God In His goodness preserved me; For Sitnikov died Of the cholera. Soon, though, Another arose, I will tell you about it." 560 "Naddai!" say the peasants (They love the word well), They are filling the glasses. CHAPTER IV DJÓMUSHKA "The little tree burns For the lightning has struck it. The nightingale's nest Has been built in its branches. The little tree burns, It is sighing and groaning; The nightingale's children Are crying and calling: 'Oh, come, little Mother! Oh, come, little Mother! 10 Take care of us, Mother, Until we can fly, Till our wings have grown stronger, Until we can fly To the peaceful green forest, Until we can fly To the far silent valleys....' The poor little tree-- It is burnt to grey ashes; The poor little fledgelings 20 Are burnt to grey ashes. The mother flies home, But the tree ... and the fledgelings ... The nest.... She is calling, Lamenting and calling; She circles around, She is sobbing and moaning; She circles so quickly, She circles so quickly, Her tiny wings whistle. 30 The dark night has fallen, The dark world is silent, But one little creature Is helplessly grieving And cannot find comfort;-- The nightingale only Laments for her children.... She never will see them Again, though she call them Till breaks the white day.... 40 I carried my baby Asleep in my bosom To work in the meadows. But Mother-in-law cried, 'Come, leave him behind you, At home with Savyéli, You'll work better then.' And I was so timid, So tired of her scolding, I left him behind. 50 "That year it so happened The harvest was richer Than ever we'd known it; The reaping was hard, But the reapers were merry, I sang as I mounted The sheaves on the waggon. (The waggons are loaded To laughter and singing; The sledges in silence, 60 With thoughts sad and bitter; The waggons convey the corn Home to the peasants, The sledges will bear it Away to the market.) "But as I was working I heard of a sudden A deep groan of anguish: I saw old Savyéli Creep trembling towards me, 70 His face white as death: 'Forgive me, Matróna! Forgive me, Matróna! I sinned....I was careless.' He fell at my feet. "Oh, stay, little swallow! Your nest build not there! Not there 'neath the leafless Bare bank of the river: The water will rise, 80 And your children will perish. Oh, poor little woman, Young wife and young mother, The daughter-in-law And the slave of the household, Bear blows and abuse, Suffer all things in silence, But let not your baby Be torn from your bosom.... Savyéli had fallen 90 Asleep in the sunshine, And Djóma--the pigs Had attacked him and killed him. "I fell to the ground And lay writhing in torture; I bit the black earth And I shrieked in wild anguish; I called on his name, And I thought in my madness My voice must awake him.... 100 "Hark!--horses' hoofs stamping,[52] And harness-bells jangling-- Another misfortune! The children are frightened, They run to the houses; And outside the window The old men and women Are talking in whispers And nodding together. The Elder is running 110 And tapping each window In turn with his staff; Then he runs to the hayfields, He runs to the pastures, To summon the people. They come, full of sorrow-- Another misfortune! And God in His wrath Has sent guests that are hateful, Has sent unjust judges. 120 Perhaps they want money? Their coats are worn threadbare? Perhaps they are hungry? "Without greeting Christ They sit down at the table, They've set up an icon And cross in the middle; Our pope, Father John, Swears the witnesses singly. "They question Savyéli, 130 And then a policeman Is sent to find me, While the officer, swearing, Is striding about Like a beast in the forest.... 'Now, woman, confess it,' He cries when I enter, 'You lived with the peasant Savyéli in sin?' "I whisper in answer, 140 'Kind sir, you are joking. I am to my husband A wife without stain, And the peasant Savyéli Is more than a hundred Years old;--you can see it.' "He's stamping about Like a horse in the stable; In fury he's thumping His fist on the table. 150 'Be silent! Confess, then, That you with Savyéli Had plotted to murder Your child!' "Holy Mother! What horrible ravings! My God, give me patience, And let me not strangle The wicked blasphemer! I looked at the doctor 160 And shuddered in terror: Before him lay lancets, Sharp scissors, and knives. I conquered myself, For I knew why they lay there. I answer him trembling, 'I loved little Djóma, I would not have harmed him.' "'And did you not poison him. Give him some powder?' 170 "'Oh, Heaven forbid!' I kneel to him crying, 'Be gentle! Have mercy! And grant that my baby In honour be buried, Forbid them to thrust The cruel knives in his body! Oh, I am his mother!' "Can anything move them? No hearts they possess, 180 In their eyes is no conscience, No cross at their throats.... "They have lifted the napkin Which covered my baby; His little white body With scissors and lancets They worry and torture ... The room has grown darker, I'm struggling and screaming, 'You butchers! You fiends! 190 Not on earth, not on water, And not on God's temple My tears shall be showered; But straight on the souls Of my hellish tormentors! Oh, hear me, just God! May Thy curse fall and strike them! Ordain that their garments May rot on their bodies! Their eyes be struck blind, 200 And their brains scorch in madness! Their wives be unfaithful, Their children be crippled! Oh, hear me, just God! Hear the prayers of a mother, And look on her tears,-- Strike these pitiless devils!' "'She's crazy, the woman!' The officer shouted, 'Why did you not tell us 210 Before? Stop this fooling! Or else I shall order My men, here, to bind you.' "I sank on the bench, I was trembling all over; I shook like a leaf As I gazed at the doctor; His sleeves were rolled backwards, A knife was in one hand, A cloth in the other, 220 And blood was upon it; His glasses were fixed On his nose. All was silent. The officer's pen Began scratching on paper; The motionless peasants Stood gloomy and mournful; The pope lit his pipe And sat watching the doctor. He said, 'You are reading 230 A heart with a knife.' I started up wildly; I knew that the doctor Was piercing the heart Of my little dead baby. "'Now, bind her, the vixen!' The officer shouted;-- She's mad!' He began To inquire of the peasants, 'Have none of you noticed 240 Before that the woman Korchágin is crazy?' "'No,' answered the peasants. And then Phílip's parents He asked, and their children; They answered, 'Oh, no, sir! We never remarked it.' He asked old Savyéli,-- There's one thing,' he answered, 'That might make one think 250 That Matróna is crazy: She's come here this morning Without bringing with her A present of money Or cloth to appease you.' "And then the old man Began bitterly crying. The officer frowning Sat down and said nothing. And then I remembered: 260 In truth it was madness-- The piece of new linen Which I had made ready Was still in my box-- I'd forgotten to bring it; And now I had seen them Seize Djómushka's body And tear it to pieces. I think at that moment I turned into marble: 270 I watched while the doctor Was drinking some vodka And washing his hands; I saw how he offered The glass to the pope, And I heard the pope answer, 'Why ask me? We mortals Are pitiful sinners,-- We don't need much urging To empty a glass!' 280 "The peasants are standing In fear, and are thinking: 'Now, how did these vultures Get wind of the matter? Who told them that here There was chance of some profit? They dashed in like wolves, Seized the beards of the peasants, And snarled in their faces Like savage hyenas!' 290 "And now they are feasting, Are eating and drinking; They chat with the pope, He is murmuring to them, 'The people in these parts Are beggars and drunken; They owe me for countless Confessions and weddings; They'll take their last farthing To spend in the tavern; 300 And nothing but sins Do they bring to their priest.' "And then I hear singing In clear, girlish voices-- I know them all well: There's Natásha and Glásha, And Dáriushka,--Jesus Have mercy upon them! Hark! steps and accordion; Then there is silence. 310 I think I had fallen Asleep; then I fancied That somebody entering Bent over me, saying, 'Sleep, woman of sorrows, Exhausted by sorrow,' And making the sign Of the cross on my forehead. I felt that the ropes On my body were loosened, 320 And then I remembered No more. In black darkness I woke, and astonished I ran to the window: Deep night lay around me-- What's happened? Where am I? I ran to the street,-- It was empty, in Heaven No moon and no stars, And a great cloud of darkness 330 Spread over the village. The huts of the peasants Were dark; only one hut Was brilliantly lighted, It shone like a palace-- The hut of Savyéli. I ran to the doorway, And then ... I remembered. "The table was gleaming With yellow wax candles, 340 And there, in the midst, Lay a tiny white coffin, And over it spread Was a fine coloured napkin, An icon was placed At its head.... O you builders, For my little son What a house you have fashioned! No windows you've made 350 That the sunshine may enter, No stove and no bench, And no soft little pillows.... Oh, Djómushka will not Feel happy within it, He cannot sleep well.... 'Begone!'--I cried harshly On seeing Savyéli; He stood near the coffin And read from the book 360 In his hand, through his glasses. I cursed old Savyéli, Cried--'Branded one! Convict! Begone! 'Twas you killed him! You murdered my, Djóma, Begone from my sight!' "He stood without moving; He crossed himself thrice And continued his reading. But when I grew calmer 370 Savyéli approached me, And said to me gently, 'In winter, Matróna, I told you my story, But yet there was more. Our forests were endless, Our lakes wild and lonely, Our people were savage; By cruelty lived we: By snaring the wood-grouse, 380 By slaying the bears:-- You must kill or you perish! I've told you of Barin Shaláshnikov, also Of how we were robbed By the villainous German, And then of the prison, The exile, the mines. My heart was like stone, I grew wild and ferocious. 390 My winter had lasted A century, Grandchild, But your little Djóma Had melted its frosts. One day as I rocked him He smiled of a sudden, And I smiled in answer.... A strange thing befell me Some days after that: As I prowled in the forest 400 I aimed at a squirrel; But suddenly noticed How happy and playful It was, in the branches: Its bright little face With its paw it sat washing. I lowered my gun:-- 'You shall live, little squirrel!' I rambled about In the woods, in the meadows, 410 And each tiny floweret I loved. I went home then And nursed little Djóma, And played with him, laughing. God knows how I loved him, The innocent babe! And now ... through my folly, My sin, ... he has perished.... Upbraid me and kill me, But nothing can help you, 420 With God one can't argue.... Stand up now, Matróna, And pray for your baby; God acted with reason: He's counted the joys In the life of a peasant!' "Long, long did Savyéli Stand bitterly speaking, The piteous fate Of the peasant he painted; 430 And if a rich Barin, A merchant or noble, If even our Father The Tsar had been listening, Savyéli could not Have found words which were truer, Have spoken them better.... "'Now Djóma is happy And safe, in God's Heaven,' He said to me later. 440 His tears began falling.... "'I do not complain That God took him, Savyéli,' I said,--'but the insult They did him torments me, It's racking my heart. Why did vicious black ravens Alight on his body And tear it to pieces? Will neither our God 450 Nor our Tsar--Little Father-- Arise to defend us?' "'But God, little Grandchild, Is high, and the Tsar Far away,' said Savyéli. "I cried, 'Yet I'll reach them!' "But Grandfather answered, 'Now hush, little Grandchild, You woman of sorrow, Bow down and have patience; 460 No truth you will find In the world, and no justice.' "'But why then, Savyéli?' "'A bondswoman, Grandchild, You are; and for such Is no hope,' said Savyéli. "For long I sat darkly And bitterly thinking. The thunder pealed forth And the windows were shaken; 470 I started! Savyéli Drew nearer and touched me, And led me to stand By the little white coffin: "'Now pray that the Lord May have placed little Djóma Among the bright ranks Of His angels,' he whispered; A candle he placed In my hand.... And I knelt there 480 The whole of the night Till the pale dawn of daybreak: The grandfather stood Beside Djómushka's coffin And read from the book In a measured low voice...." CHAPTER V THE SHE-WOLF "'Tis twenty years now Since my Djóma was taken, Was carried to sleep 'Neath his little grass blanket; And still my heart bleeds, And I pray for him always, No apple till Spassa[53] I touch with my lips.... "For long I lay ill, Not a word did I utter, 10 My eyes could not suffer The old man, Savyéli. No work did I do, And my Father-in-law thought To give me a lesson And took down the horse-reins; I bowed to his feet, And cried--'Kill me! Oh, kill me! I pray for the end!' He hung the reins up, then. 20 I lived day and night On the grave of my Djóma, I dusted it clean With a soft little napkin That grass might grow green, And I prayed for my lost one. I yearned for my parents: 'Oh, you have forgotten, Forgotten your daughter!' "'We have not forgotten 30 Our poor little daughter, But is it worth while, say, To wear the grey horse out By such a long journey To learn about your woes, To tell you of ours? Since long, little daughter, Would father and mother Have journeyed to see you, But ever the thought rose: 40 She'll weep at our coming, She'll shriek when we leave!' "In winter came Philip, Our sorrow together We shared, and together We fought with our grief In the grandfather's hut." "The grandfather died, then?" "Oh, no, in his cottage For seven whole days 50 He lay still without speaking, And then he got up And he went to the forest; And there old Savyéli So wept and lamented, The woods were set throbbing. In autumn he left us And went as a pilgrim On foot to do penance At some distant convent.... 60 "I went with my husband To visit my parents, And then began working Again. Three years followed, Each week like the other, As twin to twin brother, And each year a child. There was no time for thinking And no time for grieving; Praise God if you have time 70 For getting your work done And crossing your forehead. You eat--when there's something Left over at table, When elders have eaten, When children have eaten; You sleep--when you're ill.... "In the fourth year came sorrow Again; for when sorrow Once lightens upon you 80 To death he pursues you; He circles before you-- A bright shining falcon; He hovers behind you-- An ugly black raven; He flies in advance-- But he will not forsake you; He lingers behind-- But he will not forget.... "I lost my dear parents. 90 The dark nights alone knew The grief of the orphan; No need is there, brothers, To tell you about it. With tears did I water The grave of my baby. From far once I noticed A wooden cross standing Erect at its head, And a little gilt icon; 100 A figure is kneeling Before it--'Savyéli! From whence have you come?' "'I have come from Pesótchna. I've prayed for the soul Of our dear little Djóma; I've prayed for the peasants Of Russia.... Matróna, Once more do I pray-- Oh, Matróna ... Matróna.... 110 I pray that the heart Of the mother, at last, May be softened towards me.... Forgive me, Matróna!' "'Oh, long, long ago I forgave you, Savyéli.' "'Then look at me now As in old times, Matróna!' "I looked as of old. Then up rose Savyéli, 120 And gazed in my eyes; He was trying to straighten His stiffened old back; Like the snow was his hair now. I kissed the old man, And my new grief I told him; For long we sat weeping And mourning together. He did not live long After that. In the autumn 130 A deep wound appeared In his neck, and he sickened. He died very hard. For a hundred days, fully, No food passed his lips; To the bone he was shrunken. He laughed at himself: 'Tell me, truly, Matróna, Now am I not like A Korójin mosquito?' 140 "At times the old man Would be gentle and patient; At times he was angry And nothing would please him; He frightened us all By his outbursts of fury: 'Eh, plough not, and sow not, You downtrodden peasants! You women, sit spinning And weaving no longer! 150 However you struggle, You fools, you must perish! You will not escape What by fate has been written! Three roads are spread out For the peasant to follow-- They lead to the tavern, The mines, and the prison! Three nooses are hung For the women of Russia: 160 The one is of white silk, The second of red silk, The third is of black silk-- Choose that which you please!' And Grandfather laughed In a manner which caused us To tremble with fear And draw nearer together.... He died in the night, And we did as he asked us: 170 We laid him to rest In the grave beside Djóma. The Grandfather lived To a hundred and seven.... "Four years passed away then, The one like the other, And I was submissive, The slave of the household, For Mother-in-law And her husband the drunkard, 180 For Sister-in-law By all suitors rejected. I'd draw off their boots-- Only,--touch not my children! For them I stood firm Like a rock. Once it happened A pilgrim arrived At our village--a holy And pious-tongued woman; She spoke to the people 190 Of how to please God And of how to reach Heaven. She said that on fast-days No woman should offer The breast to her child. The women obeyed her: On Wednesdays and Fridays The village was filled By the wailing of babies; And many a mother 200 Sat bitterly weeping To hear her child cry For its food--full of pity, But fearing God's anger. But I did not listen! I said to myself That if penance were needful The mothers must suffer, But not little children. I said, 'I am guilty, 210 My God--not my children!' "It seems God was angry And punished me for it Through my little son; My Father-in-law To the commune had offered My little Fedótka As help to the shepherd When he was turned eight.... One night I was waiting 220 To give him his supper; The cattle already Were home, but he came not. I went through the village And saw that the people Were gathered together And talking of something. I listened, then elbowed My way through the people; Fedótka was set 230 In their midst, pale and trembling, The Elder was gripping His ear. 'What has happened? And why do you hold him?' I said to the Elder. "'I'm going to beat him,-- He threw a young lamb To the wolf,' he replied. "I snatched my Fedótka Away from their clutches; 240 And somehow the Elder Fell down on the ground! "The story was strange: It appears that the shepherd Went home for awhile, Leaving little Fedótka In charge of the flock. 'I was sitting,' he told me, 'Alone on the hillside, When all of a sudden 250 A wolf ran close by me And picked Masha's lamb up. I threw myself at her, I whistled and shouted, I cracked with my whip, Blew my horn for Valétka, And then I gave chase. I run fast, little Mother, But still I could never Have followed the robber 260 If not for the traces She left; because, Mother, Her breasts hung so low (She was suckling her children) They dragged on the earth And left two tracks of blood. But further the grey one Went slower and slower; And then she looked back And she saw I was coming. 270 At last she sat down. With my whip then I lashed her; ''Come, give me the lamb, You grey devil!'' She crouched, But would not give it up. I said--''I must save it Although she should kill me.'' I threw myself on her And snatched it away, But she did not attack me. 280 The lamb was quite dead, She herself was scarce living. She gnashed with her teeth And her breathing was heavy; And two streams of blood ran From under her body. Her ribs could be counted, Her head was hung down, But her eyes, little Mother, Looked straight into mine ... 290 Then she groaned of a sudden, She groaned, and it sounded As if she were crying. I threw her the lamb....' "Well, that was the story. And foolish Fedótka Ran back to the village And told them about it. And they, in their anger, Were going to beat him 300 When I came upon them. The Elder, because Of his fall, was indignant, He shouted--'How dare you! Do you want a beating Yourself?' And the woman Whose lamb had been stolen Cried, 'Whip the lad soundly, 'Twill teach him a lesson!' Fedótka she pulled from 310 My arms, and he trembled, He shook like a leaf. "Then the horns of the huntsmen Were heard,--the Pomyéshchick Returning from hunting. I ran to him, crying, 'Oh, save us! Protect us!' "'What's wrong? Call the Elder!' And then, in an instant, The matter is settled: 320 'The shepherd is tiny-- His youth and his folly May well be forgiven. The woman's presumption You'll punish severely!' "'Oh, Barin, God bless you!' I danced with delight! 'Fedótka is safe now! Run home, quick, Fedótka.' "'Your will shall be done, sir,' 330 The Elder said, bowing; 'Now, woman, prepare; You can dance later on!' "A gossip then whispered, 'Fall down at the feet Of the Elder--beg mercy!' "'Fedótka--go home!' "Then I kissed him, and told him: 'Remember, Fedótka, That I shall be angry 340 If once you look backwards. Run home!' "Well, my brothers, To leave out a word Of the song is to spoil it,-- I lay on the ground...." * * * * * "I crawled like a cat To Fedótushka's corner That night. He was sleeping, He tossed in his dream. 350 One hand was hung down, While the other, clenched tightly, Was shielding his eyes: 'You've been crying, my treasure; Sleep, darling, it's nothing-- See, Mother is near!' I'd lost little Djóma While heavy with this one; He was but a weakling, But grew very clever. 360 He works with his dad now, And built such a chimney With him, for his master, The like of it never Was seen. Well, I sat there The whole of the night By the sweet little shepherd. At daybreak I crossed him, I fastened his laputs, I gave him his wallet, 370 His horn and his whip. The rest began stirring, But nothing I told them Of all that had happened, But that day I stayed From the work in the fields. "I went to the banks Of the swift little river, I sought for a spot Which was silent and lonely 380 Amid the green rushes That grow by the bank. "And on the grey stone I sat down, sick and weary, And leaning my head On my hands, I lamented, Poor sorrowing orphan. And loudly I called On the names of my parents: 'Oh, come, little Father, 390 My tender protector! Oh, look at the daughter You cherished and loved!' "In vain do I call him! The loved one has left me; The guest without lord, Without race, without kindred, Named Death, has appeared, And has called him away. "And wildly I summon 400 My mother, my mother! The boisterous wind cries, The distant hills answer, But mother is dead, She can hear me no longer! "You grieved day and night, And you prayed for me always, But never, beloved, Shall I see you again; You cannot turn back now, 410 And I may not follow. "A pathway so strange, So unknown, you have chosen, The beasts cannot find it, The winds cannot reach it, My voice will be lost In the terrible distance.... "My loving protectors, If you could but see me! Could know what your daughter 420 Must suffer without you! Could learn of the people To whom you have left her! "By night bathed in tears, And by day weak and trembling, I bow like the grass To the wind, but in secret A heart full of fury Is gnawing my breast!" CHAPTER VI AN UNLUCKY YEAR "Strange stars played that year On the face of the Heavens; And some said, 'The Lord rides Abroad, and His angels With long flaming brooms sweep The floor of the Heavens In front of his carriage.' But others were frightened,-- They said, 'It is rather The Antichrist coming! 10 It signals misfortune!' And they read it truly. A terrible year came, A terrible famine, When brother denied To his brother a morsel. And then I remembered The wolf that was hungry, For I was like her, Craving food for my children. 20 Now Mother-in-law found A new superstition: She said to the neighbours That I was the reason Of all the misfortune; And why? I had caused it By changing my shirt On the day before Christmas! Well, I escaped lightly, For I had a husband 30 To shield and protect me, But one woman, having Offended, was beaten To death by the people. To play with the starving Is dangerous, my friends. "The famine was scarcely At end, when another Misfortune befell us-- The dreaded recruiting. 40 But I was not troubled By that, because Phílip Was safe: one already Had served of his people. One night I sat working, My husband, his brothers, The family, all had Been out since the morning. My Father-in-law Had been called to take part 50 In the communal meeting. The women were standing And chatting with neighbours. But I was exhausted, For then I was heavy With child. I was ailing, And hourly expected My time. When the children Were fed and asleep I lay down on the oven. 60 The women came home soon And called for their suppers; But Father-in-law Had not come, so we waited. He came, tired and gloomy: 'Eh, wife, we are ruined! I'm weary with running, But nothing can save us: They've taken the eldest-- Now give them the youngest! 70 I've counted the years To a day--I have proved them; They listen to nothing. They want to take Phílip! I prayed to the commune-- But what is it worth? I ran to the bailiff; He swore he was sorry, But couldn't assist us. I went to the clerk then; 80 You might just as well Set to work with a hatchet To chop out the shadows Up there, on the ceiling, As try to get truth Out of that little rascal! He's bought. They are all bought,-- Not one of them honest! If only he knew it-- The Governor--he'd teach them! 90 If he would but order The commune to show him The lists of the volost, And see how they cheat us!' The mother and daughters Are groaning and crying; But I! ... I am cold.... I am burning in fever! ... My thoughts ... I have no thoughts! I think I am dreaming! 100 My fatherless children Are standing before me, And crying with hunger. The family, frowning, Looks coldly upon them.... At home they are 'noisy,' At play they are 'clumsy,' At table they're 'gluttons'! And somebody threatens To punish my children-- 110 They slap them and pinch them! Be silent, you mother! You wife of a soldier!" * * * * * "I now have no part In the village allotments, No share in the building, The clothes, and the cattle, And these are my riches: Three lakes of salt tear-drops, Three fields sown with grief!" 120 * * * * * "And now, like a sinner, I bow to the neighbours; I ask their forgiveness; I hear myself saying, 'Forgive me for being So haughty and proud! I little expected That God, for my pride, Would have left me forsaken! I pray you, good people, 130 To show me more wisdom, To teach me to live And to nourish my children, What food they should have, And what drink, and what teaching.'" * * * * * "I'm sending my children To beg in the village; 'Go, children, beg humbly, But dare not to steal.' The children are sobbing, 140 'It's cold, little Mother, Our clothes are in rags; We are weary of passing From doorway to doorway; We stand by the windows And shiver. We're frightened To beg of the rich folk; The poor ones say, ''God will Provide for the orphans!'' We cannot come home, 150 For if we bring nothing We know you'll be angry!'" * * * * * "To go to God's church I have made myself tidy; I hear how the neighbours Are laughing around me: 'Now who is she setting Her cap at?' they whisper." * * * * * "Don't wash yourself clean. And don't dress yourself nicely; 160 The neighbours are sharp-- They have eyes like the eagle And tongues like the serpent. Walk humbly and slowly, Don't laugh when you're cheerful, Don't weep when you're sad." * * * * * "The dull, endless winter Has come, and the fields And the pretty green meadows Are hidden away 170 'Neath the snow. Nothing living Is seen in the folds Of the gleaming white grave-clothes. No friend under Heaven There is for the woman, The wife of the soldier. Who knows what her thoughts are? Who cares for her words? Who is sad for her sorrow? And where can she bury 180 The insults they cast her? Perhaps in the woods?-- But the woods are all withered! Perhaps in the meadows?-- The meadows are frozen! The swift little stream?-- But its waters are sleeping! No,--carry them with you To hide in your grave!" * * * * * "My husband is gone; 190 There is no one to shield me. Hark, hark! There's the drum! And the soldiers are coming! They halt;--they are forming A line in the market. 'Attention!' There's Phílip! There's Phílip! I see him! 'Attention! Eyes front!' It's Shaláshnikov shouting.... Oh, Phílip has fallen! 200 Have mercy! Have mercy! 'Try that--try some physic! You'll soon get to like it! Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!' He is striking my husband! 'I flog, not with whips, But with knouts made for giants!'" * * * * * "I sprang from the stove, Though my burden was heavy; I listen.... All silent.... 210 The family sleeping. I creep to the doorway And open it softly, I pass down the street Through the night.... It is frosty. In Domina's hut, Where the youths and young maidens Assemble at night, They are singing in chorus My favourite song: 220 "'The fir tree on the mountain stands, The little cottage at its foot, And Máshenka is there. Her father comes to look for her, He wakens her and coaxes her: ''Eh, Máshenka, come home,'' he cries, ''Efeémovna, come home!'' "'''I won't come, and I won't listen! Black the night--no moon in Heaven! Swift the stream--no bridge, no ferry! Dark the wood--no guards.'' 231 "'The fir tree on the mountain stands, The little cottage at its foot, And Máshenka is there. Her mother comes to look for her, She wakens her and coaxes her: ''Now, Máshenka, come home,'' she says, ''Efeémovna, come home!'' "'''I won't come, and I won't listen! Black the night--no moon in Heaven! Swift the stream--no bridge, no ferry! Dark the wood--no guards!'' 242 "'The fir tree on the mountain stands, The little cottage at its foot, And Máshenka is there. Young Peter comes to look for her, He wakens her, and coaxes her: ''Oh, Máshenka, come home with me! My little dove, Efeémovna, Come home, my dear, with me.'' 250 "'''I will come, and I will listen, Fair the night--the moon in Heaven, Calm the stream with bridge and ferry, In the wood strong guards.'''" CHAPTER VII THE GOVERNOR'S LADY "I'm hurrying blindly, I've run through the village; Yet strangely the singing From Domina's cottage Pursues me and rings In my ears. My pace slackens, I rest for awhile, And look back at the village: I see the white snowdrift O'er valley and meadow, 10 The moon in the Heavens, My self, and my shadow.... "I do not feel frightened; A flutter of gladness Awakes in my bosom, 'You brisk winter breezes, My thanks for your freshness! I crave for your breath As the sick man for water.' My mind has grown clear, 20 To my knees I am falling: 'O Mother of Christ! I beseech Thee to tell me Why God is so angry With me. Holy Mother! No tiniest bone In my limbs is unbroken; No nerve in my body Uncrushed. I am patient,-- I have not complained. 30 All the strength that God gave me I've spent on my work; All the love on my children. But Thou seest all things, And Thou art so mighty; Oh, succour thy slave!' "I love now to pray On a night clear and frosty; To kneel on the earth 'Neath the stars in the winter. 40 Remember, my brothers, If trouble befall you, To counsel your women To pray in that manner; In no other place Can one pray so devoutly, At no other season.... "I prayed and grew stronger; I bowed my hot head To the cool snowy napkin, 50 And quickly my fever Was spent. And when later I looked at the roadway I found that I knew it; I'd passed it before On the mild summer evenings; At morning I'd greeted The sunrise upon it In haste to be off To the fair. And I walked now 60 The whole of the night Without meeting a soul.... But now to the cities The sledges are starting, Piled high with the hay Of the peasants. I watch them, And pity the horses: Their lawful provision Themselves they are dragging Away from the courtyard; 70 And afterwards they Will be hungry. I pondered: The horses that work Must eat straw, while the idlers Are fed upon oats. But when Need comes he hastens To empty your corn-lofts, Won't wait to be asked.... "I come within sight Of the town. On the outskirts 80 The merchants are cheating And wheedling the peasants, There's shouting and swearing, Abusing and coaxing. "I enter the town As the bell rings for matins. I make for the market Before the cathedral. I know that the gates Of the Governor's courtyard 90 Are there. It is dark still, The square is quite empty; In front of the courtyard A sentinel paces: 'Pray tell me, good man, Does the Governor rise early?' "'Don't know. Go away. I'm forbidden to chatter.' (I give him some farthings.) 'Well, go to the porter; 100 He knows all about it.' "'Where is he? And what Is his name, little sentry?' "'Makhár Fedosséich, He stands at the entrance.' I walk to the entrance, The doors are not opened. I sit on the doorsteps And think.... "It grows lighter, 110 A man with a ladder Is turning the lamps down. "'Heh, what are you doing? And how did you enter?' "I start in confusion, I see in the doorway A bald-headed man In a bed-gown. Then quickly I come to my senses, And bowing before him 120 (Makhár Fedosséich), I give him a rouble. "'I come in great need To the Governor, and see him I must, little Uncle!' "'You can't see him, woman. Well, well.... I'll consider.... Return in two hours.' "I see in the market A pedestal standing, 130 A peasant upon it, He's just like Savyéli, And all made of brass: It's Susánin's memorial. While crossing the market I'm suddenly startled-- A heavy grey drake From a cook is escaping; The fellow pursues With a knife. It is shrieking. 140 My God, what a sound! To the soul it has pierced me. ('Tis only the knife That can wring such a shriek.) The cook has now caught it; It stretches its neck, Begins angrily hissing, As if it would frighten The cook,--the poor creature! I run from the market, 150 I'm trembling and thinking, 'The drake will grow calm 'Neath the kiss of the knife!' "The Governor's dwelling Again is before me, With balconies, turrets, And steps which are covered With beautiful carpets. I gaze at the windows All shaded with curtains. 160 'Now, which is your chamber,' I think, 'my desired one? Say, do you sleep sweetly? Of what are you dreaming?' I creep up the doorsteps, And keep to the side Not to tread on the carpets; And there, near the entrance, I wait for the porter. "'You're early, my gossip!' 170 Again I am startled: A stranger I see,-- For at first I don't know him; A livery richly Embroidered he wears now; He holds a fine staff; He's not bald any longer! He laughs--'You were frightened?' "'I'm tired, little Uncle.' "'You've plenty of courage, 180 God's mercy be yours! Come, give me another, And I will befriend you.' "(I give him a rouble.) 'Now come, I will make you Some tea in my office.' "His den is just under The stairs. There's a bedstead, A little iron stove, And a candlestick in it, 190 A big samovar, And a lamp in the corner. Some pictures are hung On the wall. 'That's His Highness,' The porter remarks, And he points with his finger. I look at the picture: A warrior covered With stars. 'Is he gentle?' "'That's just as you happen 200 To find him. Why, neighbour, The same is with me: To-day I'm obliging, At times I'm as cross As a dog.' "'You are dull here, Perhaps, little Uncle?' "'Oh no, I'm not dull; I've a task that's exciting: Ten years have I fought 210 With a foe: Sleep his name is. And I can assure you That when I have taken An odd cup of vodka, The stove is red hot, And the smuts from the candle Have blackened the air, It's a desperate struggle!' "There's somebody knocking. Makhár has gone out; 220 I am sitting alone now. I go to the door And look out. In the courtyard A carriage is waiting. I ask, 'Is he coming?' 'The lady is coming,' The porter makes answer, And hurries away To the foot of the staircase. A lady descends, 230 Wrapped in costliest sables, A lackey behind her. I know not what followed (The Mother of God Must have come to my aid), It seems that I fell At the feet of the lady, And cried, 'Oh, protect us! They try to deceive us! My husband--the only 240 Support of my children-- They've taken away-- Oh, they've acted unjustly!'... "'Who are you, my pigeon?' "My answer I know not, Or whether I gave one; A sudden sharp pang tore My body in twain." * * * * * "I opened my eyes In a beautiful chamber, 250 In bed I was laid 'Neath a canopy, brothers, And near me was sitting A nurse, in a head-dress All streaming with ribbons. She's nursing a baby. 'Who's is it?' I ask her. "'It's yours, little Mother.' I kiss my sweet child. It seems, when I fell 260 At the feet of the lady, I wept so and raved so, Already so weakened By grief and exhaustion, That there, without warning, My labour had seized me. I bless the sweet lady, Elyén Alexándrovna, Only a mother Could bless her as I do. 270 She christened my baby, Lidórushka called him." "And what of your husband?" "They sent to the village And started enquiries, And soon he was righted. Elyén Alexándrovna Brought him herself To my side. She was tender And clever and lovely, 280 And healthy, but childless, For God would not grant her A child. While I stayed there My baby was never Away from her bosom. She tended and nursed him Herself, like a mother. The spring had set in And the birch trees were budding, Before she would let us 290 Set out to go home. "Oh, how fair and bright In God's world to-day! Glad my heart and gay! "Homewards lies our way, Near the wood we pause, See, the meadows green, Hark! the waters play. Rivulet so pure, Little child of Spring, 300 How you leap and sing, Rippling in the leaves! High the little lark Soars above our heads, Carols blissfully! Let us stand and gaze; Soon our eyes will meet, I will laugh to thee, Thou wilt smile at me, Wee Lidórushka! 310 "Look, a beggar comes, Trembling, weak, old man, Give him what we can. 'Do not pray for us,' Let us to him say, 'Father, you must pray For Elyénushka, For the lady fair, Alexándrovna!' "Look, the church of God! 320 Sign the cross we twain Time and time again.... 'Grant, O blessed Lord, Thy most fair reward To the gentle heart Of Elyénushka, Alexándrovna!' "Green the forest grows, Green the pretty fields, In each dip and dell 330 Bright a mirror gleams. Oh, how fair it is In God's world to-day, Glad my heart and gay! Like the snowy swan O'er the lake I sail, O'er the waving steppes Speeding like the quail. "Here we are at home. Through the door I fly 340 Like the pigeon grey; Low the family Bow at sight of me, Nearly to the ground, Pardon they beseech For the way in which They have treated me. 'Sit you down,' I say, 'Do not bow to me. Listen to my words: 350 You must bow to one Better far than I, Stronger far than I, Sing your praise to her.' "'Sing to whom,' you say? 'To Elyénushka, To the fairest soul God has sent on earth: Alexándrovna!'" CHAPTER VIII THE WOMAN'S LEGEND Matróna is silent. You see that the peasants Have seized the occasion-- They are not forgetting To drink to the health Of the beautiful lady! But noticing soon That Matróna is silent, In file they approach her. "What more will you tell us?" 10 "What more?" says Matróna, "My fame as the 'lucky one' Spread through the volost, Since then they have called me 'The Governor's Lady.' You ask me, what further? I managed the household, And brought up my children. You ask, was I happy? Well, that you can answer 20 Yourselves. And my children? Five sons! But the peasant's Misfortunes are endless: They've robbed me of one." She lowers her voice, And her lashes are trembling, But turning her head She endeavours to hide it. The peasants are rather Confused, but they linger: 30 "Well, neighbour," they say, "Will you tell us no more?" "There's one thing: You're foolish To seek among women For happiness, brothers." "That's all?" "I can tell you That twice we were swallowed By fire, and that three times The plague fell upon us; 40 But such things are common To all of us peasants. Like cattle we toiled, My steps were as easy As those of a horse In the plough. But my troubles Were not very startling: No mountains have moved From their places to crush me; And God did not strike me 50 With arrows of thunder. The storm in my soul Has been silent, unnoticed, So how can I paint it To you? O'er the Mother Insulted and outraged, The blood of her first-born As o'er a crushed worm Has been poured; and unanswered The deadly offences 60 That many have dealt her; The knout has been raised Unopposed o'er her body. But one thing I never Have suffered: I told you That Sítnikov died, That the last, irreparable Shame had been spared me. You ask me for happiness? Brothers, you mock me! 70 Go, ask the official, The Minister mighty, The Tsar--Little Father, But never a woman! God knows--among women Your search will be endless, Will lead to your graves. "A pious old woman Once asked us for shelter; The whole of her lifetime 80 The Flesh she had conquered By penance and fasting; She'd bathed in the Jordan, And prayed at the tomb Of Christ Jesus. She told us The keys to the welfare And freedom of women Have long been mislaid-- God Himself has mislaid them. And hermits, chaste women, 90 And monks of great learning, Have sought them all over The world, but not found them. They're lost, and 'tis thought By a fish they've been swallowed. God's knights have been seeking In towns and in deserts, Weak, starving, and cold, Hung with torturing fetters. They've asked of the seers, 100 The stars they have counted To learn;--but no keys! Through the world they have journeyed; In underground caverns, In mountains, they've sought them. At last they discovered Some keys. They were precious, But only--not ours. Yet the warriors triumphed: They fitted the lock 110 On the fetters of serfdom! A sigh from all over The world rose to Heaven, A breath of relief, Oh, so deep and so joyful! Our keys were still missing.... Great champions, though, Till to-day are still searching, Deep down in the bed Of the ocean they wander, 120 They fly to the skies, In the clouds they are seeking, But never the keys. Do you think they will find them? Who knows? Who can say? But I think it is doubtful, For which fish has swallowed Those treasures so priceless, In which sea it swims-- God Himself has forgotten!" 130 PART IV. Dedicated to Serge Petrovitch Botkin A FEAST FOR THE WHOLE VILLAGE PROLOGUE A very old willow There is at the end Of the village of "Earthworms," Where most of the folk Have been diggers and delvers From times very ancient (Though some produced tar). This willow had witnessed The lives of the peasants: Their holidays, dances, 10 Their communal meetings, Their floggings by day, In the evening their wooing, And now it looked down On a wonderful feast. The feast was conducted In Petersburg fashion, For Klímka, the peasant (Our former acquaintance), Had seen on his travels 20 Some noblemen's banquets, With toasts and orations, And he had arranged it. The peasants were sitting On tree-trunks cut newly For building a hut. With them, too, our seven (Who always were ready To see what was passing) Were sitting and chatting 30 With Vlass, the old Elder. As soon as they fancied A drink would be welcome, The Elder called out To his son, "Run for Trifon!" With Trifon the deacon, A jovial fellow, A chum of the Elder's, His sons come as well. Two pupils they are 40 Of the clerical college Named Sava and Grisha. The former, the eldest, Is nineteen years old. He looks like a churchman Already, while Grisha Has fine, curly hair, With a slight tinge of red, And a thin, sallow face. Both capital fellows 50 They are, kind and simple, They work with the ploughshare, The scythe, and the sickle, Drink vodka on feast-days, And mix with the peasants Entirely as equals.... The village lies close To the banks of the Volga; A small town there is On the opposite side. 60 (To speak more correctly, There's now not a trace Of the town, save some ashes: A fire has demolished it Two days ago.) Some people are waiting To cross by the ferry, While some feed their horses (All friends of the peasants). Some beggars have crawled 70 To the spot; there are pilgrims, Both women and men; The women loquacious, The men very silent. The old Prince Yutiátin Is dead, but the peasants Are not yet aware That instead of the hayfields His heirs have bequeathed them A long litigation. 80 So, drinking their vodka, They first of all argue Of how they'll dispose Of the beautiful hayfields. You were not all cozened,[54] You people of Russia, And robbed of your land. In some blessed spots You were favoured by fortune! By some lucky chance-- 90 The Pomyéshchick's long absence, Some slip of posrédnik's, By wiles of the commune, You managed to capture A slice of the forest. How proud are the peasants In such happy corners! The Elder may tap At the window for taxes, The peasant will bluster,-- 100 One answer has he: "Just sell off the forest, And don't bother me!" So now, too, the peasants Of "Earthworms" decided To part with the fields To the Elder for taxes. They calculate closely: "They'll pay both the taxes And dues--with some over, 110 Heh, Vlásuchka, won't they?" "Once taxes are paid I'll uncover to no man. I'll work if it please me, I'll lie with my wife, Or I'll go to the tavern." "Bravo!" cry the peasants, In answer to Klímka, "Now, Vlásuchka, do you Agree to our plan?" 120 "The speeches of Klímka Are short, and as plain As the public-house signboard," Says Vlásuchka, joking. "And that is his manner: To start with a woman And end in the tavern." "Well, where should one end, then? Perhaps in the prison? Now--as to the taxes, 130 Don't croak, but decide." But Vlásuchka really Was far from a croaker. The kindest soul living Was he, and he sorrowed For all in the village, Not only for one. His conscience had pricked him While serving his haughty And rigorous Barin, 140 Obeying his orders, So cruel and oppressive. While young he had always Believed in 'improvements,' But soon he observed That they ended in nothing, Or worse--in misfortune. So now he mistrusted The new, rich in promise. The wheels that have passed 150 O'er the roadways of Moscow Are fewer by far Than the injuries done To the soul of the peasant. There's nothing to laugh at In that, so the Elder Perforce had grown gloomy. But now, the gay pranks Of the peasants of "Earthworms" Affected him too. 160 His thoughts became brighter: No taxes ... no barschin ... No stick held above you, Dear God, am I dreaming? Old Vlásuchka smiles.... A miracle surely! Like that, when the sun From the splendour of Heaven May cast a chance ray In the depths of the forest: 170 The dew shines like diamonds, The mosses are gilded. "Drink, drink, little peasants! Disport yourselves bravely!" 'Twas gay beyond measure. In each breast awakens A wondrous new feeling, As though from the depths Of a bottomless gulf On the crest of a wave, 180 They've been borne to the surface To find there awaits them A feast without end. Another pail's started, And, oh, what a clamour Of voices arises, And singing begins. And just as a dead man's Relations and friends Talk of nothing but him 190 Till the funeral's over, Until they have finished The funeral banquet And started to yawn,-- So over the vodka, Beneath the old willow, One topic prevails: The "break in the chain" Of their lords, the Pomyéshchicks. The deacon they ask, 200 And his sons, to oblige them By singing a song Called the "Merry Song" to them. (This song was not really A song of the people: The deacon's son Grisha Had sung it them first. But since the great day When the Tsar, Little Father, Had broken the chains 210 Of his suffering children, They always had danced To this tune on the feast-days. The "popes" and the house-serfs Could sing the words also, The peasants could not, But whenever they heard it They whistled and stamped, And the "Merry Song" called it.) CHAPTER I BITTER TIMES--BITTER SONGS _The Merry Song_ * * * * * The "Merry Song" finished, They struck up a chorus, A song of their own, A wailing lament (For, as yet, they've no others). And is it not strange That in vast Holy Russia, With masses and masses Of people unnumbered, No song has been born 10 Overflowing with joy Like a bright summer morning? Yes, is it not striking, And is it not tragic? O times that are coming, You, too, will be painted In songs of the people, But how? In what colours? And will there be ever A smile in their hearts? 20 "Eh, that's a fine song! 'Tis a shame to forget it." Our peasants regret That their memories trick them. And, meanwhile, the peasants Of "Earthworms" are saying, "We lived but for 'barschin,' Pray, how would you like it? You see, we grew up 'Neath the snout of the Barin, 30 Our noses were glued To the earth. We'd forgotten The faces of neighbours, Forgot how to speak. We got tipsy in silence, Gave kisses in silence, Fought silently, too." "Eh, who speaks of silence? We'd more cause to hate it Than you," said a peasant 40 Who came from a Volost Near by, with a waggon Of hay for the market. (Some heavy misfortune Had forced him to sell it.) "For once our young lady, Miss Gertrude, decided That any one swearing Must soundly be flogged. Dear Lord, how they flogged us 50 Until we stopped swearing! Of course, not to swear For the peasant means--silence. We suffered, God knows! Then freedom was granted, We feasted it finely, And then we made up For our silence, believe me: We swore in such style That Pope John was ashamed 60 For the church-bells to hear us. (They rang all day long.) What stories we told then! We'd no need to seek For the words. They were written All over our backs." "A funny thing happened In our parts,--a strange thing," Remarked a tall fellow With bushy black whiskers. 70 (He wore a round hat With a badge, a red waistcoat With ten shining buttons, And stout homespun breeches. His legs, to contrast With the smartness above them, Were tied up in rags! There are trees very like him, From which a small shepherd Has stripped all the bark off 80 Below, while above Not a scratch can be noticed! And surely no raven Would scorn such a summit For building a nest.) "Well, tell us about it." "I'll first have a smoke." And while he is smoking Our peasants are asking, "And who is this fellow? 90 What sort of a goose?" "An unfortunate footman Inscribed in our Volost, A martyr, a house-serf Of Count Sinegúsin's. His name is Vikénti. He sprang from the foot-board Direct to the ploughshare; We still call him 'Footman.' He's healthy enough, 100 But his legs are not strong, And they're given to trembling. His lady would drive In a carriage and four To go hunting for mushrooms. He'll tell you some stories: His memory's splendid; You'd think he had eaten The eggs of a magpie." [55] Now, setting his hat straight, 110 Vikénti commences To tell them the story. _The Dutiful Serf--Jacob the Faithful_ Once an official, of rather low family, Bought a small village from bribes he had stored, Lived in it thirty-three years without leaving it, Feasted and hunted and drank like a lord. Greedy and miserly, not many friends he made, Sometimes he'd drive to his sister's to tea. Cruel was his nature, and not to his serfs alone: On his own daughter no pity had he, 120 Horsewhipped her husband, and drove them both penniless Out of his house; not a soul dare resist. Jacob, his dutiful servant, Ever of orders observant, Often he'd strike in the mouth with his fist. Hearts of men born into slavery Sometimes with dogs' hearts accord: Crueller the punishments dealt to them More they will worship their lord. 129 Jacob, it seems, had a heart of that quality, Only two sources of joy he possessed: Tending and serving his Barin devotedly, Rocking his own little nephew to rest. So they lived on till old age was approaching them, Weak grew the legs of the Barin at last, Vainly, to cure them, he tried every remedy; Feast and debauch were delights of the past. Plump are his hands and white, Keen are his eyes and bright, Rosy his cheek remains, 140 But on his legs--are chains! Helpless the Barin now lies in his dressing-gown, Bitterly, bitterly cursing his fate. Jacob, his "brother and friend,"--so the Barin says,-- Nurses him, humours him early and late. Winter and summer they pass thus in company, Mostly at card-games together they play, Sometimes they drive for a change to the sister's house, Eight miles or so, on a very fine day. Jacob himself bears his lord to the carriage then, 150 Drives him with care at a moderate pace, Carries him into the old lady's drawing-room.... So they live peacefully on for a space. Grisha, the nephew of Jacob, a youth becomes, Falls at the feet of his lord: "I would wed." "Who will the bride be?" "Her name is Arisha, sir." Thunders the Barin, "You'd better be dead!" Looking at her he had often bethought himself, "Oh, for my legs! Would the Lord but relent!" 159 So, though the uncle entreated his clemency, Grisha to serve in the army he sent. Cut to the heart was the slave by this tyranny, Jacob the Faithful went mad for a spell: Drank like a fish, and his lord was disconsolate, No one could please him: "You fools, go to Hell!" Hate in each bosom since long has been festering: Now for revenge! Now the Barin must pay, Roughly they deal with his whims and infirmities, Two quite unbearable weeks pass away. Then the most faithful of servants appeared again, 170 Straight at the feet of his master he fell, Pity has softened his heart to the legless one, Who can look after the Barin so well? "Barin, recall not your pitiless cruelty, While I am living my cross I'll embrace." Peacefully now lies the lord in his dressing-gown, Jacob, once more, is restored to his place. Brother again the Pomyéshchick has christened him. "Why do you wince, little Jacob?" says he. "Barin, there's something that stings ... in my memory...." 180 Now they thread mushrooms, play cards, and drink tea, Then they make brandy from cherries and raspberries, Next for a drive to the sister's they start, See how the Barin lies smoking contentedly, Green leaves and sunshine have gladdened his heart. Jacob is gloomy, converses unwillingly, Trembling his fingers, the reins are hung slack, "Spirits unholy!" he murmurs unceasingly, "Leave me! Begone!" (But again they attack.) Just on the right lies a deep, wooded precipice, Known in those parts as "The Devil's Abyss," 191 Jacob turns into the wood by the side of it. Queries his lord, "What's the meaning of this?" Jacob replies not. The path here is difficult, Branches and ruts make their steps very slow; Rustling of trees is heard. Spring waters noisily Cast themselves into the hollow below. Then there's a halt,--not a step can the horses move: Straight in their path stand the pines like a wall; Jacob gets down, and, the horses unharnessing, Takes of the Barin no notice at all. 201 Vainly the Barin's exclaiming and questioning, Jacob is pale, and he shakes like a leaf, Evilly smiles at entreaties and promises: "Am I a murderer, then, or a thief? No, Barin, _you_ shall not die. There's another way!" Now he has climbed to the top of a pine, Fastened the reins to the summit, and crossed himself, Turning his face to the sun's bright decline. Thrusting his head in the noose ... he has hanged himself! 210 Horrible! Horrible! See, how he sways Backwards and forwards.... The Barin, unfortunate, Shouts for assistance, and struggles and prays. Twisting his head he is jerking convulsively, Straining his voice to the utmost he cries, All is in vain, there is no one to rescue him, Only the mischievous echo replies. Gloomy the hollow now lies in its winding-sheet, Black is the night. Hear the owls on the wing, Striking the earth as they pass, while the horses stand 220 Chewing the leaves, and their bells faintly ring. Two eyes are burning like lamps at the train's approach, Steadily, brightly they gleam in the night, Strange birds are flitting with movements mysterious, Somewhere at hand they are heard to alight. Straight over Jacob a raven exultingly Hovers and caws. Now a hundred fly round! Feebly the Barin is waving his crutch at them, Merciful Heaven, what horrors abound! So the poor Barin all night in the carriage lies, Shouting, from wolves to protect his old bones. 231 Early next morning a hunter discovers him, Carries him home, full of penitent groans: "Oh, I'm a sinner most infamous! Punish me!" Barin, I think, till you rest in your grave, One figure surely will haunt you incessantly, Jacob the Faithful, your dutiful slave. "What sinners! What sinners!" The peasants are saying, "I'm sorry for Jacob, 240 Yet pity the Barin, Indeed he was punished! Ah, me!" Then they listen To two or three more tales As strange and as fearful, And hotly they argue On who must be reckoned The greatest of sinners: "The publican," one says, And one, "The Pomyéshchick," 250 Another, "The peasant." This last was a carter, A man of good standing And sound reputation, No ignorant babbler. He'd seen many things In his life, his own province Had traversed entirely. He should have been heard. The peasants, however, 260 Were all so indignant They would not allow him To speak. As for Klímka, His wrath is unbounded, "You fool!" he is shouting. "But let me explain." "I see you are _all_ fools," A voice remarks roughly: The voice of a trader Who squeezes the peasants 270 For laputs or berries Or any spare trifles. But chiefly he's noted For seizing occasions When taxes are gathered, And peasants' possessions Are bartered at auction. "You start a discussion And miss the chief point. Why, who's the worst sinner? 280 Consider a moment." "Well, who then? You tell us." "The robber, of course." "You've not been a serf, man," Says Klímka in answer; "The burden was heavy, But not on your shoulders. Your pockets are full, So the robber alarms you; The robber with this case 290 Has nothing to do." "The case of the robber Defending the robber," The other retorts. "Now, pray!" bellows Klímka, And leaping upon him, He punches his jaw. The trader repays him With buffets as hearty, "Take leave of your carcase!" 300 He roars. "Here's a tussle!" The peasants are clearing A space for the battle; They do not prevent it Nor do they applaud it. The blows fall like hail. "I'll kill you, I'll kill you! Write home to your parents!" "I'll kill you, I'll kill you! 310 Heh, send for the pope!" The trader, bent double By Klímka, who, clutching His hair, drags his head down, Repeating, "He's bowing!" Cries, "Stop, that's enough!" When Klímka has freed him He sits on a log, And says, wiping his face With a broadly-checked muffler, 320 "No wonder he conquered: He ploughs not, he reaps not, Does nothing but doctor The pigs and the horses; Of course he gets strong!" The peasants are laughing, And Klímka says, mocking, "Here, try a bit more!" "Come on, then! I'm ready," The trader says stoutly, 330 And rolling his sleeves up, He spits on his palms. "The hour has now sounded For me, though a sinner, To speak and unite you," Ióna pronounces. The whole of the evening That diffident pilgrim Has sat without speaking, And crossed himself, sighing. 340 The trader's delighted, And Klímka replies not. The rest, without speaking, Sit down on the ground. CHAPTER II PILGRIMS AND WANDERERS We know that in Russia Are numbers of people Who wander at large Without kindred or home. They sow not, they reap not, They feed at the fountain That's common to all, That nourishes likewise The tiniest mouse And the mightiest army: The sweat of the peasant. 10 The peasants will tell you That whole populations Of villages sometimes Turn out in the autumn To wander like pilgrims. They beg, and esteem it A paying profession. The people consider That misery drives them 20 More often than cunning, And so to the pilgrims Contribute their mite. Of course, there are cases Of downright deception: One pilgrim's a thief, Or another may wheedle Some cloth from the wife Of a peasant, exchanging Some "sanctified wafers" 30 Or "tears of the Virgin" He's brought from Mount Athos, And then she'll discover He's been but as far As a cloister near Moscow. One saintly old greybeard Enraptured the people By wonderful singing, And offered to teach The young girls of the village 40 The songs of the church With their mothers' permission. And all through the winter He locked himself up With the girls in a stable. From thence, sometimes singing Was heard, but more often Came laughter and giggles. Well, what was the upshot? He taught them no singing, 50 But ruined them all. Some Masters so skilful There are, they will even Lay siege to the ladies. They first to the kitchens Make sure of admission, And then through the maids Gained access to the mistress. See, there he goes, strutting Along through the courtyard 60 And jingling the keys Of the house like a Barin. And soon he will spit In the teeth of the peasants; The pious old women, Who always before At the house have been welcome, He'll speedily banish. The people, however, Can see in these pilgrims 70 A good side as well. For, who begs the money For building the churches? And who keeps the convent's Collecting-box full? And many, though useless, Are perfectly harmless; But some are uncanny, One can't understand them: The people know Fóma, 80 With chains round his middle Some six stones in weight; How summer and winter He walks about barefoot, And constantly mutters Of Heaven knows what. His life, though, is godly: A stone for his pillow, A crust for his dinner. The people know also 90 The old man, Nikífor, Adherent, most strange, Of the sect called "The Hiders." One day he appeared In Usólovo village Upbraiding the people For lack of religion, And calling them forth To the great virgin forest To seek for salvation. 100 The chief of police Of the district just happened To be in the village And heard his oration: "Ho! Question the madman!" "Thou foe of Christ Jesus! Thou Antichrist's herald!" Nikífor retorts. The Elders are nudging him: "Now, then, be silent!" 110 He pays no attention. They drag him to prison. He stands in the waggon, Undauntedly chiding The chief of police, And loudly he cries To the people who follow him: "Woe to you! Woe to you! Bondsmen, I mourn for you! Though you're in rags, e'en the rags shall be torn from you! Fiercely with knouts in the past did they mangle you: 120 Clutches of iron in the future will strangle you!" The people are crossing Themselves. The Nachálnik[56] Is striking the prophet: "Remember the Judge Of Jerusalem, sinner!" The driver's so frightened The reins have escaped him, His hair stands on end.... And when will the people 130 Forget Yevressína, Miraculous widow? Let cholera only Break out in a village: At once like an envoy Of God she appears. She nurses and fosters And buries the peasants. The women adore her, They pray to her almost. 140 It's evident, then, That the door of the peasant Is easily opened: Just knock, and be certain He'll gladly admit you. He's never suspicious Like wealthier people; The thought does not strike him At sight of the humble And destitute stranger, 150 "Perhaps he's a thief!" And as to the women, They're simply delighted, They'll welcome you warmly. At night, in the Winter, The family gathered To work in the cottage By light of "luchina," [57] Are charmed by the pilgrim's Remarkable stories. 160 He's washed in the steam-bath, And dipped with his spoon In the family platter, First blessing its contents. His veins have been thawed By a streamlet of vodka, His words flow like water. The hut is as silent As death. The old father Was mending the laputs, 170 But now he has dropped them. The song of the shuttle Is hushed, and the woman Who sits at the wheel Is engrossed in the story. The daughter, Yevgénka, Her plump little finger Has pricked with a needle. The blood has dried up, But she notices nothing; 180 Her sewing has fallen, Her eyes are distended, Her arms hanging limp. The children, in bed On the sleeping-planks, listen, Their heads hanging down. They lie on their stomachs Like snug little seals Upon Archangel ice-blocks. Their hair, like a curtain, 190 Is hiding their faces: It's yellow, of course! But wait. Soon the pilgrim Will finish his story-- (It's true)--from Mount Athos. It tells how that sinner The Turk had once driven Some monks in rebellion Right into the sea,-- Who meekly submitted, 200 And perished in hundreds. (What murmurs of horror Arise! Do you notice The eyes, full of tears?) And now conies the climax, The terrible moment, And even the mother Has loosened her hold On the corpulent bobbin, It rolls to the ground.... 210 And see how cat Vaska At once becomes active And pounces upon it. At times less enthralling The antics of Vaska Would meet their deserts; But now he is patting And touching the bobbin And leaping around it With flexible movements, 220 And no one has noticed. It rolls to a distance, The thread is unwound. Whoever has witnessed The peasant's delight At the tales of the pilgrims Will realise this: Though never so crushing His labours and worries, Though never so pressing 230 The call of the tavern, Their weight will not deaden The soul of the peasant And will not benumb it. The road that's before him Is broad and unending.... When old fields, exhausted, Play false to the reaper, He'll seek near the forest For soil more productive. 240 The work may be hard, But the new plot repays him: It yields a rich harvest Without being manured. A soil just as fertile Lies hid in the soul Of the people of Russia: O Sower, then come! The pilgrim Ióna Since long is well known 250 In the village of "Earthworms." The peasants contend For the honour of giving The holy man shelter. At last, to appease them, He'd say to the women, "Come, bring out your icons!" They'd hurry to fetch them. Ióna, prostrating Himself to each icon, 260 Would say to the people, "Dispute not! Be patient, And God will decide: The saint who looks kindest At me I will follow." And often he'd follow The icon most poor To the lowliest hovel. That hut would become then A Cup overflowing; 270 The women would run there With baskets and saucepans, All thanks to Ióna. And now, without hurry Or noise, he's beginning To tell them a story, "Two Infamous Sinners," But first, most devoutly, He crosses himself. _Two Infamous Sinners_ Come, let us praise the Omnipotent! 280 Let us the legend relate Told by a monk in the Priory. Thus did I hear him narrate: Once were twelve brigands notorious, One, Kudeár, at their head; Torrents of blood of good Christians Foully the miscreants shed. Deep in the forest their hiding-place, Rich was their booty and rare; Once Kudeár from near Kiev Town 290 Stole a young maiden most fair. Days Kudeár with his mistress spent, Nights on the road with his horde; Suddenly, conscience awoke in him, Stirred by the grace of the Lord. Sleep left his couch. Of iniquity Sickened his spirit at last; Shades of his victims appeared to him, Crowding in multitudes vast. Long was this monster most obdurate, 300 Blind to the light from above, Then flogged to death his chief satellite, Cut off the head of his love,-- Scattered his gang in his penitence, And to the churches of God All his great riches distributed, Buried his knife in the sod, Journeyed on foot to the Sepulchre, Filled with repentance and grief; Wandered and prayed, but the pilgrimage Brought to his soul no relief. 311 When he returned to his Fatherland Clad like a monk, old and bent, 'Neath a great oak, as an anchorite, Life in the forest he spent. There, from the Maker Omnipotent, Grace day and night did he crave: "Lord, though my body thou castigate, Grant that my soul I may save!" Pity had God on the penitent, 320 Showed him the pathway to take, Sent His own messenger unto him During his prayers, who thus spake: "Know, for this oak sprang thy preference, Not without promptings divine; Lo! take the knife thou hast slaughtered with, Fell it, and grace shall be thine. "Yea, though the task prove laborious, Great shall the recompense be, Let but the tree fall, and verily 330 Thou from thy load shalt be free." Vast was the giant's circumference; Praying, his task he begins, Works with the tool of atrociousness, Offers amends for his sins. Glory he sang to the Trinity, Scraped the hard wood with his blade. Years passed away. Though he tarried not, Slow was the progress he made. 'Gainst such a mighty antagonist 340 How could he hope to prevail? Only a Samson could vanquish it, Not an old man, spent and frail. Doubt, as he worked, began plaguing him: Once of a voice came the sound, "Heh, old man, say what thy purpose is?" Crossing himself he looked round. There, Pan[58] Glukhóvsky was watching him On his brave Arab astride, Rich was the Pan, of high family, 350 Known in the whole countryside. Many cruel deeds were ascribed to him, Filled were his subjects with hate, So the old hermit to caution him Told him his own sorry fate. "Ho!" laughed Glukhóvsky, derisively, "Hope of salvation's not mine; These are the things that I estimate-- Women, gold, honour, and wine. "My life, old man, is the only one; 360 Many the serfs that I keep; What though I waste, hang, and torture them-- You should but see how I sleep!" Lo! to the hermit, by miracle, Wrath a great strength did impart, Straight on Glukhóvsky he flung himself, Buried the knife in his heart. Scarce had the Pan, in his agony, Sunk to the blood-sodden ground, Crashed the great tree, and lay subjugate, Trembled the earth at the sound. 371 Lo! and the sins of the anchorite Passed from his soul like a breath. "Let us pray God to incline to us, Slaves in the shadow of Death...." CHAPTER III OLD AND NEW Ióna has finished. He crosses himself, And the people are silent. And then of a sudden The trader cries loudly In great irritation, "What's wrong with the ferry? A plague on the sluggards! Ho, ferry ahoy!" "You won't get the ferry 10 Till sunrise, for even In daytime they're frightened To cross: the boat's rotten! About Kudeár, now--" "Ho, ferry ahoy!" He strides to his waggon. A cow is there tethered; He churlishly kicks her. His hens begin clucking; He shouts at them, "Silence!" 20 The calf, which is shifting About in the cart. Gets a crack on the forehead. He strikes the roan mare With the whip, and departing He makes for the Volga. The moon is now shining, It casts on the roadway A comical shadow, Which trots by his side. 30 "Oho!" says the Elder, "He thought himself able To fight, but discussion Is not in his line.... My brothers, how grievous The sins of the nobles!" "And yet not as great As the sin of the peasant," The carter cannot here Refrain from remarking. 40 "A plaguey old croaker!" Says Klím, spitting crossly; "Whatever arises The raven must fly To his own little brood! What is it, then, tell us, The sin of the peasant?" _The Sin of Gleb the Peasant_ A'miral Widower sailed on the sea, Steering his vessels a-sailing went he. 49 Once with the Turk a great battle he fought, His was the victory, gallantly bought. So to the hero as valour's reward Eight thousand souls[59] did the Empress award. A'miral Widower lived on his land Rich and content, till his end was at hand. As he lay dying this A'miral bold Handed his Elder a casket of gold. "See that thou cherish this casket," he said, "Keep it and open it when I am dead. There lies my will, and by it you will see Eight thousand souls are from serfdom set free." 61 Dead, on the table, the A'miral lies, A kinsman remote to the funeral hies. Buried! Forgotten! His relative soon Calls Gleb, the Elder, with him to commune. And, in a trice, by his cunning and skill, Learns of the casket, and terms of the will. Offers him riches and bliss unalloyed, Gives him his freedom,--the will is destroyed! Thus, by Gleb's longing for criminal gains, Eight thousand souls were left rotting in chains, 71 Aye, and their sons and their grandsons as well, Think, what a crowd were thrown back into Hell! God forgives all. Yes, but Judas's crime Ne'er will be pardoned till end of all time. Peasant, most infamous sinner of all, Endlessly grieve to atone for thy fall! Wrathful, relentless, The carter thus finished The tale of the peasant 80 In thunder-like tones. The others sigh deeply And rise. They're exclaiming, "So, that's what it is, then, The sin of the peasant. He's right. 'Tis indeed A most terrible sin!" "The story speaks truly; Our grief shall be endless, Ah, me!" says the Elder. 90 (His faith in improvements Has vanished again.) And Klímka, who always Is swayed in an instant By joy or by sorrow, Despondingly echoes, "A terrible sin!" The green by the Volga, Now flooded with moonlight, Has changed of a sudden: 100 The peasants no longer Seem men independent With self-assured movements, They're "Earthworms" again-- Those "Earthworms" whose victuals Are never sufficient, Who always are threatened With drought, blight, or famine, Who yield to the trader The fruits of extortion 110 Their tears, shed in tar. The miserly haggler Not only ill-pays them, But bullies as well: "For what do I pay you? The tar costs you nothing. The sun brings it oozing From out of your bodies As though from a pine." Again the poor peasants 120 Are sunk in the depths Of the bottomless gulf! Dejected and silent, They lie on their stomachs Absorbed in reflection. But then they start singing; And slowly the song, Like a ponderous cloud-bank, Rolls mournfully onwards. They sing it so clearly 130 That quickly our seven Have learnt it as well. _The Hungry One_ The peasant stands With haggard gaze, He pants for breath, He reels and sways; From famine food, From bread of bark, His form has swelled, His face is dark. 140 Through endless grief Suppressed and dumb His eyes are glazed, His soul is numb. As though in sleep, With footsteps slow, He creeps to where The rye doth grow. Upon his field He gazes long, 150 He stands and sings A voiceless song: "Grow ripe, grow ripe, O Mother rye, I fostered thee, Thy lord am I. "Yield me a loaf Of monstrous girth, A cake as vast As Mother-Earth. 160 "I'll eat the whole-- No crumb I'll spare; With wife, with child, I will not share." "Eh, brothers, I'm hungry!" A voice exclaims feebly. It's one of the peasants. He fetches a loaf From his bag, and devours it. "They sing without voices, 170 And yet when you listen Your hair begins rising," Another remarks. It's true. Not with voices They sing of the famine-- But something within them. One, during the singing, Has risen, to show them The gait of the peasant Exhausted by hunger, 180 And swayed by the wind. Restrained are his movements And slow. After singing "The Hungry One," thirsting They make for the bucket, One after another Like geese in a file. They stagger and totter As people half-famished, A drink will restore them. 190 "Come, let us be joyful!" The deacon is saying. His youngest son, Grísha, Approaches the peasants. "Some vodka?" they ask him. "No, thank you. I've had some. But what's been the matter? You look like drowned kittens." "What should be the matter?" (And making an effort 200 They bear themselves bravely.) And Vlass, the old Elder, Has placed his great palm On the head of his godson. "Is serfdom revived? Will they drive you to barschin Or pilfer your hayfields?" Says Grísha in jest. "The hay-fields? You're joking!" "Well, what has gone wrong, then? And why were you singing 211 'The Hungry One,' brothers? To summon the famine?" "Yes, what's all the pother?" Here Klímka bursts out Like a cannon exploding. The others are scratching Their necks, and reflecting: "It's true! What's amiss?" "Come, drink, little 'Earthworms,' Come, drink and be merry! 221 All's well--as we'd have it, Aye, just as we wished it. Come, hold up your noddles! But what about Gleb?" A lengthy discussion Ensues; and it's settled That they're not to blame For the deed of the traitor: 'Twas serfdom's the fault. 230 For just as the big snake Gives birth to the small ones, So serfdom gave birth To the sins of the nobles, To Jacob the Faithful's And also to Gleb's. For, see, without serfdom Had been no Pomyéshchick To drive his true servant To death by the noose, 240 No terrible vengeance Of slave upon master By suicide fearful, No treacherous Gleb. 'Twas Prov of all others Who listened to Grísha With deepest attention And joy most apparent. And when he had finished He cried to the others 250 In accents of triumph, Delightedly smiling, "Now, brothers, mark _that_!" "So now, there's an end Of 'The Hungry One,' peasants!" Cries Klímka, with glee. The words about serfdom Were quickly caught up By the crowd, and went passing From one to another: 260 "Yes, if there's no big snake There cannot be small ones!" And Klímka is swearing Again at the carter: "You ignorant fool!" They're ready to grapple! The deacon is sobbing And kissing his Grísha: "Just see what a headpiece The Lord is creating! 270 No wonder he longs For the college in Moscow!" Old Vlass, too, is patting His shoulder and saying, "May God send thee silver And gold, and a healthy And diligent wife!" "I wish not for silver Or gold," replies Grísha. "But one thing I wish: 280 I wish that my comrades, Yes, all the poor peasants In Russia so vast, Could be happy and free!" Thus, earnestly speaking, And blushing as shyly As any young maiden, He walks from their midst. The dawn is approaching. The peasants make ready 290 To cross by the ferry. "Eh, Vlass," says the carter, As, stooping, he raises The span of his harness, "Who's this on the ground?" The Elder approaches, And Klímka behind him, Our seven as well. (They're always most anxious To see what is passing.) 300 Some fellow is lying Exhausted, dishevelled, Asleep, with the beggars Behind some big logs. His clothing is new, But it's hanging in ribbons. A crimson silk scarf On his neck he is wearing; A watch and a waistcoat; His blouse, too, is red. 310 Now Klímka is stooping To look at the sleeper, Shouts, "Beat him!" and roughly Stamps straight on his mouth. The fellow springs up, Rubs his eyes, dim with sleep, And old Vlásuchka strikes him. He squeals like a rat 'Neath the heel of your slipper, And makes for the forest 320 On long, lanky legs. Four peasants pursue him, The others cry, "Beat him!" Until both the man And the band of pursuers Are lost in the forest. "Who is he?" our seven Are asking the Elder, "And why do they beat him?" "We don't know the reason, 330 But we have been told By the people of Tískov To punish this Shútov Whenever we catch him, And so we obey. When people from Tískov Pass by, they'll explain it. What luck? Did you catch him?" He asks of the others Returned from the chase. 340 "We caught him, I warrant, And gave him a lesson. He's run to Demyánsky, For there he'll be able To cross by the ferry." "Strange people, to beat him Without any cause!" "And why? If the commune Has told us to do it There must be some reason!" 350 Shouts Klím at the seven. "D'you think that the people Of Tískov are fools? It isn't long since, mind, That many were flogged there, One man in each ten. Ah, Shútov, you rendered A dastardly service, Your duties are evil, You damnable wretch! 360 And who deserves beating As richly as Shútov? Not we alone beat him: From Tískov, you know, Fourteen villages lie On the banks of the Volga; I warrant through each He's been driven with blows." The seven are silent. They're longing to get 370 At the root of the matter. But even the Elder Is now growing angry. It's daylight. The women Are bringing their husbands Some breakfast, of rye-cakes And--goose! (For a peasant Had driven some geese Through the village to market, And three were grown weary, 380 And had to be carried.) "See here, will you sell them? They'll die ere you get there." And so, for a trifle, The geese had been bought. We've often been told How the peasant loves drinking; Not many there are, though, Who know how he eats. He's greedier far 390 For his food than for vodka, So one man to-day (A teetotaller mason) Gets perfectly drunk On his breakfast of goose! A shout! "Who is coming? Who's this?" Here's another Excuse for rejoicing And noise! There's a hay-cart With hay, now approaching, 400 And high on its summit A soldier is sitting. He's known to the peasants For twenty versts round. And, cosy beside him, Justínutchka sits (His niece, and an orphan, His prop in old age). He now earns his living By means of his peep-show, 410 Where, plainly discerned, Are the Kremlin and Moscow, While music plays too. The instrument once Had gone wrong, and the soldier, No capital owning, Bought three metal spoons, Which he beat to make music; But the words that he knew Did not suit the new music, 420 And folk did not laugh. The soldier was sly, though: He made some new words up That went with the music. They hail him with rapture! "Good-health to you, Grandad! Jump down, drink some vodka, And give us some music." "It's true I got _up_ here, But how to get-down?" 430 "You're going, I see, To the town for your pension, But look what has happened: It's burnt to the ground." "Burnt down? Yes, and rightly! What then? Then I'll go To St. Petersburg for it; For all my old comrades Are there with their pensions, They'll show me the way." 440 "You'll go by the train, then?" The old fellow whistles: "Not long you've been serving Us, orthodox Christians, You, infidel railway! And welcome you were When you carried us cheaply From Peters to Moscow. (It cost but three roubles.) But now you want seven, 450 So, go to the devil! "Lady so insolent, lady so arrogant! Hiss like a snake as you glide! _Fig for you! Fig for you! Fig for you! Fig for you!_ Puff at the whole countryside! Crushing and maiming your toll you extort, Straight in the face of the peasant you snort, Soon all the people of Russia you may Cleaner than any big broom sweep away!" "Come, give us some music," 460 Says Vlass to the soldier, "For here there are plenty Of holiday people, 'Twill be to your profit. You see to it, Klímka!" (Though Vlass doesn't like him, Whenever there's something That calls for arranging He leaves it to Klímka: "You see to it, Klímka!" 470 And Klimka is pleased.) And soon the old soldier Is helped from the hay-cart: He's weak on his legs,--tall, And strikingly thin. His uniform seems To be hung from a pole; There are medals upon it. It cannot be said That his face is attractive, 480 Especially when It's distorted by _tic_: His mouth opens wide And his eyes burn like charcoal,-- A regular demon! The music is started, The people run back From the banks of the Volga. He sings to the music. * * * * * A spasm has seized him: 490 He leans on his niece, And his left leg upraising He twirls it around In the air like a weight. His right follows suit then, And murmuring, "Curse it!" He suddenly masters And stands on them both. "You see to it, Klímka!" Of course he'll arrange it 500 In Petersburg fashion: He stands them together, The niece and the uncle; Takes two wooden dishes And gives them one each, Then springs on a tree-trunk To make an oration. (The soldier can't help Adding apt little words To the speech of the peasant, 510 And striking his spoons.) * * * * * The soldier is stamping His feet. One can hear His dry bones knock together. When Klímka has finished The peasants come crowding, Surrounding the soldier, And some a kopéck give, And others give half: In no time a rouble 520 Is piled on the dishes. EPILOGUE GRÍSHA DOBROSKLONOW A CHEERFUL SEASON--CHEERFUL SONGS The feast was continued Till morning--a splendid, A wonderful feast! Then the people dispersing Went home, and our peasants Lay down 'neath the willow; Ióna--meek pilgrim Of God--slept there too. And Sáva and Grísha, The sons of the deacon, 10 Went home, with their parent Unsteady between them. They sang; and their voices, Like bells on the Volga, So loud and so tuneful, Came chiming together: "Praise to the hero Bringing the nation Peace and salvation! "That which will surely 20 Banish the night He[60] has awarded-- Freedom and Light! "Praise to the hero Bringing the nation Peace and salvation! "Blessings from Heaven, Grace from above, Rained on the battle, Conquered by Love. 30 "Little we ask Thee-- Grant us, O Lord, Strength to be honest, Fearing Thy word! "Brotherly living, Sharing in part, That is the roadway Straight to the heart. "Turn from that teaching Tender and wise-- 40 Cowards and traitors Soon will arise. "People of Russia, Banish the night! You have been granted That which is needful-- Freedom and Light!" The deacon was poor As the poorest of peasants: A mean little cottage 50 Like two narrow cages, The one with an oven Which smoked, and the other For use in the summer,-- Such was his abode. No horse he possessed And no cow. He had once had A dog and a cat, But they'd both of them left him. His sons put him safely 60 To bed, snoring loudly; Then Sávushka opened A book, while his brother Went out, and away To the fields and the forest. A broad-shouldered youth Was this Grísha; his face, though, Was terribly thin. In the clerical college The students got little 70 To eat. Sometimes Grísha Would lie the whole night Without sleep; only longing For morning and breakfast,-- The coarse piece of bread And the glassful of sbeeten.[61] The village was poor And the food there was scanty, But still, the two brothers Grew certainly plumper 80 When home for the holidays-- Thanks to the peasants. The boys would repay them By all in their power, By work, or by doing Their little commissions In town. Though the deacon Was proud of his children, He never had given Much thought to their feeding. 90 Himself, the poor deacon, Was endlessly hungry, His principal thought Was the manner of getting The next piece of food. He was rather light-minded And vexed himself little; But Dyómna, his wife, Had been different entirely: She worried and counted, 100 So God took her soon. The whole of her life She by salt[62] had been troubled: If bread has run short One can ask of the neighbours; But salt, which means money, Is hard to obtain. The village with Dyómna Had shared its bread freely; And long, long ago 110 Would her two little children Have lain in the churchyard If not for the peasants. And Dyómna was ready To work without ceasing For all who had helped her; But salt was her trouble, Her thought, ever present. She dreamt of it, sang of it, Sleeping and waking, 120 While washing, while spinning, At work in the fields, While rocking her darling Her favourite, Grísha. And many years after The death of his mother, His heart would grow heavy And sad, when the peasants Remembered one song, And would sing it together 130 As Dyómna had sung it; They called it "The Salt Song." _The Salt Song_ Now none but God Can save my son: He's dying fast, My little one.... I give him bread--- He looks at it, He cries to me, "Put salt on it." 140 I have no salt-- No tiny grain; "Take flour," God whispers, "Try again...." He tastes it once, Once more he tries; "That's not enough, More salt!" he cries. The flour again.... My tears fall fast 150 Upon the bread,-- He eats at last! The mother smiles In pride and joy: Her tears so salt Have saved the boy. * * * * * Young Grísha remembered This song; he would sing it Quite low to himself In the clerical college. 160 The college was cheerless, And singing this song He would yearn for his mother, For home, for the peasants, His friends and protectors. And soon, with the love Which he bore to his mother, His love for the people Grew wider and stronger.... At fifteen years old 170 He was firmly decided To spend his whole life In promoting their welfare, In striving to succour The poor and afflicted. The demon of malice Too long over Russia Has scattered its hate; The shadow of serfdom Has hidden all paths 180 Save corruption and lying. Another song now Will arise throughout Russia; The angel of freedom And mercy is flying Unseen o'er our heads, And is calling strong spirits To follow the road Which is honest and clean. Oh, tread not the road 190 So shining and broad: Along it there speed With feverish tread The multitudes led By infamous greed. There lives which are spent With noble intent Are mocked at in scorn; There souls lie in chains, And bodies and brains 200 By passions are torn, By animal thirst For pleasures accurst Which pass in a breath. There hope is in vain, For there is the reign Of darkness and death. * * * * * In front of your eyes Another road lies-- 'Tis honest and clean. 210 Though steep it appears And sorrow and tears Upon it are seen: It leads to the door Of those who are poor, Who hunger and thirst, Who pant without air. Who die in despair-- Oh, there be the first! The song of the angel 220 Of Mercy not vainly Was sung to our Grísha. The years of his study Being passed, he developed In thought and in feeling; A passionate singer Of Freedom became he, Of all who are grieving, Down-trodden, afflicted, In Russia so vast. 230 * * * * * The bright sun was shining, The cool, fragrant morning Was filled with the sweetness Of newly-mown hay. Young Grísha was thoughtful, He followed the first road He met--an old high-road, An avenue, shaded By tall curling birch trees. The youth was now gloomy, 240 Now gay; the effect Of the feast was still with him; His thoughts were at work, And in song he expressed them: "I know that you suffer, O Motherland dear, The thought of it fills me with woe: And Fate has much sorrow In store yet, I fear, But you will not perish, I know. 250 "How long since your children As playthings were used, As slaves to base passions and lust; Were bartered like cattle, Were vilely abused By masters most cruel and unjust? "How long since young maidens Were dragged to their shame, Since whistle of whips filled the land, Since 'Service' possessed 260 A more terrible fame Than death by the torturer's hand? "Enough! It is finished, This tale of the past; 'Tis ended, the masters' long sway; The strength of the people Is stirring at last, To freedom 'twill point them the way. "Your burden grows lighter, O Motherland dear, 270 Your wounds less appalling to see. Your fathers were slaves, Smitten helpless by fear, But, Mother, your children are free!" * * * * * A small winding footpath Now tempted young Grísha, And guided his steps To a very broad hayfield. The peasants were cutting The hay, and were singing 280 His favourite song. Young Grísha was saddened By thoughts of his mother, And nearly in anger He hurried away From the field to the forest. Bright echoes are darting About in the forest; Like quails in the wheat Little children are romping 290 (The elder ones work In the hay fields already). He stopped awhile, seeking For horse-chestnuts with them. The sun was now hot; To the river went Grísha To bathe, and he had A good view of the ruins That three days before Had been burnt. What a picture! No house is left standing; 301 And only the prison Is saved; just a few days Ago it was whitewashed; It stands like a little White cow in the pastures. The guards and officials Have made it their refuge; But all the poor peasants Are strewn by the river 310 Like soldiers in camp. Though they're mostly asleep now, A few are astir, And two under-officials Are picking their way To the tent for some vodka 'Mid tables and cupboards And waggons and bundles. A tailor approaches The vodka tent also; 320 A shrivelled old fellow. His irons and his scissors He holds in his hands, Like a leaf he is shaking. The pope has arisen From sleep, full of prayers. He is combing his hair; Like a girl he is holding His long shining plait. Down the Volga comes floating 330 Some wood-laden rafts, And three ponderous barges Are anchored beneath The right bank of the river. The barge-tower yesterday Evening had dragged them With songs to their places, And there he is standing, The poor harassed man! He is looking quite gay though, 340 As if on a holiday, Has a clean shirt on; Some farthings are jingling Aloud in his pocket. Young Grísha observes him For long from the river, And, half to himself, Half aloud, begins singing: _The Barge-Tower_ With shoulders back and breast astrain, And bathed in sweat which falls like rain, Through midday heat with gasping song, He drags the heavy barge along. 352 He falls and rises with a groan, His song becomes a husky moan.... But now the barge at anchor lies, A giant's sleep has sealed his eyes; And in the bath at break of day He drives the clinging sweat away. Then leisurely along the quay He strolls refreshed, and roubles three 360 Are sewn into his girdle wide; Some coppers jingle at his side. He thinks awhile, and then he goes Towards the tavern. There he throws Some hard-earned farthings on the seat; He drinks, and revels in the treat, The sense of perfect ease and rest. Soon with the cross he signs his breast: The journey home begins to-day. And cheerfully he goes away; 370 On presents spends a coin or so: For wife some scarlet calico, A scarf for sister, tinsel toys For eager little girls and boys. God guide him home--'tis many a mile-- And let him rest a little while.... * * * * * The barge-tower's fate Lead the thoughts of young Grisha To dwell on the whole Of mysterious Russia-- 380 The fate of her people. For long he was roving About on the bank, Feeling hot and excited, His brain overflowing With new and new verses. _Russia_ "The Tsar was in mood To dabble in blood: To wage a great war. Shall we have gold enough? 390 Shall we have strength enough? Questioned the Tsar. "(Thou art so pitiful, Poor, and so sorrowful, Yet thou art powerful, Thy wealth is plentiful, Russia, my Mother!) "By misery chastened, By serfdom of old, The heart of thy people, 400 O Tsar, is of gold. "And strong were the nation, Unyielding its might, If standing for conscience, For justice and right. "But summon the country To valueless strife, And no man will hasten To offer his life. "So Russia lies sleeping 410 In obstinate rest;-- But should the spark kindle That's hid in her breast-- "She'll rise without summons, Go forth without call, With sacrifice boundless, Each giving his all! "A host she will gather Of strength unsurpassed, With infinite courage 420 Will fight to the last. "(Thou art so pitiful, Poor, and so sorrowful, Yet of great treasure full, Mighty, all-powerful, Russia, my Mother!)" * * * * * Young Grísha was pleased With his song; and he murmured. "Its message is true; I will sing it to-morrow 430 Aloud to the peasants. Their songs are so mournful, It's well they should hear Something joyful,--God help them! For just as with running The cheeks begin burning, So acts a good song On the spirit despairing, Brings comfort and strength." But first to his brother 440 He sang the new song, And his brother said, "Splendid!" Then Grísha tried vainly To sleep; but half dreaming New songs he composed. They grew brighter and stronger.... Our peasants would soon Have been home from their travels If they could have known What was happening to Grísha: 450 With what exaltation His bosom was burning; What beautiful strains In his ears began chiming; How blissfully sang he The wonderful anthem Which tells of the freedom And peace of the people. FOOTNOTES: [1] Many years later, after his mother's death, Nekrassov found this letter among her papers. It was a letter written to her by her own mother after her flight and subsequent marriage. It announced to her her father's curse, and was filled with sad and bitter reproaches: "To whom have you entrusted your fate? For what country have you abandoned Poland, your Motherland? You, whose hand was sought, a priceless gift, by princes, have chosen a savage, ignorant, uncultured.... Forgive me, but my heart is bleeding...." [2] Priest. [3] Landowner. [4] The peasants assert that the cuckoo chokes himself with young ears of corn. [5] A kind of home-brewed cider. [6] _Laput_ is peasants' footgear made of bark of saplings. [7] Priest [8] New huts are built only when the village has been destroyed by fire. [9] The lines of asterisks throughout the poem represent passages that were censored in the original. [10] There is a superstition among the Russian peasants that it is an ill omen to meet the "pope" when going upon an errand. [11] Landowners [12] Dissenters in Russia are subjected to numerous religious restrictions. Therefore they are obliged to bribe the local orthodox pope, in order that he should not denounce them to the police. [13] There is a Russian superstition that a round rainbow is sent as a sign of coming dry weather. [14] _Kasha_ and _stchee_ are two national dishes. [15] The mud and water from the high lands on both sides descend and collect in the villages so situated, which are often nearly transformed into swamps during the rainy season. [16] On feast days the peasants often pawn their clothes for drink. [17] Well-known popular characters in Russia. [18] Each landowner kept his own band of musicians. [19] The halting-place for prisoners on their way to Siberia. [20] The tax collector, the landlord, and the priest. [21] Fire. [22] Popular name for Petrograd. [23] The primitive wooden plough still used by the peasants in Russia. [24] Three pounds. [25] Holy pictures of the saints. [26] The Russian nickname for the bear. [27] Chief of police. [28] An administrative unit consisting of a group of villages. [29] The end of the story is omitted because of the interference of the Censor. [30] A three-horsed carriage. [31] The Pomyeshchick is still bitter because his serfs have been set free by the Government. [32] The Russian warriors of olden times. [33] Russian Easter dishes. [34] Russians embrace one another on Easter Sunday, recalling the resurrection of Christ. [35] The Russians press their foreheads to the ground while worshipping. [36] The official appointed to arrange terms between the Pomyéshchicks and their emancipated serfs. [37] The haystacks. [38] A long-skirted coat. [39] The forced labour of the serfs for their owners. [40] Holy images. [41] Meenin--a famous Russian patriot in the beginning of the seventeenth century. He is always represented with an immense beard. [42] It is a sign of respect to address a person by his own name and the name of his father. [43] Ukhá--fish soup. [44] A national loose sleeveless dress worn with a separate shirt or blouse. [45] The marriage agent. [46] The marriage agent. [47] Inhabitants of the village Korojin. [48] Germans were often employed as managers of the Pomyéshchicks' estates. [49] In Russian vapour-baths there are shelves ranged round the walls for the bathers to recline upon. The higher the shelf the hotter the atmosphere. [50] Police-official. [51] Heave-to! [52] This paragraph refers to the custom of the country police in Russia, who, on hearing of the accidental death of anybody in a village, will, in order to extract bribes from the villagers, threaten to hold an inquest on the corpse. The peasants are usually ready to part with nearly all they possess in order to save their dead from what they consider desecration. [53] The Saviour's day. [54] A reference to the arranging of terms between the Pomyéshchicks and peasants with regard to land at the time of the emancipation of the serfs. [55] There is a Russian superstition that a good memory is gained by eating magpies' eggs. [56] Chief of Police. [57] A wooden splinter prepared and used for lighting purposes. [58] Polish title for nobleman or gentleman. [59] Serfs. [60] Alexander II., who gave emancipation to the peasants. [61] A popular Russian drink composed of hot water and honey. [62] There was a very heavy tax laid upon salt at the time. 
41495	----	RUSSIA ITS PEOPLE AND ITS LITERATURE BY EMILIA PARDO BAZÁN Translated from the Spanish By FANNY HALE GARDINER CHICAGO A.C. McCLURG & CO. 1901 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. Emilia Pardo Bazán, the author of the following critical survey of Russian literature, is a Spanish woman of well-known literary attainments as well as wealth and position. Her life has been spent in association with men of mark, both during frequent sojourns at Madrid and at home in Galicia, "the Switzerland of Spain," from which province her father was a deputy to Cortes. Books and libraries were almost her only pleasures in childhood, as she was allowed few companions, and she says she could never apply herself to music. By the time she was fourteen she had read widely in history, sciences, poetry, and fiction, excepting the works of the French romanticists, Dumas, George Sand, and Victor Hugo, which were forbidden fruit and were finally obtained and enjoyed as such. At sixteen she married and went to live in Madrid, where, amid the gayeties of the capital, her love for literature suffered a long eclipse. Her father was obliged, for political reasons, to leave the country after the abdication of Amadeus, and she accompanied him in a long and to her profitable period of wandering, during which she learned French, English, and Italian, in order to read the literatures of those tongues. She also plunged deep into German philosophy, at first out of curiosity, because it was then in vogue; but she confesses a debt of gratitude to it nevertheless. While she was thus absorbed in foreign tongues and literatures, she remained almost entirely ignorant of the new movement in her own land, led by Valera, Galdos, and Alarcon. The prostration which characterized the reign of Isabella II. had been followed by a rejuvenation born of the Revolution of 1868. When this new literature was at last brought to her notice, she read it with delighted surprise, and was immediately struck by something resembling the spirit of Cervantes, Hurtado, and other Spanish writers of old renown. Inspired by the possibility of this heredity, she resolved to try novel-writing herself,--a thought which had never occurred to her when her idea of the novel had been bounded by the romantic limitations of Victor Hugo and his suite. But if the novel might consist of descriptions of places and customs familiar to us, and studies of the people we see about us, then she would dare attempt it. As yet, however, no one talked of realism or naturalism in Spain; the tendency of Spanish writers was rather toward a restoration of elegant Castilian, and her own first novel followed this line, although evidently inspired by the breath of realism as far as she was then aware of it. The methods and objects of the French realists became fully manifest to her shortly afterward; for, being in poor health, she went to Vichy, where in hours of enforced leisure she read for the first time Balzac, Flaubert, Goncourt, and Daudet. The result led her to see the importance of their aims and the force of their art, to which she added the idea that each country should cultivate its own tradition while following the modern methods. These convictions she embodied first in a prologue to her second novel, "A Wedding Journey," and then in a series of articles published in the "Epoca" at Madrid, and afterward in Paris; these she avers were the first echoes in Spain of the French realist movement. All of her novels have been influenced by the school of art to which she has devoted her attention and criticism, and her study of which has well qualified her for the essays contained in this volume. This work on Russian literature was published in 1887, but prior to its appearance in print the Señora de Bazán was invited to read selections from it before the Ateneo de Madrid,--an honor never before extended to a woman, I believe. Few Spanish women are accustomed to speaking in public, and she thus describes her own first attempt in 1885, when, during the festivities attending the opening of the first railway between Madrid and Coruña, the capital of her native province, she was asked to address a large audience invited to honor the memory of a local poet:-- "Fearful of attempting so unusual a performance, as well as doubtful of the ability to make my voice heard in a large theatre, I took advantage of the presence of my friend Emilio Castelar to read to him my discourse and confide to him my fears. On the eve of the performance, Castelar, ensconced in an arm-chair in my library, puzzled his brains over the questions whether I should read standing or sitting, whether I should hold my papers in my hand or no, and having an artist's eye to the scenic effect, I think he would have liked to suggest that I pose before the mirror! But I was less troubled about my attitude than by the knowledge that Castelar was to speak also, and before me, which would hardly predispose my audience in my favor.... The theatre was crowded to suffocation, but I found that this rather animated than terrified me. I rose to read (for it was finally decided that I should stand), and I cannot tell how thin and hard and unsympathetic my voice sounded in the silence. My throat choked with emotion; but I was scarcely through the first paragraph when I heard at my right hand the voice of Castelar, low and earnest, saying over and over again, 'Very good, very good! That is the tone! So, so! 'I breathed more freely, speaking became easier to me; and my audience, far from becoming impatient, gave me an attention and applause doubly grateful to one whose only hope had been to avoid a fiasco. Castelar greeted me at the close with a warm hand-grasp and beaming eyes, saying, 'We ought to be well satisfied, Emilia; we have achieved a notable and brilliant success; let us be happy, then!'" Probably the Señora de Bazán learned her lesson well, and had no need of the friendly admonitions of Castelar when she came to address the distinguished audience at the Ateneo, for she is said to have "looked very much at ease," and to have been very well received, but a good deal criticised afterward, being the first Spanish woman who ever dared to read in the Ateneo. Turning from the authoress to the work, I will only add that I hope the American reader may find it to be what it seemed to me as I read it in Spanish,--an epitome of a vast and elaborate subject, and a guide to a clear path through this maze which without a guide can hardly be clear to any but a profound student of belles-lettres; for classicism, romanticism, and realism are technical terms, and the purpose of the modern novel is only just beginning to be understood by even fairly intelligent readers. In the belief that the interest awakened by Russian literature is not ephemeral, and that this great, young, and original people has come upon the world's stage with a work to perform before the world's eye, I have translated this careful, critical, synthetical study of the Russian people and literature for the benefit of my intelligent countrymen. F.H.G. Chicago, March, 1890. CONTENTS. Book I. THE EVOLUTION OF RUSSIA. I. Scope and Purpose of the Present Essay II. The Russian Country III. The Russian Race IV. Russian History V. The Russian Autocracy VI. The Agrarian Communes VII. Social Classes in Russia VIII. Russian Serfdom Book II. RUSSIAN NIHILISM AND ITS LITERATURE. I. The Word "Nihilism" II. Origin of the Intellectual Revolution III. Woman and the Family IV. Going to the People V. Herzen and the Nihilist Novel VI. The Reign of Terror VII. The Police and the Censor Book III. RISE OF THE RUSSIAN NOVEL. I. The Beginnings of Russian Literature II. Russian Romanticism.--The Lyric Poets III. Russian Realism: Gogol, its Founder Book IV. MODERN RUSSIAN REALISM. I. Turguenief, Poet and Artist II. Gontcharof and Oblomovism III. Dostoiëwsky, Psychologist and Visionary IV. Tolstoï, Nihilist and Mystic V. French Realism and Russian Realism Book I. THE EVOLUTION OF RUSSIA. I. Scope And Purpose of the Present Essay. The idea of writing something about Russia, the Russian novel, and Russian social conditions (all of which bear an intimate relationship to one another), occurred to me during a sojourn in Paris, where I was struck with the popularity and success achieved by the Russian authors, and especially the novelists. I remember that it was in the month of March, 1885, that the Russian novel "Crime and Punishment," by Dostoiëwsky, fell into my hands and left on my mind a deep impression. Circumstances prevented my following up at that time my idea of literary work on the subject; but the next winter I had nothing more important to do than to make my projected excursion into this new realm. My interest was quickened by all the reports I read of those who had done the same. They all declared that one branch of Russian literature, that which flourishes to-day in every part of Europe, namely, the novel, has no rival in any other nation, and that the so much discussed tendency to the pre-eminence of truth in art, variously called realism, naturalism, etc., has existed in the Russian novel ever since the Romantic period, a full quarter of a century earlier than in France. I saw also that the more refined and select portion of the Parisian public, that part which boasts an educated and exacting taste, bought and devoured the works of Turguenief, Tolstoï, and Dostoiëwsky with as much eagerness as those of Zola, Goncourt, and Daudet; and it was useless to ascribe this universal eagerness merely to a conspiracy intended to produce jealousy and humiliation among the masters and leaders of naturalism or realism in France, even though I may be aware that such a conspiracy tacitly exists, as well as a certain amount of involuntary jealousy, which, in fact, even the most illustrious artist is prone to display. I do not ignore the objections that might be urged against going to foreign lands in search of novelties, and I should decline to face them if Russian literature were but one of the many caprices of the exhausted Parisian imagination. I know very well that the French capital is a city of novelties, hungry for extravagances which may entertain for a moment and appease its yawning weariness, and that to this necessity for diversion the _decadent_ school (which has lately had such a revival, and claims the aberrations of the Spanish Gongora as its master), though aided by some talent and some technical skill, owes the favor it enjoys. Some years ago I attended a concert in Paris, where I heard an orchestra of Bohemians, or Zingaras, itinerant musicians from Hungary. I was asked my opinion of them at the close, and I frankly confessed that the orchestra sounded to me very like a jangling of mule-bells or a caterwauling; they were only a little more tolerable than a street band of my own country (Spain), and only because these were gypsies were their scrapings to be endured at all. Literary oddities are puffed and made much of by certain Parisian critics very much as the Bohemian musicians were, as, for example, the Japanese novel "The Loyal Ronins," and certain romantic sketches of North American origin. It is but just, nevertheless, to acknowledge that in France the mania for the exotic has a laudable aim and obeys an instinct of equity. To know everything, to call nothing outlandish, to accord the highest right of human citizenship, the right of creating their own art and of sacrificing according to their own rites and customs on the altar sacred to Beauty, not only to the great nations, but to the decayed and obscure ones,--this surely is a generous act on the part of a people endowed with directive energies; the more so as, in order to do this, the French have to overcome a certain petulant vanity which naturally leads them to consider themselves not merely the first but the only people. But confining myself now to Russia, I do not deny that to my curiosity there were added certain doubts as to the value of her literary treasures. During my investigations, however, I have discovered that, apart from the intrinsic merit of her famous authors, her literature must attract our attention because of its intimate connections with social, political, and historical problems which are occupying the mind of Europe to-day, and are outcomes of the great revolutionary movement, unless it would be more correct to say that they inspired and directed that movement. I take this opportunity to confess frankly that I lack one almost indispensable qualification for my task,--the knowledge of the Russian language. It would have been easy for me, during my residence in Paris, to acquire a smattering of it perhaps, enough to conceal my ignorance and to enable me to read some selections in poetry and prose; but not so easy thus to learn thoroughly a language which for intricacy, splendid coloring, and marvellous flexibility and harmony can only be compared, in the opinion of philologists, to the ancient Greek. Of what use then a mere smattering, which would be insufficient to give to my studies a positive character and an indisputable authority? Two years would not have been too long to devote to such an accomplishment, and in that length of time new ideas, different lines of thought, and unexpected obstacles might perhaps arise; the opportunity would be gone and my plan would have lost interest. Still, I mentioned my scruples on this head to certain competent persons, and they agreed that ignorance of the Russian language, though an ignorance scarcely uncommon, would be an insuperable difficulty if I proposed to write a didactic treatise upon Russian letters, instead of a rapid review or a mere sketch in the form of a modest essay or two. They added that the best Russian books were translated into French or German, and that in these languages, and also in English and Italian, had been published several able and clever works relative to Muscovite literature and institutions, solid enough foundations upon which to build my efforts. It may be said, and with good reason, that if I could not learn the language I might at least have made a trip to Russia, and like Madame de Staël when she revealed to her countrymen the culture of a foreign land, see the places and people with my own eyes. But Russia is not just around the corner, and the women of my country, though not cowardly, are not accustomed to travel so intrepidly as for example the women of Great Britain. I have often envied the good fortune of that clever Scotchman, Mackenzie Wallace, who has explored the whole empire of Russia, ridden in sleighs over her frozen rivers, chatted with peasants and _popes_, slept beneath the tents of the nomadic tribes, and shared their offered refreshment of fermented mare's-milk, the only delicacy their patriarchal hospitality afforded. But I acknowledge my deficiencies, and can only hope that some one better qualified than I may take up and carry on this imperfect and tentative attempt. I have tried to supply from other sources those things which I lacked. Not only have I read everything written upon Russia in every language with which I am acquainted, but I have associated myself with Russian writers and artists, and noted the opinions of well-informed persons (who often, however, be it said in parenthesis, only served to confuse me by their differences and opposition). A good part of the books (a list of which I give at the end) were hardly of use to me, and I read them merely from motives of literary honesty. To save continual references I prefer to speak at once and now of those which I used principally: Mackenzie Wallace's work entitled "Russia" abounds in practical insight and appreciation; Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu's "The Empire of the Czars" is a profound, exact, and finished study, so acknowledged even by the Russians themselves in their most just and calm judgments; Tikomirov's "Russia, Political and Social" is clear and comprehensible, though rather radical and passionate, as might be expected of the work of an exile; Melchior de Voguié's "The Russian Novel" is a critical study of incomparable delicacy, though I do not always acquiesce in his conclusions. From these four books, to which I would add the remarkable "History of Russia" by Rambaud, I have drawn copious draughts; and giving them this mention, I may dispense with further reference to them. II. The Russian Country. If we consider the present state of European nations, we shall observe a decided decline of the political fever which excited them from about the end of the last century to the middle of the present one. A certain calm, almost a stagnation with some, has followed upon the conquest of rights more craved than appreciated. The idea of socialistic reforms is agitated darkly and threateningly among the masses, openly declaring itself from time to time in strikes and riots; but on the other hand, the middle classes almost everywhere are anxious for a long respite in which to enjoy the new social conditions created by themselves and for themselves. The middle classes represent the largest amount of intellectual force; they have withdrawn voluntarily (through egoism, prudence, or indifference) from active political fields, and renounced further efforts in the line of experiment; the arts and letters, which are in the main the work of well-to-do people, cry out against this withdrawal, and, losing all social affinities, become likewise isolated. France possesses at this moment that form of government for which she yearned so long and so convulsively; yet she has not found in it the sort of well-being she most desired,--that industrial and economical prosperity, that coveted satisfaction and compensation which should restore to the Cock of Brenus his glittering spurs and scarlet crest. She is at peace, but doubtful of herself, always fearful of having to behold again the vandalism of the Commune and the catastrophes of the Prussian invasion. Italy, united and restored, has not regained her place as a European power, nor, in rising again from her glorious ashes, can she reanimate the dust of the heroes, the great captains and the sublime artists, that lie beneath her monuments. And it is not only the Latin nations that stand in more or less anxious expectation of the future. If France has established her much desired republic, and Italy has accomplished her union, England also has tasted all the fruits of the parliamentary system, has imparted her vigor to magnificent colonies, has succeeded in impressing her political doctrines and her positive ideas of life upon the whole continent; while Germany has obtained the military supremacy and the amalgamation of the fatherland once dismembered by feudalism, as well as the fulfilment of the old Teutonic dream of Cæsarian power and an imperial throne,--a dream cherished since the Middle Ages. For the Saxon races the hour of change has sounded too; in a certain way they have fulfilled their destinies, they have accomplished their historic work, and I think I see them like actors on the stage declaiming the closing words of their rôles. One plain symptom of what I have described seems to me to be the draining off of their creative forces in the domain of art. What proportion does the artistic energy of England and Germany bear to their political strength? None at all. No names nowadays cross the Channel to be put up beside--I will not say those of Shakspeare and Byron, but even those of Walter Scott and Dickens; there is no one to wear the mantle of the illustrious author of "Adam Bede," who was the incarnation of the moral sense and temperate realism of her country, and at the same time an eloquent witness to the extent and limit allowed by these two tendencies, both of puritanic origin, to the laws of æsthetics and poetry. On the other side of the Rhine the tree of Romance is dry, though its roots are buried in the mysterious sub-soil of legend, and beneath its branches pass and repass the heroes of the ballads of Bürger and Goethe, and within its foliage are crystallized the brilliant dialectics of Hegel. To put it plainly, Germany to-day produces nothing within herself, particularly if we compare this to-day with the not distant yesterday. But I would be less general, and set forth my idea in a clearer manner. It is not my purpose to sacrifice on the altar of my theme the genius of all Europe. I recognize willingly that there are in every nation writers worthy of distinction and praise, and not only in nations of the first rank but in some also of second and third, as witness those of Portugal, Belgium, Sweden, modern Greece, Denmark, and even Roumania, which can boast a queenly authoress, extremely talented and sympathetic. I merely say--and to the intelligent reader I need give but few reasons why--that it is easy to distinguish the period in which a people, without being actually sterile, and even displaying relatively a certain fecundity which may deceive the superficial observer, yet ceases to produce anything virile and genuine, or to possess vital and creative powers. To this general rule I consider France an exception, for she is really the only nation which, since the close of the Romantic period, has seen any spontaneous literary production great enough to traverse and influence all Europe,--a phenomenon which cannot be explained by the mere fact of the general use of the French tongue and customs. It will be understood that I refer to the rise and success of Realism, and that I speak of it in a large sense, not limiting my thoughts to the master minds, but considering it in its entirety, from its origin to its newest ramifications, from its antecedent encyclopedists to its latest echoes, the pessimists, _decadents_, and other fanatics. Looking at what are called French naturalists or realists in a group, as a unity which obliterates details, I cannot deny to France the glory of presenting to the world in the second half of this century a literary development, which, even if it carries within itself the germs of senility and decrepitude (namely, the very materialism which is its philosophic basis, its very extremes and exaggerations, and its erudite, and reflective character, a quality which however unapparent is nevertheless perfectly demonstrable), yet it shows also the vigor of a renaissance in its valiant affirmation of artistic truth, its zeal in maintaining this, in the faith with which it seeks this truth, and in the effectiveness of its occasional revelations thereof. When party feeling has somewhat subsided, French realism will receive due thanks for the impulse it has communicated to other peoples; not a lamentable impulse either, for nations endowed with robust national traditions always know how to give form and shape to whatever comes to them from without, and those only will accept a completed art who lack the true conditions of nationality, even though they figure as States on the map. There are two great peoples in the world which are not in the same situation as the Latin and Saxon nations of Europe,--two peoples which have not yet placed their stones in the world's historic edifice. They are the great transatlantic republic and the colossal Sclavonic empire,--the United States and Russia. What artistic future awaits the young North American nation? That land of material civilization, free, happy, with wise and practical institutions, with splendid natural resources, with flourishing commerce and industries, that people so young yet so vigorous, has acquired everything except the acclimatization in her vast and fertile territory of the flower of beauty in the arts and letters. Her literature, in which such names as Edgar Poe shine with a world-wide lustre, is yet a prolongation of the English literature, and no more. What would that country not give to see within herself the glorious promise of that spirit which produced a Murillo, a Cervantes, a Goethe, or a Meyerbeer, while she covers with gold the canvases of the mediocre painters of Europe! But that art and literature of a national character may be spontaneous, a people must pass through two epochs,--one in which, by the process of time, the myths and heroes of earlier days assume a representative character, and the early creeds and aspirations, still undefined by reflection, take shape in popular poetry and legend; the other in which, after a period of learning, the people arises and shakes off the outer crust of artificiality, and begins to build conscientiously its own art upon the basis of its never-forgotten traditions. The United States was born full-grown. It never passed through the cloudland of myth; it is utterly lacking in that sort of popular poetry which to-day we call folk-lore. But when a nation carries within itself this powerful and prolific seed, sooner or later this will sprout. A people may be silent for long years, for ages, but at the first rays of its dawning future it will sing like the sphinx of Egypt. Russia is a complete proof of this truth. Perhaps no other nation ever saw its æsthetic development unfold so unpromisingly, so cramped and so stunted. The stiff and unyielding garments of French classicism have compressed the spirit of its national literature almost to suffocation; German Romanticism, since the beginning of this century, has lorded it triumphantly there more than in any other land. But in spite of so many obstacles, the genius of Russia has made a way for itself, and to-day offers us a sight which other nations can only parallel in their past history; namely, the sudden revelation of a national literature. I do not mean to prophesy for others an irremediable sterility or decadence; I merely confine myself to noting one fact: Russia is at this moment the only young nation in Europe,--the last to arrive at the banquet. The rest live upon their past; this one sets out now impetuously to conquer the future. Over Russia are passing at present the hours of dawn, the golden days, the times that after a while will be called classic; some even of the men whom generations to come will call their glorious ancestors are living now. I insist upon this view in order to explain the curiosity which this empire of the North has aroused in Europe, and also to explain why so much thoughtful and serious study and attention is given to Russia by all foreigners; while every book or article on such a country as Spain, for instance, is full of so many careless and superficial errors. That elegant and subtle author, Voguié, in writing of Léon Tolstoï, says that this Russian novelist is so great that he seems to belong to the dead,--meaning to express in this wise the idea that the magnitude of Tolstoï's genius annuls the laws of temporal criticism by which we are accustomed to see the glory of our contemporaries less or more than the reality. I would apply Voguié's phrase to the Russian national literature as a whole. Though I see it arise before my very eyes, yet I view it amid the halo of prestige enjoyed only by things that have been. There is indeed no parallel to it anywhere. The modern phenomenon of the resurrection of local literatures, and the reappearance of forgotten or amalgamated races, bears no analogy to this Russian movement; for apart from the fact that the former represents a protest by race individualism against dominant nationalities, and the latter, on the contrary, bears the seal of strong unity of sentiment (which distinguishes Russia), it must be borne in mind that local literatures are reactionary in themselves,--restorers of traditions more or less forgotten and lost sight of,--while Russian literature is an innovation, which accepts the past, not as its ideal, but as its root. I have heard Émile Zola say, with his usual ingenuousness, that between his own spirit and that of the Russian novel there was something like a haze. This gray vapor may be the effect of the northern mist which is so asphyxiating to Latin brains, or it may be owing to the eccentricity which sometimes produces a work entirely independent of accepted social notions and historical factors. In order to dissipate this haze, this mist, I must devote a part of this essay to a study of the race, the natural conditions, the history, the institutions, the social and political state of Russia, especially to that revolutionary effervescence known as Nihilism. Without such a preliminary study I could scarcely give any idea of this literary phenomenon. Let us, then, cross the Russian frontier and enter her colossal expanse, without being too much abashed by its size, which, says Humboldt, is greater than that of the disk of the full moon. Really, when we cast our eyes upon the map, fancy refuses to believe or to conceive that so large an extent of territory can form but one nation and obey but one man. We are amazed by its geographical bigness, and a sentiment of respect involuntarily enters the mind, together with the instinctive conviction that God has not modelled the body of this Titan without having in view for it some admirable historical destiny to be achieved by the fine diplomacy of Providence. Truly it is God's handiwork, as is proved by its solid unity,--geographical as well as ethnographical,--and its duration as an independent empire. Russia is no artificial conglomeration, nor a federation of States,--each with distinct internal life and traditions,--the result of conquest or of the necessity of resistance to a common enemy; for while the strife against the nomadic Asiatics may have contributed to solidify her union, it was Nature that predisposed her to a community of aspirations and political existence. There are islands like Sicily, peninsulas like Spain, whose territory, though so small, is far more easily subdivided than Russia, which is intersected by no mountain chains, and which is everywhere connected by rivers,--water-ways of communication. The vast surface of Russia is like a piece of cloth which unfolds everywhere alike, seamless and level. The northern regions, which produce lumber, cannot exist without the southern regions, which produce cereals; the two halves of Russia are complementary; there is nowhere any conception of the provincialisms which honeycomb the Spanish peninsula; and in spite of the imposing magnitude of the nation, which at first glance would seem necessarily divided into different if not inimical provinces, especially those most distant, the cohesion is so strong that all Russia considers herself, not so much a state as a family, subject to the law of a father; and Father they call, with tender familiarity, the Autocrat of all the Russias. Even to-day the name of the famous Mazeppa, who tried to separate Ukrania from Russia, is a term of insult in the Ukranian dialect, and his name is cursed in their temples. To this sublime sentiment Russia owes that national independence which the other Sclavonic peoples have lost. III. The Russian Race. It is no hindrance to Muscovite unity that within it there are two completely opposing elements, namely, the Germanic and the Semitic. The influence of the Germans is about as irritating to the Russians as was that of the Flemings to the Spaniards under Charles V. They are petted and protected by the government, especially in the Baltic provinces, all the while that the Russians accuse them of having introduced two abominations,--bureaucracy and despotism. But even more aggravating to the Russian is the Jewish usurer, who since the Middle Ages has fastened himself like a leach upon producer and consumer, and who, if he does not borrow or lend, begs; and if he does not beg, carries on some suspicious business. A nation within a nation, the Jews are sometimes made the victims of popular hatred; the usually gentle Russians sometimes rise in sudden wrath, and the newspapers report to us dreadful accounts of an assault and murder of Hebrews. Russian national unity is not founded, however, upon community of race; on the contrary, nowhere on the globe are the races and tribes more numerous than those that have spread over that illimitable territory like the waves of the sea; and as the high tide washes away the marks of every previous wave, and levels the sandy surface, these divers races have gone on stratifying, each forgetful of its distinct origin. Those who study Russian ethnography call it a chaos, and declare that at least twenty layers of human alluvium exist in European Russia alone, without counting the emigrations of prehistoric peoples whose names are lost in oblivion. And yet from these varied races and origins--Scythians, Sarmatians, Kelts, Germans, Goths, Tartars, and Mongols--has proceeded a most homogeneous people, a most solid coalescence, little given to treasuring up ancient rights and lost causes. Geographical oneness has superseded ethnographical variety, and created a moral unity stronger than all other. When so many races spread themselves over one country, it becomes necessary and inevitable that one shall exercise sovereignty. In Russia this directive and dominant race was the Sclav, not because of numerical superiority, but from a higher character more adaptable to European civilization, and perhaps by virtue of its capability for expansion. Compare the ethnographical maps of Russia in the ninth and nineteenth centuries. In the ninth the Sclavs occupy a spot which is scarcely a fifth part of European Russia; in the nineteenth the spot has spread like oil, covering two thirds of the Russian map. And as the Sclavonic inundation advances, the inferior races recede toward the frozen pole or the deserts of Asia. When the monk Nestor wrote the first account of Russia, the Sclavs lived hedged in by Lithuanians, Turks, and Finns; to-day they number above sixty million souls. Thus it is once more demonstrated that to the Aryan race, naturally and without violence, is reserved the pre-eminence in modern civilization. A thousand years ago northern Russia was peopled by Finnish tribes; in still more recent times the Asiatic fisherman cast his nets where now stands the capital of Peter the Great; and yet without any war of extermination, without any emigration of masses, without persecutions, or the deprivation of legal privileges, the aboriginal Finns have subsided, have been absorbed,--have become Russianized, in a word. This is not surprising, perhaps, to us who believe in the absolute superiority of the Indo-European race, noble, high-minded, capable of the loftiest and profoundest conceptions possible to the human intellect. I may say that the Russian ethnographical evolution may be compared with that of my own country, if we may trust recent and well-authenticated theories. The most remote peoples of Russia were, like those of Spain, of Turanian origin, with flattish faces, and high cheek-bones, speaking a soft-flowing language; and to this day, as in Spain also, one may see in some of the physiognomies clear traces of the old blood in spite of the predominance of the invading Aryan. In Spain, perhaps, the aboriginal Turanian bequeathed no proofs of intellectual keenness to posterity, and the famous Basque songs and legends of Lelo and Altobizkar may turn out to be merely clever modern tricks of imitation; but in Russia the Finnish element, whose influence is yet felt, shows great creative powers. One of the richest popular literatures known to the researches of folk-lore is the epic cycle of Finland called the Kalevala, which compares with the Sanscrit poems of old. A Castilian writer of note, absent at present from his country, in writing to me privately his opinions on Russia, said that the civilization which we behold has been created, so far as concerns its good points, exclusively by the Mediterranean race dwelling around that sea of inspiration which stretches from the Pillars of Hercules to Tyre and Sidon; that sea which brought forth prophets, incarnate gods, great captains and navigators, arch-philosophers, and the geniuses of mankind. Recently the most celebrated of our orators has stirred up in Paris some Greco-Latin manifestations whose political opportuneness is not to the point just here, but whose ethnographical significance, seeking to divide Europe into northern barbarians and civilized Latin folk,--just as happened at the fall of the Roman Empire,--is of no benefit to me. Who would listen without protest nowadays to the famous saying that the North has given us only iron and barbarism, or read tranquilly Grenville Murray's exclamation in an access of Britannic patriotism, "Russia will fall into a thousand pieces, the common fate of barbarous States!" The intelligence of the hearers would be offended, for they would recall the part played in universal civilization by Germans and Saxons,--Germany, Holland, England; but confining myself to the subject in hand, I cannot credit those who taunt the Sclav with being a barbarian, when he is as much an Aryan, a descendant of Japhet, as the Latin, descended as much as he from the sacred sources beside which lay the cradle of humanity, and where it first received the revelation of the light. Knowing their origin, are we to judge the Sclav as the Greeks, the contemporaries of Herodotus, did the Scythian and the Sarmatian, relegating him forever to the cold eternal night of Cimmerian regions? It is nothing remarkable that, in the varied fortunes of this great Indo-European family of races, if the Kelt came early to the front, the Sclav came correspondingly late. Who can explain the causes of this diversity of destiny between the two branches that most resemble each other on this great tree? In the study of Russian writings I was ofttimes surprised at the resemblances in the character, customs, and modes of thought of the Russian _mujik_ to those of the peasants of Gallicia (northern Spain), my native province. Then I read in various authors that the Sclav is more like the Kelt than like his other ancestors, which observation applied equally well to my own people. Perhaps the Kelt brought to Spain and France the first seeds of civilization; but the superiority of the Greek and the Latin obliterated the traces of that primitive culture which has left us no written monuments. More fortunate is the Sclav, the last to put his hand to the great work, for he is sure of leaving the marks of his footprints upon the sands of time. It is undeniable that he has come late upon the world's stage, and after the ages of inspiration and of brilliant historic action have passed. It sometimes seems now as though the brain of the world had lost its freshness and plastic quality, as though every possible phase of civilization had been seen in Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and in the scientific and political development of our own day. But the backwardness of the Russian has been caused by no congenital inferiority of race; his quickness and aptitude are apparent, and sufficient to prove it is the rich treasure of popular poetry to be found among the peoples of Sclav blood,--Servians, Russians, and Poles. Such testimony is irrefutable, and is to groups of peoples what articulate speech is to the individual in the zoological scale. What the Romanceros are to the Spaniard, the Bilinas are to the Russian,--an immense collection of songs in which the people have immortalized the memory of persons and events indelibly engraved on their imagination; a copious spring, a living fountain, whither the future bards of Russia must return to drink of originality. What the poem of the Cid represents to Spain, and the Song of Roland to France, is symbolized for the Russian by the Song of the Tribe of Igor, the work of some anonymous Homer,--a pantheistic epic impregnated with the abounding and almost overwhelming sense of realism which seems to preponderate in the literary genius of Russia. History--and I use this word in the broadest sense known to us to-day--thrusts some nations to the fore, as the Latins, for example; others, like the Sclavs, she holds back, restraining their instinctive efforts to make themselves heard. We are accustomed to say that Russia is an Asiatic country, and that the Russian is a Tartar with a thin coat of European polish. The Mongolian element must certainly be taken into account in a study of Muscovite ethnography, in spite of the supremacy of the Byzantine and Tartar influence, and in order to understand Russia. In the interior of European Russia the ugly _Kalmuk_ is still to be seen, and who can say how many drops of Asiatic blood run in the veins of some of the most illustrious Russian families? Yet within this question of purity of race lies a scientific and social _quid_ easily demonstrable according to recent startling biological theories, and only the thoughtless will censure the old Spaniards for their efforts to prove their blood free of any taint of Moor or Jew. Russia, with her double nature of European and Asiatic, seems like a princess in a fairy-tale turned to stone by a malignant sorcerer's art, but restored to her natural and living form by the magic word of some valiant knight. Her face, her hands, and her beautiful figure are already warm and life-like, but her feet are still immovable as stone, though the damsel struggles for the fulness of reanimation; even so Imperial Russia strives to become entirely European, to free herself from Asiatic inertia to-day. Apart from the undeniable Asiatic influence, we must consider the extreme and cruel climate as among the causes of her backwardness. The young civilization flourishes under soft skies, beside blue seas whose soft waves lave the limbs of the new-born goddess. Where Nature ill-treats man he needs twice the time and labor to develop his vocation and tendencies. To us of a more temperate zone, the description of the rigorous and overpowering climate of Russia is as full of terrors as Dante's Inferno. The formation of the land only adds to the trying conditions of the atmosphere. Russia consists of a series of plains and table-lands without mountains, without seas or lakes worthy of the name,--for those that wash her coasts are considered scarcely navigable. The only fragments of a mountain system are known by the generic and expressive term _ural_, meaning a girdle; and in truth they serve only to engirdle the whole territory. To an inhabitant of the interior the sight of a mountainous country is entirely novel and surprising. Almost all the Russian poets and novelists exiled to the Caucasus have found an unexpected fountain of inspiration in the panorama which the mountains afforded to their view. The hero of Tolstoï's novel "The Cossacks," on arriving at the Caucasus for the first time, and finding himself face to face with a mountain, stands mute and amazed at its sublime beauty. "What is that?" he asked the driver of his cart. "The mountain," is the indifferent reply. "What a beautiful thing!" exclaims the traveller, filled with enthusiasm. "Nobody at home can imagine anything like it!" And he loses himself in the contemplation of the snow-covered crests rising abruptly above the surface of the steppes. The oceans that lie upon the boundaries of Russia send no refreshing breezes over her vast continental expanse, for the White Sea, the Arctic, the Baltic, and sometimes the Caspian, are often ice-bound, while the waves of the Sea of Asof are turbid with the slime of marshes. Neither does Russia enjoy the mild influence of the Gulf Stream, whose last beneficent waves subside on the shores of Scandinavia. The winds from the Arctic region sweep over the whole surface unhindered all the winter long, while in the short summer the fiery breath of the central Asian deserts, rolling over the treeless steppes, bring an intolerable heat and a desolating drought. Beyond Astrakan the mercury freezes in winter and bursts in the summer sun. Under the rigid folds of her winter shroud Russia sleeps the sleep of death long months at a time, and upon her lifeless body slowly and pauselessly fall the "white feathers" of which Herodotus speaks; the earth becomes marble, the air a knife. A snow-covered country is a beautiful sight when viewed through a stereopticon, or from the comfortable depths of a fur-lined, swift-gliding sleigh; but snow is a terrible adversary to human activity. If its effects are not as dissipating as excessive heat, it none the less pinches the soul and paralyzes the body. In extreme climates man has a hard time of it, and Nature proves the saying of Goethe: "It envelops and governs us; we are incapable of combating it, and likewise incapable of eluding its tyrannical power." Formidable in its winter sleep, Nature appears even more despotic perhaps in its violent resurrection, when it breaks its icy bars and passes at once from lethargy to an almost fierce and frenzied life. In the spring-time Russia is an eruption, a surprise; the days lengthen with magic rapidity; the plants leaf out, and the fruits ripen as though by enchantment; night comes hardly at all, but instead a dusky twilight falls over the land; vegetation runs wild, as though with impatience, knowing that its season of happiness will be short. The great writer, Nicolaï Gogol, depicts the spring-time on the Russian steppes in the following words: "No plough ever furrowed the boundless undulations of this wild vegetation. Only the unbridled herds have ever opened a path through this impenetrable wilderness. The face of earth is like a sea of golden verdure, broken into a thousand shades. Among the thin, dry branches of the taller shrubs climb the cornflowers,--blue, purple, and red; the broom lifts its pyramid of yellow flowers; tufts of white clover dot the dark earth, and beneath their poor shade glides the agile partridge with outstretched neck. The chattering of birds fills the air; the sparrow-hawk hangs motionless overhead, or beats the air with the tips of his wings, or swoops upon his prey with searching eyes. At a distance one hears the sharp cry of a flock of wild duck, hovering like a dark cloud over some lake lost or unseen in the immensity of the plain. The prairie-gull rises with a rhythmic movement, bathing his shining plumage in the blue air; now he is a mere speck in the distance, once more he glistens white and brilliant in the rays of the sun, and then disappears. When evening begins to fall, the steppes become quite still; their whole breadth burns under the last ardent beams; it darkens quickly, and the long shadows cover the ground like a dark pall of dull and equal green. Then the vapors thicken; each flower, each herb, exhales its aroma, and all the plain is steeped in perfume. The crickets chirp vigorously.... At night the stars look down upon the sleeping Cossack, who, if he opens his eyes, will see the steppes illuminated with sparks of light,--the fireflies. Sometimes the dark depths of the sky are lighted up by fires among the dry reeds that line the banks of the little streams and lakes, and long lines of swans, flying northward and disclosed to view by this weird light, seem like bands of red crossing the sky." Do we not seem to see in this description the growth of this impetuous, ardent, spasmodic life, goaded on to quick maturity by the knowledge of its own brevity? Without entirely accepting Montesquieu's theory as to climate, it is safe to allow that it contains a large share of truth. It is indubitable that the influence of climate is to put conditions to man's artistic development by forcing him to keep his gaze fixed upon the phenomena of Nature and the alternation and contrast of seasons, and helps to develop in him a fine pictorial sense of landscape, as in the case of the Russian writers. In our temperate zone we may live in relative independence of the outside world, and almost insensible to the transition from summer to winter. We do not have to battle with the atmosphere; we breathe it, we float in it. Perhaps for this reason good word-painters of landscape are few in our (Spanish) literature, and our descriptive poets content themselves with stale and regular phrases about the aurora and the sunset. But laying aside this parallel, which perhaps errs in being over-subtle, I will say that I agree with those who ascribe to the Russian climate a marked influence in the evolution of Russian character, institutions, and history. Enveloped in snow and beaten by the north wind, the Sclav wages an interminable battle; he builds him a light sleigh by whose aid he subjects the frozen rivers to his service; he strips the animals of their soft skins for his own covering; to accustom his body to the violent transitions and changes of temperature, he steams himself in hot vapors, showers himself with cold water, and then lashes himself with a whip of cords, and if he feels a treacherous languor in his blood he rubs and rolls his body in the snow, seeking health and stimulus from his very enemy. But strong as is his power of reaction and moral energy, put this man, overwrought and wearied, beside a genial fire, in the silence of the tightly closed _isba_, or hut, within his reach a jug of _kvass_ or _wodka_ (a terrible _fire-water_ more burning than any other), and, obeying the urgency of the long and cruel cold, he drinks himself into a drunken sleep, his senses become blunted, and his brain is overcome with drowsiness. Do not exact of him the persevering activity of the German, nor talk to him of the public life which is adapted to the Latin mind. Who can imagine a forum, an oracle, a tribune, in Russia? Study the effect of an inclement sky upon a Southern mind in the Elegies of Ovid banished to the Pontus; his reiterated laments inspire a profound pity, like the piping of a sick bird cowering in the harsh wind. The poet's greatest dread is that his bones may lie under the earth of Sarmatia; he, the Latin voluptuary, son of a race that desires for its dead that the earth may lie lightly on them, shrinks in anticipation of the cold beyond the tomb, when he thinks that his remains may one day be covered by that icy soil. The Sclav is the victim of his climate, which relaxes his fibres and clouds his spirit. The Sclav, say those who know him well, lacks tenacity, firmness; he is flexible and variable in his impressions; as easily enthusiastic as indifferent; fluctuating between opposite conclusions; quick to assimilate foreign ideas; as quick to rid himself of them; inclined to dreamy indolence and silent reveries; given to extremes of exaltation and abasement; in fact, much resembling the climate to which he has to adapt himself. It needs not be said that this description, and any other which pretends to sum up the characteristics of the whole people, must have numerous exceptions, not only in individual cases but in whole groups within the Russian nationality: the Southerner will be more lively and vivacious; the Muscovite (those properly answering to that name) more dignified and stable; the Finlander, serious and industrious, like the Swiss, to whose position his own is somewhat analogous. There is in every nation a psychical as well as physical type to which the rank and file more or less correspond, and it is only upon a close scrutiny that one notices differences. The influence of the Tropics upon the human race has never been denied; we are forced to admit the influence of the Pole also, which, while beneficial in those lands not too close upon it, invigorating both bodies and souls and producing those chaste and robust barbarians who were the regenerators of the effete Empire, yet too close, it destroys, it annihilates. Who can doubt the effect of the snow upon the Russian character when it is stated upon the authority of positive data and statistics that the vice of drunkenness increases in direct proportion to the degrees of latitude? There is a fine Russian novel, "Oblomof" (of which I shall speak again later), which is more instructive than a long dissertation. The apathy, the distinctively Russian enervation of the hero, puts the languor of the most indolent Creole quite in the shade, with the difference that in the case of the Sclav brain and imagination are at work, and his body, if well wrapped, is able to enjoy the air of a not unendurable temperature. Not only the rigors of climate but the aspect of the outside world has a marked influence on character. Ovid in exile lamented having to live where the fields produced neither fruits nor sweet grapes; he might have added, had he lived in Russia, where the fields are all alike, where the eye encounters no variety to attract and please it. Castile is flat and monotonous like Russia, but there the sky compensates for the nakedness of the earth, and one cannot be sad beneath that canopy of turquoise blue. In Russia the dark firmament seems a leaden vault instead of a silken canopy, and oppresses the breast. The only things to diversify the immense expanse of earth are the great rivers and the broad belts or zones of the land, which may be divided into the northern, covered with forests; the _black lands_, which have been the granary of the empire from time immemorial; the arable steppes, so beautifully described by Gogol, like the American prairies, the land of the wild horses of the Russian heroic age; and lastly, the sandy steppes, sterile deserts only inhabited by the nomadic shepherds and their flocks. Throughout this vast body four large arteries convey the life-giving waters: the Dnieper which brought to Russia the culture of old Byzantium; the Neva, beside which sits the capital of its modern civilization; the Don, legendary and romantic; and the Volga, the great _Mother Volga_, the marvellous river, whose waters produce the most delicious fish in the world. Without the advantage of these rivers, whose abundance of waters is almost comparable to an ocean, the plains of Russia would be uninhabitable. Land, land everywhere, an ocean of land, a uniformity of soil, no rocks, no hills, so that stone is almost unknown in Russia. St. Petersburg was the first city not built entirely of wood, and it is an axiom, that Russian houses, as a rule, burn once in seven years. This dulness and desolation of Nature's aspect must of course influence brain and imagination, and consequently must be reflected in the literature, where melancholy predominates even in satire, and whence is derived a tendency to pessimism and a sort of religious devotion tinged with misery and sadness. Indolence, fatalism, inconstancy,--these are the defects of Russian character; resignation, patience, kindness, tolerance, humility, its better qualities. Its passive resignation may be readily transformed into heroism; and Count Léon Tolstoï, in his military narrative of the "Siege of Sevastopol," and his novel "War and Peace," studies and portrays in a wonderful way these traits of the national soul. IV. Russian History. History has been for Russia as inclement and hostile as Nature. A cursory glance will suffice to show this, and it is foreign to my purpose to devote more than slight attention to it. The Greeks, the civilizers of the world, brought their culture to Colchis and became acquainted with the very southernmost parts of Russia known as Sarmatia and Scythia. Herodotus has left us minute descriptions of the inhabitants of the Cimmerian plains, their ways, customs, religions, and superstitions, distinguishing between the industrious Scythians who produce and sell grain, and the nomadic Scythians, the Cossacks, who, depending on their pastures, neither sow nor work. The Sarmatian region was invaded and subjugated by the northern Sclavs, who in turn were conquered by the Goths, these by the Huns, and finally, upon the same field, Huns, Alans, and Bulgarians fought one another for the mastery. In this first confused period there is no historical outline of the Russia that was to be. Her real history begins in a, to us, strange event, whose authenticity historical criticism may question, but which is the basis of all tradition concerning the origin of Russian institutions; I mean the famous message sent by the Sclavs to those Norman or Scandinavian princes, those daring adventurers, the Vikings supposedly (but it matters not), saying to this effect, more or less: "Our land is broad and fertile, but there is neither law nor justice within it; come and possess it and govern it." Upon the foundation provided by this strange proceeding many very original theories and philosophical conclusions have been built concerning Russian history; and the partisans of autocracy and the ancient order of things consider it a sure evidence that Russia was destined by Heaven to acknowledge an absolute power of foreign derivation, and to bow voluntarily to its saving yoke. Whether the triumphal rulers were Normans or Scandinavians or the original Sclavs, it is certain that with their appearance on the scene as the element of military strength and of disciplined organization, the history of Russia begins: the date of this foreign admixture (which would be for us a day of mourning and shame) Russia to-day celebrates as a glorious millennium. Heroic Russia came into being with the Varangian or Viking chieftains, and it is that age which provides the subject of the _bilinas_; it was the ninth century after Christ, at the very moment when the epic and romantic life of Spain awoke and followed in the train of the Cid. With the establishment of order and good government among the Sclavs, Rurik founded the nation, as certainly as he founded later the legendary city of Novgorod, and his brother and successor, Olaf, that of Kief, mother of all the Russian cities. It fell to Rurik's race also to give the signal for that secular resistance which even to-day Russia maintains toward her perpetual enemy, Constantinople; the Russian fleets descended the Dnieper to the Byzantine seas to perish again and again under the Greek fire. Russia received also from this same Byzantium, against which her arms are ever turned, the Christian religion, which was delivered to Olga by Constantine Porfirogenitus. Who shall say what a change there might have been over the face of the earth if the Oriental Sclavs had received their religion from Rome, like the Poles? Olga was the Saint Clotilde of Russia; in Vladimir we see her Clodovicus. He was a sensuous and sanguinary barbarian, though at times troubled with religious anxieties, who at the beginning of his reign upheld paganism and revived the worship of idols, at whose feet he sacrificed the Christians. But his darkened conscience was tortured nevertheless by aspirations toward a higher moral light, and he opened a discussion on the subject of the best religion known to mankind. He dismissed Mahometanism because it forbade the use of the red wine which rejoiceth the heart of man; Judaism because its adherents were wanderers over the face of the earth; Catholicism because it was not sufficiently splendid and imposing. His childish and primitive mind was taken with the Asiatic splendors of the church of Constantinople, and being already espoused to the sister of the Byzantine emperor, he returned to his own country bringing its priests with him, cast his old idols into the river, and compelled his astonished vassals to plunge into the same waters and receive baptism perforce, while the divinity he venerated but yesterday was beaten, smeared with blood, and buried ignominiously. Happy the people upon whom the gospel has not been forced by a cruel tyrant, at the point of the sword and under threats of torture, but to whom it has been preached by a humble apostle, the brother of innumerable martyrs and saintly confessors! In the twelfth century, when Christianity inspired us to reconquer our country, Russia, more than half pagan, wept for her idols, and seemed to see them rising from the depths of the river demanding adoration. From this corrupt Byzantine source Russia derived her second civilization, counting as the first that proceeding from the colonization and commerce of the Greeks, as related by Herodotus. The dream of Yaroslaus, the Russian Charlemagne, was to make his capital, Kief, a rival and imitator of Byzantium. From Byzantium came the arts, customs, and ideas; and it seemed the fate of the Sclav race to get the pattern for its intellectual life from abroad. Some Russian thinkers deem it advantageous for their country to have received its Christianity from Byzantium, and consider it an element of greater independence that the national Church never arrogated to itself the supremacy and dominion over the State. Let such advantages be judged by the rule of autocracy and the nullity of the Greek Church. The Catholic nations, being educated in a more spiritual and exalted idea of liberty, have never allowed that the monarch could be lord of the human conscience, and have never known that monstrous confusion of attributes which makes the sovereign absolute dictator of souls. The Crusade, that fecund movement which was the work of Rome, never spread over Russia; and when the Sclavs fell under the Tartar yoke, the rest of Europe left her to her fate. Russia's choice of this branch of the Christian religion was fatal to her dominion over other kindred Sclavs; for it embittered her rivalry with the Poles, and raised an insurmountable barrier between Russia and European civilization which was inseparably intertwined with the Catholic faith even in such phenomena as the Renaissance, which seems at first glance laic and pagan. Nevertheless, so much of Christianity as fell to Russia through the accepted channel sufficed to open to her the doors of the civilized world, and to rouse her from the torpid sleep of the Oriental. It gave her the rational and proper form of family life as indicated by monogamy, whose early adoption is one of the highest and most distinguishing marks of the Aryan race; and instead of the savage chieftain surrounded by his fierce vassals always ready for rebellion and bloodshedding, it gave the idea of a monarch who lives as God's vicar upon the earth, the living incarnation of law and order,--an idea which, in times of anarchy and confusion, served to constitute the State and establish it upon a firm basis. Lastly, Russia owes to Christianity her ecclesiastical literature, the fount and origin of literary culture throughout Europe. In the thirteenth century--that bright and luminous age, the time of Saint Thomas, of Saint Francis of Assisi, of Dante, of Saint Ferdinand--Russia was suddenly invaded by the Mongols, and, like locusts in a corn-field, those hideous and demoniacal foes fell upon her and made all Christendom tremble, so that the French historian Joinville records it as a sign of the coming of Antichrist. "For our sins the unknown nations covered our land," say the Russian chroniclers. Genghis Khan, after subduing all Asia, drew around him an immense number of tribes, and fell upon Russia with irresistible force, sowing the land with skulls as the flower of the field sows it with seeds, and compelling the once free and wealthy native Boyars to bring grist to the mill and serve their conquerors as slaves. The Russian towns and princes performed miracles of heroism, but in vain. The Tartar hordes, let loose upon those vast plains where their horses found abundant pasture, rolled over the land like an inundation. In a more varied country, more densely populated and with better communication, the Tartars would have been beaten back, as they were from Moravia. Again Nature's hand was upon the destinies of Russia; the topographical conditions laid her under the power of the Golden Horde. This great misfortune not only isolated Russia from the Occident and left her under Asiatic sway, but it also subjugated her to the growing autocracy of the Muscovite princes who were becoming formidable oppressors of their subjects, and they in turn were victims, tributaries, and vassals of the great Khans. So the invasion came to exercise a decisive influence upon the institutions of the future empire, pernicious in consequence of the abnormal development allowed to monarchical authority, and beneficent inasmuch as it aided forcibly in the formation of the nationality. At the time of the Mongol irruption Russia was composed of various independent principalities governed by the descendants of Rurik; the necessity of opposing the invader demonstrated the necessity also of uniting all under one sceptre. Continually chafing at the bit, dissimulating and temporizing with the enemy by means of clever diplomatic envoys, the princes slowly cemented their power and prepared the land for a homogeneous state, until one day the chivalrous Donskoï, the victor at the battle of the Don, opened the era of reconquest, exclaiming in the exuberance of his first triumph over the Tartars, "Their day is past, and God is with us!" But Russia's evil star awoke one of the greatest captains named in history, Tamerlane, who ruined the work begun by Donskoï, and toward the end of the fourteenth century once more laid the Muscovite people under subjection. At the meeting of the Council of Florence, when the Greek Emperor John Paleologos agreed to the reunion of the two churches, the prince of Moscow, Basil the Blind, showed himself blind of soul as well as of eye, in obstinately opposing such a union, thus cutting off Russia again from the Occident. When the Turks took Constantinople and consummated the fall of the Byzantine empire, Moscow became the capital of the Greek world, the last bulwark of the schismatic church, the asylum of the remains of a depraved and perishing organism, of the senile decadence of the last of the Cæsars. V. The Russian Autocracy. Such was the sad situation in Russia at the opening of the period of European Renaissance, out of which grew the modern age which was to provide the remedy for her ills through her own tyrants. For without intending a paradox, I will say that tyranny is the liberator of Russia. Twice these tyrants who have forced life into her, who have impelled her toward the future, have been called _The Terrible_,--Ivan III., the uniter of the provinces, he whose very look made the women faint, and Ivan IV., the first to use the title of Czar. Both these despots cross the stage of history like spectres called up by a nightmare: the former morose, dissimulating, and hypocritical, like Louis XI. of France, whom he resembles; the latter demented, fanatical, epileptic, and hot-tempered, clutching his iron pike in hand, with which he transfixed Russia as one may transfix a fluttering insect with a pin. But these tyrants, gifted and guided by a saving instinct, created the nation. Ivan III. instituted the succession to the throne, thus suppressing the hurtful practice of partition among brothers, and it was he who finally broke the yoke of the Mongols. Ivan IV. did more yet; he achieved the actual separation of Europe from Asia, put down the anarchy of the nobles, and taught them submission to law; and not content with this, he put himself at the head of the scanty literature of his time, and while he widened the domains of Russia, he protected within her borders the establishment of the press, until then persecuted as sacrilegious. It is difficult to think what would have become of the Russian nation without her great tyrants. Therefore it is that the memory of Ivan IV. still lives in the popular imagination, and the Terrible Czar, like Pedro the Cruel of Spain, is neither forgotten nor abhorred. The consolidation of the autocratic idea is easily understood in the light of these historic figures. No wonder that the people accepted it, from a spirit of self-preservation, since it was despotism that sustained them, that formed them, so to speak. It is folly to consider the institutions of a nation as though they were extraneous to it, fruit of an individual will or of a single event; society obeys laws as exact as those which regulate the courses of the stars, and the historian must recognize and fix them. The autocracy and the unity of Russia were consolidated together by the genius of Ivan III., who made their emblem the double-headed eagle, and by Ivan IV., who sacrificed to them a sea of blood. The municipal autonomies and the petty independent princes frowned, but Russia became a true nation; at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the brilliant age of the monarchical principle, no European sovereign could boast of being so thoroughly obeyed as the sovereign prince of Moscow. The radical concept of omnipotent power, not tempered as in the West by the humanity of Catholicism, at once rushed headlong to oppression and slavery. The ambitious regent Boris Godonof was not long in attaching the serfs to the soil, and upon the heels of this unscrupulous act followed the dark and bloody days of the false Demetrii, in which the serf, irritated by the burden of his chains, welcomed, in every adventurer, in every impostor, a Messiah come to redeem him. Then the Poles, the eternal enemies of Russia, seized the Kremlin, the Swedes threatened to overcome her, and the nation seemed ready to perish had it not been for the heroism of a butcher and a prince; a suggestive example of the saving strength which at supreme moments rises up in every nation. But one more providential tyrant was needed, the greatest of all, the most extraordinary man of Russia's history, of the house of Romanoff, successor to the extinct dynasty of the Terrible Ivans. "Terrible" might also be applied to the name of the imperial carpenter whose character and destiny are not unlike those of Ivan IV. Both were precocious in intellect, both were self-educated, and both cooled their hot youth in the hard school of abandonment. Out of it came Peter the Great, determined at all costs to remodel his gigantic empire. Herodotus relates how the young Anacarsis, on returning from foreign lands wherein he had learned new arts and sciences, came to Scythia his native country, and wished to celebrate there a great feast, after the manner of the Greeks, in honor of the mother of the gods; hearing of which the king Sarillius impaled him with a lance. He tells also how another king who wearied of the Scythian mode of living, and craved the customs of the Greeks, among whom he had been educated, endeavored to introduce the Bacchanalian dances, himself taking part in them. The Scythians refused to conform to these novel ideas, and finally cut off the king's head; for, adds the historian, "The Scythians detest nothing so much as foreign customs." The tale of Herodotus was in danger of being repeated at the beginning of the reign of Peter Romanoff. With him began the battle, not yet ended, between old Russia, which calls itself Holy, and new Russia, cut after the Western pattern. While Peter travelled and studied the industry and progress of Europe with the idea of bringing them to his Byzantine empire, the rebels at home conspired to dethrone this daring innovator who threatened to use fire and sword, whips and scourges, the very implements of barbarism, against barbarism itself. It is a notable fact in Russian history that none of her mighty sovereigns was possessed of moral conditions in harmony with the vigor of their intelligence and will force. Russia has had great emperors but not good emperors. The halo that wreathes the head of Berenguela of Castile and Isabel the Catholic, Saint Ferdinand, or Saint Louis,--men and women in whom the ideal of justice seemed to become incarnate,--is lacking to Vladimir the Baptizer, to Ivan IV., to Peter the Great. Among Occidental peoples the monarchy owed its prestige and sacred authority to good and just kings, vicars of God on earth, who were impressed with a sense of being called to play a noble part in the drama of history, conscious of grave responsibilities, and sure of having to render an account of their stewardship to a Supreme Power. The Czars present quite a different aspect: they seem to have understood civilization rather by its externals than by its intrinsic doctrines, which demand first of all our inward perfecting, our gradual elevation above the level of the beast, and the continuous affirmation of our dignity. Therefore they used material force as their instrument, and spared no means to crown their efforts. But with all it is impossible to withhold a tribute of admiration to Peter the Great. That fierce despot, gross and vicious, was not only a reformer but a hero. Pultowa, which beheld the fall of the power of Sweden, justified the reforms and the military organization instituted by the young emperor, and made Russia a European power,--a power respected, influential, and great. Whatever may be said against war, whatever sentimental comparisons may be made between the founder and the conqueror, it must still be admitted that the monarch who leads his people to victory will lead them _ipse facto_ to new destinies, to a more glorious and intense historic life. If Peter the Great had vacillated one degree, if he had squandered time and opportunity in studying prudent ways and means for planting his reforms, if his hand had trembled in laying the rod across the backs of his nobles, or had spared the lash upon the flesh of his own son, perhaps he would never have achieved the transformation of his Oriental empire into a European State, a transformation which embraced everything,--the navy, the army, public instruction, social relations, commerce, customs, and even the beards of his subjects, the much respected traditional long beards, mercilessly shaven by order of the autocrat. In his zeal for illimitable authority, and that his decrees might meet with no obstacles either in heaven or earth, this Czar conceived the bright idea of assuming the spiritual power, and having suppressed the Patriarchy and created the Synod, he held in his hands the conscience of his people, could count its every pulsation, and wind it up like a well-regulated clock. What considerations, human or divine, will check a man who, like Abraham, sacrifices his first-born to an idea, and makes himself the executioner of his own son? The race sign was not obliterated from the Russian culture produced by immoral and short-sighted reformers. A woman of low extraction and obscure history, elevated to the imperial purple, was the one to continue the work of Peter the Great; his daughter's favorite became the protector of public instruction and the founder of the University of Moscow; a frivolous and dissolute Czarina, Elisabeth Petrowna, modified the customs, encouraged intellectual pleasures and dramatic representations, and put Russia in contact with the Latin mind as developed in France; another empress, a parricide, a usurper and libertine, who deserves the perhaps pedantic name of the Semiramis of the North given her by Voltaire, hid her delinquencies under the splendor of her intellect, the refined delicacy of her artistic tastes, her gifts as a writer, and her magnificence as a sovereign. It was the profound and violent shock administered by the hard hand of Peter the Great that impelled Russia along the road to French culture, and with equal violence she retraced her steps at the invasion of the armies of Napoleon. The nobility and the patriots of Russia cursed France in French,--the language which had been taught them as the medium of progress; and the nation became conscious of its own individuality in the hour of trial, in the sudden awakening of its independent instincts. But in proportion as the nationality arose in its might, the low murmur of a growing revolution made itself heard. This impulse did not burst first from the hearts of the people, ground down by the patriarchal despotism of Old Russia, but from the brain of the educated classes, especially the nobility. The first sign of the strife, predestined from the close of the war with the French, was the political repression of the last years of the reign of Alexander I., and the famous republican conspiracy of December against Nicholas,--an aristocratic outbreak contrived by men in whose veins ran the blood of princes. Of these events I shall speak more fully when I come to the subject of Nihilism; I merely mention it here in this general glimpse of Russian history. Menaced by Asia, Russia had willingly submitted to an absolute power, because, as we have seen, she lacked the elements that had concurred in the formation of modern Europe. Classic civilization never entered her veins; she had no other light than that which shone from Byzantium, nor any other model than that offered by the later empire; she had no place in the great Catholic fraternity which had its law and its focus in Rome, and the Mongolian invasion accomplished her complete isolation. Spain also suffered an invasion of a foreign race, but she pulled herself together and sustained herself on a war-footing for seven centuries. Russia could not do this, but bent her neck to the yoke of the conqueror. Our national character would have chafed indeed to see the kings of Asturias and Castile, instead of perpetually challenging the Moors, become their humble vassals, as the Muscovite princes were to the Khans. With us the struggle for re-conquest, far from exhausting us, redoubled our thirst for independence,--a thirst born farther back than that time, in spite of Leroy-Beaulieu's statement, although it was indeed confirmed and augmented during the progress of that Hispano-Saracenic Iliad. The Russians being obliged to lay down their arms, to suffer and to wait, assumed, instead of our ungovernable vehemence, a patient resignation. But they none the less considered themselves a nation, and entertained a hope of vindicating their rights, which they accomplished finally in the overthrow of the Tartars, and in later days in rising against the French with an impetuosity and spontaneity almost as savage as Spain had shown in her memorable days. Moreover, Russia lacked the elements of historic activity necessary to enable her to play an early part in the work of modern civilization. She had no feudalism, no nobility (as we understand the term), no chivalry, no Gothic architecture, no troubadours, no knights. She lacked the intellectual impetus of mediæval courts, the sturdy exercise of scholastic disputations, the elucidations of the problems of the human race, which were propounded by the thirteenth century. She lacked the religious orders, that network which enclosed the wide edifice of Catholicism; and the military, uniting in mystic sympathy the ascetic and chivalric sentiments. She lacked the councils of the laws of modern rights; and that her lack might be in nothing lacking, she lacked even the brilliant heresies of the West, the subtle rationalists and pantheists, the Abelards and Amalrics, whose followers were brilliant ignoramuses or rank bigots roused by a question of ritual. Lastly, she lacked the sunny smile of Pallas Athene and the Graces, the Renaissance, which brightened the face of Europe at the close of the Middle Ages. And as the civilization brought at last to Russia was the product of nations possessed of all that Russia lacked, and as finally, it was imposed upon her by force, and without those gradual transitions and insensible modifications as necessary to a people as to an individual, she could not accept it in the frank and cordial manner indispensable to its beneficent action. A nation which receives a culture ready made, and not elaborated by itself, condemns itself to intellectual sterility; at most it can only hope to imitate well. And so it happened with Russia. Her development does not present the continuous bent, the gentle undulations of European history in which yesterday creates to-day, and to-day prepares for to-morrow, without an irregular or awkward halt, or ever a trace broken. In the social order of Russia primitive institutions coexist with products of our spick and span new sociology, and we see the deep waters of the past mixed with the froth of the Utopia that points out the route of the unknown future. This confusion or inharmoniousness engenders Russian dualism, the cause of her political and moral disturbances. Russia contains an ancient people, to-day an anachronism, and a society in embryo struggling to burst its bounds. But above all it is evident there is a people eager to speak, to come forth, to have a weight in the world, because its long-deferred time has come; a race which, from an insignificant tribe mewed in around the sources of the Dnieper, has spread out into an immense nation, whose territory reaches from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Arctic to the borders of Turkey, Persia, and China; a nation which has triumphed over Sweden, Poland, the Turks, the Mongols, and the French; a nation by nature expansive, colonizing, mighty in extent, most interesting in the qualities of the genius it is developing day by day, and which is more astonishing than its material greatness, because it is the privilege of intellect to eclipse force. Half a dozen brains and spirits who are now spelling out their race for us, arrest and captivate all who contemplate this great empire. Out of the poverty of traditions and institutions which Russian history bewails, two characteristic ones appear as bases of national life: the autocracy, and the agrarian commune,--absolute imperial power and popular democracy. The geography of Russia, which predisposes her both to unity and to invasion, which obliges her to concentrate herself, and to seek in a vigorous autocratic principle the consciousness of independent being as a people, created the formidable dominion of the Muscovite Czars, which has no equal in the world. Like all primordial Russian ideas, the plan of this Cæsarian sovereignty proceeded from Byzantium, and was founded by Greek refugee priests, who surrounded it with the aureole of divinity indispensable to the establishment of advantageous superstitions so fecund in historical results. Since the twelfth century the autocracy has been a fixed fact, and has gone on assuming all the prerogatives, absorbing all the power, and symbolizing in the person of one man this colossal nation. The sovereign princes, discerning clearly the object and end of these aims, have spared no means to attain to it. They began by checking the proud Boyars in their train, reducing them from companions and equals to subjects; later on they devoted themselves to the suppression of all institutions of democratic character. For the sake of those who judge of a race by the political forms it uses, it should be observed that Russia has not only preserved latent in her the spirit of democracy, but that she possessed in the Middle Ages republican institutions more liberal and radical than any in the rest of Europe. The Italian republics, which at bottom were really oligarchies, cannot compare with the municipal and communist republics of Viatka, Pskof, and especially the great city of Novgorod, which called itself with pride Lord Novgorod the Great. The supreme power there resided in an assembly of the citizens; the prince was content to be an administrator or president elected by free suffrage, and above all an ever-ready captain in time of war; on taking his office he swore solemnly to respect the laws, customs, and privileges of the republic; if he committed a perjury, the assembly convened in the public square at the clang of an ancient bell, and the prince, having been declared a traitor, was stripped, expelled, and _cast into the mud_, according to the forcible popular expression. This industrious republic reached the acme of its prosperity in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, after which the rising principality of Moscow, now sure of its future, came and took down the bells of Novgorod the Great, and so silenced their voices of bronze and the voice of Russian liberties, though not without a bloody battle, as witnesseth the whirlpool--which is still pointed out to the curious traveller--under the bridge of the ancient republican city, whose inhabitants were drowned there by Ivan the Terrible. Upon their dead bodies he founded the unity of the empire. Nor are the free towns the only tradition of autonomy which disturbed the growing autocratic power. The Cossacks for a long time formed an independent and warlike aristocracy, proud and indomitable; and to subdue and incorporate these bellicose tribes with the rest of the nation it was necessary to employ both skill and force. We may say without vanity that although the Spaniards exalted monarchical loyalty into a cult, they never depreciated human dignity. Amongst us the king is he who makes right (_face derecho_), and if he makes it not, we consider him a tyrant, a usurper of the royal prerogative; in acknowledging him lord of life and property, we protest (by the mouth of Calderon's honest rustic) against the idea that he can arrogate to himself also the dominion over conscience and soul; and the smallest subject in Spain would not endure at the king's hand the blows administered by Peter the Great for the correction of his nobles, themselves descendants of Rurik. In Russia, where the inequalities and extremes of climate seem to have been communicated to its institutions, there was nothing between the independent republics and the autocracy. In Spain, the slightest territorial disaffection, the fruit of partial conquests or insignificant victories, was an excuse for some upstart princeling, our instinctive tendencies being always monarchical and anything like absolute authority and Cæsarism, so odious that we never allowed it even in our most excellent kings; a dream of imperial power would almost have cost them the throne. In Russia, absolutism is in the air,--one sole master, one lord omnipotent, the image of God himself. Read the Muscovite code. The Czar is named therein _the autocrat whose power is unlimited_. See the catechism which is taught in the schools of Poland; it says that the subject owes to the Czar, not love or loyalty, but adoration. Hear the Russian hymn; amid its harmonies the same idea resounds. In all the common forms of salutation to the Czar we shall find something that excites in us a feeling of rebellion, something that represents us as unworthy to stand before him as one mortal before another. Paul I. said to a distinguished foreigner, "You must know that in Russia there is no person more important than the person to whom I speak and while I speak." A Czar who directs by means of _ukases_ not only the dress but even the words of the language which his subjects must use, and changes the track of a railroad by a stroke of his pen, frightens one even more than when he signs a sentence of proscription; for he reaches the high-water mark of authority when he interferes in these simple and unimportant matters, and demonstrates what one may call the micrography of despotism. If anything can excuse or even commend to our eyes this obedience carried to an absurdity, it is its paternal character. There are no offences between fathers and sons, and the Czar never can insult a subject. The serf calls him _thou_ and _Father_, and on seeing him pass he takes off his cap though the snow falls, crossing his hands over his breast with religious veneration. For him the Czar possesses every virtue, and is moved only by the highest purposes; he thinks him impeccable, sacred, almost immortal. If we abide by the judgment of those who see a symbol of the Russian character in the call of Rurik and the voluntary placing of the power in his hands, the autocracy will not seem a secular abuse or a violent tyranny, but rather an organic product of a soil and a race; and it will inspire the respect drawn forth by any spontaneous and genuine production. There exists in Russia a small school of thinkers on public affairs, important by reason of the weight they have had and still have upon public opinion. They are called Sclavophiles,--people enamoured of their ancient land, who affirm that the essence of Russian nationality is to be found in the customs and institutions of the laboring classes who are not contaminated by the artificial civilization imported from the corrupt West; who make a point of appearing on occasions in the national dress,--the red silk blouse and velvet jacket, the long beard and the clumsy boots. According to them, the only independent forces on which Russia can count are the people and the Czar,--the immense herd of peasants, and, at the top, the autocrat. And in fact the Russian empire, in spite of official hierarchies, is a rural state in which the sentiment of democratic equality predominates so entirely that the people, not content with having but yesterday taken the Czar's part against the rich and mighty Boyars, sustains him to-day against the revolution, loves him, and cannot conceive of intermediaries between him and his subjects, between lord and vassal, or, to put it still more truly, between father and son. And having once reduced the nobles, with the consent of the people, to the condition of inoffensive hangers-on of the court, many thinkers believe that the Czar need only lean upon the rude hand of the peasant to quell whatever political disaffection may arise. So illimitable is the imperial power, that it becomes impotent against itself if it would reduce itself by relegating any of its influence to a class, such as, for instance, the aristocracy. If turbulent magnates or sullen conspirators manage to get rid of the person of the Czar, the principle still remains inviolate. VI. The Agrarian Communes. At the right hand of the imperial power stands the second Russian national institution, the municipal commune known as the _mir_, which is arresting the attention of European statesmen and sociologists, since they have learned of its existence (thanks to the work of Baron Haxsthausen on the internal life of Russia). Who is not astonished at finding realized in the land of the despots a large number of the communist theories which are the terror of the middle classes in liberal countries, and various problems, of the kind we call formidable, there practically solved? And why should not a nation often called barbarous swell with pride at finding itself, suddenly and without noise or effort, safely beyond what in others threatens the extremity of social revolution? Therefore it happens that since the discovery of the _mir_, the Russians have one argument more, and not a weak one, against the corrupt civilization of the Occident. The European nations, they say, are running wildly toward anarchy, and in some, as England, the concentration of property in a few hands creates a proletariat a thousand times more unhappy than the Russian serf ever was, a hungry horde hostile to the State and to the wealthy classes. Russia evades this danger by means of the _mir_. In the Russian village the land belongs to the municipality, amongst whose members it is distributed periodically; each able-bodied individual receives what he needs, and is spared hunger and disgrace. Foreigners have not been slow to examine into the advantages of such an arrangement. Mackenzie Wallace has pronounced it to be truly constitutional, as the phrase is understood in his country; not meaning a sterile and delusive law, written upon much paper and enwrapped in formulas, but a traditional concept which came forth at the bidding of real and positive necessities. What an eloquent lesson for those who think they have improved upon the plan of the ages! History, scouting our thirst for progress, offers us again in the _mir_ the picture of the serpent biting his own tail. This institution, so much lauded by the astonished traveller and the meditative philosopher, is really a sociological fossil, remains of prehistoric times, preserved in Russia by reason of the suspension or slow development of the history of the race. Students of law have told me that in the ancient forms of Castilian realty, those of Santander, for example, there have been discovered traces of conditions analogous to the Russian _mir_. And when I have seen the peasants of my own province assembled in the church-porch after Mass, I have imagined I could see the remains of this Saturnian and patriarchal type of communist partition. Common possession of the land is a primitive idea as remote as the prehistoric ages; it belongs to the paleontology of social science, and in those countries where civilization early flourished, gave way before individual interest and the modern idea of property. "Happy age and blessed times were those," exclaimed Don Quixote, looking at a handful of acorns, "which the ancients called golden, and not because gold which in our iron age has such a value set on it, not because gold could be got without any trouble, but because those who lived in it were ignorant of those two words, _mine_ and _thine_! In that blessed age everything was in common; nobody needed to take any more trouble for his necessities than to stretch forth his hand and take from the great oak-trees the sweet and savory fruit so liberally offered!" Gone long ago for us is the time deplored by the ingenious knight, but it has reappeared there in the North, where, according to our information, it is still recent; for it is thought that the _mir_ was established about the sixteenth century. The character of the _mir_ is entirely democratic; the oldest peasant represents the executive power in the municipal assembly, but the authority resides in the assembly itself, which consists of all the heads of families, and convenes Sundays in the open air, in the public square or the church-porch. The assembly wields a sacred power which no one disputes. Next to the Czar the Russian peasant loves his _mir_, among whose members the land is in common, as also the lake, the mills, the canals, the flocks, the granary, the forest. It is all re-divided from time to time, in order to avoid exclusive appropriation. Half the cultivable land in the empire is subject to this system, and no capitalist or land-owner can disturb it by acquiring even an inch of municipal territory; the laborer is born invested with the right of possession as certainly as we are all entitled to a grave. In spite of a feeling of distrust and antipathy against communism, and of my own ignorance in these matters which precludes my judgment of them, I must confess to a certain agreement with the ardent apologists of the Russian agrarian municipality. Tikomirov says that in Russia individual and collective property-rights still quarrel, but that the latter has the upper hand; this seems strange, since the modern tendency is decidedly toward individualism, and it is hard to conceive of a return to patriarchal forms; but there is no reason to doubt the vitality of the _mir_ and its generation and growth in the heart of the fatherland, and this is certainly worthy of note, especially in a country like Russia, so much given to the imitation of foreign models. Mere existence and permanence is no _raison d'être_ for any institution, for many exist which are pernicious and abominable; but when an institution is found to be in harmony with the spirit of the people, it must have a true merit and value. It is said that the tendency to aggregate, either in agrarian municipalities or in trades guilds and corporations, is born in the blood and bred in the bone of the Sclavs, and that they carry out these associations wherever they go, by instinct, as the bee makes its cells always the same; and it is certainly true that as an ethnic force the communistic principle claims a right to develop itself in Russia. It is certain that the _mir_ fosters in the poor Russian village habits of autonomous administration and municipal liberty, and that in the shadow of this humble and primitive institution men have found a common home within the fatherland, no matter how scattered over its vast plains. "The heavens are very high, and the Czar is far off," says the Russian peasant sadly, when he is the victim of any injustice; his only refuge is the _mir_, which is always close at hand. The _mir_ acts also as a counterbalance to a centralized administration, which is an inevitable consequence of the conformation of Russian territory; and it creates an advantageous solidarity among the farmers, who are equal owners of the same heritages and subject to the same taxes. Since 1861 the rural governments, released from all seignorial obligations, elect their officers from among themselves, and the smaller municipal groups, still preserving each its own autonomy, meet together in one larger municipal body called _volost_, which corresponds to the better-known term _canton_. No institution could be more democratic: here the laboring man discusses his affairs _en famille_, without interference from other social classes; the _mir_ boasts of it, as also of the fact that it has never in its corporate existence known head or chief, even when its members were all serfs. In fine, the _mir_ holds its sessions without any presiding officer; rooted in the communist and equal-rights idea, it acknowledges no law of superiority; it votes by unanimous acclamation; the minority yields always to the general opinion, to oppose which would be thought base obstinacy. "Only God shall judge the _mir_" says the proverb; the word _mir_, say the etymological students and admirers of the institution, means, "world," "universe," "complete and perfect microcosm," which is sufficient unto itself and is governed by its own powers. To what does the _mir_ owe its vitality? To the fact that it did not originate in the mind of the Utopian or the ideologist, but was produced naturally by derivation from the family, from which type the whole Russian state organization springs. It should be understood, however, that the peasant family in Russia differs from our conception of the institution, recalling as it does, like all purely Russian institutions, the most ancient or prehistoric forms. The family, or to express it in the language of the best writers on the subject, _the great Russian family_, is an association of members submitted to the absolute authority of the eldest, generally the grandfather,--a fact personally interesting to me because of the surprising resemblance it discloses between Russia and the province of Gallicia, where I perceive traces of this family power in the _petrucios_, or elders. In this association everything is in common, and each individual works for all the others. To the head of the house is given a name which may be translated as administrator, major-domo, or director of works, but conveys no idea of relationship. The laws of inheritance and succession are understood in the same spirit, and very differently from our custom. When a house or an estate is to be settled, the degree of relationship among the heirs is not considered; the whole property is divided equally between the male adults, including natural or adopted sons if they have served in the family the same as legitimate sons, while the married daughter is considered as belonging to the family of her husband, and she and the son who has separated himself from the parent house are excluded from the succession, or rather from the final liquidation or settlement between the associates. Although there is a law of inheritance written in the Russian Code, it is a dead letter to a people opposed to the idea of individual property. Intimately connected with this communist manner of interpreting the rights of inheritance and succession are certain facts in Russian history. For a long time the sovereign authority was divided among the sons of the ruler; and as the Russian nobility rebelled against the establishment of differences founded upon priority in birth, entail and primogeniture took root with difficulty, in spite of the efforts made by the emperors to import Occidental forms of law. Their idea of succession is so characteristic that, like the Goths, they sometimes prefer the collateral to the immediate branch, and the brother instead of the son will mount the steps of the throne. It is important to note these radical differences, because a race which follows an original method in the matter of its laws has a great advantage in setting out upon genuine literary creations. But while the family, understood as a group or an association, offers many advantages from the agrarian point of view, its disadvantages are serious and considerable because it annuls individual liberty. It facilitates agricultural labors, it puts a certain portion of land at the service of each adult member, as well as tools, implements, fuel, and cattle; helps each to a maintenance; precludes hunger; avoids legal exactions (for the associated family cannot be taxed, just as the _mir_ cannot be deprived of its lands); but on the other hand it puts the individual, or rather the true family, the human pair, under an intolerable domestic tyranny. According to traditional usage, the authority of the head of the family was omnipotent: he ordered his house, as says an old proverb, like a Khan of the Crimea; his gray hairs were sacred, and he wielded the power of a tribal chieftain rather than of a head of a house. In our part of the world marriage emancipates; in Russia, it was the first link in a galling chain. The oppression lay heaviest upon the woman: popular songs recount the sorrows of the daughters-in-law subjected to the maltreatment of mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, or the victims of the vicious appetites of the chief, who in a literally Biblical spirit thought himself lord of all that dwelt beneath his roof. Truly those institutions which sometimes elicit our admiration for their patriarchal simplicity hide untold iniquities, and develop a tendency to the abuse of power which seems inherent in the human species. At first sight nothing could be more attractive than the great Russian family, nothing more useful than the rural communes; and nowadays, when we are applying the laws and technicism of physiology to the study of society, this primordial association would seem the cell from which the true organism of the State may be born; the family is a sort of lesser municipality, the municipality is a larger family, and the whole Russian people is an immense agglomeration, a great ant-hill whose head is the emperor. In the popular songs we see the Oriental idea of the nation expressed as the family, when the peasant calls the Czar _father_. But this primitive machinery can never prevail against the notion of individualism entertained among civilized peoples. Our way of understanding property, which the admirers of the Russian commune consider fundamentally vicious, is the only way compatible with the independence and dignity of work and the development of industries and arts. The Russian _mir_ may prevent the growth of the proletariat, but it is by putting mankind in bonds. It may be said that agrarian communism only differs from servitude in that the latter provides one master and the former many; and that though the laboring man theoretically considers himself a member of a co-operative agricultural society, he is in reality a slave, subject to collective responsibilities and obligations, by virtue of which he is tied to the soil the same as the vassals of our feudal epochs. Perhaps the new social conditions which are the fruit of the emancipation of the serfs, which struck at and violated the great associated family, will at last undermine the _mir_, unless the _mir_ learns some way to adapt itself to any political mutations. What is most important to the study of the historical development and the social ideas as shown in modern Russian literature, is to understand how by means of the great family and the agrarian municipality, communism and socialism run in the veins of the people of Russia, so that Leroy-Beaulieu could say with good reason, that if they are to be preserved from the pernicious effects of the Occidental proletariat it must be by inoculation, as vaccination exempts from small-pox. The socialist leaven may be fairly said to lie in the most important class in the Russian State,--important not alone by reason of numerical superiority, but because it is the depositary of the liveliest national energies and the custodian of the future: I mean the peasants. There are some who think that this _mitjik_, this _little man_ or _black man_, tiller of still blacker soil, holds the future destinies of Europe in his hands; and that when this great new Horde becomes conscious some day of its strength and homogeneity, it will rise, and in its concentrated might fall upon some portion of the globe, and there will be no defence or resistance possible. In the rest of Europe it is the cities, the urban element, which regulates the march of political events. Certainly Spain is not ignorant of this fact, since she has a vivid remembrance of civil wars in which the rustic element, representing tradition, was vanquished. In Russia, the cities have no proportionate influence, and that which demands the special attention of the governor or the revolutionist is the existence, needs, and thoughts of the innumerable peasant communities, who are the foundation and material of an empire justly termed rural. From this is derived a sort of cult, an apotheosis which is among the most curious to be found in Russian modern literature. Of the peasant, wrapped in badly cured sheepskins, and smelling like a beast; the humble and submissive peasant, yesterday laden with the chains of servitude; the dirty, cabbage-eating peasant, drunk with _wodka_, who beats his wife and trembles with fright at ghosts, at the Devil, and at thunder,--of this peasant, the charity of his friends and the poetic imagination of Russian writers has made a demi-god, an ideal. So great is the power of genius, that without detriment to the claims of truth, picturing him with accurate and even brutal realism (which we shall find native to the Russian novel), Russian authors have distilled from this peasant a poetic essence which we inhale involuntarily until we, aristocratic by instinct, disdainful of the rustic, given to ridicule the garlic-smelling herd, yield to its power. And not content with seeing in this peasant a brother, a neighbor, whom, according to the word of Christ, we ought to love and succor, Russian literature discovers in him a certain indefinable sublimity, a mysterious illumination which other social classes have not. Not merely because of the introduction of the picturesque element in the description of popular customs has it been said that Russian contemporary literature smells of the peasant, but far rather because it raises the peasant to the heights of human moral grandeur, marks in him every virtue, and presupposes him possessed of powers which he never puts forth. From Turguenief, fine poet as he is, to Chtchédrine, the biting satirist, all paint the peasant with loving touch, always find a ready excuse for his defects, and lend him rare qualities, without ever failing to show faithfully his true physiognomy. Corruption, effeminacy, and vice characterize the upper classes, particularly the employees of government, or any persons charged with public trusts; and to make these the more odious, they are attributed with a detestable hypocrisy made more hateful by apparent kindliness and culture. There is a humorous little novel by Chtchédrine (an author who merits especial mention) entitled "The Generals[1] and the _Mujik_," which represents two generals of the most ostentatious sort, transported to a desert island, unable either to get food or to get away, until they meet with a _mujik_, who performs all sorts of services for them, even to _making broth in the hollow of his hand_, and then, after making a raft, conveys them safely to St. Petersburg; whereupon these knavish generals, after recovering back pay, send to their deliverer a glass of whiskey and a sum amounting to about three cents. But this bitter allegory is a mild one compared with the mystical apotheosis of the _mujik_ as conceived by Tolstoï. In one of his works, "War and Peace," the hero, after seeking vainly by every imaginable means to understand all human wisdom and divine revelation, finds at last the sum of it in a common soldier, imperturbable and dull of soul, and poor in spirit, a prisoner of the French, who endures with calm resignation ill treatment and death without once entertaining the idea of taking the life of his foreign captors. This poor fellow, who, owing to his rude, uncouth mode of life, suffers persecution by other importunate lesser enemies which I forbear to name, is the one to teach Pierre Besukof the alpha and omega of all philosophy, wherein he is wise by intuition, and, in virtue of his condition as the peasant, fatalistic and docile. I have had the good fortune to see with my own eyes this idol of Russian literature, and to satisfy a part of my curiosity concerning some features of Holy Russia. Twenty or thirty peasants from Smolensk who had been bitten by a rabid wolf were sent to Paris to be treated by M. Pasteur. In company with some Russian friends I went to a small hotel, mounted to the fourth floor, and entered a narrow sleeping apartment. The air being breathed by ten or twelve human beings was scarcely endurable, and the fumes of carbolic acid failed to purify it; but while my companions were talking with their compatriots, and a Russian young-lady medical student dressed their wounds, I studied to my heart's content these men from a distant land. I frankly confess that they made a profound impression upon me which I can only describe by saying that they seemed to me like Biblical personages. It gave me a certain pleasure to see in them the marks of an ancient people, rude and rough in outward appearance, but with something majestic and monumental about them, and yet with a suggestion of latent juvenility, the grave and religious air of dreamer or seer, different from really Oriental peoples. Their features, as well as their limbs (which bearing the marks of the wild beast's teeth they held out to be washed and dressed with tranquil resignation), were large and mighty like a tree. One old man took my attention particularly, because he presented a type of the patriarchs of old, and might have served the painter as a model for Abraham or Job,--a wide skull bald at the top, fringed about with yellowish white hair like a halo; a long beard streaked with white also; well-cut features, frontal development very prominent, his eyes half hidden beneath bushy eyebrows. The arm which he uncovered was like an old tree-trunk, rough and knotty, the thick sinuous network of veins reminding one of the roots; his enormous hands, wrinkled and horny, bespoke a life of toil, of incessant activity, of daily strife with the energies of Mother Nature. I heard with delight, though without understanding a word, their guttural speech, musical and harmonious withal, and I needed not to heat my imagination overmuch to see in those poor peasants the realization of the great novelists' descriptions, and an expression of patience and sadness which raised them above vulgarity and coarseness. The sadness may have been the result of their unhappy situation; nevertheless it seemed sweet and poetic. The attraction which _the people_ exercises upon refined and cultivated minds is not surprising. Who has not sometimes experienced with terrible keenness what may be called the æsthetic effect of collectivity? A regiment forming, the crew of a ship about to weigh anchor, a procession, an angry mob,--these have something about them that is epic and sublime; so any peasant, if we see in him an epitome of race or class, with his historic consequence and his unconscious majesty, may and ought to interest us. The _payo_ of Avila who passes me indifferently in the street; the beggar in Burgos who asks an alms with courteous dignity, wrapped in his tattered clothes as though they were garments of costly cloth; the Gallician lad who guides his yoke of oxen and creaking cart,--these not only stir in my soul a sentiment of patriotism, but they have for me an æsthetic charm which I never feel in the presence of a dress-coat and a stiff hat. Perhaps this effect depends rather on the spectator, and it may be our fancy that produces it; for, as regards the Russian peasant, those who know him well say that he is by nature practical and positive, and not at all inclined to the romantic and sentimental. The Sclav race is a rich poetic wellspring, but it depends upon what one means by poetry. For example, in love matters, the Russian peasant is docile and prosaic to the last degree. The hardy rustic is supposed to need two indispensable accessories for his work,--a woman and a horse; the latter is procured for him by the head or _old man_ of the house, the former by the _old woman_; the wedding is nothing more than the matriculation of the farmer; the pair is incorporated with the great family, the agricultural commune, and that is the end of the idyl. Amorous and gallant conduct among peasants would be little fitting, given the low estimation in which women are held. Although the Russian peasant considers the woman independent, subject neither to father nor husband, invested with equal rights with men; and although the widow or the unmarried woman who is head of the house takes part in the deliberations of the _mir_ and may even exercise in it the powers of a mayor (and in order to preserve this independence many peasant-women remain unmarried), this consideration is purely a social one, and individually the woman has no rights whatever. A song of the people says that seven women together have not so much as one soul, rather none at all, for their soul is smoke. The theory of marriage relations is that the husband ought to love his wife as he does his own soul, to measure and treasure her as he does his sheepskin coat: the rod sanctions the contract. In some provinces of Finnish or Tartar origin the bride is still bought and sold like a head of cattle; it is sometimes the custom still to steal her, or to feign a rape, symbolizing indeed the idea of woman as a slave and the booty of war. So rigorous is the matrimonial yoke, that parricides are numerous, and the jury, allowing attenuating circumstances, generally pardons them. Tikomirov, who, though a radical, is a wise and sensible man, says, that far from considering the masses of the people as models worthy of imitation, he finds them steeped in absolute ignorance, the victims of every abuse and of administrative immorality; deprived for many centuries of intercourse with civilized nations, they have not outgrown the infantile period, they are superstitious, idolatrous, and pagan, as shown by their legends and popular songs. They believe blindly in witchcraft, to the extent that to discredit a political party with them one has only to insinuate that it is given to the use of sorcery and the black arts. The peasant has also an unconquerable propensity to stealing, lying, servility, and drunkenness. Wherefore, then, is he judged superior to the other classes of society? In spite of the puerile humility to which the Russian peasant is predisposed by long years of subjection, he yet obeys a democratic impulse toward equality, which servitude has not obliterated; the Russian does not understand the English peasant's respect for the _gentleman_, nor the French reverence for the _chevalier_ well-dressed and decorated. When the government of Poland ordered certain Cossack executions of the nobility, these children of the steppes asked one another, "Brother, has the shadow of my body increased?" Taught to govern himself, thanks to the municipal regimen, the Russian peasant manifests in a high degree the sentiment of human equality, an idea both Christian and democratic, rather more deeply rooted in those countries governed by absolute monarchy and municipal liberty, than in those of parliamentary institutions. The Spaniard says, "None lower than the King;" the Russian says the same with respect to the Czar. Primitive and credulous, a philosopher in his way, the dweller on the Russian steppes wields a dynamic force displayed in history by collectivities, be the moral value of the individual what it may. In nations like Russia, in which the upper classes are educated abroad, and are, like water, reflectors and nothing more, the originality, the poetry, the epic element, is always with the masses of the people, which comes out strong and beautiful in supreme moments, a faithful custodian of the national life, as for example when the butcher Minine saved his country from the yoke of Sweden, or when, before the French invasion of 1812, they organized bands of guerillas, or set fire to Moscow. Hence in Russia, as in France prior to the Revolution, many thinkers endeavor to revive the antiquated theory of the Genevan philosopher, and proclaim the superiority of the natural man, by contact with whom society, infected with Occidental senility, must be regenerated. Discouraged by the incompatibility between the imported European progress and the national tradition, unable to still the political strife of a country where pessimist solutions are most natural and weighty, their patriotism now uplifts, now shatters their hopes, even in the case of those who disclaim and condemn individual patriotism, such as Count Tolstoï; and then ensues the apotheosis of the past, the veneration of national heroes and of the people. "The people is great," says Turguenief in his novel "Smoke;" "we are mere ragamuffins." And so _the people_, which still bears traces of the marks of servitude, has been converted into a mysterious divinity, the inspiration of enthusiastic canticles. [1] Voguié explains this title of "General" to be both in the civil and military order with the qualification of "Excellency." Without living in Russia one can hardly understand the prestige attached to this title, or the facilities it gives everywhere for everything. To attain this dignity is the supreme ambition of all the servants of the State. The common salutation by way of pleasantry among friends is this line from the comedy of Griboiëdof, which has become a proverb: "I wish you health and the tchin of a General."--TR. VII. Social Classes in Russia. Properly speaking, there are no social classes in Russia, a phenomenon which explains to some extent the political life and internal constitution; there is no co-ordinate proportion between the rural and the urban element, and at first sight one sees in this vast empire only the innumerable mass of peasants, just as on the map one sees only a wide and monotonous plain. Although it is true that a rural and commercial aristocracy did arise and flourish in old Moscow in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the era of invasions, yet the passions of the wars that followed gave it the death-blow. The middle classes in the rich and independent republics lost their wealth and influence, and the people, being unable of themselves to reorganize the State, sustained the princes, who soon became autocrats, ready at the first chance to subdue the nobles and unite the disintegrated and war-worn nation. With the sub-division into independent principalities and the institution of democratic municipalities the importance of the cities decreased, and the privileged classes were at an end. The middle class is the least important. In the same districts where formerly it was most powerful it has been dissolved by the continuous infusion of the peasant element, owing to the curious custom of emigration, which is spontaneous with this nomadic and colonizing people. Many farmers, although enrolled in the rural villages, spend a large part of the year in the city, filling some office, and forming a hybrid class between the rural and artisan classes, thus sterilizing the natural instincts of the laboring proletariat by the enervation of city life. The emperors were not blind to the disproportion between the civic and rural elements, and have endeavored to remedy it. The industrial and commercial population fled from the cities to escape the taxes; therefore they promulgated laws prohibiting emigration and the renunciation of civic rights, under severe penalties. Yet with all these the cities have taken but a second place in Russian history. Western annals are full of sieges, defences, and mutinies of cities; in Russia we hear only of the insurrection of wandering tribes or hordes of peasants. Russian cities exist and live only at the mandate or protection of the emperor. Every one knows what extraordinary means were taken by Peter the Great to build St. Petersburg upon the swamps along the Neva; in twenty-three years that remarkable woman called the Semiramis of the North founded no less than two hundred and sixteen cities, determined to create a mesocratic element, to the lack of which she attributed the ignorance and misery of her empire. Whenever we see any rapid advancement in Russia we may be sure it is the work of autocracy, a beneficence of despotism (that word so shocking to our ears). It was despotism which created the modern capital opposite the old Byzantine, legendary, retrogressive town,--the new so different from the old, so full of the revolutionary spirit, its streets undermined by conspirators, its pavements red with the blood of a murdered Czar. These cities, colleges, schools, universities, theatres, founded by imperial and autocratic hands, were the cradle of the political unrest that rebels against their power; were there no cities, there would be no revolutions in Russia. Although they do not harbor crowds of famishing authors like those of London and Paris, who lie in wait for the day of sack and ruin, yet they are full of a strange element composed of people of divers extraction and condition, and of small intellect, but who call themselves emphatically _the intelligence of Russia_. I have felt compelled to render justice to the good will of the autocrats; and to be equally just I must say that whatever has advanced culture in Russia has proceeded from the nobility, and this without detriment to the fact that the larger energies lie with the masses of the people. The enlightenment and thirst for progress manifested by the nobility is everywhere apparent in Russian history. They are descended from the retinues of the early Muscovite Czars, to whom were given wealth and lands on condition of military service, and they are therefore in their origin unlike any other European nobility; they have known nothing of feudalism, nor the Germanic symbolism of blazons, arms, titles, and privileges, pride of race and notions of caste: these have had no influence over them. The Boyars, who are the remnants of the ancient territorial aristocracy, on losing their sovereign rights, rallied round the Czar in the quality of court councillors, and received gold and treasure in abundance, but never the social importance of the Spanish grandee or the French baron. Hence the Russian aristocracy was an instrument of power, but without class interests, replenished continually by the infusion of elements from other social classes, for no barrier prevented the peasant from becoming a merchant and the merchant from becoming a noble, if the fates were kind. There are legally two classes of aristocracy in Russia,--the transmissible, or hereditary, and the personal, which is not hereditary. If the latter surprise us for a moment, it soon strikes us with favor, since we all acknowledge to an occasional or frequent protest against the idea of hereditary nobility, as when we lament that men of glorious renown are represented by unworthy or insignificant descendants. In Russia, Krilof, the Æsop of Moscow, as he is called, put this protest into words in the fable of the peasant who was leading a flock of geese to the city to sell. The geese complained of the unkindness with which they were treated, adding that they were entitled to respect as being the descendants of the famous birds that saved the Capitol, and to whom Rome had dedicated a feast. "And what great thing have _you_ done?" asked the peasant. "We? Oh, nothing." "Then to the oven!" he replied. The only title of purely national origin in Russia is that of prince;[1] all others are of recent importation from Europe; in the family of the prince, as in that of the humblest _mujik_, the sons are equals in rights and honors, and the fortune of the father, as well as his title, descends equally to all. Feudalism, the basis of nobility as a class, never existed in Russia: according to Sclavophiles, because Russia never suffered conquest in those ancient times; according to positivist historians, by reason of geographical structure which did not favor seignorial castles and bounded domains, or any other of those appurtenances of feudalism dear to romance and poetry, and really necessary to its existence,--the moated wall, the mole overhanging some rocky precipice washed by an angry torrent, and below at its foot, like a hen-roost beneath a vulture's nest, the clustered huts of the vassals. But we have seen that the Russian nobility acknowledges no law of superiority; like the people, they hold the idea of divisible and common property. Hence this aristocracy, less haughty than that of Europe, ruled by imperial power, subject until the time of Peter III. to insulting punishment by whip or rod, and which, at the caprice of the Czar, might at any time be degraded to the quality of buffoons for any neglect of a code of honor imposed by the traditions of their race,--never drew apart from the life of the nation, and, on the contrary, was always foremost in intellectual matters. Russian literature proves this, for it is the work of the Russian nobility mainly, and the ardent sympathy for the people displayed in it is another confirmation. Tolstoï, a noble, feels an irrepressible tenderness, a physical attraction toward the peasant; Turguenief, a noble and a rich man, in his early years consecrated himself by a sort of vow to the abolition of servitude. The same lack of class prejudices has made the Russian nobility a quick soil for the repeated ingrafting of foreign culture according to the fancy of the emperors. Catherine II. found little difficulty in modelling her court after that of Versailles; but the same aristocracy that powdered and perfumed itself at her behest adopted more important reforms to a degree that caused Count Rostopchine to exclaim, "I can understand the French citizen's lending a hand in the revolution to acquire his rights, but I cannot understand the Russian's doing the same to lose his." They are so accustomed to holding the first place in intellectual matters, that no privilege seems comparable to that of standing in the vanguard of advanced thought. They had been urged to frequent the lyceums and debating societies, to take up serious studies and scientific education by the word of rulers who were enlightened, and friends to progress (as were many of them), when all at once sciences and studies, books and the press, began to be suspected, the censorship was established, and the conspiracy of December was the signal for the rupture between authority and the liberal thought of the country. But the nobles who had tasted of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil did not resign themselves easily to the limited horizon offered by the School of Pages or the antechamber of the palace; their hand was upon the helm, and rather than let it go they generously immolated their material interests and social importance. The aristocracy is everywhere else the support of the throne, but in Russia it is a destroying element; and while the people remains attached to the autocrat, the nobles learn in the very schools founded by the emperors to pass judgment upon the supreme authority and to criticise the sovereign. Nicholas I. did not fail to realize that these establishments of learning were focuses of revolutionary ardor, and he systematically reduced the number of students and put limits to scientific education. It follows that the most reactionary class, or the most unstable class in Russia, the class painted in darkest colors by the novelists and used as a target for their shafts by the satirists, is not the noble but the bureaucratic, the office-holders, the members of the _tchin_ (an institution Asiatic in form, comparable perhaps to a Chinese mandarinate). Peter the Great, in his zeal to set everything in order, drew up the famous categories wherein the Russian official microcosm is divided into a double series of fourteen grades each, from ecclesiastical dignitaries to the military. This Asiatic sort of machinery (though conceived by the great imitator of the West) became generally abhorred, and excited a national antipathy, less perhaps for its hollow formalism than on account of the proverbial immorality of the officers catalogued in it. Mercenariness, pride, routine, and indolence are the capital sins of the Russian office-holder, and the first has so strong a hold upon him that the people say, "To make yourself understood by him you must talk of rubles;" adding that in Russia everybody robs but Christ, who cannot because his hands are nailed down. Corruption is general; it mounts upward like a turbid wave from the humblest clerk to the archduke, generalissimo, or admiral. It is a tremendous ulcer, that can only be cured by a cautery of literary satire, the avenging muse of Gogol, and the dictatorial initiative of the Czars. In a country governed by parliamentary institutions it would be still more difficult to apply a remedy. The contrast is notable between the odium inspired by the bureaucracy and the sympathy that greets the municipal institutions,--not only those of a patriarchal character such as the _mir_, but those too of a more modern origin. Among the latter may be mentioned the _zemstvo_, or territorial assembly, analogous to our provincial deputations, but of more liberal stripe, and entirely decentralized. In this all classes are represented, and not, as in the _mir_, the peasants merely. The form of this local parliament is extremely democratic; the cities, the peasants, and the property-holders elect separate representatives, and the assembly devotes itself to the consideration of plain but interesting practical questions of hygiene, salubrity, safety, and public instruction. This offers another opportunity to the nobility, for this body engages itself particularly with the well-being and progress of the poorer classes, in providing physicians for the villages in place of the ignorant herb-doctors, in having the _mujiks_ taught to read, and in guarding their poor wooden houses from fire. While the Russian nobility has never slept, the Russian clergy, on the contrary, has been permanently wrapped in lethargy. The rôle accorded to the Greek Church is dull and depressing, a petrified image, fixed and archaic as the _icons_, or sacred pictures, which still copy the coloring and design of the Byzantine epoch. Ever since it was rent by schism from the parent trunk of Catholicism, life has died in its roots and the sap has frozen in its veins. Since Peter the Great abolished the Patriarchy, the ecclesiastical authority resides in a Synod composed of prelates elected by the government. According to the ecclesiastical statutes, the emperor is Head of the church, supreme spiritual chief; and though there has been promulgated no dogma of his infallibility, it amounts to the same in effect, for he may bind and loose at will. At the Czar's command the church anathematizes, as when for example to-day the _popes_ are ordered to preach against the growing desire for partition of land, against socialism, and against the political enemies of the government; the priest is given a model sermon after which he must pattern his own; and such is his humiliation that sometimes he is obliged by order of the Synod to send information, obtained through his office as confessor, to the police, thus revealing the secrets of confiding souls. What a loss of self-respect must follow such a proceeding! Is it a marvel that some independent schismatics called _raskolniks_, revivalists and followers of ancient rites and truths, should thrive upon the decadence of the official clergy, who are subjected to such insulting servitude and must give to Cæsar what belongs to God? In view of these facts it is in vain to boast of spiritual independence and say that the Greek church knows no head but Christ. The government makes use of the clergy as of one arm more, which, however, is now almost powerless through corruption. The Oriental church has no conception of the noble devotion which has honored Catholicism in the lives of Saint Thomas of Canterbury and Cardinal Cisneros. The Russian clergy is divided into _black_ and _white_, or regular and secular; the former, powerful and rich, rule in ecclesiastical administration; the latter vegetate in the small villages, ill paid and needy, using their wits to live at the expense of their parishioners, and to wheedle them out of a dozen eggs or a handful of meal. Is it strange that the parishioner respects them but little? Is it strange that the _pope_ lives in gross pride or scandalous immorality, and that we read of his stealing money from under the pillow of a dying man, of one who baptized a dog, of another who was ducked in a frozen pond by his _barino_, or landlord, for the amusement of his guests? It is true that a few occasional facts prove nothing against a class, and that malice will produce from any source hurtful anecdotes and more or less profane details touching sacred things; but to my mind, that which tells most strongly against the Russian clergy is its inanity, its early intellectual death, which shut it out completely from scientific reflection, controversy, and apology, and therefore from all philosophy,--realms in which the Catholic clergy has excelled. Like a stripped and lifeless trunk the Oriental church produces no theologians, thinkers, or _savants_. There are none to elaborate, define, and ramify her dogmas; the human mind in her sounds no depths of mystery. If there are no conflicts between religion and science in Russia, it is because the Muscovite church weighs not a shadow with the free-thinkers. Certainly the adherents and members of the earlier church bear away the palm for culture and spiritual independence. At the close of the seventeenth century, after the struggles with Sweden and Poland, the schismatic church aroused the national conscience, and satisfied, to a certain extent, the moral needs of a race naturally religious by temperament It began to discuss liturgical minutiæ, and persecuted delinquents so fiercely that it infused all dissenters with a spirit of protest against an authority which was disposed to treat them like bandits or wild beasts. Such persecution demonstrates the fact that not only ecclesiastical but secular power is irritated by heterodoxy. In Russia, whose slumbering church is unmoved even by a thunder-bolt, an instinct of orderliness led the less devout of the emperors against the schismatics. To-day there are from twelve to fifteen millions of schismatics and sects; and many among them are given to the coarsest superstitions, practise obscene and cruel rites, worship the Devil, and mutilate themselves in their insane fervors. Probably Russia is the only country in the civilized world to-day where superstition, quietism, and mysticism, without law or limit, grow like poisonous trees; and in my work on Saint Francis of Assisi I have remarked how the communist heresies of the Middle Ages have survived there in the North. Some authors affirm that the clergy shut their eyes and open their hands to receive hush-money for their tolerance of heterodoxy. But let us not be too ready always to believe the worst. Only lately there fell into my hands an article written by that much respected author, Melchior de Voguié, who assures us that he has observed signs of regeneration in many Russian parishes. From this review of social classes in Russia it may be deduced that the peasant masses are the repository of national energies, while the nobility has until now displayed the most apparent activity. The proof of this is to be found in the consideration of a memorable historical event,--the greatest perhaps that the present century has known,--the emancipation of the serfs. [1] "The term translated 'prince' perhaps needs some explanation. A Russian prince may be a bootblack or a ferryman. The word _kniaz_ denotes a descendant of any of the hundreds of petty rulers, who before the time of the unification of Russia held the land. They all claim descent from the semi-mythical Rurik; and as every son of a _kniaz_ bears the title, it may be easily imagined how numerous they are. The term 'prince,' therefore, is really a too high-sounding title to represent it."--Nathan Haskell Dole. VIII. Russian Serfdom. Russia boasts of never having known that black stain upon ancient civilizations, slavery; but the pretension, notwithstanding many allegations thereto in her own chronicles, is refuted by Herodotus, who speaks of the inhuman treatment inflicted by the Scythians on their slaves, even putting out their eyes that they might better perform certain tasks; and the same historian refers to the treachery of the slaves to their masters in raping the women while they were at war with the Medes, and to the insurrection of these slaves which was put down by the Scythians by means of the whip alone,--the whip being in truth a characteristic weapon of a country accustomed to servitude. Herodotus does say in another place that "among the Scythians the king's servants are free youths well-born, for it is not the custom in Scythia to buy slaves;" from which it may be inferred that the slaves were prisoners of war. Howbeit, Russian authors insist that in their country serfs were never slaves, and serfdom was rather an abuse of the power of the nobility and the government than an historic natural result. To my mind this is not so; and I must say that I think servitude had an actual beginning, and that there was a cause for it. The Muscovite empire was but sparsely populated, and the population was by temperament adventurous, nomadic, restless, and expansive. We have observed that the limitless plains of Russia offer no climatic antagonisms, for the reason that there are no climatic boundaries; but it was not merely the love of native province that was lacking in the Russian, but the attachment to the paternal roof and to the home village. It is said that the origin of this sentiment is embedded in rock; where dwellings are built of wood and burn every seven years on an average, there is no such thing as the paternal roof, there is no such thing as home. With his hatchet in his belt the Russian peasant will build another house wherever a new horizon allures him. But if the scanty rural population scatters itself over the steppes, it will be lost in it as the sand drinks in the rain, and the earth will remain unploughed and waste; there will be nothing to tax, and nobody to do military service. Therefore, about the end of the sixteenth century, when all the rest of Europe was beginning to feel the stirrings of political liberty and the breath of the Renaissance, the Regent, Boris Godonof, riveted the chains of slavery upon the wrists of many millions of human beings in Russia. It is very true that Russian servitude does not mean the subjection of man to man, but to the soil; for the decree of Godonof converted the peasant into a slave merely by abrogating the traditional right of the "black man" to change his living-place on Saint George's day. The peasant perceived no other change in his condition than that of finding himself fastened, chained, bound to the soil. The Russian word which we translate "serf" means "consolidated," "adherent." It is easy to see the historical transition from the free state to that of servitude. The military and political organization of the Russian State in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries hedged in the peasant's liberty of action, and his situation began to resemble that of the Roman _colonus_, or husbandman, who was neither "bond nor free." When the nation was constituted upon firmer bases, it seemed indispensable to fix every man's limitation, to range the population in classes, and to lay upon them obligations consistent with the needs of the empire. These bonds were imposed just as the other peoples of Europe were breaking away from theirs. Servitude, or serfdom, did not succeed throughout the empire, however. Siberia and the independent Cossacks of the South rejected it; only passive consent could sanction a condition that was not the fruit of conquest nor had as an excuse the right of the strongest. Even in the rest of Russia the peasant never was entirely submissive, never willingly bent his neck to the yoke, and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed bitter and sanguinary uprisings of the serfs, who were prompt to follow the first impostor who pronounced words of promise; and, strange to say, what was most galling was his entail upon the land rather than the deprivation of his own liberty. He imagined that the lord of the whole earth was the Czar, that by his favor it was temporarily in possession of the nobles, but that in truth and justice it belonged to him who tilled it. Pugatchef, the pretender to the title of Peter III., in order to rally to his standard an innumerable host of peasants, called himself the rural emperor, and declared that no sooner should he gain the throne of his ancestors than he would shower treasure upon the nobles and restore the land to the tillers of it. Those who forged the fetters of serfdom had little faith in the stability of it, however. And although the abuses arising out of it were screened and tacitly consented to,--and never more so than during the reign of the humane philosopher, friend, and correspondent of Voltaire, the Empress Catherine II.,--yet law and custom forever refused to sanction them. Russian serfdom assumed rather a patriarchal character, and this softened its harshness. It was considered iniquitous to alienate the serfs, and it was only lawful in case of parting with the land whereon those serfs labored; in this way was preserved the thin line of demarcation between agrarian servitude and slavery. There were, however, serfs in worse condition, true helots, namely, the domestic servants, who were at the mercy of the master's caprice, like the fowls in his poultry-yard. Each proprietor maintained a numerous household below stairs, useless and idle as a rule, whose children he brought up and had instructed in certain ways in order to hire them out or sell them by and by. The players in the theatres were generally recruited from this class, and until Alexander I. prohibited such shameless traffic, it was not uncommon to see announced in the papers the sale of a coachman beside that of a Holstein cow. But like every other institution which violates and offends human conscience, Russian serfdom could not exist forever, in spite of some political and social advantages to the empire. Certain Russian writers affirm that the assassination of masters and proprietors was of frequent occurrence in the days of serfdom, and that even now the peasant is disposed to quarrels and acts of violence against the nobles. Yet, on the whole, I gather from my reading on the subject that the relations in general between the serf and the master were, on the one side, humble, reverent, and filial; on the other, kind, gentle, and protecting. The important question for the peasant is that of the practical ownership of the land. It is not his freedom but his agrarian rights that have been restored to him; and this must be borne in mind in order to understand why the recent emancipation has not succeeded in pacifying the public mind and bringing about a new and happy Russia. Given the same problem to the peasant and the man of mind, it will be safe to say that they will solve it in very different ways, if not in ways diametrically opposed. The peasant will be guided by the positive and concrete aspect of the matter; the man of mind by the speculative and ideal. The peasant calculates the influence of atmospheric phenomena upon his crops, while the other observes the beauty of the sunset or the tranquillity of the night. In social questions the peasant demands immediate utility, no matter how small it may be, while the other demands the application of principles and the triumph of ideas. Under the care of a master the Russian serf enjoyed a certain material welfare, and if he fell to the lot of a good master--and Russian masters have the reputation of being in general excellent--his situation was not only tolerable but advantageous. On the other hand, the intelligent could not put up with the monstrous and iniquitous fact of human liberty being submitted to the arbitrary rule of a master who could apply the lash at will, sell men like cattle, and dispose as he would of bodies and souls. Where this exists, since Christ came into the world, either there is no knowledge, or the ignominy must be stamped out. We all know that celebrated story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the famous Abolitionist novel by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. There were also novelists in Russia who set themselves to plead for the emancipation of the serfs. But there is a difference between them and the North American authoress, in that the Russians, in order to achieve their object, had no need to exaggerate the reality, to paint sensitive slaves and children that die of pity, but, with an artistic instinct, they appealed to æsthetic truth to obtain human justice. "Dead Souls," by Gogol, or one of the poetical and earnest _brochures_ of Turguenief, awakens a more stirring and permanent indignation than the sentimental allegory of Mrs. Stowe; and neither Gogol nor Turguenief misrepresented the serf or defamed the master, but rather they present to us both as they were in life, scorning recourse to bad taste for the sake of capturing tender hearts. The noblest sentiments of the soul, divine compassion, equity, righteous vengeance, the generous pity that moves to sacrifice, rise to the inspired voice of great writers; we see the abuse, we feel it, it hurts us, it oppresses us, and by a spontaneous impulse we desire the good and abhor the evil. This enviable privilege has been granted to the Russian novelists; had they no greater glory, this would suffice to save them from oblivion. The Abolitionist propaganda subtly and surely spread through the intelligent classes, created an opinion, communicated itself naturally to the press in as far as the censor permitted, and little by little the murmur grew in volume, like that raised against the administrative corruption after the Crimean War. And it is but just to add that the Czars were never behind in this national movement. Had it not been for their omnipotent initiative, who knows if even now slavery would not stain the face of Europe? There is reason to believe it when one sees the obstacles that hinder other reforms in Russia in which the autocrat takes no part. Doubtless the mind of the emperor was influenced by the words of Alexander II., in 1856, to the Muscovite nobles: "It is better to abolish serfdom by decrees from above than to wait for it to be destroyed by an impulse from below." A purely human motive; yet in every generous act there may be a little egotistical leaven. Let us not judge the unfortunate Emancipator too severely. The Crimean War and its grave internal consequences aided to undermine the infamous institution of serfdom, at the same time that it disclosed the hidden cancer of the administration, the misgovernment and ruin of the nation. With the ill success of the campaign, Russia clearly saw the need for self-examination and reorganization. Among the many and pressing questions presented to her, the most urgent was that of the serfs, and the impossibility of re-forming a prosperous State, modern and healthy, while this taint existed within her. Alexander II., whose variability and weakness are no bar to his claim of the honored title of the Liberator, exhorted the aristocracy to consummate this great work, and (a self-abnegation worthy of all praise, and which only a blind political passion can deny them) the nobles coincided and co-operated with him with perfect good faith, and even with the electrical enthusiasm characteristic of the Sclavic race. One cannot cease to extol this noble act, which, taken as a whole, is sublime, although, being the work of large numbers, it may be overloaded with details and incidents in which the interest flags. It may be easy to preach a reform whose aims do not hurt our pride, shatter our fortunes, alter our way of living, or conflict with the ideas inculcated upon us in childhood by our parents; but to do this to one's own detriment deserves especial recognition. The nobility on this occasion only put into practice certain theories which had stirred in their hearts of old. The first great Russian poet, Prince Kantemire, wrote in 1738, in his satires, that Adam did not beget nobles, nor did Noah save in the ark any but his equals,--humble husbandmen, famous only for their virtues. To my mind the best praise to the Russian nobility is for having offered less hindrance to the emancipation of the serfs than the North American democracy to the liberation of the slaves; and I solicit especial applause for this self-sacrificing, redeeming aristocracy. The fruits of the emancipation were not what desire promised. The peasants, from their positivist point of view, set little value on liberty itself, and scarcely understood it. "We are yours," they were accustomed to say to their masters; "but the soil is ours." When it became known that they must go on paying even for the goods of the community, they rebelled; they declared that emancipation was a farce, a lie, and that true emancipation ought to abolish rent and distribute the land in equal parts. Did not the proclamation of the Czar read that they were free? Well, freedom, in their language, meant emancipation from labor, and the possession of the land. One _mir_ even sent a deputation to the governor, announcing that as he had been a good master he would still be allowed the use and profit of his house and farm. The peasant believed himself free from all obligation, and even refused to work until the government forced him to do so; and the result was that the lash and the rod were never so frequently laid across Russian shoulders as in the first three years of emancipation and liberty. What cared they--"the little black men"--for the dignity of the freeman or the rights of citizenship? That which laid strongest hold of their primitive imagination was the desire to possess the whole land,--the old dream of what they called the _black partition_, the national Utopia. One Russian revolutionary journal adopted the name of "Land and Liberty," a magic motto to a peasant country, giving the former the first place, or at least making the two synonymous. The Russian people ask no political rights, but rather the land which is watered by the sweat of their brow; and if some day the anarchists--the agitators who go from village to village propagating their sanguinary doctrines--succeed in awakening and stirring this Colossus to action, it will be by touching this tender spot and alluring by the promise of this traditional dream. The old serf lives in hopes of a Messiah, be he emperor or conspirator, who shall deliver the earth into his hands; and at times the vehemence of this insatiable desire brings forth popular prophets, who announce that the millennium is at hand, and that by the will of Heaven the land is to be divided among the cultivators thereof. From his great love to the autocrat the peasant believes that _he_ also desires this distribution, but being hampered by his counsellors and menaced by his courtiers, he cannot authorize it yet. "For," says the peasant, "the land never belonged to the lords, but first to the sovereign and then to the _mir_." The idea of individual proprietorship is so repugnant to this people that they say that even death is beautiful shared in common. All the schismatic sects in Russia preach community of possessions. Some among them live better than the orthodox Greeks; some are voluntarily consecrated to absolute poverty, such as characterized the early orders of mendicants, and literally give their cloak to him who asks; but both the more temperate and the fanatics agree in the faith of the general and indisputable right of man to possess the land he cultivates. With society as with the individual, after great effort comes prostration, after a sudden change, inevitable uneasiness. So with Russian emancipation. Although in some localities the condition of the peasants was ameliorated, in others their misery and retrogression seemed only to increase, and led them to pine for the old bonds. The abuse, arbitrariness, and cruelty which are cited, and which shock the nerves of Westerners, caused no alarm to the Russian peasant, who was well used to baring his back in payment for any delinquency. The worst extent to which the master allowed his anger to spend itself was an unlimited number of stripes; and this very punishment, which to-day no master would inflict, and which the law expressly forbids, is still frequently imposed by the peasant tribunals of the _volost_ or _canton_; their confidence in its efficacy is well grounded, and it is well authorized by custom and experience. What the peasant fears and hates most is not the rod or the whip, but the rent-collector, the tax-gatherer, the burden of the taxes themselves, and hunger. What must be the æsthetic and political determination of this race, which prefers the possession of the soil to the liberty of the individual? In literature, toward a plain and candid realism; in form of government, a communist absolutism. The abstract constitutional idea, which, in spite of its Anglo-Saxon origin, meets perfectly the ideal entertained by Latin minds, has no charm for the Sclav. Yet at the same time the Russian combines, with his practical and concrete notions of life and his preponderating sense of realism, a dreamy and childlike imagination, which acts upon him like a dangerous dose of opium. In the next essay I propose to show how there has grown up within this patient and submissive rural people, and has finally burst forth, that most terrible of revolutionary volcanoes, nihilism. Book II. RUSSIAN NIHILISM AND ITS LITERATURE. I. The Word "Nihilism." I have scarcely realized until now the difficulties in the way of the subject I am treating. To talk of nihilism is an audacious undertaking, and in spite of all my endeavors to hold the balance true, and to consider calmly the social phenomena and the literature into which it has infiltrated, I shall perhaps not be able to avoid a note of partiality or emotion. To some I shall seem too indulgent with the Russian revolutionaries, and they may say of me, as of M. Leroy-Beaulieu, that my opinions are imbibed from official sources and my words taken from the mouth of reactionaries. The first stumbling-block is the word "nihilism." In Tikomirov's work on Russia seven or eight pages are devoted to the severe condemnation of the use of the expressions "nihilism" and "nihilist," Nevertheless, at the risk of offending my friend the author, I must make use of them, since, as he himself allows, they are employed universally, and all the world understands what is meant by them in an approximate and relative way. I do not reject the term proposed by Tikomirov, who would call nihilism "the militant intelligence;" but this is much too long and obscure, and before accepting it, it behooves one to understand what is meant by _Russian intelligence_. The nihilists call themselves by a variety of names,--democrats, socialists, propagandists, _new men_, or sometimes by the title of some organ of their clandestine press. This war of names seems puerile, and I prefer to face the fury of Tikomirov against those who not only use the objectionable term but dedicate a chapter to what it represents, and study nihilism as a doctrine or tendency distinct among all that have arisen until now. I cannot agree to the idea that nihilism is merely a Russian intellectual movement, nor do I think that all Europe is mistaken in judging that the nihilist explosions are characteristic of the great Sclav empire. On the contrary, I believe that if Russia were to-morrow blotted from the map, and her history and every trace of her national individuality obliterated, only a few pages of her romances and a few fragments of her revolutionary literature being left to us, a philosopher or a critic could reconstruct, without other data, the spirit of the race in all its integrity and completeness. Now, to begin, how did this much-discussed word originate? It was a novelist who first baptized the party who called themselves at that time _new men_. It was Ivan Turguenief, who by the mouth of one of the characters in his celebrated novel, "Fathers and Sons," gave the young generation the name of nihilists. But it was not of his coinage; Royer-Collard first stamped it; Victor Hugo had already said that the negation of the infinite led directly to nihilism, and Joseph Lemaistre had spoken of the nihilism, more or less sincere, of the contemporary generations; but it was reserved for the author of "Virgin Soil" to bring to light and make famous this word, which after making a great stir in his own country attracted the attention of the whole world. The reign of Nicholas I. was an epoch of hard oppression. When he ascended the throne, the conspiracy of the Decembrists broke out, and this sudden revelation of the revolutionary spirit steeled the already inflexible soul of the Czar. Nicholas, although fond of letters and an assiduous reader of Homer, was disposed to throttle his enemies, and would not have hesitated to pluck out the brains of Russia; he was very near suppressing all the universities and schools, and inaugurating a voluntary retrocession to Asiatic barbarism. He did mutilate and reduce the instruction, he suppressed the chair of European political laws, and after the events of 1848 in France he seriously considered the idea of closing his frontiers with a cordon of troops to beat back foreign liberalism like the cholera or the plague. Those who have had a near view of this Iron Czar have described him to me as tall, straight, stiff, always in uniform, a slave to his duties as sovereign, the living personification of the autocrat, and called, not without reason, the Quixote of absolutism. At the close of a life devoted to the fanatical inculcation of his convictions, this inflexible emperor, who believed himself to be guided by the Divine hand, saw only the dilapidation and ruin of his country, which then started up dismayed and raised a cry of reprobation, a chorus of malediction against the emperor and the order of things established by him. Satire cried out in strident and indignant tones, and spit in the face of the Czar with terrible anathemas. "Oh, Emperor," it said to him, "Russia confided the supreme power to you; you were as a god upon the earth. What have you done? Blinded by ignorance and selfishness, you longed for power and forgot Russia; you spent your life in reviewing troops, in changing uniforms, in signing decrees. You created the vile race of press-censors, so that you might sleep in peace, that you might ignore the needs of the people, and turn a deaf ear to their cries; and the truth you buried deep, and rolled a great stone over the door of the sepulchre, and put a guard over it, so that you might think in your proud heart that it would never rise again. But the light of the third day is breaking, and truth will come forth from among the dead." And so the great autocrat heard the crash of the walls that he had built with callous hands and cemented with the blood and tears of two millions of human beings whom he had exiled to Siberia. Perhaps the inflexible principles, the mainspring of his hard soul, gave way then; but it was indeed too late to give the lie to his whole life, and according to well-authenticated reports he sought a sure and speedy death by wilful exposure to the rigors of the terrible climate. "I cannot go back," were the dying words of this upright and consistent man, who, notwithstanding his hardness, was yet not a tyrant. However, it was under his sceptre, under his systematic suppression, that, by confession of the great revolutionary statesman Herzen, Russian thought developed as never before; that the emancipation of the intelligence, which this very statesman calls a tragic event, was accomplished, and a national literature was brought to light and began to flourish. When Alexander II. succeeded to the throne, when the bonds of despotism were loosened and the blockade with which Nicholas vainly tried to isolate his empire was raised, the field was ready for the intellectual and political strife. Russia is prone to violent extremes in everything. No social changes are brought about in her with the slow gradations which make transitions easy and avoid shocks and collisions. In the rest of Europe modern scientific progress was due to numerous coincident causes, such as the Renaissance, the art of printing, the discovery of America; but in Russia the will of the autocrat was the motor, and the country was forced and surprised into it. And when this drowsy land one day shakes off its lethargy and takes note of the latent political effervescence within itself, it will be with the same fiery earnestness, the same exaggeration, the same logical directness, straight to the end, even though that end culminate in absurdity. Before explaining how nihilism is the outcome of intelligence, we must understand what is meant by intelligence in Russia. It means a class composed of all those, of whatever profession or estate, who have at heart the advancement of intellectual life, and contribute in every way toward it. It may be said, indeed, that such a class is to be found in every country; but there is this difference,--in other countries the class is not a unit; there are factions, or a large number of its members shun political and social discussion in order to enjoy the serene atmosphere of the world of art, while in Russia _the intelligence_ means a common cause, a homogeneous spirit, subversive and revolutionary withal. To write a history of modern literature, particularly of the novel, in Russia, is equivalent to writing the history of the revolution. The subversive, dissolvent character of this intelligence--working now tacitly, now openly, and with a candor surprising in a country subjected to such suspicious censorship--explains why the czars, once the protectors of the arts, have become since the middle of this century so out of humor with authors, books, and the press. We have heard of one emperor--the cleverest of them all--who in the interest of his reforms had his own son whipped to death. Russian art, also son of the czars, figuratively speaking, received scarcely better treatment when it signified a desire to stand on its own feet. Long and painful is the list of persecutions directed against the growth of Thought, in prose and verse, and above all against illustrious men. But we must make a distinction, so as not to be unjust. Herzen, exiled and deprived of all his possessions, and the famous martyr Tchernichewsky, confined twenty and odd years in a Siberian prison or fortress, do not arouse our astonishment, for they suffered the common fate of the political agitator; but it seems a pity that such artists as Dostoiëwsky and Turguenief should suffer any such infliction at all. All Russian literature is charged with a revolutionary spirit; but there is the same difference between those authors whose aim is political and those who merely speak of Russia's wounds when occasion offers, that there is between those who are licentious and those who are simply open and candid. And by this I do not mean to compare the nihilist writers with licentious ones, nor to convey any stigma by my words. I merely say that when literature deliberately attacks established society, the instinct of self-preservation obliges the latter to defend itself even to persecuting its adversary. II. Origin of the Intellectual Revolution. Whence came the revolutionary element in Russia? From the Occident, from France, from the negative, materialist, sensualist philosophy of the Encyclopædia imported into Russia by Catherine II. and later from Germany, from Kantism and Hegelianism, imbibed by Russian youth at the German universities, and which they diffused throughout their own country with characteristic Sclav impetuosity. By "Pure Reason" and transcendental idealism, Herzen and Bakunine, the first apostles of nihilism, were inspired. But the ideas brought from Europe to Russia soon allied themselves with an indigenous or possibly an Oriental element; namely, a sort of quietist fatalism, which leads to the darkest and most despairing pessimism. On the whole, nihilism is rather a philosophical conception of the sum of life than a purely democratic and revolutionary movement. Since the beginning of this century Europe has seen mobs and revolutions, dynasties wrecked and governments overturned; but these were political disturbances, and not the result of mind diseased or anguish of soul. Nihilism had no political color about it at the beginning. During the decade between 1860 and 1870 the youth of Russia was seized with a sort of fever for negation, a fierce antipathy toward everything that was,--authorities, institutions, customary ideas, and old-fashioned dogmas. In Turguenief's novel, "Fathers and Sons," we meet with Bazarof, a froward, ill-mannered, intolerable fellow, who represents this type. After 1871 the echo of the Paris Commune and emissaries of the Internationals crossed the frontier, and the nihilists began to bestir themselves, to meet together clandestinely, and to send out propaganda. Seven years later they organized an era of terror, assassination, and explosions. Thus three phases have followed upon one another,--thought, word, and deed,--along that road which is never so long as it looks, the road that leads from the word to the act, from Utopia to crime. And yet nihilism never became a political party as we understand the term. It has no defined creed or official programme. The fulness of its despair embraces all negatives and all acute revolutionary forms. Anarchists, federalists, cantonalists, covenanters, terrorists, all who are unanimous in a desire to sweep away the present order, are grouped under the ensign of _nihil_. The frenzy which thus moves a whole people to tear their hair and rend their garments has at bottom an element of passionate melancholy born of just and noble aspirations crushed by fatal circumstances. We have seen what Nature and history have made of Russia,--a nation civilized by violence, whose natural and harmonious development was checked, and which was isolated from Europe as soon as the ruling powers perceived the dangers likely to ensue from communication therewith. The impulse of youth toward the unknown and the new, toward vague dreams and abstractions, was thus exasperated; and from out the seminaries, universities, and schools, from the ranks of the nobility and from the bosom of the literature, there arose a host composed of women hungering for the ideal, and young students, poor in pocket and position, who gave themselves up to a Bohemian sort of life well calculated to set at nought society and the world in general. A Russian friend once told me that seeing a _mujik_ looking very dejected and melancholy he asked what was the matter, and received answer, "Sir, we are a sick people." His reply defines the whole race; and of all the explanations of nihilism, that which describes it as a pathological condition of the nation is perhaps the most accurate. One must be prudent, however, in calling an intellectual phenomenon based upon historical reasons a sickness or dementia; and above all one must not confound the mental exaltation of the enthusiast with the vagaries of the unsound mind. We do not allow ourselves to call him a fool who does not think as we do, nor even him who leaves the beaten common track for dizzy heights above our ken. No reformer or other great man, however, has escaped the insinuation of foolishness, not even Saint Francis of Assisi, who openly professed idiocy. But we have a kind of sympathy for madness of a speculative character,--the sort of lunacy which makes mankind dream sometimes that material good does not entirely satisfy, that makes it yearn anxiously for something that it may never obtain on this earth. To begin with, is nihilism pure negation? No. Pure negation conceives nothing further, and whatever it denies it affirms at the same time. Nihilism, or to use their own term, Russian _intelligence_, contains the germs of social renovation; and before referring to its political history I will explain some of its strange and curious doctrines. III. Woman and the Family. Among the most important of the nihilist doctrines is that which refers to the condition of woman and the constitution of the family; and the attempt radically to modify things so guarded and so sacred presupposes an extraordinary power in the moving principle. The state of woman in Russia has been far more bitter and humiliating than in the rest of Europe; she wore her face covered with the Oriental veil until an empress dared to cast it aside,--to the great horror of the court; among the peasants she was a beast of burden; among the nobles an odalisque; in the most enlightened classes of society the whip hung at the head of the bed as a symbol of the husband's authority. The law did not keep her perpetually a minor, as with us, but allowed her to administer her property freely; yet the invisible and unwritten bonds of custom made this freedom illusory. The new ideas have changed all this, however, and to-day the Russian woman is more nearly equal to the man in condition, more free, intelligent, and respected than elsewhere in Europe. Even the peasants, accustomed to bestow a daily allowance of the lash upon their women, are beginning to treat them with more gentleness and regard, for they realize, tardily though certainly, the worth of the ideas of justice deduced from the Gospels, which once planted can never be rooted out. Their conquests are final. A few years hence the conjugal relation in Russia will be based on ideas of equality, fraternity, and mutual respect. I have never gone about preaching emancipation or demanding rights, but I am nevertheless quite capable of appreciating everything that savors of equity. The great Russian romantic poet, Lermontof, lamented the moral inferiority of the women of his country. "Man," said this Russian Byron, "should not be satisfied with the submission of his slave or the devotion of his dog; he needs the love of a human being who will repay insight for insight, soul for soul." This noble aspiration, derived from the profound Platonic allegory of the two soul-halves that seek each other and thereby find completion, the Russian intelligence desired to realize, and as a step toward it procured participation for woman in intellectual and political life; she, on her part, proved her worth by bringing to nihilism a passionate devotion, absolute faith, and initiative energy. When the early Christians rehabilitated the pagan woman, somewhat the same thing happened, and a tender gratitude toward the gentle Nazarene led virgins and matrons to vie with strong men in the heroism displayed in the amphitheatre. But in our times the systematic efforts toward female emancipation have a tendency to stumble into absurdities. To show to what an extent conjugal equality has been carried in certain Russian families of humble position, I was told that the wife cooks one day and the husband the next! At the beginning of the reign of Alexander II. the longing for feminine independence was expressed in the wearing of short hair, blue spectacles, and extraordinary dress; in smoking, in scorn of neatness, and the assumption of viragoish and disgusting manners. The serious side of the movement led them on the other hand to study, to throw themselves into every career open to them, to show a brave front in the hospitals of typhus and the plague, to win honors in the clinics, and to practise medicine in the small villages with noble self-abnegation, seriousness, and sagacity. It is worthy of note, in examining Russian revolutionary tendencies, that political rights are a secondary consideration, and that they go down to the root of the matter, and seek first to reclaim natural rights. In countries that are under parliamentary regimen, half of the human race is judicially and civilly the servant of the other half; while in the classic land of absolutism all parts are equal before the law, especially among the reformatory class, the nobility. There is one fact in this connection which, though rather dubious on the face of it, is yet so original and typical that it ought not to be omitted. Owing to these modifications in the social condition of women, and also to political circumstances, we are told that one frequently hears in Russia--among the _intelligent_ class particularly--of a sort of free unions, having no other bond than the mutual willingness of the contracting parties, and marked by singular characteristics. Some of these unions may be compared to the espousals of Saint Cecilia and her husband, Saint Valerian, or to the nuptials of the legendary hero separated by a naked sword from the bride. The Russians call this a fictitious marriage. It sometimes happens that a young girl, bold, determined, and full of a longing for life,--in the social sense of the word,--leaves the paternal roof and takes up her abode under that of another man. Having obtained the liberty and individuality enjoyed by the married woman, the protector and the _protégée_ maintain a fraternal friendship mutually and willingly agreed to. In Turguenief's novel, "Virgin Soil," a young lady runs away from her uncle's house with the tutor, a young nihilist poet, with whom she believes herself to be deeply in love; but she finds out that what she really loved and craved was liberty, and the chance to practise her politico-social principles; and as these two runaways live in chastity, the heroine finally, and without any conscientious scruples, marries another poet, also a nihilist, but more practical and intelligent, who has really succeeded in interesting her heart. Is such a voluntary restriction the result of a hyperæsthesia of the fancy, natural to an age of persecution, in which those who fight for and defend an idea are ready at any moment to go to the gallows for its sake? Is it mere woman's pride demanding for her sex liberty and franchises which she scorns to make use of? Is it a manifestation of an idealist sentiment which is always present in revolutionary outbursts? Is it a consequence of the theory which Schopenhauer preached, but did not practise? Is it Malthusian pessimism which would refuse to provide any more subjects for despotism? Is it a result of the natural coldness of the Scythian? There seems to be no doubt, according to the statement of trustworthy authors, that there are nihilist virgins living promiscuously with students, helping them like sisters, united by this strange understanding. Solovief, who made a criminal attempt on the life of Alexander II., was thus _married_, as was shown at his trial. Among the young generation of nihilists this sort of union was really an affiliation in devotion to their party. The bride's dower went into the party treasury, her body was consecrated to the worship of the unknown God; and being but slightly bound to his or her nominal spouse, each one went his or her way, sometimes to distant provinces, to propagate and disseminate the good news. Tikomirov (from whose interesting book I have taken most of my information concerning the constitution of the Russian revolutionary family) seems to think that French authors have not done full justice to the austerity and purity of nihilist customs, and he depicts a charming scene in the home of intelligence, whose members are united and affectionate, where moral and intellectual equality produce solid friendship, precluding tyranny on the one hand and treason on the other; adding that in Russia everybody is convinced of the superiority of this sort of family, and only foreigners think that nihilism undermines the foundations of conjugal union. Is this really true? In any case it seems possible that such a beautiful ideal might be attained to in our Latin societies, given the elevated conception of the Catholic marriage, which makes it a sacrament, were there only a little more equity, toward which it is evident, however, that laws and customs are ever tending. In speaking of nihilist marriages, it is well to add that in general the Russian revolutionary movement has a pronounced flavor of mysticism, although at first sight it seems an explosion of free-thinking and blasphemy. It is true that nihilist youth laughs at the supernatural, and has been steeped in the crudities of German materialism and in the pliant philosophies of the clinic and the laboratory; but at the same time, whether because of the religious character of the race, or because of a certain exaltation which may be the fruit of a period of stress, the nihilist young people are mystics in their own way, and talk about the martyrs to the cause with an inspired voice and with the unction of a devotee invoking the saints. In proof of this I will give here a nihilist madrigal dedicated to the young heroine in a political trial, Lydia Figuier, who had studied medicine in Zurich and Paris. "Deep is the impression, O maiden, left by thy enchanting beauty; but more powerful than the charm of thy face is the purity of thy soul. Full of pity is the image of the Saviour, and his divine features are full of compassion; but in the unfathomable depths of thine eyes there is still more love and suffering." The extremes of this rare sort of fanaticism are still better shown in a famous novel of Tchernichewsky, the hero of which outdoes the Hindu fakirs and Christian anchorites in point of macerations, penances, and austerities. He is offered several kinds of fruit, but he will taste only the apple, which is what the people eat; he fasts in grief and anguish, and one day, in order to accustom himself to bear any sort of trial, he lays himself down upon a cloth thickly studded with nails an inch long, points upward, and there he remains until his blood saturates the ground. Not content with mortifying the flesh in this way, he disposes of all his worldly goods among the poor, and vows never to touch a drop of wine or the lips of woman. This is only the hero of a story-book; yes, but this story endeavors to present a type, an ideal pattern, to which the _new men_, or nihilists, try to conform themselves. It must be understood that when I say mysticism, I use the word in a generic and not in a theological sense. It seems contradictory to say that an atheist can do and feel like the most fervent believer; but a man may pass a whole lifetime in parrying logic, and yet sometimes what his reason refuses his imagination accepts. There is something in nihilism that recalls the transcendental contradictions of the Hindu philosophies and religions, especially Buddhism; and in Russian brains there is a fermentation of heterodox illumination which is manifested among the common people by sects of tremblers, jumpers, and others, and among the more learned classes by revolutionary mysticism, amorphism, anarchy, and a gloomy and rebellious pessimism. The prophets of the ignorant sects among the people preach many of the revolutionary dogmas, teaching disobedience to all authority, community of goods, social liquidation and free love, yet without political intention; and better educated nihilists, even reactionary minds like Dostoiëwsky, feel the pulse of mystic enthusiasm which runs in the blood. The people are so predisposed to color the language of the political devotee that they were quite satisfied with the answer given by the propagandist Rogatchef to the peasants who asked what he sought among them. He replied, "The true faith." To the honor of humanity be it said that the most profound emotions it has experienced have been produced by its own thirst for the ideal, and caused by the need of belief, and of feeling in one form or another a religious excitement. It is this element which conquers our sympathy for nihilism; this shows us a young and enthusiastic people given to visions and sublime ardors. To put it more explicitly, I am not passing judgment upon the only revolutionaries just now extant in the world. I have very little liking for political upheavals; but, to the egotistical indifference that afflicts some nations, I believe that I prefer the passionate extremes of nihilism. In politics as in art we want the living. It will be seen therefore that the people were not irrelevant in confounding nihilism with a religions sect. As far as our rationalist age will admit, the nihilist dissenter resembles the great heretics of the Middle Ages; he has traces of the Millenarian, of Sakya Muni, and of the German pantheists; and he has the blind faith, the hazy transports, the dogmatical and absolute affirmation of the persecuted religious sects, and of esoteric and subterranean beliefs. He adores a divinity without feelings, deaf and primitive, and this adoration is the corner-stone of the nihilist temple. The _mujik_ sublimated by Russian literature is the god of nihilism. IV. Going to the People. Here is a passage from Tikomirov's book to illustrate this aspect of Russian revolution:-- "Where is there any sociological theory that can explain the crusade taken up in 1873 by thousands of young men and women determined to _go to the people_? The word crusade is appropriate. Our youths left the bosom of their families; our maidens abandoned the worldly pleasures of life. Nobody thought of his own welfare; the great cause absorbed all attention, and the nervous tension was such that many were able to endure, without injury to health, unusual and dreadful privations. They gave up their past life and all their property, and if any vacillated in offering his fortune to the cause, he was looked upon with pity and contempt. Some renounced official positions and gave all their means, even to thousands of rubles; others, like Prince Krapotkine, from being _savants_, diplomats and opulent, became humble artisans. The prince took to painting doors and windows. Rich heiresses sought occupation as factory operatives, even some who had reigned as belles in aristocratic salons. It was as though, exiled from other classes of society, they found, in turning to the people, their souls' true country." Do not these words almost seem to describe the beginnings of Christianity in Rome? The idol takes no notice of his fanatical adorers, nor perhaps does he understand them any better than the peasant-woman of Toboso understood the amorous suit with which Don Quixote wooed her malformed and dishevelled person. The Russian peasant cannot make anything of theories and apotheoses evolved from an intellectual condition amounting to rapturous frenzy. "Oh that I might die," exclaims a devout nihilist, "and that my blood like a drop of hot lead could burn and arouse the people!" This thirst for martyrdom is common, but above all is the anxiety to be amalgamated with the people, to know them, and if possible to infuse them with the enthusiasm they feel themselves. It requires more courage to do what Russians call _going to the people_, than to bear exile or the gallows. In our society, which boasts of its democracy, the very equalization of classes has strengthened the individual instinct of difference, and especially the aristocrats of mind, the writers and thinkers, have become terribly nervous, finicky, and inimical to the plebeian smell, to the extent that even novels which describe the common people with sincerity and truth displease the public taste. Yet the nihilists, a select company from the point of view of intellectual culture, go, like apostles, in search of the poor in spirit, the ignorant and the humble. The sons of families belonging to the highest classes, alumni of universities, leave fine clothes and books, dress like peasants, and mix with factory hands, so as to know them and to teach them; young ladies of fine education return from a foreign tour and accept with the utmost contentment situations as cooks in manufacturers' houses, so as to be able to study the labor question in their workshops. We find very curious instances of this in Turguenief's novel "Virgin Soil." The heroine, Mariana, a nihilist, in order to learn how the people live, and to _simplify herself_ (this is a sacramental term), helps a poor peasant-woman in her domestic duties. Here we have the way of the world reversed: the educated learns of the ignorant, and in all that the peasant-woman does or says the young lady finds a crumb of grace and wisdom. "We do not wish to teach the people," she explains, "we wish to serve them." "To serve them?" replies the woman, with hard practicality. "Well, the best way to serve them is to teach them." Equally fruitless are the efforts of Mariana's _fictitious husband_, or _husband by free grace_, as the peasant-woman calls him,--the poet and dreamer Nedjanof, who thinks himself a nihilist, but in the bottom of his soul has the aristocratic instincts of the artist. Here is the passage where he presents himself to Mariana dressed in workman's clothes:-- "Mariana uttered an exclamation of surprise. At first she did not know him. He wore an old caftan of yellowish drill, short-waisted, and buttoned with small buttons; his hair was combed in the Russian style, with the part in the middle; a blue kerchief was tied around his neck; he held in his hand an old cap with a torn visor, and his feet were shod with undressed calfskin." Mariana's first act on seeing him in this guise is to tell him that he is indeed ugly, after which disagreeable piece of information, and a shudder of repugnance at the smell of his greasy cap and dirty sleeves, they provide themselves with pamphlets and socialist proclamations and start out on their Odyssey among the people, hoping to meet with ineffable sufferings. He would be no less glad than she of a heroic sacrifice, but he is not content with a grotesque farce; and the girl is indignant when Solomine, her professor in nihilism, tells her that her duty actually compels her to wash the children of the poor, to teach them the alphabet, and to give medicine to the sick. "That is for Sisters of Charity," she exclaims, inadvertently recognizing a truth; the Catholic faith contains all ways of loving one's neighbor, and none can ever be invented that it has not foreseen. But the human type of the novel is Nedjanof, although the nihilists have sought to deny it. There is one very sad and real scene in which he returns drunk from one of his propagandist excursions, because the peasants whom he was haranguing compelled him to drink as much as they. The poor fellow drinks and drinks, but he might as well have thrown himself upon a file of bayonets. He comes home befuddled with _wodka_, or perhaps more so with the disgust and nausea which the brutish and mal-odorous people produced in him. He had never fully believed in the work to which he had consecrated himself: now it is no longer scepticism, it is invincible disgust that takes hold upon his soul, urging him to despair and suicide. The lament of his lost revolutionary faith is contained in the little poem entitled "Dreaming," which I give literally, as follows:-- "It was long since I had seen my birthplace, but I found it not at all changed. The deathlike sleep, intellectual inertia, roofless houses, ruined walls, mire and stench, scarcity and misery, the insolent looks of the oppressed peasants,--all the same! Only in sleeping, we have outstripped Europe, Asia, and the whole world. Never did my dear compatriots sleep a sleep so terrible! "Everything sleeps: wherever I turn, in the fields, in the cities, in carnages, in sleighs, day and night, sitting or walking; the merchant and the functionary, and the watchman in the tower, all sleep in the cold or in the heat! The accused snores and the judge dozes; the peasants sleep the sleep of death; asleep they sow and reap and grind the corn; father, mother, and children sleep! The oppressed and the oppressor sleep equally well! "Only the gin-shop is awake, with eyes ever open! And hugging to her breast a jug of fire-water, her face to the pole, her feet to the Caucasus, thus sleeps and dreams on forever our Mother, Holy Russia!" To all nihilist intents and purposes, particularly to those of a political character, the masses are apparently asleep. Many eloquent anecdotes refer to their indifference. A young lady propagandist, who served as cook on a farm, confesses that the peasants spitefully accused her of taking bread from the poor. In order to get them to take their pamphlets and leaflets, the nihilists present them as religious tracts, adorning the covers with texts of Scripture and pious mottoes and signs. Only by making good use of the antiquated idea of distribution (of goods) have they any chance of success; it is of no use to talk of autonomous federations, or to attack the emperor, who has the people on his side. The active nihilists are always young people, and this is reason enough why they are not completely discouraged by the sterility of their efforts. Old age abhors fruitless endeavors, and better appreciating the value of life, will not waste it in tiresome experiments. And this contrast between the ages, like that between the seasons, is nowhere so sharp as in Russia; nowhere else is the difference of opinions and feelings between two generations so marked. Some one has called nihilism a disease of childhood, like measles or diphtheria; perhaps this is not altogether erroneous, not only as regards individuals but also as regards society, for vehemence and furious radicalism are the fruit of historical inexperience, of the political youth of a nation. The precursor of nihilism, Herzen, said, with his brilliant imagery and vigor of expression, that the Russia of the future lay with a few insignificant and obscure young folks who could easily hide between the earth and the soles of the autocrat's boots; and the poet Mikailof, who was sentenced to hard labor in 1861, and subsequently died under the lash, exclaimed to the students, "Even in the darkness of the dungeon I shall preserve sacredly in my heart of hearts the incomparable faith that I have ingrafted upon the new generation." It is sad to see youth decrepit and weary from birth, without enthusiasm or ambition for anything. It is more natural that the sap should overflow, that a longing for strife and sacrifice, even though foolish and vain, should arise in its heart. This truth cannot be too often repeated: to be enthusiastic, to be full of life, is not ridiculous; but our pusillanimous doctrine of disapproval is ridiculous indeed, especially in life's early years,--as ridiculous as baldness at twenty, or wrinkles and palsy at thirty. Besides, we must recognize something more than youthful ardor in nihilism, and that is, sympathetic disinterestedness. The path of nihilism does not lead to brilliant position or destiny: it may lead to Siberia or to the gibbet. V. Herzen and the Nihilist Novel. But it is time to mention some of the precursors of nihilism. First of all there is Alexander Herzen, a brilliant, paradoxical writer, a great visionary, a keen satirist, the poet of denial, a romanticist and idealist to his own sorrow, and, in the bottom of his soul, sceptical and melancholy. Herzen was born in Moscow in the year of the Fire, and his mind began to mature about the time the December conspirators forced Nicholas I. into trembling retirement. He was wont to say that he had seen the most imposing personification of imperial power, had grown up under the shadow of the secret police and panted in its clutches. Charmed by the philosophical doctrines of Hegel and Feuerbach, which were then superseding the French, he became a socialist and a revolutionary. Just at the time when to have a constitution was the ideal and the dream of the Latin peoples, who were willing to tear themselves to pieces to obtain it, this Sclav was writing that a constitution was a miserable contract between a master and his slaves! Herzen was but a little more than twenty years old when he was sent to Siberia. On his return from exile he found at home a mental effervescence, a Germanic and idealist current in the wake of the eminent critic Bielinsky, Sclavophiles singing hymns in praise of national life and repudiating European civilization which was in turn defended by the so-called Occidentals; and lastly he found a set of literary, innovators who formed the famous _natural school_, at the head of which was the great Gogol. Herzen fell into this whirl of ideas, and his æsthetic doctrines and advanced Hegelianism had great influence, and after some more serious works he published his celebrated novel, "Who is to Blame?"--a masterly effort, which gained him immense renown in Russia. It was masterly more by reason of the popularity it achieved than by its literary merit, for Herzen is, after all, not to be counted among the chief novel-writers of Russia. Herzen was born to point the way to a social Utopia rather than the road to pure Beauty. He invented new phases of civilization, societies transformed by the touch of a magic wand. The star of Proudhon was at this time in the ascendant, and Herzen, attracted by its brilliancy, left his country never to return; but he did not on this account cease to exercise a great influence upon her destinies, so great, indeed, that some profess to think that had Herzen never lived, nihilism would have perished in the bud. Herzen hailed with delight the French revolution of 1848. He expected to behold a social liquidation, but he saw instead only a conservative republic,--a change of form. Then he cried out in savage despair, and his words have become the true nihilist war-cry: "Let the old world perish! Let chaos and destruction come upon it! Hail, Death! Welcome to the Future!" To sweep away the past with one stroke became his perennial aspiration. He drew a vivid picture of a secret tribunal which every _new man_ carries within himself, to judge, condemn, and guillotine the past; he described how a man, fearful of following up his logical conclusions, after citing before this tribunal the Church, the State, the family, the good, and the evil, might make an effort to save a rag of the worn-out yesterday, unable to see that the lightest weight would prove a hindrance to his passage from the old world to the new. "There is a remarkable likeness between logic and terror," he said. "It is not for us to pluck the fruits of the past, but to destroy them, to persecute them, to judge them, to unmask them, and to immolate them upon the altars of the future. Terror sentenced human beings; it concerns us to judge institutions, demolish creeds, put no faith in old things, unsettle every interest, break every bond, without mercy, without leniency, without pity." This was his programme: Not to civilize or to progress, but to obliterate, to demolish; to replace what he called the senile barbarity of the world with a juvenile barbarity; "to go to the very limits of absurdity,"--these are his own words. They contain the sum of nihilism; they include the pessimist despair, and the foolish proscription of art, beauty, and culture, which to an artistic mind is the greatest crime that can be laid at the door of any political or philosophical doctrine. A tendency that aspires to overthrow the altar sacred to the Muses and the Graces can never prevail. Herzen went to London, established a press for the dissemination of political writings in Russia, and organized a secret society for Russian refugees, among whom he counted Bakunine; and having refused to return to his country, he founded a singular paper called "The Bell" (_Kolokol_), of which thousands of copies, though strictly prohibited by the censor, crossed the frontier. They were distributed and read on every hand, and a copy was regularly placed, by invisible hands, in the chamber of the emperor, who devoured it no less eagerly than his faithful subjects. From the pages of this illegal publication the sovereign learned of secret intrigues in his palace, of plots among his high officials, and scandalous stories reported by the socialist refugee with incredible accuracy. By the side of these evidences of dexterity and cleverness, some of the stratagems recounted of the times of our own Carlist war seem mere child's play. As the precursor of nihilism Herzen excites great interest, but there is much to be said of Tchernichewsky and Bakunine. It is said that the latter's influence was more felt abroad than at home, and that he fanned the activity of the Internationalist societies, and of the Swiss, Italian, and Spanish laboring classes. Be that as it may, Bakunine was a classic type of the conspirator by profession,--in love with his dangerous work. He adopted as his motto that to destroy is to create. Caussidière saw him and watched him during the insurrections in Paris, and exclaimed, "What a man! The first day of the revolution he is a treasure; on the second we must shoot him!" Paris was not the only witness of his feats; he fought like a lion at the barricades in Dresden, and was elected dictator; he took an active part in the Polish insurrection; he quite outshone Carl Marx in the International, and with him originated the anarchist faction, and that last grade of revolution, amorphism. As for Tchernichewsky, he is considered the great master and inspirer of contemporary nihilism, his principal claim to such a place being based on a novel; and at the bottom of the Russian revolution we shall always find the epic fictions of our day exerting a powerful influence. With Herzen's novel the tendencies of nihilism were first revealed; with Tchernichewsky's they became fixed and decisive. Novels of Gogol and Turguenief overthrew serfdom, and novels of Turguenief, Dostoiëwsky, Tolstoï, Gontcharof, and Tchedrine are the documents which historians will consult hereafter when the great contest between the revolution and the old society shall be written. When Tchernichewsky wrote his famous novel, he had already tried his hand at various public questions, had made a compilation from the "Political Economy" of John Stuart Mill, and was a prisoner on the charge of organizing the revolutionary propaganda in Russia along with Herzen, Ogaref, and Bakunine, who were refugees in London. Before setting out to suffer his sentence of fifteen years' imprisonment and perpetual residence in Siberia, he was tied to a stake in a public square of St. Petersburg, and after the reading of the sentence a sword was broken over his head. What a blow was dealt at absolute power by this man, shut up, annihilated, suppressed, and civilly dead! Happy the cause that hath martyrs! His novel produced an indescribable sensation. The nihilists were inclined to resent Turguenief's "Fathers and Sons," whose hero, the materialist Bazarof, represented the new generation, or, according to them, caricatured it. Tchernichewsky's book was considered to be a faithful picture, and a model besides for the party; it was the nihilists painted by one of themselves, so to speak. Although it is tedious and inconsistent in its arguments, the book shows much talent and a fertile imagination; the author declares that it is his purpose to stereotype the personality of the _new man_, who is but an evanescent type, a sign of the times, destined to disappear with the epoch he has initiated. Writing about the year 1850, he says, "Six years ago there were no such men; three years ago they were little noticed, and now--but what matters what is thought of them now? Soon enough they will hear the cry, Save us! and whatever they command shall be done." Farther on he says that these _new men_ in turn shall disappear to the last man; and after a long time men shall say, "Since the days of those men things go on better, although not entirely well yet." Then the type shall reappear again in larger numbers and in greater perfection, and this will continue to happen until men say, "Now we are doing well!" And when this hour arrives, there will be no special types of humanity, there will be no _new men_, for all shall realize the largest sum of perfection possible. Such is the theory of this famous martyr, and it is certainly as original as it is curious. The admirers of Tchernichewsky's novel compare it to "The City of the Sun," by Campanella, "Utopia," by Sir Thomas More, "The Journey to Icaria," by Cabet, and the phalansterian sketches by Fourier's disciples. This comparison is alone sufficient to decide the rivalry in favor of Turguenief; for the Siberian exile wrought only in the interest of socialist propaganda, while the author of "Virgin Soil," whether accurate or not in detail, was a consummate artist. Only political excitement can dictate certain judgments and decisions. If I speak now more at length of the exile's novel, it is for the sake of its representative value, and as a reflection of nihilism in literature. The title is, "What to do?" The author wishes to solve the problem put by Herzen in the title to his novel, "Who is to blame?" and under the guise of a love-quarrel he delineates the ideal of the contemporary generation represented by two favorite characters, the two classic types of the nihilist novel,--the student of medicine, a _new man_, saturated with science and German metaphysics, and a brave girl longing to be _initiated_ and thirsting to consecrate herself to some lofty cause. Among other curiosities there is a nihilist husband, who, on discovering that his wife is enamoured of somebody else, calculates his moral sufferings as equivalent to the excitement produced by four cupfuls of strong coffee, and he therefore takes two morphine pills and declares that he feels better! In spite of being prohibited by the censor, this novel, as might be expected, had a great success; the editions multiplied clandestinely; the heroine's type became immensely popular; the young girls took to the study of medicine with an enthusiasm and a will to which I can personally testify; and if report be true, a part of the new ideas concerning conjugal equality and the constitution of the family proceeded from this novel. The popularity of the author, glorified by the halo of his sufferings and imprisonment, far superseded that of Herzen. Materialism and positivism soon came also to replace the visions of Herzen; for when Alexander II. opened the frontiers which the inflexible Nicholas had closed, the students brought home new idols from the German universities. Schopenhauer and Buchner superseded Hegel and Feuerbach. Schopenhauer, with his pessimism, his theory of Nirvana and universal annihilation, arrived just in time to foster the germs of fatalism dormant within the Russian soul; and Buchner, by means of his very superficial but eloquent book, was also in season to offer an accessible, clear, and popular formula to unthinking minds and negative or indolent temperaments; "Force and matter" was for a time the Bible of Russian students. It will be readily seen that the revolutionary formula and methods in Russia always came from abroad; but they met with tendencies which were unexpected, even though they proved favorable to development. The philosophy of nihilism was drawn from Western sources, no doubt; yet this phenomenon made its appearance only in Russia, a land predisposed to realism and mysticism, to brutality and languor, and above all to melancholy limitless as its plains. We are told of the now famous saying of a nihilist, who, being asked his doctrines, replied, "To see earth and heaven, Church and State, God and king, and to spit upon them all!" Although the verb to _spit_ is not so offensive in Russia as here, and is rather a sign of repugnance than of insult, such a reply contains the sum of negative nihilism; and negation, the critical period, cannot last longer than the despairing sigh of the dying. The active phase of nihilism, the reign of terror, passed by quickly, and now the party is beginning to lay aside its ferocious radicalism and deal with realities. VI. The Reign of Terror. The reign of terror was short but tragic. We have seen that the active nihilists were a few hundred inexperienced youths without position or social influence, armed only with leaflets and tracts. This handful of boys furiously threw down the gauntlet of defiance at the government when they saw themselves pursued. Resolved to risk their heads (and with such sincerity that almost all the associates who bound themselves to execute what they called _the people's will_ have died in prison or on the scaffold), they adopted as their watchword _man for man_. When the sanguinary reprisals fell upon Russia from one end to the other, the frightened people imagined an immense army of terrorists, rich, strong, and in command of untold resources, covering the empire. In reality, the twenty offences committed from 1878 to 1882, the mines discovered under the two capitals, the explosions in the station at Moscow and in the palace at St. Petersburg, the many assassinations, and the marvellous organization which could get them performed with circumstances so dramatic and create a mysterious terror against which the power of the government was broken in pieces,--all this was the work of a few dozens of men and women seemingly endowed with ubiquitousness, so rapid and unceasing their journeys, and so varied the disguises, names, and stratagems they made use of to bewilder and confound the police. It was whispered that millions of money were sent in from abroad, that there were members of the Czar's family implicated in the conspiracy, that there was an unknown chief, living in a distant country, who managed the threads of a terrible executive committee which passed judgment in the dark, and whose decrees were carried out instantly. Yet there were only a few enthusiastic students, a few young girls ready to perform any service, like the heroine of Turguenief's "Shadows;" a few thousand rubles, each contributing his share; and, after all, a handful of determined people, who, to use the words of Leroy-Beaulieu, had made a covenant with death. For a strong will, like intelligence or inspiration, is the patrimony of the few; and so, just as ten or twelve artist heads can modify the æsthetic tendency of an age, six or eight intrepid conspirators are enough to stir up an immense empire. After Karakozof's attempt upon the life of the Czar (the first spark of discontent), the government augmented the police and endowed Muravief, who was nicknamed _the Hangman_, with dictatorial powers. In 1871 the first notable political trial was held upon persons affiliated with a secret society. Persecutions for political offences are a great mistake. Maltreatment only inspires sympathy. After a few such trials the doors had to be closed; the public had become deeply interested in the accused, who declared their doctrines in a style only comparable to the acts of the early Christian martyrs. Who could fail to be moved at the sight of a young woman like Sophia Bardina, rising modestly and explaining before an audience tremulous with compassion her revolutionary ideas concerning society, the family, anarchy, property, and law? Power is almost always blind and stupid in the first moments of revolutionary disturbances. In Russia men risked life and security as often by acts of charity toward conspirators as by conspiracy itself. In Odessa, which was commanded by General Totleben, the little blond heads of two children appeared between the prison bars; they were the children of a poor wretch who had dropped five rubles into a collection for political exiles, and these two little ones were sentenced to the deserts of Siberia with their father. And the poet Mikailof chides the revolutionaries with the words: "Why not let your indignation speak, my brothers? Why is love silent? Is our horrible misfortune worthy of nothing more than a vain tribute of tears? Has your hatred no power to threaten and to wound?" The party then armed itself, ready to vindicate its political rights by means of terror. The executive committee of the revolutionary socialists--if in truth such a committee existed or was anything more than a triumvirate--favored this idea. Spies and fugitives were quickly executed. The era of sanguinary nihilism was opened by a woman, the Charlotte Corday of nihilism,--Vera Zasulitch. She read in a newspaper that a political prisoner had been whipped, contrary to law,--for corporal punishment had been already abolished,--and for no worse cause than a refusal to salute General Trepof; she immediately went and fired a revolver at his accuser. The jury acquitted her, and her friends seized her as she was coming out of court, and spirited her away lest she should fall into the hands of the police; the emperor thereupon decreed that henceforth political prisoners should not be tried by jury. Shortly after this the substitute of the imperial deputy at Kief was fired upon in the street; suspicion fell upon a student; all the others mutinied; sixteen of them were sent into exile. As they were passing through Moscow their fellow-students there broke from the lecture-halls and came to blows with the police. Some days later the rector of the University of Kief, who had endeavored to keep clear of the affair, was found dead upon the stairs; and again later, Heyking, an officer of the _gendarmerie_, was mortally stabbed in a crowded street. The clandestine press declared this to have been done by order of the executive committee; and it was not long before the chief of secret police of St. Petersburg received a very polite notice of his death-sentence, which was accomplished by another dagger, and the clandestine paper, "Land and Liberty," said by way of comment, "The measure is filled, and we gave warning of it." Months passed without any new assassinations; but in February, 1879, Prince Krapotkine, governor of Karkof, fell by the hand of a masked man, who fired two shots and fled, and no trace of him was to be found, though sentence of death against him was announced upon the walls of all the large towns of Russia. The brother of Prince Krapotkine was a furious revolutionary, and conducted a socialist paper in Geneva at that time. In March it fell to the turn of Colonel Knoup of the _gendarmerie_, who was assassinated in his own house, and beside him was found a paper with these words: "By order of the Executive Committee. So will we do to all tyrants and their accomplices." A pretty nihilist girl killed a man at a ball; it was at first thought to be a love-affair, but it was afterward found out that the murderess did the deed by order of the executive committee, or whatever the hidden power was which inspired such acts. On the 25th of this same March a plot against the life of the new chief of police, General Drenteln, was frustrated, and the walls of the town then flamed with a notice that revolutionary justice was about to fall upon one hundred and eighty persons. It rained crimes,--against the governor of Kief, against Captain Hubbenet, against Pietrowsky, chief of police, who was riddled with wounds in his own room; and lastly on the 14th of April Solovief attempted the life of the Czar, firing five shots, none of which took effect. On being caught, the would-be assassin swallowed a dose of poison, but his suicide was also unsuccessful. Solovief, however, had reached the heights of nihilism; he had dared to touch the sacred person of the Czar. He was the ideal nihilist: he had renounced his profession, determined to _go with the people_, and became a locksmith, wearing the artisan's dress; he was married _mystically_, and by _free grace_ or _free will_, and it was said that he was a member of the terrible executive committee. He suffered death on the gallows with serenity and composure, and without naming his accomplices. "Land and Liberty" approved his acts by saying, "We should be as ready to kill as to die; the day has come when assassination must be counted as a political motor." From that day Alexander II. was a doomed man, and his fatal moment was not far off. The revolutionaries were determined to strike the government with terror, and to prove to the people that the sacred emperor was a man like any other, and that no supernatural charm shielded his life. At the end of 1879 and the beginning of 1880 two lugubrious warnings were forced upon the emperor: first, the mine which wrecked the imperial train, and then the explosion which threw the dining-room of the palace in ruins, which catastrophe he saw with his own eyes. About this time the office of a surreptitious paper was attacked, the editors and printers of which defended themselves desperately; alarmed by this significant event, the emperor intrusted to Loris Melikof, who was a liberal, an almost omnipotent dictatorship. The conciliatory measures of Melikof somewhat calmed the public mind; but just as the Czar had convened a meeting for the consideration of reforms solicited by the general opinion, his own sentence was carried out by bombs. It is worthy of note that both parties (the conservative and the revolutionary) cast in each other's face the accusation of having been the first to inflict the death-penalty, which was contrary to Russian custom and law. If Russia does not deserve quite so appropriately as Spain to be called the country of _vice versas_, it is nevertheless worth while to note how she long ago solved the great juridical problem upon which we are still employing tongue and pen so busily. Not only is capital punishment unknown to the Russian penal code, but since 1872 even perpetual confinement has been abolished, twenty years being the maximum of imprisonment; and this even to-day is only inflicted upon political criminals, who are always treated there with greater severity than other delinquents. Before the celebrated Italian criminalist lawyer, Beccaria, ever wrote on the subject, the Czarina Elisabeth Petrowna had issued an edict suppressing capital punishment. The terrible Muscovite whip probably equalled the gibbet, but aside from the fact that it had been seldom used, it was abolished by Nicholas I. If we judge of a country by its penal laws, Russia stands at the head of European civilization. The Russians were so unaccustomed to the sight of the scaffold, that when the first one for the conspirators was to be built, there were no workmen to be found who knew how to construct it. VII. The Police and the Censor. It is not easy to say whether the government was ill-advised in confronting the terrors of nihilism with the terrors of authority. Public executions are contageous in their effect, and blood intoxicates. The nihilists, even in the hour of death, did not neglect their propaganda, and held up to the people their dislocated wrists as evidences of their tortures. One must put one's self in the place of a government menaced and attacked in so unusual a manner. Certain extreme measures which are the fruit of the stress of the moment are more excusable than the vacillating system commonly practised from time immemorial; and which is foster-mother to professional demagogues, and dynamiters by vocation and preference. The police as organized in Russia seem to inspire greater horror even than the nihilist atrocities. In the face of judicial reforms there exists an irresponsible tribunal, called the Third Section of the Imperial Chancellorship. The worst of this kind of arbitrary and antipathetic institutions is that imagination attributes many more iniquities to them than they in reality commit. Russian written law declares that no subject of the Czar can be condemned without a public trial; but the special police has the right to arrest, imprison, and make way with, rendering no account to any one. Thus absolute power leaps the barriers of justice. It must be acknowledged that the dark ways of the special police only reflected those of their nihilist adversary. Nowhere in the world, however, is the police so hated; nowhere do they perform their work in so irritating a manner as in Russia; and the public, far from assisting them, as in England and France, fights and circumvents them. The proneness to secret societies in Russia is the result of the perpetual and odious tyranny of the police. The Russian lives in clandestine association like a fish in water; so much so that after the fall of Loris Melikof the reactionaries were no less eager for it than the nihilists, and bound themselves together under the name of the Holy League, taking as a model the revolutionary executive committee, and even including the death-sentence in their rules. War without quarter was declared, and the police organized a counter-terror characterized by impeachment, suspicion, espionage, and inquisition. There were domiciliary visitations; every one was obliged to take notice whether any illegal meetings were held in his neighborhood, or any proscribed books or explosive materials were to be seen; no posters were allowed to be put on the walls, and every one was expected to aid the arrest of any suspicious person; a vigilant watch was kept upon Russian refugees; the rigors of confinement were enforced; and all this made the police utterly abhorred, even in a country accustomed to endure them as a traditional institution since the last of the Ruriks and the first of the Romanoffs. The chief of the Third Section became a power in the land. The Section worked secretly and actively. The chief and the emperor maintained incessant communication, and the former was made a member of the cabinet, and could arrest, imprison, exile, and put out of the way, whomever he pleased. During the reign of the kind-hearted Alexander II. his power declined for a while, until nihilist plots and manoeuvres caused it to be redoubled. There was a struggle unto death between two powers of darkness, from which the police came out beaten, having been unable to save the lives of their chief and the sovereign. While the Third Section attacked personal security and liberty, the censorship, more intolerable still, hemmed in the spirit and condemned to a death by inanition a young people hungry for literature and science, for plays, periodicals, and books. Mutilated as it is, the newspaper is bread to the soul of the Russian. The Russian press, like all the obstacles that absolute power finds in its way, was founded by one of their imperial civilizers, Peter the Great, and it maintained a purely literary character until the reign of Alexander II., when it took a political form. Under the iron hand of the censor, the Russian press has learned the manner and artifices of the slave; in allusions, insinuations, retentions, and half-meanings it is an adept, for only so can it convey all that it is forbidden to speak. It must emigrate and recross the frontier as contraband in order to speak freely. The censor lies ever in ambush like a mastiff ready to bite; and sometimes its teeth clinch the most inoffensive words on the page, the most innocent page in the book, the librettos of operas, as for example "The Huguenots" and "William Tell." In 1855 certain literary works were exempted from the previous censure, but this beneficence was not extended to the periodical press. The newspapers of St. Petersburg and Moscow were open to a choice between the new and old systems, between submitting to the rule of the censor and a deluge of denunciations, seizures, suspensions, and suppressions; and they willingly chose the former. So the Russian press exists under an entirely arbitrary sufferance, and according as the political scales rise and fall they are allowed to-day what was prohibited yesterday, and sometimes their very means of sustenance are cut off by an embargo on certain numbers or the proscription of advertisements. If a liberal minister is to the fore, times are prosperous; if there is a reaction, they are crushed to death. This accounts for the popularity of the secret press, which is at work even in buildings belonging to the crown, in seminaries and convents, and in the very laboratory of dynamite bombs. Books are as much harassed as periodicals. The Russians, being very fond of everything foreign, sigh for books from abroad, especially those that deal with political and social questions; but the censor has custom-houses at the frontier, and the officials, with the usual perspicacity of literary monitors, finally let slip that which may prove most dangerous and subversive, and exercise their zeal upon the most ingenuous. They have even cut off the _feuilletines_ of thousands of French papers,--what patience it must have required to do it!--while Madame Gagneur's novel, "The Russian Virgins," passed unmutilated. I wonder what would be the fate of my peaceful essays should they receive the unmerited honor of translation and reach the frontiers of Muscovy! As to the foreign reviews, they are submitted to a somewhat amusing process, called the _caviar_. Suspicious passages, if they escape the scissors, get an extra dash of printing-ink. Thus the Russian is not even free to read till he goes from home, and by force of dieting he suffers from frequent mental indigestion, and the weakest sort of _spirits_ goes to his head! All this goes to prove that if speculative nihilism is a moral infirmity congenital to the soul of the Russian, active and political nihilism is the fruit of the peculiar situation of the empire. The phrase is stale, but in the present case accurate. Russia is passing through a period of transition. She goes forward to an uncertain future, stumbles and falls; her feet bleed, her senses swim; she has fits of dementia and even of epilepsy. Good intention goes for nought, whether the latent generosity of revolutionaries, or of government and Czar. Where is there a person of nobler desires and projects than Alexander II.? But his great reforms seemed rather to accelerate than to calm the revolutionary fever. As long as the revolution does not descend from the cultivated classes upon the masses of the people, it must be content with occasional spurts, chimerical attempts, and a few homicides; but if some day the socialist propaganda, which now begins to take effect in the workshops, shall make itself heard in the country villages, and the peasant lend an ear to those who say to him, "Rise, make the sign of the Cross and take thy hatchet with thee," then Russia will show us a most formidable insurrection, and that world of country-folk, patient as cattle, but fanatical and overwhelming in their fury, once let loose, will sweep everything before it. Nothing will appease or satisfy it. The constitutions of Western lands they have already torn in pieces without perusal. Even the revolutionaries would prefer to those illusory statutes a Czar standing at the head of the peasants, and institutions born within their own land. It is said that now, just as the nihilist frenzy is beginning to subside, one can perceive a smouldering agitation among the people manifesting itself occasionally in conflagrations, anti-Semitic outbreaks, and frequent agrarian crimes. What a clouded horizon! What volcanic quakings beneath all that snow! On the one hand the autocratic power, the secular arm, consecrated by time, tradition, and national life; on the other the far-reaching revolution, fanatical and impossible to appease with what has satisfied other nations; and at bottom the cry of the peasants, like the sullen roar of the ocean, for--it is a little thing--the land! Book III. RISE OF THE RUSSIAN NOVEL. I. The Beginnings of Russian Literature. From this state of anguish, of unrest, of uncertainty, has been brought forth, like amber from the salt sea, a most interesting literature. Into this relatively peaceful domain we are about to penetrate. But before speaking of the novel itself I must mention as briefly as possible the sources and vicissitudes of Russian letters up to the time when they assumed a national and at the same time a social and political character. I will avoid tiresome details, and the repetition of Russian names which are formidable and harsh to our senses, besides being confusing and at first sight all very much alike, and much given to terminating in _of_,--a syllable which on Russian lips is nevertheless very euphonious and sweet. I will also avoid the mention of books of secondary importance; for as this is not a course of Russian literature, it would be pedantry to refer to more than those I have read from cover to cover. I will mention in passing only a few authors of lesser genius than the four whom Melchior de Voguié very correctly estimates as the perfect national types; namely, Gogol, Turguenief, Dostoiëwsky, and Tolstoï, and I will give only a succinct review of the primitive period, the classicism and romanticism, the satire and comedy antecedent to Gogol, this much being necessary in order to bring out the transformation due to the prodigious genius of this founder of realism, and consummated in the contemporary novel. Literature, considered not as rhetorical feats or as the art of speaking and writing well, but as a manifestation of national life or of the peculiar inclinations of a people, exists from the time when the spirit of the people is spontaneously revealed in legends, traditions, proverbs, and songs. The fertility of Russian popular literature is well known to students of folk-lore. Critics have demonstrated to us that between the primitive oral, mythical, and poetical literature of Russia and the present novel (which is profoundly philosophical in character, and inspired by that austere muse, the Real) there is as close a relationship as between the gray-haired grandfather who has all his life followed the plough, and his offspring who holds a chair in a university. Russian literature was born beside the Danube, in the fatherland of the Sclavonic people. The various tribes dispersed themselves over the Black Sea, and the Russian Sclavs, following the course of the Dnieper, began to elaborate their heroic mythology with feats of gods and demi-gods against the forces of Nature, and monsters and other fantastic beings. A warlike mode of life and a semi-savage imagination are reflected in their legends and songs. All this period is covered by the _bilinas_, a word which is explained by Russian etymology to mean _songs of the past_. These epics tell of the exploits of ancient warriors who personify the blind and chaotic forces of Nature and the elements. _Esviatogor_, for example, represents a mountain; _Volk_ may mean a wolf, a bull, or an ant; there is a godlike tiller of the soil who stands for Russian agriculture, and who is the popular and indigenous hero, in opposition to the fighting and adventurous hero _Volga_, who stands for the ruling classes. Perhaps these _bilinas_ and the Finnish Kalevala are the only primitive epics in which the laborer plays a first part and puts the fighting hero into the shade. In these national poems of a people descended from the Scythians, who in the days of Herodotus were proud of calling themselves _farmers_ or _laborers_, the two most attractive figures are the heroes of the plough, Mikula and Ilia; it is as though the singers of long ago started the worship of the peasant, which is the dogma of the present novel, or as though the apotheosis of agriculture were an idea rooted in the deepest soil of the national thought of Russia. Next after this primitive cycle comes the age of chivalry, known under the name of Kief cycle, which has its focus in the Prince Vladimir called the Red Sun; but even in this Round Table epic we find the heroic _mujik_, the giant Cossack, Ilias de Moron. The splendor of the hero-mythical epoch faded after the advent of Christianity, and the heroes of Kief and Novgorod fell into oblivion; one _bilina_ tells now "the paladins of Holy Russia disappeared; a great new force that was not of this world came upon them," and the paladins, unable to conquer it, and seeing that it multiplied and became only more powerful with every stroke, were afraid, and ran and hid themselves in the caverns, which closed upon them forever. Since that day there are no more paladins in Holy Russia. In every _bilina_, and also in songs which celebrate the seed-time, the pagan feast of the summer solstice, and the spring-time, we notice the two characteristics of Russian thought,--a lively imagination and a dreamy sadness, which is most evident in the love-songs. On coming in contact with Christianity the pagan tale became a legend, and the clergy, brought from Byzantium by Valdimir the Baptizer, gave the people the Gospel in the Sclavonic tongue, translated by two Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, and the day of liturgical and sacred literature was at hand. The apostles of Christianity arranged the alphabet of thirty-eight letters, which represent all the sounds in the Sclav language, and founded also the grammar and rhetoric. As in every other part of Christendom, these early preachers were the first to enlighten the people, bringing ideas of culture entirely new to the barbarous Sclavonic tribes; and the poor monk, bent over his parchment, writing with a sharp-pointed reed, was the first educator of the nation. In the eleventh century the first Russian literary efforts began to take shape, being, like all early-written literature, of essentially clerical origin and character,--such as epistles, sermons, and moral exhortations. The chief writers of that time were the monk Nestor, the metropolitan Nicephorous, and Cyril the Golden-Mouthed, who imitated the florid Byzantine eloquence. At the side of ecclesiastical literature history was born; the lives of the saints prepared the ground for the chroniclers, and Nestor's Chronicle, the first book on Russian history, was written. The early essays in profane history, which took the form of fables and trenchant sayings disclosing a vein of satire, still smack of the ecclesiastical flavor, although they contain the instincts of a laic and civil literature. The people had their epic, the clergy accumulated their treasures, but the warriors and knights, who with the sovereign formed a separate society, must have their heroic cycle also; and bards and singers were found to give it to them in fragmentary pieces, among which the most celebrated is the "Song of the Host of Igor," which relates the victories of a prince over the savage tribes of the steppes. The poem is a mixture of pagan and Christian wonders, which is only natural, since in the twelfth century (the era of its composition) Christianity, while triumphant in fact, had not yet succeeded in driving out the old Sclavonic deities. In the eighth century the Tartar invasion interrupted the course of civil literature. Russia then had no time for the remembrance of anything but her disasters, and the Church became again the only depository of the civilization brought from Byzantium, and of the intellectual riches of the nation; for the Khans, who destroyed everything else, regarded the churches and images with superstitious respect. The little then written expresses the grief of Russia over her catastrophe, but in sermon form, presenting it as a punishment from Heaven, and a portent of the end of the world; it was the universal panic of the Middle Ages arrived in Russia three centuries late. Until the fourteenth century there was no revival of historical narrations in sufficient numbers to show the preponderance of the epic spirit in the Russian people. In the fifteenth century, for the first time, oral literature really penetrated into the domain of the written; but the inevitable and tiresome mediæval stories of Alexander the Great and the Siege of Troy, the Thousand and One Nights, and others, entering by way of Servia and Bulgaria, appear among the literature of the southern Sclavs; and tales of chivalry from Byzantium are also rearranged and copied,--an element of imitation and artificiality which never took deep root in Russia, however. Aside from some few tales, the only germs of vitality are to be found in the apocryphal religious narratives, which were an early expression of the spirit of mysticism and exegesis, natural to Muscovite thought; and in the songs, also religious, chanted by pilgrims on their way to visit the shrines, and by the people also, but probably the work of the monks. These are still sung by beggars on the streets, and the people listen with delight. In the sixteenth century there were Maximus the Greek (the Savonarola of Russia), the priest Silvester, author of "Domostrof," a book which was held to contain the model of ancient Russian society, and lastly the Czar, Ivan the Terrible himself, who wrote many notable epistles, models of irony. The songs of the people still flourished, and they were provided with subject-matter by the awful figure and actions of the emperor, who was beloved by the people, because, like Pedro the Cruel of Castile, he dared to bridle the nobles. The popular poet describes him as giving to a potter the insignia and dignity of a Boyar. This tyrant, the most ferocious that humanity ever endured, busied himself with establishing the art of printing in Russia, with the help of Maximus the Greek, who was a great friend of Aldus the Venetian, the famous printer. According to the Metropolitan Macarius, God himself from his high throne put this thought into the heart of the Czar. On the 1st of May, 1564, the first book printed in Russia, "The Acts of the Apostles," made its appearance. The Russian theatre grew out of the symbolic ceremonies of the church and the representations given by the Polish Jesuits in the colleges; and through Poland, in the seventeenth century, by means of translations or imitations, came also that kind of literary recreations known in France and Italy during the fourteenth century under the name of novels and facetias. But these did not intercept the natural course of the national spirit, nor drown the popular voice,--the _duma_, or meditation, the religious canticle, the satire, and especially the incessant reiteration of the _bilinas_, which were now devoted to relating the heroic conquests of the Cossacks. The impulse communicated to Russian thought by Peter the Great at last obliterated the chasm between popular and written literature. Peter established in Russia a school of translators; whatever he thought useful and beneficial he had correctly translated, and then he established the academy. He set up the first regular press and founded the first periodical paper. Not having much confidence in ecclesiastical literature, he commanded that the monks should be deprived of pen, ink, and paper; and on the other hand he revived the theatre, which was apparently dead, and under the influence of his reforms there arose the first Russian writer who can properly be called such,--Lomonosof, the personification of academical classicism, who wrote because he thought it his business, in a well-ordered State, to write incessantly, to polish and perfect the taste, the speech, and even the characters of his fellow-countrymen; he was always a rhetorician, a censor, a corrector, and we seem to see him always armed with scissors and rule, pruning and shaping the myrtles in the garden of literature. The Czar pensioned this ornamental poet, after the fashion of French monarchs, and he in turn bequeathed to his country, of course, a heroic poem entitled "Petriada." His best service to the national literature was in the line of philology; he found a language unrefined and hampered by old Sclavonic forms, and he refined it, softened it, made it more flexible, and ready to yield sweeter melody to those who played upon it thereafter. Semiramis, in her turn, was not less eager to forward the cause of letters; she had also her palace poet, Derjavine, the Pindar of her court; and not being satisfied with this, her imperial hands grasped the foils and fought out long arguments in the periodicals, to which she contributed for a long time. Woman, just at that time emerging from Oriental seclusion, as during the Renaissance in Europe, manifested an extraordinary desire to learn and to exercise her mind. Catherine became a journalist, a satirist, and a dramatic author; and a lady of her court, the Princess Daschkof, directed the Academy of Sciences, and presided over the Russian Academy founded by Catherine for the improvement and purification of the language, while three letters in the new dictionary are the exclusive work of this learned princess. Catherine effectively protected her literary men, being convinced that letters are a means of helping the advancement of a barbarous people, in fact the highways of communication; and under her influence a literary Pleiad appeared, among whom were Von-Vizine, the first original Russian dramatist; Derjavine, the official bard and oracle; and Kerakof, the pseudo-classic author of the "Rusiada." Court taste prevailed, and Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot ruled as intellectual masters of a people totally opposed to the French in their inmost thoughts. The thing most grateful to the Russian poet in Catherine's time was to be called the Horace or the Pindar of his country; the nobles hid their Muscovite ruggedness under a coat of Voltairian varnish, and even the seminaries resounded with denunciations of _fanaticism_ and _horrid superstition_. Other nations have been known to go thus masked unawares. But new currents were undermining the possessions of the Encyclopedists. During the last years of Catherine's reign the theosophical doctrines from Sweden and Germany infiltrated Russia; mysticism brought free-masonry, which finally mounted the throne with Alexander I., the tender friend of the sentimental Valeria; and even had Madame Krudener never appeared to shape in her visions the protest of the Russian soul against the dryness and frivolity of the French philosophers, the fresh lyric quality of Rousseau, Florian, and Bernardin Saint-Pierre would still have flowed in upon the people of the North by means of that eminent man and historian, Karamzine. Before achieving the title of the Titus Livius of Russia, Karamzine, being a keen intellectual observer of what was going on abroad, founded, by means of a novel, the _emotional school_, declaring that the aim of art is "to pour out floods of grateful impressions upon the realms of the sentimental." This sounds like mere jargon, but such was their mode of speech at the time; and that their spirits demanded just such food is proved by the general use of it, and by the tears that rained upon the said novel, in which the Russian _mujik_ appears in the disguise of a shepherd of Arcadia. These innocent absurdities, which were the delight of our own grandmothers, prepared the way for Romanticism, and the appearance of Lermontof and Puchkine. II. Russian Romanticism.--the Lyric Poets. The period of lyric poetry represented by these two excellent poets, Lermontof and Puchkine, was considered the most glorious in Russian literature, and there are yet many who esteem it as such in spite of the contemporary novel. Undoubtedly rhyme can do wonders with this rich tongue in which words are full of color, melody, and shape, as well as ideas. A fine critic has said that Russian poetry is untranslatable, and that one must feel the beauty of certain stanzas of Lermontof and Puchkine sensually, to realize why they are beyond even the most celebrated verses in the world. At the beginning of the century classicism was in its decline; Russia was leaving her youth behind her, and after 1812 she became totally changed. The Napoleonic wars caused the alliance with Germany, and secret societies of German origin flourished under the favor of the versatile Alexander I. Weary of the artificial literature imposed by the iron will of Peter the Great, and stirred by a great desire for independence, like all the other nations awakened by Napoleon, Russia held her breath and listened to the birdlike song of the harbingers of a new era, to the great romantic poets who, almost simultaneously and with marvellous accord, burst forth in England, Italy, France, Spain, and Russia. The air was full of melody like the sudden twang of harp-strings in the darkness of the night; and perhaps the autocratic severity of Nicholas I. by forcing attention from public affairs and concentrating it upon literature, was a help rather than a hindrance to this revelation and development. Alexander Puchkine, the demi-god of Russian verse, carried African as well as Sclavonic blood in his veins, being the grandson of an Abyssinian named Abraham Hannibal, a sort of Othello upon whom Peter the Great bestowed the rank of general and married him to a lady of the court. During the poet's childhood an old servant beguiled him with legends, fables, and popular tales, and the seed fell upon good ground. He left home at the age of fourteen, having quarrelled with all his family and become an out-and-out Voltairian; his professor at the Lyceum--of whom no more needs be said than that he was a brother of Marat--had instilled into his youthful mind the superficial atheism then the fashion; his other tutors declared that this impetuous and fanciful child was throwing away body and soul; yet, when the occasion came, Puchkine remembered all that his old nurse had told him, and found himself with an exquisite æsthetic instinct, in touch with the popular feeling. When Nicholas I., in December, 1825, mounted the throne vacated by the death of Alexander I. and the renunciation of the Grand-Duke Constantine, Puchkine, then scarcely more than twenty-six years of age, found himself in exile for the second time. His first appearance in public life coincided with the reactionary mood of Alexander I. and the favoritism of the retrogressive minister, Count Arakschef; and the young men from the Lyceum, who had been steeping their souls in liberalism, found themselves defrauded of their expectations of active life, discussions closed, meetings prohibited, and Russia again in a trance of Asiatic immobility. The young nobility began to entertain themselves with conspiracy; and those who had no talent for that, spent their time in drinking and dissipation. Puchkine was as much inclined toward the one as the other. His passionate temperament led him into all sorts of adventures; his eager imagination and his literary tastes incited him to political essays, though under pain of censure. Living amid a whirl of amusement, and coveting an introduction to aristocratic circles, he launched his celebrated poem of "Russia and Ludmilla," which placed him at once at the head of the poets of his day, who had formed themselves into a society called "Arzamas," which was to Russian Romanticism what the Cénacle was to the French,--a centre of attack and defence against classicism; but at length their literary discussions overstepped the forbidden territory of politics, and certain ideas were broached which ended in the conspiracy of December. If Puchkine was not himself a conspirator, he was at least acquainted with the movement; his ode to liberty alarmed the police, and the Czar said to the director of the Lyceum, "Your former pupil is inundating Russia with revolutionary verses, and every boy knows them by heart." That same afternoon the Czar signed the order for Puchkine's banishment,--a great good-fortune for the poet; for had he not been banished he might have been implicated in the conspiracy about to burst forth, and sent to Siberia or to the quicksilver mines. He was expelled from Odessa, which was his first place of confinement, because his Byronic bravado had a pernicious influence upon the young men of the place, and he was sent home to his father, with whom he could come to no understanding whatever. While there he heard of the death of Alexander and the events of December. Upon knowing that his friends were all compromised and under arrest, he started for St. Petersburg, but having met a priest and seen a hare cross his path, he considered these ill omens, and, yielding to superstition, he turned back. Soon afterward he wrote to the new Czar begging reprieve of banishment, which was granted. The Iron Czar sent for him to come to the palace, and held with him a conversation or dialogue which has become famous in the annals of the historians: "If you had found yourself in St. Petersburg on the 25th of December, where would you have been?" asked Nicholas. "Among the rebels," answered the poet. Far from being angry, the sovereign was pleased with his reply, and he embraced Puchkine, saying: "Your banishment is at an end; and do not let fear of the censors spoil your poetry, Alexander, son of Sergius, for I myself will be your censor." This is not the only instance of this inflexible autocrat's warm-heartedness. More than once his imperial hand stayed the sentence of the censors and gave the wing to genius. Nicholas was not afraid of art, and was, besides, an intelligent amateur of literature. We shall see how he protected even the satire of Gogol. And so, with a royal suavity which softens the most selfish character, Nicholas gained to his side the first poet of Russia, and forever alienated him from the cause for which his friends suffered in gloomy fortresses and in exile, or perished on the scaffold. Puchkine had no other choice than to accept the situation or forfeit his freedom,--to make peace with the emperor or to go and vegetate in some village and bury his talent alive. He chose his vocation as poet, accepted the imperial favor, and returned to St. Petersburg, where he found a remnant of the Arzamas, but now languid and without creative fire. Being restored to his place in high society, he tasted the delights of living in a sphere with which his refined and aristocratic nature was in harmony. He was a poet; he enjoyed the privileges and immunities of a demi-god, the just tribute paid to the productive genius of beauty. And yet at times the pride and independence hushed within his soul stirred again, and he thought with horror upon the hypocrisy of his position as imperial oracle. But he found himself at the height of his glory, doing his best work, seldom annoyed by the censorial scissors, thanks to the Czar; and so, flattered by the throne, the court, and the public, he led to the altar his "brown-skinned virgin," his beautiful Natalia, with whom he was so deeply in love. Having satisfied every earthly desire, he must needs, like Polycrates, throw his ring into the sea. All his happiness came to a sudden end, and not only his happiness, but his life, went to pay his debt to that high society which had received him with smiles and fair promises. Puchkine's end is as dramatic as any novel. A certain French Legitimist who had been well received by the nobility at St. Petersburg took advantage of the chivalrous customs then in vogue there, to pay court to the poet's beautiful wife, electing her as the lady of his thoughts without disguise. Society protected this little skirmish, and assisted the gallant to meet his lady at every entertainment and in every _salon_; and as Puchkine, though quite unsuspicious, showed plainly that he did not enjoy the game, they amused themselves with exciting and annoying him, ridiculing him, and making him the butt of epigrams and anonymous verses. The marriage of "Dante"--as the adorer of his wife was called--with his wife's sister, far from calming his nerves, only irritated him the more, and he believed it to be a stratagem on the lover's part, a means of approaching the nearer to his desires. Becoming desperate, he sought and obtained a challenge to a duel, and fell mortally wounded by a ball from his adversary. Two days later he died, having just received a letter from the emperor, saying:-- "Dear Alexander, Son of Sergius,--If it is the will of Providence that we should never meet again in this world, I counsel you to die like a Christian. Give yourself no anxiety for your wife and children; I will care for them." Russia cried out with indignation at the news of his death, accusing polite society in round terms of having taken the part of the professional libertine against the husband,--of the French adventurer against their illustrious compatriot; and Lermontof voiced the national anger in some celebrated lines to this effect:-- "Thy last days were poisoned by the vicious ridicule of low detractors; thou hast died thirsting for vengeance, moaning bitterly to see thy most beautiful hopes vanished; none understood the deep emotion of thy last words, and the last sigh of thy dying lips was lost." But I agree with those who, in spite of this fine elegy, do not regret the premature end of the romantic poet. His life, exuberant, brilliant, fecund, passionate, like that of Byron, could have no more appropriate termination than a pistol-shot. He died before the end of romanticism--his tragic history lent him a halo which lifts his figure above the mists of time. I have seen Victor Hugo and our own Zorilla in their old age, and I was not guilty of wishing them anything but long life and prosperity; but, æsthetically speaking, it seemed to me that both of them had lived forty years too long, and that Alfred de Musset, Espronceda, and Byron were well off in their glorious tombs. Puchkine belongs undeniably to the great general currents of European literature; only now and then does he manifest the peculiar genius of his country which was so strongly marked in Gogol. But it would be unjust to consider him a mere imitator of foreign romanticists, and some even claim that he always had one foot upon the soil of classicism, taking the phrase in the Helenic sense, as particularly shown in his "Eugene Oneguine," and that, were he to live again, his talents would undergo a transformation and shine forth in the modern novel and the national theatre. Besides being a lyric poet of first rank, Puchkine must also be considered a superb prose writer, having learned from Voltaire a harmony of arrangement, a discreet selection of details, and a concise, clear, and rapid phrasing. His novel, "The Captain's Daughter," is extremely pretty and interesting, at times amusing, or again very touching, and in my opinion preferable in its simplicity to the interminable narratives of Walter Scott. But Puchkine has one remarkable peculiarity, which is, that while he had a keen sympathy with the popular poetry, and was fully sensible of the revelation of it by Gogol, which he applauded with all his heart, yet the author of "Boris Godonof" was so caught in the meshes of romanticism that he never could employ his faculties in poetry of a national character. Puchkine's works have no ethnical value at all. His melancholy is not the despairing sadness of the Russian, but the romantic _morbidezza_ expressed often in much the same words by Byron, Espronceda, and de Musset. The phenomenon is common, and easily explained. It lies in the fact that romanticism was always and everywhere prejudicial to the manifestation of nationality, and made itself a nation apart, composed of half-a-dozen persons from every European country. Realism, with its principles--whether tacitly or explicitly accepted--of human verities, heredity, atavism, race and place influences, etc., became a necessity in order that writers might follow their natural instincts and speak in their own mother tongue. Within the restricted circle of poets who hovered around Puchkine, one deserves especial mention, namely, Lermontof. He is the second lyric poet of Russia, and perhaps embodies the spirit of romanticism even more than Puchkine; he is the real Russian Byron. His life is singularly like that of Puchkine, he having also been banished to the Caucasus, and for the very reason of having written the elegy upon Puchkine's death; like him he was also killed in a duel, but still earlier in life, and before he had reached the plenitude of his powers. Lermontof became the singer of the Caucasian region. At that time it was really a great favor to send a poet to the mountains, for there he came in contact with things that reclaimed and lifted his fancy,--air, sun, liberty, a wooded and majestic landscape, picturesque and charming peasant-maidens, wild flowers full of new and virginal perfume like the Haydees and Fior d'Alizas sung of by our Western poets. There they forgot the deceits of civilization and the weariness of mind that comes of too much reading; there the brain was refreshed, the nerves calmed, and the moral fibre strengthened. Puchkine, Lermontof, and Tolstoï, each in his own way, have lauded the regenerative virtue of the snow-covered mountains. But Lermontof in particular was full of it, lived in it, and died in it, after his fatal wound at the age of twenty-six, when public opinion had just singled him out as Puchkine's successor. He had drunk deeply of Byron's fountain, and even resembled Byron in his discontent, restlessness, and violent passions, which more than Byron's were tinged with a stripe of malice and pride, so that his enemies used to say that to describe Lucifer he needed only to look at himself in the glass. There is an unbridled freedom, a mocking irony, and at times a deep melancholy at the bottom of his poetic genius; it is inferior to Puchkine's in harmony and completeness, but exceeds it in an almost painful and thrilling intensity; there was more gall in his soul, and therefore more of what has been called subjectivity, even amounting to a fierce egoism. Lermontof is the high-water mark of romanticism, and after his death it necessarily began to ebb; it had exhausted curses, fevers, complaints, and spleens, and now the world of literature was ready for another form of art, wider and more human, and that form was realism. I am sorry to have to deal in _isms_, but the fault is not mine; we are handling ideas, and language offers no other way. The transition came by means of satire, which is exceptionally fertile in Russia. A genius of wonderful promise arose in Griboiëdof, a keen observer and moralist, who deserves to be mentioned after Puchkine, if only for one comedy which is considered the gem of the Russian stage, and is entitled (freely rendered) "Too Clever by Half." The hero is a misanthropic patriot who sighs for the good old times and abuses the mania for foreign education and imitation. This shows the first impulse of the nation to know and to assert itself in literature as in everything else. Being prohibited by the censor, the play circulated privately in manuscript; every line became a proverb, and the people found their very soul reflected in it. Five years later, when Puchkine was returning from the Caucasus, he met with a company of Georgians who were drawing a dead body in a cart: it was the body of Griboiëdof, who had been assassinated in an insurrection. Between the decline of the romantic period and the appearance of new forms inspired by a love of the truth, there hovered in other parts of Europe undefined and colorless shapes, sterile efforts and shallow aspirations which never amounted to anything. But not so in Russia. Romanticism vanished quickly, for it was an aristocratic and artificial condition, without root and without fruit conducive to the well-being of a nation which had as yet scarcely entered on life, and which felt itself strong and eager for stimulus and aim, eager to be heard and understood; realism grew up quickly, for the very youth of the nation demanded it. Russia, which until then had trod with docile steps upon the heels of Europe, was at last to take the lead by creating the realistic novel. She had not to do violence to her own nature to accomplish this. The Russian, little inclined to metaphysics, unless it be the fatalist philosophy of the Hindus, more quick at poetic conceptions than at rational speculations, carries realism in his veins along with scientific positivism; and if any kind of literature be spontaneous in Russia it is the epic, as shown now in fragmentary songs and again in the novels. Before ever they were popular in their own country, Balzac and Zola were admired and understood in Russia. The two great geniuses of lyric poetry, Puchkine and Lermontof, confirm this theory. Though both perished before the descriptive and observing faculties of their countrymen were matured, they had both instinctively turned to the novel, and perhaps the possible direction of their genius was thus shadowed forth as by accident. Puchkine seems to me endowed with qualities which would have made him a delightful novel-writer. His heroes are clearly and firmly drawn and very attractive; he has a certain healthy joyousness of tone which is quite classic, and a brightness and freedom of coloring that I like; in the short historic narrative he has left us we never see the slightest trace of the lyric poet. As to Lermontof, is it not marvellous that a man who died at the age of twenty-six years should have produced anything like a novel? But he left a sort of autobiography, which is extremely interesting, entitled "A Contemporary Hero," which hero, Petchorine by name, is really the type of the romantic period, exacting, egotistical, at war with himself and everybody else, insatiable for love, yet scorning life, a type that we meet under different forms in many lands; now swallowing poison like De Musset's Rolla, now refusing happiness like Adolfo, now consumed with remorse like Réné, now cocking his pistol like Werther, and always in a bad humor, and to tell the truth always intolerable. "My hero," writes Lermontof, "is the portrait of a generation, not of an individual." And he makes that hero say, "I have a wounded soul, a fancy unappeased, a heart that nothing can ease. Everything becomes less and less to me. I have accustomed myself to suffering and joy alike, and I have neither feelings nor impressions; everything wearies me." But there are many fine pages in the narratives of Lermontof besides these poetical declamations. Perhaps the novel might also have offered him a brilliant future. The sad fate of the writers during the reign of Nicholas I. is remarkable, when we consider how favorable it was to art in other respects. Alexander Herzen calculated that within thirty years the three most illustrious Russian poets were assassinated or killed in a duel, three lesser ones died in exile, two became insane, two died of want, and one by the hand of the executioner. Alas! and among these dark shadows we discern one especially sad; it is that of Nicholas Gogol, a soul crushed by its own greatness, a victim to the noblest infirmity and the most generous mania that can come upon a man, a martyr to love of country. III. Russian Realism: Gogol, its Founder. Gogol was born in 1809; he was of Cossack blood, and first saw the light of this world amid the steppes which he was afterward to describe so vividly. His grandfather, holding the child upon his knee, amused him with stories of Russian heroes and their mighty deeds, not so very long past either, for only two generations lay between Gogol and the Cossack warriors celebrated in the _bilinas_. Sometimes a wandering minstrel sang these for him, accompanying himself on the _bandura_. In this school was his imagination taught. We may imagine the effect upon ourselves of hearing the Romance of the Cid under such circumstances. When Gogol went to St. Petersburg with the intention of joining the ranks of Russian youth there, though ostensibly to seek employment, he carried a light purse and a glowing fancy. He found that the great city was a desert more arid than the steppes, and even after obtaining an office under the government he endured poverty and loneliness such as no one can describe so well as himself. His position offered him one advantage which was the opportunity of studying the bureaucratic world, and of drawing forth from amid the dust of official papers the material for some of his own best pages. On the expiration of his term of office he was for a while blown about like a dry leaf. He tried the stage but his voice failed him; he tried teaching but found he had no vocation for it. Nor had he any aptitude for scholarship. In the Gymnasium of Niejine his rank among the pupils was only medium; German, mathematics, Latin, and Greek were little in his line; he was an illiterate genius. But in his inmost soul dwelt the conviction that his destiny held great things in store for him. In his struggle with poverty, the remembrance of the hours he had passed at school reading Puchkine and other romantic poets began to urge him to try his fortune at literature. One day he knocked with trembling hand at Puchkine's door; the great poet was still asleep, having spent the night in gambling and dissipation, but on waking, he received the young novice with a cordial welcome, and with his encouragement Gogol published his first work, called "Evenings at the Farm." It met with amazing success; for the first time the public found an author who could give them a true picture of Russian life. Puchkine had hit the mark in advising him to study national scenes and popular customs; and who knows whether perhaps his conscience did not reproach him with shutting his own eyes to his country and the realities she offered him, and stopping his ears against the voice of tradition and the charms of Nature? Gogol's "Evenings at the Farm" is the echo of his own childhood; in these pages the Russia of the people lives and breathes in landscapes, peasants, rustic customs, dialogues, legends, and superstitions. It is a bright and simple work, not yet marked with the pessimism which later on darkened the author's soul; it has a strong smell of the soil; it is full of dialect and colloquial diminutive and affectionate terms, with now and then a truly poetical passage. Is it not strange that the intellect of a nation sometimes wanders aimlessly through foreign lands seeking from without what lies handier at home, and borrowing from strangers that of which it has a super-abundance already? And how sweet is the surprise one feels at finding so beautiful the things which were hidden from our understanding by their very familiarity! "The Tales of Mirgorod," which followed the "Evenings at the Farm," contain one of the gems of Gogol's writings, the story of "Taras Boulba." Gogol has the quality of the epic poet, though he is generally noted only for his merits as a novelist; but judging from his greatest works, "Taras Boulba" and "Dead Souls," I consider his epic power to be of the first class, and in truth I hold him to be, rather more than a modern novelist, a master poet who has substituted for the lyric poetry brought into favor by romanticism the epic form, which is much more suited to the Russian spirit. He is the first who has caught the inspiration of the _bilinas_, the hero-songs, the Sclavonic poetry created by the people. The novel, it is true, is one manifestation of epic poetry, and in a certain way every novelist is a rhapsodist who recites his canto of the poem of modern times; but there are some descriptive, narrative fictions, which, imbued with a greater amount of the poetic element united to a certain large comprehensive character, more nearly resemble the ancient idea of the epopee; and of this class I may mention "Don Quixote," and perhaps "Faust," as examples. By this I do not mean to place Gogol on the same plane as Goethe and Cervantes; yet I associate them in my mind, and I see in Gogol's books the transition from the lyric to the epic which is to result in the true novel that begins with Turguenief. All the world is agreed that "Taras Boulba" is a true prose poem, modelled in the Homeric style, the hero of which is a people that long preserved a primitive character and customs. Gogol declared that he merely allowed himself to reproduce the tales of his grandfather, who thus becomes the witness and actor in this Cossack Iliad. One charming trait in Gogol is his love for the past and his fidelity to tradition; they have as strong an attraction for him certainly as the seductions of the future, and both are the outcome of the two sublime sentiments which divide every heart,--retrospection and anticipation. Gogol, who is so skilful in sketching idyllic scenes of the tranquil life of country proprietors, clergy, and peasants, is no less skilful in his descriptions of the adventurous existence of the Cossack; sometimes he is so faithful to the simple grandeur of his grandfather's style, that though the action in "Taras Boulba" takes place in recent times, it seems a tale of primeval days. The story of this novel--I had almost said this poem--unfolds among the Cossacks of the Don and the Dnieper, who were at that time a well-preserved type of the ancient warlike Scythians that worshipped the blood-stained sword. Old Taras Boulba is a wild animal, but a very interesting wild animal; a rude and majestic warrior-like figure cast in Homeric mould. There is, I confess, just a trace of the leaven of romanticism in Taras. Not all in vain had Gogol hidden Puchkine's works under his pillow in school-days; but the whole general tone recalls inevitably the grand naturalism of Homer, to which is added an Oriental coloring, vivid and tragical. Taras Boulba is an Ataman of the Cossacks, who has two young sons, his pride and his hope, studying at the University of Kief. On a declaration of war between the savage Cossack republic and Poland, the old hawk calls his two nestlings and commands them to exchange the book for the sword. One of the sons, bewitched by the charms of a Polish maiden, deserts from the Cossack camp and fights in the ranks of the enemy; he at length falls into the power of his enraged father, who puts him to death in punishment for his treason. After dreadful battles and sieges, starvation and suffering, Taras dies, and with him the glory and the liberty of the Cossacks. Such is the argument of this simple story, which begins in a manner not unlike the Tale of the Cid. The two sons of Taras arrive at their father's house, and the father begins to ridicule their student garb. "'Do not mock at us, father,' says the elder. "'Listen to the gentleman! And why should I not mock at you, I should like to know?' "'Because, even though you are my father, I swear by the living God, I will smite you.' "'Hi! hi! What? Your father?' cries Taras, receding a step or two. "'Yes, my own father; for I will take offence from nobody at all.' "'How shall we fight then,--with fists?' exclaims the father in high glee. "'However you like.' "'With fists, then,' answers Taras, squaring off at him. 'Let us see what sort of fellow you are, and what sort of fists you have.'" And so father and son, instead of embracing after a long absence, begin to pommel one another with naked fists, in the ribs, back, and chest, each advancing and receding in turn. "'Why, he fights well,' exclaims Taras, stopping to take breath. 'He is a hero,' he adds, readjusting his clothes. 'I had better not have put him to the proof. But he will be a great Cossack! Good! my son, embrace me now.'" This is like the delight of Diego Lainez in the Spanish Romanceros, when he says, "Your anger appeases my own, and your indignation gives me pleasure." Could Gogol have been acquainted with the Tale of the Cid and the other Spanish Romanceros? I do not think it too audacious to believe it possible, when we know that this author was a delighted reader of "Don Quixote," and really drew inspiration from it for his greatest work. But let us return to "Taras Boulba." Another admirable passage is on the parting of the mother and sons. The poor wife of Taras is the typical woman of the warlike tribes, a gentle and miserable creature amid a fierce horde of men who are for the most part celibates,--a creature once caressed roughly for a few moments by her harsh husband, and then abandoned, and whose love instincts have concentrated themselves upon the fruits of his early fugitive affection. She sees again her beloved sons who are to spend but one night at home,--for at break of day the father leads them forth to battle, where perhaps at the first shock some Tartar may cut off their heads and hang them by the hair at his saddle-girths. She watches them while they sleep, kept awake herself by hope and fear. "'Perhaps,' she says to herself, 'when Boulba awakes he will put off his departure one or two days; perhaps he was drunk, and did not think how soon he was taking them away from me.'" But at dawn her maternal hopes vanish; the old Cossack makes ready to set off. "When the mother saw her sons leap to horse, she rushed toward the younger, whose face showed some trace of tenderness; she grasped the stirrup and the saddle-girth, and would not let go, and her eyes were wide with agony and despair. Two strong Cossacks seized her with firm but respectful hands, and bore her away to the house. But scarcely had they released her upon the threshold, when she sprang out again quicker than a mountain-goat, which was the more remarkable in a woman of her age; with superhuman effort she held back the horse, gave her son a wild, convulsive embrace, and again was carried away. The young Cossacks rode off in silence, choking their tears for fear of their father; and the father, too, had a queer feeling about his heart, though he took care that it should not be noticed." In another place I have translated his magnificent description of the steppe, and I should like to quote the admirable paragraphs on starvation, on the killing of Ostap Boulba, and the death of Taras. As an example of the extreme simplicity with which Gogol manages his most dramatic passages and yet obtains an intense and powerful effect, I will give the scene in which Taras takes the life of his son by his own hand,--a scene which Prosper Mérimée imitated in his celebrated sketch of "Mateo Falcone." Andry comes out of the city, which was attacked by the Cossacks. "At the head of the squadron galloped a horseman, handsomer and haughtier than the others. His black hair floated from beneath his bronze helmet; around his arm was bound a beautifully embroidered scarf. Taras was stupefied on recognizing in him his son Andry. But the latter, inflamed with the ardor of combat, eager to merit the prize which adorned his arm, threw himself forward like a young hound, the handsomest, the fleetest, the strongest of the pack.... Old Taras stood a moment, watching Andry as he cut his way by blows to the right and the left, laying the Cossacks about him. At last his patience was exhausted. "'Do you strike at your own people, you devil's whelp?' he cried. "Andry, galloping hard away, suddenly felt a strong hand pulling at his bridle-rein. He turned his head and saw Taras before him. He grew pale, like a child caught idling by his master. His ardor cooled as though it had never blazed; he saw only his terrible father, motionless and calm before him. "'What are you doing?' exclaimed Taras, looking at the young man sharply. Andry could not reply, and his eyes remained fixed upon the ground. "'How now, my son? Have your Polish friends been of much use to you?' Andry was dumb as before. "'You commit felony, you barter your religion, you sell your own people.... But wait, wait.... Get down.' Like an obedient child Andry alighted from his horse, and, more dead than alive, stood before his father. "'Stand still. Do not move. I gave you life, I will take your life away,' said Taras then; and going back a step he took the musket from his shoulder. Andry was white as wax. He seemed to move his lips and to murmur a name. But it was not his country's name, nor his mother's, nor his brother's; it was the name of the beautiful Polish maiden. Taras fired. As the wheat-stalk bends after the stroke of the sickle, Andry bent his head and fell upon the grass without uttering a word. The man who had slain his son stood a long time contemplating the body, beautiful even in death. The young face, so lately glowing with strength and winsome beauty, was still wonderfully comely, and his eyebrows, black and velvety, shaded his pale features. "'What was lacking to make him a true Cossack?' said Boulba. 'He was tall, his eyebrows were black, he had a brave mien, and his fists were strong and ready to fight. And he has perished, perished without glory, like a cowardly dog.'" In the opinion of Guizot there is perhaps no true epic poem in the modern age besides "Taras Boulba," in spite of some defects in it and the temptation to compare it with Homer to its disadvantage. But Gogol's glory is not derived solely from his epopee of the Cossacks. His especial merit, or at least his greatest service to the literature of his country, lies in his having been what neither Lermontof nor Puchkine could be; namely, the centre at which romanticism and realism join hands, the medium of a smooth and easy transition from lyric poetry, more or less imported from abroad, and the national novel; the founder of the _natural school_, which was the advance sentinel of modern art. This tendency is first exhibited in a little sketch inserted in the same volume with Taras Boulba, and entitled "The Small Proprietors of Former Times," also translated as "Old-fashioned Farmers," or "Old-time Proprietors,"--a story of the commonplace, full of keen observations and wrought out in the methods of the great contemporary novelists. About the year 1835, at the height of the romantic period, Gogol gave up his official employment forever, exclaiming, "I am going to be a free Cossack again; I will belong to nobody but myself." He then published a little volume of _Arabesques_,--a collection of disconnected articles, criticisms, and sketches, chiefly interesting because by him. His short stories of this period are the stirrings of his awakening realism; and among them the one most worthy of notice is "The Cloak," which is filled with a strain of sympathy and pity for the poor, the ignorant, the plain, and the dull people,--social zeros, so different from the proud and aristocratic ideal of romanticism, and who owe their title of citizenship in Russian literature to Gogol. The hero of the story is an awkward, half-imbecile little office-clerk, who knows nothing but how to copy, copy, copy; a martyr to bitter cold and poverty, and whose dearest dream is to possess a new cloak, for which he saves and hoards sordidly and untiringly. The very day on which he at last fulfils his desire, some thieves make off with his precious cloak. The police, to whom he carries his complaint, laugh in his face, and the poor fellow falls a victim to the deepest melancholy, and dies of a broken heart shortly after. "And," says Gogol, "St. Petersburg went on its way without Acacio, son of Acacio, just exactly as though it had never dreamed of his existence. This creature that nobody cared for, nobody loved, nobody took any interest in,--not even the naturalist who sticks a pin through a common fly and studies it attentively under a microscope,--this poor creature disappeared, vanished, went to the other world without anything in particular ever having happened to him in this.... But at least once before he died he had welcomed that bright guest, Fortune, whom we all hope to see; to his eyes she appeared under the form of a cloak. And then misfortune fell upon him as suddenly and as darkly as it ever falls upon the great ones of the earth." "The Cloak" and his celebrated comedy, "The Inspector," also translated as "The Revizor," are the result of his official experiences. Men who have been a good deal tossed about, who have drunk of life's cup of bitterness, who have been bruised by its sharp corners and torn by its thorns, if they have an analytical mind and a magnanimous heart, human kindness and a spark of genius, become the great satirists, great humorists, and great moralists. "The Inspector" is a picture of Russian public customs painted by a master hand; it is a laugh, a fling of derision, at the baseness of a society and a political regimen under which bureaucracy and official formalism can descend to incredible vice and corruption. It seems at first a mere farce, such as is common enough on the Russian or any stage; but the covert strength of the satire is so far-reaching that the "Inspector" is a symbolical and cruel work. The curtain rises at the moment when the officials of a small provincial capital are anxiously awaiting the Inspector, who is about to make them a visit incognito. A traveller comes to the only hotel or inn of the town, and all believe him to be the dreaded governmental attorney. It turns out that the traveller who has given them such a fright is neither more nor less than an insignificant employee from St. Petersburg, a madcap fellow, who, having run short of money, is obliged to cut his vacation journey short. When he is apprised of a visit from the governor, he thinks he is about to be arrested. What is his astonishment when he finds that, instead of being put in prison, a purse of five hundred rubles is slipped into his hand, and he is conducted with great ceremony to visit hospitals and schools. As soon as he smells the _quid pro quo_ he adapts himself to the part, dissimulates, and plays the protector, puts on a majestic and severe demeanor, and after having fooled the whole town and received all sorts of obsequious attentions, he slips out with a full purse. A few minutes afterward the real Inspector appears and the curtain falls. Gogol frankly confesses that in this comedy he has tried to put together and crystallize all the evil that he saw in the administrative affairs of Russia. The general impression it gave was that of a satire, as he desired; the nation looked at itself in the glass, and was ashamed. "In the midst of my own laughter, which was louder than ever," says Gogol, "the spectator perceived a note of sorrow and anger, and I myself noticed that my laugh was not the same as before, and that it was no longer possible to be as I used to be in my works; the need to amuse myself with innocent fictions was gone with my youth." This is the sincere confession of the humorist whose laughter is full of tears and bitterness. This rough satire on the government of the autocrat Nicholas, this terrible flagellation of wickedness in high places raised to a venerated national institution, was represented before the court and applauded by it, and the satirical author of it was subjected to no censor but the emperor himself, who read the play in manuscript, burst into roars of laughter over it, and ordered his players to give it without delay; and on the first night Nicholas appeared in his box, and his imperial hands gave the signal for applause. The courtiers could not do otherwise than swallow the pill, but it left a bad taste and a bitter sediment in their hearts, which they treasured up against Gogol for the day of revenge. On this occasion the terrible autocrat acted with the same exquisite delicacy and truly royal munificence which he had shown toward Puchkine. On allowing Gogol a pension of five thousand rubles, he said to the person who presented the petition, "Do not let your protégé know that this gift is from me; he would feel obliged to write from a government standpoint, and I do not wish him to do that." Several times afterward the Emperor secretly sent him such gifts under cover of his friend Joukowsky the poet, by which means he was able to defray his journeys to Europe. Without apparent cause Gogol's character became soured about the year 1836; he became a prey to hypochondria, probably, as may be deduced from a passage in one of his letters, on account of the atmosphere of hostility which had hung over him since the publication of "The Inspector." "Everybody is against me," he says, "officials, police, merchants, literary men; they are all gnashing and snapping at my comedy! Nowadays I hate it! Nobody knows what I suffer. I am worn out in body and soul." He determined to leave the country, and he afterward returned to it only occasionally, until he went back at last to languish and die there. Like Turguenief, and not without some, truth, he declared that he could see his country, the object of his study, better from a distance; it is the law of the painter, who steps away from his picture to a certain distance in order to study it better. He went from one place to another in Europe, and in Rome he formed a close friendship with the Russian painter Ivanof, who had retired to a Capuchin convent, where he spent twenty years on one picture, "The Apparition of Christ," and left it at last unfinished. Some profess to believe that Gogol was converted to Catholicism, and with his friend devoted himself to a life of asceticism and contemplation of the hereafter, toward which vexed and melancholy souls often feel themselves irresistibly drawn. Gogol felt a strong desire to deal with the truth, with realities; he longed to write a book that would tell _the whole truth_, which should show Russia as she was, and which should not be hampered by influences that forced him to temporize, attenuate, and weigh his words,--a book in which he might give free vent to his satirical vein, and put his faculties of observation to consummate use. This book, which was to be a _résumé_ of life, a _chef d'oeuvre_, a lasting monument (the aspiration of every ambitious soul that cannot bear to die and be forgotten), at last became a fixed idea in Gogol's mind; it took complete possession of him, gave him no repose, absorbed his whole life, demanded every effort of his brain, and finally remained unfinished. And yet what he accomplished constitutes the most profoundly human book that has ever been written in Russia; it contains the whole programme of the school initiated by Gogol, and compels us to count the author of it among the descendants of Cervantes. "Don Quixote" was in fact the model for "Dead Souls," which put an end to romanticism, as "Quixote" did to books of chivalry. That none may say that this supposition is dictated by my national pride, I am going to quote literally two paragraphs, one by Gogol himself, the other by Melchior de Voguié, the intelligent French critic whose work on the Russian novel has been so useful to me in these studies. "Puchkine," says Gogol, "has been urging me for some time to undertake a long and serious work. One day he talked to me of my feeble health, of the frequent attacks which may cause my premature death; he mentioned as an example Cervantes, the author of some short stories of excellent quality, but who would never have held the place he is awarded among the writers of first rank, had he not undertaken his 'Don Quixote.' And at last he suggested to me a subject of his own invention on which he had thought of making a poem, and said he would tell it to nobody but me. The subject was 'The Dead Souls.' Puchkine also suggested to me the idea of 'The Inspector.'" "In spite of this frank testimony," adds Voguié, "equally honorable to both friends, I must continue to believe that the true progenitor of 'Dead Souls' was Cervantes himself. On leaving Russia Gogol turned toward Spain, and studied at close quarters the literature of this country, especially 'Don Quixote,' which was always his favorite book. The Spanish humorist held up to him a subject marvellously suited to his plans, the adventures of a hero with a mania which leads him into all regions of society, and who serves as the pretext to show to the spectator a series of pictures, a sort of human magic-lantern. The near relationship of these two works is indicated at all points,--the cogitative, sardonic spirit, the sadness underlying the laughter, and the impossibility of classifying either under any definite literary head. Gogol protested against the application of the word 'novel' to his book, and himself called it a poem, dividing it, not into chapters but into cantos. Poem it cannot be called in any rigorous sense of the term; but classify 'Don Quixote,' and Gogol's masterpiece will fall into the same category." I read "Dead Souls" before reading Voguié's criticism, and my impression coincided exactly with his. I said to myself, "This book is the nearest like 'Don Quixote' of any that I have ever read." There are important differences--how could it be otherwise?--and even discounting the loss to Gogol by means of translation, a marked inferiority of the Russian to Cervantes; but they are writers of the same species, and even at the distance of two centuries they bear a likeness to each other. And the intention to take "Don Quixote" as a model is evident, even though Gogol had never set foot in Spain, as some of his compatriots affirm. "Dead Souls" may be divided into three parts: the first, which was completed and published in 1842; the second, which was incomplete and rudimentary, and cast into the flames by the author in a fit of desperation, but published after his death from notes that had escaped this holocaust; and the third, which never took shape outside the author's mind. Even the contrast between the heroes of Cervantes and Gogol--the Ingenious Knight Avenger of Wrongs, and the clever rascal who goes from place to place trying to carry out his extravagant schemes--illustrates still more clearly the Cervantesque affiliation of the book. Undoubtedly Gogol purposely chose a contrast, because he wished to embody in the story the wrath he felt at the social state of Russia, more lamentable and hateful even than that of Spain in Cervantes' time. No more profound diatribe than "Dead Souls" has ever been written in Russia, though it is a country where satire has flourished abundantly. Sometimes there is a ray of sunshine, and the poet's tense brows relax with a hearty laugh. In the first chapter is a description of the Russian inns, drawn with no less graceful wit than that of the inns of La Mancha. It is not difficult to go on with the parallel. In "Dead Souls," as in "Don Quixote," the hero's servants are important personages, and so are their horses, which have become typical under the names of Rocinante and Rucio; the dialogues between the coachman Selifan and his horses remind one of some of the passages between Sancho and his donkey. As in "Don Quixote," the infinite variety of persons and episodes, the physiognomy of the places, the animated succession of incidents, offer a panorama of life. As in "Don Quixote," woman occupies a place in the background; no important love-affair appears in the whole book. Gogol, like Cervantes, shows less dexterity in depicting feminine than masculine types, except in the case of the grotesque, where he also resembles the creator of Maritornes and Teresa Panza. As in "Don Quixote," the best part of the book is the beginning; the inspiration slackens toward the middle, for the reason, probably, that in both the poetic instinct supersedes the prudent forecasting of the idea, and there is in both something of the sublime inconsistency common to geniuses and to the popular muse. And in "Don Quixote," as in "Dead Souls," above the realism of the subject and the vulgarity of many passages there is a sort of ebullient, fantastic life, something supersensual, which carries us along under full sail into the bright world of imagination; something which enlivens the fancy, takes hold upon the mind, and charms the soul; something which makes us better, more humane, more spiritual in effect. The subject of "Dead Souls"--so strange as never to be forgotten--gives Gogol a wide range for his pungent satire. Tchitchikof--there's a name, indeed!--an ex-official, having been caught in some nefarious affair, and ruined and dishonored by the discovery, conceives a bright idea as to regaining his fortune. He knows that the serfs, called in Russia by the generic name of _souls_, can be pawned, mortgaged, and sold; and that on the other hand the tax-collector obliges the owners to pay a _per capita_ tax for each soul. He remembers also that the census is taken on the Friday before Easter, and in the mean time the lists are not revised, seeing that natural processes compensate for losses by death. But in case of epidemic the owner loses more, yet continues to pay for hands that no longer toil for him; so it occurs to Tchitchikof to travel over the country buying at a discount a number of _dead souls_ whose owners will gladly get rid of them, the buyer having only to promise to pay the taxes thereon; then, having provided these dead souls (though to all legal intents still living) with this extraordinary nominal value, he will register them as purchased, take the deed of sale to a bank in St. Petersburg, mortgage them for a good round sum, and with the money thus obtained, buy real live serfs of flesh and blood, and by this clever trick make a fortune. No sooner said than done. The hero gives orders to harness his _britchka_, takes with him his coachman and his lackey,--two delicious characters!--and goes all over Russia, ingratiating himself everywhere, finding out all about the people and the estates, meeting with all sorts of proprietors and functionaries, and falling into many adventures which, if not quite as glorious as those of the Knight of La Mancha, are scarcely less entertaining to read about. And where is such another diatribe on serfdom as this lugubrious burlesque furnishes, or any spectacle so painfully ironical as that of these wretched corpses, who are neither free nor yet within the narrow liberty of the tomb,--these poor bones ridiculed and trafficked for even in the precincts of death? This remarkable book, which contains a most powerful argument against the inveterate abuses of slavery, unites to its value as a social and humanitarian benefactor that of being the corner-stone of Russian realism,--the realism which, though already perceptible in the prose writings of the romantic poets, appears in Gogol, not as a confused precursory intuition, nor as an instinctive impulsion of a national tendency, but as a rational literary plan, well based and firmly established. A few quotations from "Dead Souls," and some passages also from Gogol's Letters, will be enough to prove this. "Happy is the writer,"[1] he says sarcastically, "who refrains from depicting insipid, disagreeable, unsympathetic characters without any charms whatever, and makes a study of those more distinguished, refined, and exquisite; the writer who has a fine tact in selecting from the vast and muddy stream of humanity, and devoting his attention to a few honorable exceptions to the average human nature; who never once lowers the clear, high tone of his lyre; who never puts his melodies to the ignoble use of singing about folk of no importance and low quality; and who, in fact, taking care never to descend to the too commonplace realities of life, soars upward bright and free toward the ethereal regions of his poetic ideal!... He soothes and flatters the vanity of men, casting a veil over whatever is base, sombre, and humiliating in human nature. All the world applauds and rejoices as he passes by in his triumphal chariot, and the multitude proclaims him a great poet, a creative genius, a transcendent soul. At the sound of his name young hearts beat wildly, and sweet tears of admiration shine in gentle eyes.... Oh, how different is the lot of the unfortunate writer who dares to present in his works a faithful picture of social realities, exactly as they appear to the naked eye! Who bade him pay attention to the muddy whirlpool of small miseries and humiliations, in which life is perforce swallowed up, or take notice of the crowd of vulgar, indifferent, bungling, corrupt characters, that swarm like ants under our feet? If he commit a sin so reprehensible, let him not hope for the applause of his country; let him not expect to be greeted by maidens of sixteen, with heaving bosom and bright, enthusiastic eyes.... Nor will he be able to escape the judgment of his contemporaries, a tribunal without delicacy or conscience, which pronounces the works it devours in secret to be disgusting and low, and with feigned repugnance enumerates them among the writings which are hurtful to humanity; a tribunal which cynically imputes to the author the qualities and conditions of the hero whom he describes, allowing him neither heart nor soul, and belittling the sacred flame of talent which is his whole life. "Contemporary judgment is not yet able or willing to acknowledge that the lens which discloses the habits and movements of the smallest insect is worthy the same estimation as that which reaches to the farthest limits of the firmament. It seems to ignore the fact that it needs a great soul indeed to portray sincerely and accurately the life that is stigmatized by public opinion, to convert clay into precious pearls through the medium of art. Contemporary judgment finds it hard to realize that frank, good-natured laughter may be as full of merit and dignity as a fine outburst of lyric passion. Contemporary judgment pretends ignorance, and bestows only censure and depreciation upon the sincere author,--knows him not, disdains him; and so he is left wretched, abandoned, without sympathy, like the lonely traveller who has no companion but his own indomitable heart. "I understand you, dear readers; I know very well what you are thinking in your hearts; you curse the means that shows you palpable, naked human misery, and you murmur within yourselves, 'What is the use of such an exhibition? As though we did not already know enough of the absurd and base actions that the world is always full of! These things are annoying, and one sees enough of them without having them set before us in literature. No, no; show us the beautiful, the charming; that which shall lift us above the levels of reality, elevate us, fill us with enthusiasm.' And this is not all. The author exposes himself to the anger of a class of would-be patriots, who, at the least indication of injury to the country's decorum, at the first appearance of a book that dwells on some bitter truths, raise a dreadful outcry. 'Is it well that such things should be brought to light?' they say; 'this description may apply to a good many people we know; it might be you, or I, or our friend there. And what will foreigners say? It is too bad to allow them to form so poor an opinion of us.' Hypocrites! The motive of their accusations is not patriotism, that noble and beautiful sentiment; it is mean, low calculation, wearing the mask of patriotism. Let us tear off the mask and tread it under foot. Let us call things by their names; it is a sacred duty, and the author is under obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth." These passages just quoted are sufficiently explicit; but the following, taken from one of Gogol's letters concerning "Dead Souls," is still more so. "Those who have analyzed my talents as a writer have not been able to discover my chief quality. Only Puchkine noticed it, and he used to say that no author had, so much as I, the gift of showing the reality of the trivialities of life, of describing the petty ways of an insignificant creature, of bringing out and revealing to my readers infinitesimal details which would otherwise pass unnoticed. In fact, there is where my talent lies. The reader revolts against the meanness and baseness of my heroes; when he shuts the book he feels as though he had come up from a stifling cellar into the light of day. They would have forgiven me if I had described some picturesque theatrical knave, but they cannot forgive my vulgarity. The Russians are shocked to see their own insignificance." "My friend," he writes again, "if you wish to do me the greatest favor that I can expect from a Christian, make a note of every small daily act and fact that you may come across anywhere. What trouble would it be to you to write down every night in a sort of diary such notes as these,--To-day I heard such an opinion expressed, I spoke with such a person, of such a disposition, such a character, of good education or not; he holds his hands thus, or takes his snuff so,--in fact, everything that you see and notice from the greatest to the least?" What more could the most modern novelist say,--the sort that carries a memorandum-book under his arm and makes sketches, after the fashion of the painters? Thus we see that a man gifted with epic genius became in 1843, before Zola was dreamt of, and when Edmond de Goncourt was scarcely twenty, the founder of realism, the first prophet of the doctrine not inexactly called by some the doctrine of literary microbes, the poet of social atoms whose evolution at length overturns empires, changes the face of society, and weaves the subtle and elaborate woof of history. I will not go so far as to affirm with some of the critics that this light proceeded from the Orient, and that French realism is an outcome of distant Russian influence; for certainly Balzac had a large influence in his turn upon his Muscovite admirers. But it is undeniable that Gogol did anticipate and feel the road which literature, and indeed all forms of art, were bound to follow in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Certain critics see, in this doctrine of literary microbes preached by Gogol in word and deed, nothing less than an immense evolution, characteristic of and appropriate to our age. It is the advent of literary democracy, which was perhaps foreseen by the subtle genius of those early novelists who described the beggar, the lame, halt, and blind, thieves and robbers, and creatures of the lowest strata of society; with the difference that to-day, united to this spirit of æsthetic demagogy, there is a shade of Christian charity, compassion, and sympathy for wretchedness and misery which sometimes degenerates, in less virile minds than Gogol's, into an affected sentimentality. George Eliot, that great author and great advocate of Gogol's own theories, and the patroness of realism of humblest degree, speaks in words very like those used by the author of "Taras," of the strength of soul which a writer needs to interest himself in the vulgar commonplaces of life, in daily realities, and in the people around us who seem to have nothing picturesque or extraordinary about them. If there be any who could carry out this rehabilitation of the miserable with charity and tenderness, it would be the Saxon and the Sclav rather than the refined and haughty Latin, and in both these the seed scattered by Gogol has brought forth fruit abundantly. Modern Russian literature is filled with pity and sincere love toward the poorer classes; one might almost term it evangelical unction; at the voice of the poet (I cannot refuse this title to the author of "Taras") Russia's heart softened, her tears fell, and her compassion, like a caressing wave, swept over the toiling _mujik_, the ill-clad government clerk, the ragged, ignorant beggar, the political convict in the grasp of the police, and even the criminal, the vulgar assassin with shaven head, mangled shoulders, blood-stained hands, and manacled wrists. And more; their pity extends even to the dumb beasts, and the death of a horse mentioned by one great Russian novelist is more touching than that of any emperor. Gogol is the real ancestor of the Russian novel; he contained the germs of all the tendencies developed in the generation that came after him; in him even Turguenief the poet and artist, Tolstoï the philosopher, and Dostoiëwsky the visionary, found inspiration. There are writers who seem possessed of the exalted privilege of uniting and accumulating all the characteristics of their race and country; their brain is like a cave filled with wonderful stalactites formed by the deposits of ages and events. Gogol is one of these. The peculiarities of the Russian soul, the melancholy dreaminess, the satire, the suppressed and resigned soul-forces, are all seen in him for the first time. To quote from "Dead Souls" would be little satisfaction. One must read it to understand the deep impression it made in Russia. After looking it through, Puchkine exclaimed, "How low is our country fallen!" and the people, much against their will, finally acknowledged the same conviction. After a hard fight with the censors, the work of art came off at last victorious; it captured all classes of minds, and became, like "Don Quixote," the talk of every drawing-room, the joke of every meeting-place, and a proverb everywhere. The serfs were now virtually set free by force of the opinion created, and the whole nation saw and knew itself in this æsthetic revelation. But the man who dares to make such a revelation must pay for his temerity with his life. Gogol returned from Rome intent upon the completion of the fatal book; but his nerves, which were almost worn out, failed him utterly at times, his soul overflowed with bitterness and gall, and at last in a fit of rage and desperation he burned the manuscript of the Second Part, together with his whole library. His darkened mind was haunted by the question in Hamlet's monologue, the problem concerning "that bourn from which no traveller returns;" his meditations took a deeply religious hue, and his last work, "Letters to my Friends," is a collection of edifying epistles, urging the necessity of the consideration of the hereafter. To these exhortations he added one on Sclavophile nationalism, exaggerated by a fanatical devotion; and in the same breath he heralds the spirit of the Gospels and anathematizes the theories imported from the Occident, and declares that he has given up writing for the sake of dedicating his time to self-introspection and the service of his neighbor, and that henceforth he recognizes nothing but his country and his God. The public was exasperated; it was Gogol's fate to rouse the tiger. Who ever heard of a satirist turning Church father? It began to be whispered that Gogol had become a devotee of mysticism; and it is quite true that on his return from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem he lived miserably, giving all he had to the poor. He was hypochondriac and misanthropic, excepting when with children, whose innocent ways brought back traces of his former good-nature. His death is laid to two different causes. The general story is that during the Revolution of 1848 he lost what little intelligence remained to him, under the conviction that there was no remedy for his country's woes; and at last, weighed down by an incurable melancholy and despair, and terrified by visions of universal destruction and other tremendous catastrophes, he fell on his knees and fasted for a whole day before the holy pictures that hung at the head of his bed, and was found there dead. Recent writers modify this statement, and claim to know on good authority that Gogol died of a typhoid fever, which, with his chronic infirmities, was a fatal complication. Whatever may have been the illness which took him out of the world, it is certain that the part of Gogol most diseased was his soul, and his sickness was a too intense love of country, which could not see with indifferent optimism the ills of the present or the menace of the future. Gogol had no heart-burdens except the suffering he endured for the masses; he was unmarried, and was never known to have any passion but a love of country exaggerated to a dementia. It is a strange thing that Gogol--the sincere reactionist, the admirer of absolutism and of autocracy, the Pan-Sclavophile, the habitual enemy of Western paganism and liberal theories--should have been the one to throw Russian letters into their present mad whirl, into the path of nihilism and into the currents of revolution,--a course which he seems to have described once in allegory, in one of the most admirable pages of "Dead Souls," where he compares Russia to a _troïka_. I will quote it, and so take my farewell of this Russian Cervantes:-- "Rapidity of motion [in travel] is like an unknown force, a hidden power which seizes us and carries us on its wings; we skim through the air, we fly, and everything else flies too; the verst-stones fly; the tradesmen's carts fly past on one side and the other; forests with dark patches of pines rush by, and the noise of destroying axes and the cawing of hungry crows; the road flies by and is lost in the distance where we can distinguish neither object nor form nor color, unless it be a bit of the sky or the moon continually crossed by patches of flying cloud. O troïka, troïka, bird-troïka! There is no need to ask who invented thee! Thou couldst not have been conceived save in the breast of a quick, active people, in the midst of a gigantic territory that covers half the globe, and where nobody dares count the verst-stones on the roads for fear of vertigo! Thou art not graceful in thy form, O telega, rustic britchka, kibitka, thou carriage for all roads in winter or summer! No, thou art not an object of art made to please the eye; dry wood, a hatchet, a chisel, a clever arm,--with these thou art set up; there is not a peasant in Yaroslaf that knows not how to construct thee. Now the troïka is harnessed. And where is the man? What man? The driver? Aha! it is this same peasant! Very well, let him put on his boots and get up on his seat. Did you say his boots? This is no German postilion; he needs no boots nor any foot-gear at all. All that he needs is mittens for his hands and a beard on his chin! See him balancing himself; hear him sing. Now he pulls away like a whirlwind; the wheels seem a smooth circle from centre to circumference, and the tires are invisible; the ground rushes to meet the clattering hoofs; the foot-traveller leaps to one side with a cry of fright, then stops and opens his mouth in astonishment; but the vehicle has passed, and on it flies, on it flies, and far away a little whirl of dust rises, spreads out, divides, and disappears in gauzy patches, falling gently upon the sides of the road. It is all gone; nothing remains of it. "Thou art like the troïka, O Russia, my beloved country! Dost thou not feel thyself carried onward toward the unknown like this impetuous bird which nobody can overtake? The road is invisible under thy feet, the bridges echo and groan, and thou leavest everything behind thee in the distance. Men stop and gaze surprised at this celestial portent. Is it the lightning? Is it the thunderbolt from heaven itself? What causes this movement of universal terror? What mysterious and incomprehensible force spurs on thy steeds? They are Russian steeds, good steeds. Doth the whirlwind sometimes nestle in their manes? The signal is given: three bronze breasts expand; twelve ready feet start with simultaneous impetus, their light hoofs scarce striking the ground; three horses are changed before, our very eyes into three parallel lines which fly like a streak through the tremulous air. The troïka flies, sails, bright as a spirit of God. O Russia, Russia! whither goest thou? Answer! But there is no response; the bell clangs with a supernatural tone; the air, beaten and lashed, whistles and whirls, and rushes off in wide currents; the troïka cuts them all on the wing, and nations, monarchies, and empires stand aside and let her pass." [1] I could take this passage bodily from the translation of "Dead Souls" made by Isabella Hapgood directly from the Russian, but there are some discrepancies in which the Spanish writer seems to be in the right, as in the use of the word _writer_ for _reader_.--Tr. Book IV. MODERN RUSSIAN REALISM. I. Turguenief, Poet and Artist. In reviewing the development of the School of Realists founded by Nicholas Gogol, I shall begin with the one among his followers and descendants who is not merely the first in chronological order, but the most intelligible and sympathetic of the Russian novelists, Ivan Turguenief. The name of Turguenief has long been well known in Russia. In 1854, before the novelist made his appearance, Humboldt said to a member of this family, "The name you bear commands the highest respect and esteem in this country." Alexander Turguenief was a savant, and the originator of a new style of historiography, in which he revealed traces of the communicative and cosmopolitan instincts that distinguish his nephew beyond other novelists of his country, for he--the uncle--courted acquaintance with many of the most eminent men of Europe, among them Walter Scott. Another member of the family, Nicholaï Turguenief, was a statesman who found himself obliged to reside in foreign lands on account of political vicissitudes; he had the honor of preceding his nephew Ivan in the advocacy of serf-emancipation. Ivan was the son of a country gentleman, and his real education began among the heathery hills and in the company of indefatigable hunters, whose stories, colored by the blaze of the camp-fire, were transcribed afterward by Ivan's wonderful pen. His intellect was awakened and formed in Berlin, where he ranged through the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, and, as he expresses it, threw himself head-first into the ocean of German thought and came out purified and regenerated for the rest of his life. Is it not wonderful,--the power of this German philosophy, which, though it seems but a chilly and lugubrious labyrinth, gives a new temper to a mind of fine and artistic quality, like the Toledo blade thrust into the cold bath, or Achilles after washing in the waters of the Styx? As scholasticism gave a strange power to the poetry of Dante, so German metaphysics seems to give wings to the imagination in our times. Those artist writers (like Zola, for example) who have not wandered through this dark forest seem to lack a certain tension in their mental vigor, a certain tone in their artistic spectrum! Russian youth, about the year 1838, had their Mecca in the Faculty of Philosophy at Berlin, of which Hegel held one chair; and there the future celebrities of Russia were wont to meet. On leaving that radiant atmosphere of ideas and returning to his country home in Russia, Turguenief was overcome by the inevitable melancholy which attacks the man who leaves civilization behind with its intellectual brightness and activity, and enters a land where, according to the words of the hero of "Virgin Soil," "everything sleeps but the wine-shop." This feeling of nostalgia the novelist has analyzed with a master hand in the pages of "The Nobles' Nest."[1] Hungry for wider horizons and for a literary life and atmosphere, Turguenief went to St. Petersburg. All the intellect of the time was grouped about Bielinsky, who was a rare critic, and its sentiments were voiced by a periodical called the "Contemporary." Bielinsky, who had adopted the pessimist theory that Russian art could never exist until there was political emancipation, was obliged to acknowledge the indisputable worth of Turguenief's first efforts, and encouraged him to publish some excellent sketches in a collection entitled "Papers of a Sportsman." Contrary to Bielinsky's prediction, Turguenief's success was the greater because, with that exquisite artistic intuition which he alone of all Russian writers possesses, he preached no moral and taught no lesson in it, which was the fashion or rather the pest of the novel in those days. Turguenief again went abroad soon after and spent some time in Paris, where he finished the "Diary" and wrote "The Nobles' Nest." On his return to Russia he wrote a clever criticism on the "Dead Souls," of Gogol, whom he ventured to call a great man; and this called down upon his head the ire of the police and banishment to his estates, which punishment was not reprieved until the death of Nicholas and the war of the Crimea changed the aspect of everything in Russia. Notwithstanding the unjustifiable severity with which he was treated on this occasion, Turguenief cherished no grievance or thought of revenge in his heart. It is one of the most beautiful and attractive traits in the amiable character of this man, that he could always preserve his serenity of soul in the midst of the distractions occasioned him by two equally violent parties each equally determined to embitter his life if he did not consent to embrace it. He stood in the gulf that separates the two halves of Russia, yet he maintained that contemplative and thoughtful attitude which Victor Hugo ascribes to all true thinkers and poets. Urged by family traditions and by the natural equilibrium of his mind to give the preference (in comparing Russia with the rest of Europe) to Western civilization, he protested, with the courage born of conviction, against the blind vanity of the so-called National Party of Moscow, which, while it demanded the liberation of the serfs, was determined to create a new national condition which should be wholly Sclavonic, and would tread under foot every vestige of foreign culture. With equal vigor, but with a fine tact and nothing of effeminacy or æsthetic repugnance, he protested also against the vandalism of the nihilists, whose propositions were set forth in a clever caricature in a satirical paper shortly after the explosion in the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg. It represented the meeting of two nihilists amid a heap of ruins. One asks, "Is everything gone up?" "No," replies the other, "the planet still exists." "Blow it to pieces, then!" exclaims the first. Yet Turguenief, who was by no means what we should call a conservative, seeing that he lent his aid to the emancipation of the serfs, was far from approving the new revolutionary barbarism. Those of Turguenief's works which are best known and most discussed are consequently those which attack the ignominy of serfdom or the threats of revolutionary terror. In the first category may be mentioned "The Diary of a Hunter" and most of his exquisite short stories; in the second, "Fathers and Sons," a view of speculative nihilism, "Virgin Soil," the active side of the same, and "Smoke," a harsh satire on the exclusiveness and fanaticism of the Nationals, which cost him his popularity and made him innumerable enemies. I will speak more at length of each of these, and it is in no sense a digression from Turguenief's biography to do so; for the life of this amiable dreamer and delicate poet is to be found in his books, and in the trials which he endured on their account. The first lengthy novel of Turguenief is "Demetrius Rudine," a type which might have served as the model for Alphonse Daudet's "Numa Roumestan," a study of one of those complex characters, endowed with great aspirations and apparently rich faculties, but who lack force of will, and have no definite aim or career in view. "The Nobles' Nest" is to the rest of Turguenief's works what the hour of supreme and tenderest emotion that even the hardest hearts must bow to some time is to human life as a whole; in none of his works, save perhaps in "Living Relics," has Turguenief shown more depth of sentiment. The latter is a tear of compassion crystallized and set in gold; the former is a tragedy of happiness held before the eyes and then lost sight of, like the blue sky seen through a rent in the clouds and then covered over with a leaden and interminable veil. The hero is a Russian gentleman or small proprietary nobleman, named Lawretsky, who, deceived and betrayed by his wife, returns to his patrimonial estates, there to hide his dejection and loneliness. Amid these scenes of honest, simple provincial life he meets with a cousin who is young, beautiful, and open-hearted, and who captures his heart. There is a rumor that his wife has died, and a hope of future happiness begins to revive in him; but the aforesaid deceased lady resuscitates, and makes her appearance, demanding with hypocritical humility her place beneath the conjugal roof, and the other poor girl retires to a convent. It is almost a sacrilege to extract the bare plot of the story in this way, for it is thus made to seem a mere vulgar complication, feeble and colorless. But the charm lies in the manner of presenting this simple drama; the novelist seems to hold a glass before our eyes through which we see the palpitations of these bruised and suffering hearts. The background is worthy of the figures on it. The description of provincial customs, the country, and the last chapter especially, are the perfection of art in the way of novel-writing. It is said that "The Nobles' Nest" produced in Russia an effect comparable only to that of "Paul and Virginia" in France. Then came the great change in Russia: serfdom was no more! and Turguenief, leaving these touching love-stories, threw himself into the new turmoil, and gave himself up to the study of the struggle between the new state of society and the old, which resulted in the novel, "Fathers and Sons." This book contains the pictures of two generations, and each one, says Mérimée, shrewdly, found the portrait of the other well drawn, but called Heaven to witness that that of himself was a caricature; and the cry of the fathers was exceeded by that of the sons, personified in the character of the positivist, Bazarof. Two old country gentlefolk, a physician and his wife, represent the elder generation, the society of yesterday, and two students the society and generation of to-day. Bazarof is the leader, the ruling spirit of the two latter; the novelist has given him so much vivacity that we seem to hear him, to see his long, withered face, his broad brows, his great greenish eyes, and the prominent bulges on his heavy skull. I have seen such types as this many a time in the streets and alleys of the Latin Quarter, which is the lurking-place of Russian refugees in Paris, and I have said to myself, "There goes a Bazarof, exiled and half dead with hunger, and yet perhaps more eager to set off a few pounds of dynamite under the Grand Opera-House than to breakfast!" Bazarof, however, is not yet the nihilist who wishes to make a political system out of robbery and assassination, and to defend his theory in learned treatises; he is a young fellow smarting and burning under the contemplation of his country's sad state, and whom the knowledge got by his studies in medicine, natural sciences, and German materialist dogmas has made the bitterest and most intolerable of mortals, throwing away his gifts of intellect and his heart's best and most generous impulses. By reason of his energy of character and intellectual force, he takes the lead over his companion Arcadio, an enthusiastic and unsophisticated boy; and the novel begins with the return of the latter to his father's country-house in company with his adored leader. The two generations then find themselves face to face, two atheistical and demagogic young students, and Arcadio's father and uncle, conservative and ceremonious old men; the shock is immediate and terrible. Bazarof, with his mania for dissecting frogs, his negligent dress, his harsh and dogmatic replies, his coarse frankness, and his odor of drugs and cheap tobacco, inspires antipathy from the first moment, and he is himself made more captious than usual by the appearance of the uncle, Paul, an elegant and distinguished-looking man, who preserves the traditions of French culture, dresses with the utmost care, has a taste for all that is refined and poetical, and wears such finger-nails as, says Bazarof, "would be worth sending to the Exposition." The contrast is as lively as it is curious; every motion, every breath, produces conflict and augments the discord. Arcadio, under his friend's influence, finds a thousand ways to annoy his elders; he sees his father reading a volume of Puchkine, and snatches it out of his hands, giving him instead the ninth edition of "Force and Matter." And after all the poor boy really cannot follow the hard, harsh ideas of Bazarof; but he is so completely under the latter's control, and looks upon him with so much respect and awe, and stands in such fear of his ridicule, that he hides his most innocent and natural sentiments as though they were sinful, and dares not even confess the pleasure he feels at sight of the country and his native village. "What sort of fellow is your friend Bazarof?" Arcadio's father and uncle inquire of him. "He is a nihilist," is the response. "That word must come from the Latin _nihil_," says the father, "and must mean a man that acknowledges and respects nothing." "It means a man who looks at everything from a critical point of view," says Arcadio, proudly. Criticism, pitiless analysis, barren and overwhelming,--this is an epitome of Bazarof, the spirit of absolute negation, the contemporary Mephistopheles who begins by taking himself off to the Inferno. The punishment falls in the right place. Consistently with his physiological theories, Bazarof denies the existence of love, calls it a mere natural instinct, and women _females_; but scarcely does he find himself in contact with a beautiful, interesting, clever woman--somewhat of a coquette too, perhaps--than he falls into her net like a clumsy idealogue that he is, and suffers and curses his fate like the most ardent romanticist. Quite as curious as the antithesis of the two generations in the house of Arcadio's aristocratic father, is the contrast shown in that of the more humble village physician, the father of Bazarof, who is an altogether pathetic personage. He, too, is possessed of a certain pedantic and antiquated culture, and an excellent, kind heart; he adores his son, thinks him a demi-god, and yet cannot by any means understand him. Arcadio's father, on hearing an exposition of the new theories, shrugs his shoulders and exclaims, "You turn everything inside out nowadays. God give you health and a general's position!" The physician, quite non-plussed, murmurs sadly, "I confess that I idolize my son, but I dare not tell him so, for he would be displeased;" and he adds with ridiculous pathos, "What comforts me most is to think that some day men will read in the biography of my son these lines: 'He was the son of an obscure regiment physician who nevertheless had the wisdom to discern his talents from the first, and spared no pains to give him an excellent education.' Here the voice of the old man died away," says the writer. Such details bespeak the great poet. Again when Bazarof is seized with typhus fever and dies, it is not his fate which affects us, but the grief of his old father and mother, who believe that one light of their country has been put out, and that they have lost the best treasure of their uncontaminated and tender old hearts. The death of this atheist makes an admirable page. When, as he is losing consciousness, extreme unction is administered to him, the shudder of horror that passes over his face at sight of the priest in his robes, the smoking incense, the candles burning before the images, is communicated to our own souls. From 1860 Turguenief remained in France, bound by ties that shaped his course of life. He enjoyed there a reputation not inferior to that which he possessed in his own country; his works were all translated, and his soul was soothed by an almost fraternal intimacy with the greatest French writers, notably Gustave Flaubert and George Sand; and yet his thoughts were never absent from his far-away fatherland, and as a reproof to his fruitless longings he wrote "Smoke," which put the capital of Russia almost in revolt. But Turguenief was no bilious satirist after the style of Gogol, much less a habitual vilifier of existing classes and institutions like Tchedrine; on the contrary, he had a keen observation like Alphonse Daudet, and the sweeping artist-glance which takes in the moral weaknesses as well as physical deformities. The scene of "Smoke" is laid in Baden-Baden, the resort of rich people who go there to enjoy themselves, to gossip, to intrigue, and to throw themselves aimlessly into the maelstrom of frivolous and idle life. The Russian world passes rapidly before our eyes, and last of all the hero, weary and blasé, who with bitter words compares his country to the thin, feathery smoke that rises in the distance. Everything in Russia is smoke,--smoke, and nothing more! Turguenief was one of those who loved his country well enough to tell her the truth, and to warn her--in an indirect and artistic manner, of course--persistently and incessantly. His was the jealous love of the master for the favorite pupil, of the confessor for the soul under his guidance, of the ardent patriot for his too backward and unambitious nation. Turguenief compared himself, away from his country, to a dead fish kept sound in the snow, but spoiling in time of thaw. He said that in a strange land one lives isolated, without any real props or profound relation to anything whatever, and that he felt his own creative faculties decay for lack of inspiration from his native air; he complained of feeling the chill of old age upon him, and an incurable vacuity of soul. While he thus pined with homesickness, in Russia his books wrought a wholesome change in criticism; the new generation turned its back upon him, and after a general scandal followed an oblivious silence, of the two perhaps the harder to bear. In 1876 the novel "Virgin Soil" appeared, first in French in the columns of "Le Temps," and then in Russian. It dealt with the same ideas as "Fathers and Sons," save that the nihilism described in it was of the active rather than the speculative sort. It was said at the time that as Turguenief had been fifteen years away from his own country, he was not capable of seeing the nihilist world in its true aspect, a thing to be felt rather than seen, difficult enough to describe near at hand, and much more difficult at a distance; but one must not expect of the novelist what would be impossible even to the political student. To us who are not too learned in revolutionary mysteries, Turguenief's novel is delightful. I believe that there is more or less of political warmth in the judgments expressed upon this "Virgin Soil," and that if the book errs in any particular, it is on the side of the truthfulness of its representative and symbolic qualities. Otherwise, how explain the fact that certain nihilists thought themselves personally portrayed in the character of the hero, or that Turguenief was accused of having received notices and information provided by the police? Yet it seems to me that this book, which gave such offence to the nihilists, shows a lively sympathy with them. All the revolutionary characters are grand, interesting, sincere, and poetic; on the other hand, the official world is made up of egoists, hypocrites, knaves, and fools. In reality, "Virgin Soil," like all the other writings of Turguenief, is the product of a gentle and serene mind, independent of political bias, although both his artistic and his Sclavonic nature weigh the balance in favor of the visionaries who represent the spirit rather than the letter. "Virgin Soil" was the last of Turguenief's long novels. Another Russian novelist, Isaac Paulowsky, who knew him intimately, has given us some curious information concerning one he had in project, and which he believed would be found among his papers; but it has not yet come to light, and there remains only to speak of his short stories. Perhaps his best claim to reputation and glory rests upon these admirable sketches; and it is Zola's opinion that Turguenief depreciated and wasted his proper talent when he left off making these fine cameo-like studies. Perhaps this is true, as it is certainly undeniable that Turguenief had a master touch in delicate work of this sort, and it suited his intensity of sentiment, his graceful style, and his skill in shading, which distinguish him above his contemporaries. Of his short stories, his episodes of Russian life, I know not which to select; they are filigree and jewels, wrought by the Benvenuto of his trade; brass is gold in his hands, and his chisel excels at every point. But I must mention a few of the most important. "The Knight of the Steppes," in which the horse tells the story of the love and disappointment which leads his master to despair and suicide, is one of my favorites. The hero resembles Taras Boulba, perhaps, in his savage grandeur; he is a remnant of Asiatic times, brave, proud, generous, uncultured; ruined, thirsting for battle, and perhaps for pillage, bloodshed, and violence. Beside this I would put the first one in the collection translated and published under the title of "Strange Stories." It is a sketch of mysticism and religious mania peculiar, though not too common, to the Russian temperament. Sophia, a young girl at a ball, while dancing the mazurka with a stranger, speaks to him seriously concerning miracles, ghosts, the immortality of the soul, and the theory of Quietism, and manifests a wish to mortify and subdue her nature and taste martyrdom; next day she carries out her desires by running away,--not with her partner in the dance, but with a demented fanatic, a man of the lowest condition, with whom she lives in chastity, and to whose infirmities she ministers like a mother, and serves him like a slave. Such a picture could only have been conceived in a land that cradled the heroine of "The Threshold," and many another enthusiastic nihilist girl who was ready to lay down her life for her ideals. The whole volume of "Strange Stories" fascinates us with a superstitious horror. Elias Teglevo, the hero of one of the best of these tales, although a pronounced sceptic, yet believes in the influence of his star, thinks he is predestined to a tragic death, and under this persuasion works himself into a state of mind and body that becomes a hallucination strong enough to lead to suicide, in obedience to what he considers a supernatural mandate. In another tale, "King Lear of the Steppes," the gigantic Karlof has a presentiment of his death on seeing a black colt in his dreams. The great artist reproduced the souls of his characters with laudable fidelity. If supernatural terror is a real and genuine sentiment, the novel should not overlook it in its delineations of the truth. But perhaps the jewel of Turguenief's narratives is that entitled "Living Relics." In this simple story he excels himself. The novel has no plot, and is nothing more than a silver lake which reflects a beautiful soul, calm and clear as the moon; and the crippled form of Lukeria is only the pretext for the detention of such a soul in this world. Who has not sometimes entered a convent church on leaving a ball-room,--in the early morning hours of Ash-Wednesday, for instance? The ears still echo the voluptuous and stirring sounds of the military band; one is ready to drop with fatigue, dizziness, glare of lights, and the unseasonable hour. But the church is dark and empty; the nuns in the choir are chanting the psalms; above the altar flickers a dim light, by whose aid one discerns a picture or a statue, though at a distance one cannot make out details of face or figure, only an expression of vague sweetness and mysterious peace. After a moment's contemplation of it, the body forgets its weariness and the soul is rocked in tranquillity. Read some novel of the world's life, and then read "Living Relics": it is like going from the ball-room to the chapel of a convent. This faculty of putting the reader in contact with the invisible world is not the talent of Turguenief exclusively, for all the great Russian novelists possess it in some degree; but Turguenief uses it with such exquisite tact and poetic charm that he seems to look serenely upon the strange psychical phenomenon he has produced in the soul of the reader, who is roused to a state of excitement that reflects the vision evoked by the artist's words. Other instances of his power in this direction are "The Dog," "Apparitions," and "Clara Militch," a confession from beyond the tomb. The last page written by Turguenief bore the title of "Despair,"--the voice of the Russian soul whose depths he had searched for forty years, says Voguié. He was then laboring under an incurable disease, cancer of the brain, which, after causing him horrible sufferings, ended his life. But though worn-out, dying, and stupefied by doses of opium and injections of morphine, his artistic faculties died hard; and he related his dreams and hallucinations with wonderful vividness, only regretting his lack of strength to put them on paper. It is said that some of these feverish visions are preserved in his "Prose Poems," which are examples of the adaptability of Turguenief's talent to miniature, condensed, bird's-eye pictures. Like Meissonier, Turguenief saw the light upon small surfaces, enhanced rather than lessened in brilliancy. I will translate one of these prose-poems, so that the reader may see how Turguenief cuts his medallions. This one is entitled "Macha":-- "When I was living in St. Petersburg, some time ago, I was in the habit of entering into conversation with the sleigh-driver, whenever I hired one. "I particularly liked to chat with those who were engaged at night,--poor peasants from the surrounding country, who came to town with their old-fashioned rattling vehicles, besmeared with yellow mud and drawn by one poor horse, to earn enough for bread and taxes. "On a certain day I called one of these to me. He was a lad of perhaps twenty years, strong and robust-looking, with blue eyes and red cheeks. Ringlets of reddish hair escaped from under his patched cap, which was pressed down over his eyebrows, and a torn caftan, too small for him, barely covered his broad shoulders. "It seemed to me that this handsome, beardless young driver's face was sad and gloomy; we fell to chatting, and I noticed that his voice had a sorrowful tone. "Why so sad, brother?' I asked. 'Are you in trouble?' "At first he did not reply. "'Yes, barino, I am in trouble,' he said at last,--'a trouble so great that there is no other like it,--my wife is dead.' "'By this I judge that you were very fond of her.' "The lad, without turning, nodded his head. "'Barino, I loved her. It is now eight months, and I cannot get my thoughts away from her. There is something gnawing here at my heart continually. I do not understand why she died; she was young and healthy. In twenty-four hours she was carried off by the cholera.' "'And was she good?' "'Ah, barino!' the poor fellow sighed deeply, 'we were such good friends! And she died while I was away. As soon as I heard up here that--that they had buried her--that very moment I started on foot to my village, to my home. I arrived; it was past midnight. I entered my _isba_; I stood still in the middle of it, and called very low, "Macha, oh Macha!" No answer,--nothing but the chirp of a cricket in a corner. Then I burst into tears; I sat down on the ground and beat it with my hand, saying, "O thou greedy earth, thou hast swallowed her! thou must swallow me too! Macha, oh Macha!" I repeated hoarsely.' "Without loosening his hold on the reins, he caught a falling tear on his leather glove, shook it off at one side, shrugged his shoulders, and said not another word. "On alighting from the sleigh I gave him a good fee; he bowed himself to the ground before me, taking off his cap with both hands, turned again to his sleigh, and started off at a weary trot down the frozen and deserted street, which was fast filling with a cold, gray, January fog." Is it a mistake to say that in this commonplace little episode there is more of poetry than in many elegies and innumerable sonnets? I believe there is no Spanish or French writer who would know how to gather up and thread like a pearl the tear of a common coachman. There is something in the Latin character that makes us hard toward the lower classes and the vulgar professions. Like many another author, Turguenief was not a good judge of his own merits, and gave great importance to his longer novels in preference to his admirable shorter ones, in which he scarcely has a rival. He had great expectations of "Smoke," and the dislike it met with in Russia surprised him painfully. So keen was his disappointment that he determined to write no more original novels, but devote himself to his early cherished plan of translating "Don Quixote." He also suffered in one way like most souls who hang upon the lips of public opinion,--the slightest censure hurt him like a mortal wound. The cordial and enthusiastic reception which, in spite of past indignation, he was accorded in Russia in 1878, and the homage and attentions of the students of Moscow, renewed his courage and reanimated his soul.... But his strong constitution failed him at last, and his physical and mental abilities weakened. "The saddest thing that has happened to me," he said to Paulowsky, "is that I take no more pleasure in my work. I used to love literary labor, as one loves to caress a woman; now I detest it. I have many plans in my head, but I can do nothing at all with them." But after all, what posthumous work of Turguenief would bear with a deeper meaning on his literary life than the admirable words of his letter to Count Léon Tolstoï:-- "It is time I wrote you; for, be it said without the least exaggeration, I have been, I am, on my death-bed. I have no false hopes. I know there is no cure. Let this serve to tell you that I rejoice to have been your contemporary, and to make of you one supreme last request to which you must not turn a deaf ear. Go back, dear friend, to your literary work. The gift you have is from above, whence comes every good gift we possess. How happy I should be if I could believe that my entreaty would have the effect I desire! "As for myself, I am a drowning man. The physicians have not come to any conclusion about my disease. They say it may be gouty neuralgia of the stomach. I cannot walk, nor eat, nor sleep; but it would be tiresome to enter into details. My friend, great and beloved writer in Russian lands, hear my prayer. With these few lines receive a warm embrace for yourself, your wife, and all your family. I can write no more. I am tired." This pathetic document contains the essence of the writer's life, the synthesis of a soul that loved art above all things else, and believed that of the three divine attributes, truth, goodness, and beauty, the last is the one especially revealed to the artist, and the one it is his especial duty to show forth; and that he who allows his sacred flame to go out, commits a sin which is great in proportion to his talents, and a sin incalculable when commensurate with the genius of Tolstoï. Turguenief is the supreme type of the artist, for he had the tranquillity and equipoise of soul, the bright serenity, and the æsthetic sensibility which should distinguish it. According to able critics, such as Taine, Turguenief was one of the most artistic natures that has been born among men since classic times. Those who can read his works in the Russian sing marvellous praises of his style, and even through the haze of translation we are caught by its charms. Let me quote some lines of Melchior de Voguié: "Turguenief's periods flow on with a voluptuous languor, like the broad expanse of the Russian rivers beneath the shadows of the trees athwart them, slipping melodiously between the reeds and rushes, laden with floating blossoms and fallen bird's-nests, perfumed by wandering odors, reflecting sky and landscape, or suddenly darkened by a lowering cloud. It catches all, and gives each a place; and its melody is blended with the hum of bees, the cawing of the crows, and the sighing of the breeze. The most fugitive sounds of Nature's great organ he can echo in the infinite variety of the tones of the Russian speech,--flexible and comprehensive epithets, words strung together to please a poet's fancy, and bold popular sallies." Such is the effect produced by a thorough reading of Turguenief's works; it is a symphony, a sweet and solemn music like the sounds of the forest. Turguenief is, without exaggeration, the best word-painter of landscape that ever wrote. His descriptions are neither very long nor very highly colored; there is a charming sobriety about them that reminds one of the saving strokes with which the skilful painter puts life into his trees and skies without stopping over the careful delineation of leaf and cloud after the manner of the Japanese. The details are not visible, but felt. He rarely lays stress on minor points; but if he does so, it is with the same sense of congruity that a great composer reiterates a motive in music. Turguenief's enemies make ground of this very dexterity, which is displayed in all his works, for denying him originality,--as though originality must need be independent of the eternal laws of proportion and harmony which are the natural measures of beauty. Ernest Renan pronounced quite another opinion, however, when, according to the custom of the French, he delivered a discourse over the tomb that was about to receive the mortal remains of Turguenief, on the 1st of October, 1883. He said that Turguenief was not the conscience of one individual, but in a certain sense that of a whole people,--the incarnation of a race, the voice of past generations that slept the sleep of ages until he evoked them. For the multitude is silent, and the poet or the prophet must serve as its interpreter; and Turguenief holds this attitude to the great Sclavonic race, whose entrance upon the world's stage is the most astounding event of our century. Divided by its own magnitude, the Sclav race is united in the great soul and the conciliatory spirit of Turguenief, Genius having accomplished in a day that which Time could not do in ages. He has created an atmosphere of beautiful peace, wherein those who fought as mortal enemies may meet and clasp each other by the hand. It was just this impartiality and universality, which Renan praises so highly, that alienated from Turguenief many of his contemporaries and compatriots. Where ideas are at war, whoever takes a neutral position makes himself the enemy to both parties. Turguenief knew this, and he used sometimes to say, on hearing the bitter judgments passed upon him, "Let them do what they like: my soul is not in their hands." Not only the revolutionaries took it ill that he did not explicitly cast his adhesion with them, but the country at large, whose national pride spurned foreign civilization, was offended at the candor and realism of his observations. And Turguenief, though Russian every inch of him, loved Latin culture, and had developed and perfected by association with French writers, such as Prosper Mérimée and Gustave Flaubert, those qualities of precision, clearness, and skill in composition, which distinguish him above all his countrymen; yet this was a serious offence to the most of these latter. Among modern French novelists, those who, to my mind, most resemble Turguenief in the nature of their talents, are, first, Daudet, for intensity of emotion and richness of design, and then the brothers Goncourt in some, though not very many, pages. Yet there is a notable difference in all. Daudet is less the epic poet than Turguenief, because he devotes himself to the study of certain special aspects of Parisian fife, while Turguenief takes in the whole physiognomy of his immense country. From the laboring peasants and the nihilist students to the generals and government clerks, he depicts every condition,--except the highest society, which has been reserved for Léon Tolstoï. And everything is vivid, interesting, fascinating,--the poor paralytic of "Living Relics," as well as the courageous heroine of "Virgin Soil,"--everything is real as well as poetical. Truth and poetry are united in him as closely as soul and body. Though he is an indefatigable observer, he never tires the reader; his heart overflowed with sentiment, yet his good taste never permitted him to utter a false note either of brutality or cant; he was a most eloquent advocate of emancipation, moderation, and peace, yet no diatribe of either a social or political character ever ruffled the celestial calm of his muse. Puchkine and Turguenief are, to my mind, the two Russian spirits worthy to be called _classic_. Those who knew him and associated with him speak of his goodness as one speaks of a mountain's height when gazing upward from its foot. Voguié calls him a heavenly soul, one of the poor in spirit burning with the fire of inspiration, one who seemed, amid the hard and selfish world, the vain and jealous world of French letters, a visionary with gaze distraught and heart unsullied, a member of some shepherd tribe or patriarchal family. Every Russian that arrived penniless in Paris went straight to his house for protection and assistance. [1] This work is better known to American readers in a translation entitled "Lisa."--Tr. II. Gontcharof and Oblomovism. The rival and competitor of Turguenief--not in Europe, but in Russia--was a novelist of whom I must say something at least, though I do not consider that he holds a place among the great masters; I mean Gontcharof. This author's talents were fostered under the influence of the famous critic Bielinsky, who professed and taught the principles promulgated by Gogol,--demanded that art should be a faithful representation of life, and its principal object the study of the people. Ivan Gontcharof was not of the nobility, like Turguenief, but came of a family of traders, and was born in the critical year of 1812. His life was humble and laborious; he was a tutor, and then a government employee, and made a tour of the world aboard the frigate "Pallas." He began his literary career in the middle of that most glorious decade for Russian letters known as "the forties." His first novel, entitled "A Vulgar History," attracted public attention, and it is said that a secret notice from the imperial censor in consequence was the cause of the long silence of twelve years which the author maintained until the time when he wrote "Oblomof," which is, to my mind, one of the most pleasing and characteristic Russian novels. I must admit that I am acquainted with only the first volume of it, for the simple reason that it is the only one translated; and I must add that this volume begins with the moment when the hero awakes from sleep, and ends with his resolve to get up and dress and go out into the street! Yet this odd little volume has an indescribable charm, an intensity of feeling which takes the place of action, and incidents as easily invented by the idealist as observed by the realist. In these days the art of story-telling has undergone a great change; the hero no longer keeps a dagger, a cup of poison, rope-ladders, and rivals at hand, but he runs to the other extreme, not less trivial and puerile perhaps, of exaggerating small incidents that are uninteresting, and irrelevant to the subject or the essential thought of the work from an artistic point of view. But in "Oblomof," whose hero does nothing but lie still in bed, there is not a detail or a line that is superfluous to the harmonious effect of the whole. Of course I can only speak of the one volume I have read. One may imagine that the author would like to portray the state of enervation and disorganization to which the essence of autocratic despotism had brought Russian society; or perhaps it is one aspect of the Russian soul, the dreamy indolence and insuperable apathy of the body, which weighs down the active work of the imagination. It is only a study of a psychical condition, yet what intense life throbs in its pages! Perhaps this admirable and original novel was not translated in its entirety for fear of offending French taste, which demands more excitement, and could not stand a long analytical narrative full of detail, mere intellectual filigree. Turguenief was undeniably a greater artist than his rival; but he never attained to the precision, lucidity, and singular strength of "Oblomof" in any of his novels. As the character of the hero was drawn to the life, the nation recognized it at once, and the word _oblomovism_ became incorporated into the language, implying the typical indolence of the Sclav. On some accounts I find Turguenief's "Living Relics" more comparable to this novel than any others of his. Both present one single phase or state of the soul; both are purely psychological studies; the chief character of both does not change position, the position in which he has been fixed by the will of the novelist,--I had almost said the dissecting surgeon. "Oblomof" is in reality a type of the Sclav who chases the butterfly of his dreams through the still air. Study he regards, from his pessimist point of view, as useless, because it will not lead him to earthly happiness; and yet his soul is full of poetry and his heart of tenderness; he reaches out toward illimitable horizons, and his imagination is hard at work, but all his other faculties are asleep. III. Dostoiëwsky, Psychologist and Visionary. Now let us turn to that visionary novelist whom Voguié introduces to his readers in these words: "Here comes the Scythian, the true Scythian, who puts off the habiliments of our modern intellect, and leads us by the hand to the centre of Moscow, to the monstrous Cathedral of St. Basil, wrought and painted like a Chinese pagoda, built by Tartar architects, and yet consecrated to the God whom the Christians adore. Dostoiëwsky was educated at the same school, led by the same current of thought, and made his first appearance in the same year as Turguenief and Tolstoï; but the latter are opposite poles, and have but one ground in common, which is the sympathy for humanity, which was incarnate and expanded in Dostoiëwsky to the highest degree of piety, to pious despair, if such a phrase is possible." Dostoiëwsky is really the barbarian, the primitive type, whose heart-strings still reverberate certain motive tones of the Russian soul that were incompatible with the harmonious and tranquil spirit of Turguenief. Dostoiëwsky has the feverish, unreasoning, abnormal psychological intensity of the cultivated minds of his country. Let no one of tender heart and weak nerves read his books; and those who cling to classic serenity, harmony, and brightness should not so much as touch them. He leads us into a new region of æsthetics, where the horrible is beautiful, despair is consoling, and the ignoble has a halo of sublimity: where guilty women teach gospel truths, and men are regenerated by crimes; where the prison is the school of compassion, and fetters are a poetic element. Much against our will we are forced to admire a novelist whose pages almost excite to assassination and nightmare horrors, this Russian Dante who will not allow us to omit a single circle of the Inferno. Feodor, son of Michael Dostoiëwsky, was born in Moscow in 1821, in a hospital at which his father was a medical attendant. There is frequently a strange connection between the environment of great writers and the development and direction of their genius, not always evident to the general public, but apparent to the careful critic; in Dostoiëwsky's case it seems plain enough to all, however. His family belonged to the country gentlefolk from whom the class of government employees are drawn; Feodor, with his brother Alexis, whom he dearly loved, entered the school of military engineers, though his tastes were rather for belles-lettres and the humanities than for dry and unartistic details. His literary education was therefore reduced to fitful readings of Balzac, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and especially of Gogol, whose works first inspired him with tenderness toward the humble, the outcast, and the miserable. Shortly after leaving college he abandoned his career for a literary life, and began the usual struggle with the difficulties of a young writer's precarious condition. The struggle lasted almost to the end of his life; for forty years he was never sure of any other than prison bread. Proud and suspicious by nature, the humiliations and bitterness of poverty must have contributed largely to unsettle his nerves, disconcert his mind, and undermine his health, which was so precarious that he used sometimes to leave on his table before going to sleep a paper with the words: "I may fall into a state of insensibility to-night; do not bury me until some days have passed." He was sometimes afflicted with epilepsy, cruelly aggravated later in Siberia under the lashes laid upon his bleeding shoulders. Like one of his own heroes he dreamed of fame; and without having read or shown his manuscripts to any one, alone with his chimeras and vagaries, he passed whole nights in imaginary intercourse with the characters he created, loving them as though they had been his relatives or his friends, and weeping over their misfortunes as though they had been real. These were hours of pure emotion, ideal love, which every true artist experiences some time in his life. Dostoiëwsky was hen twenty-three years old. One day he begged a friend to take a few chapters of his first novel called "The Poor People" to the popular poet Nekrasof; his friend did so, and in the early hours of the morning the famous poet called at the door of the unknown writer and clasped him in his arms under the excitement of the emotion caused by perusal of the story. Nekrasof did not remit his attentions; he at once sought the dreaded critic Bielinsky, the intellectual chief and lawgiver of the glorious company of writers to which Turguenief, Tolstoï, and Gontcharof belonged, the Russian Lessing, who died of consumption at the age of thirty-eight years, just when others are beginning to acquire discernment and tranquillity,--the great Bielinsky, who had formed two generations of great artists and pushed forward the national literature to a complete development. A man in his position, more prone to meet with the sham than the genuine in art, would naturally be not over-delighted to receive people armed with rolls of manuscript. When Nekrasof entered his room exclaiming, "A new Gogol is born to us!" the critic replied in a bad humor, "Gogols are born nowadays as easily as mushrooms in a cellar." But when the author came in a tremor to learn the dictum of the judge, the latter cried out impetuously, "Young man, do you understand how much truth there is in what you have written? No, for you are scarcely more than twenty years old, and it is impossible that you should understand. It is a revelation of art, a gift of Heaven. Respect this gift, and you will be a great writer!" The success achieved by this novel on its publication in the columns of a review did not belie Bielinsky's prophecy. It is easy to understand the surprise of the critic on reading this work of a scarcely grown man, who yet seemed to have observed life with a vivid and deep sense of realism, and an unequivocal minuteness that is generally learned only through the bitter experience of prosaic sufferings, and comes forth after the illusions and vague sentimentalities of youth have been dispelled and practical life has begun. I said once, and I repeat it, that a true artist under twenty-five would be a marvel; Dostoiëwsky was indeed such a marvel. This first novel was the humble drama of two lonely souls, wounded and ground down by poverty, but not spoiled by it; a case such as one might meet with on turning the very next corner, and never think worthy of attention or study, and which, even in the midst of modern currents of thought, the novelist is quite likely to pass by. Yet the book is a work of art,--of the new and the old art compounded, classic art infused with the new warm blood of truth. This work of Dostoiëwsky, this touching, tearful story, had a model in Gogol's "The Cloak," but it goes beyond the latter in energy and depth of sadness. If Dostoiëwsky ever invoked a muse, it must have been the muse of Hypochondria. It was not likely that Dostoiëwsky would escape the political fatality which pursued the generality of Russian writers. During those memorable _forties_ the students were wont to meet more or less secretly for the purpose of reading and discussing Fourier, Louis Blanc, and Proudhon. About 1847 these circles began to expand, and to admit public and military men; they were moved by one desire, and what began as an intellectual effervescence ended in a conspiracy. Dostoiëwsky was good material for any revolutionary cabal, being easily disposed thereto by his natural enmity to society, his continuous poverty, his nervous excitement, his Utopian dreams, and his inordinate and fanatical compassion for the outcast classes. The occasion was ill-timed, and the hour a dangerous one, being just at the time of the French outbreak, which seemed a menace to every throne in Europe. The police got wind of it, and on the 23rd of April, 1849, thirty-four suspected persons were arrested, the brothers Feodor and Alexis Dostoiëwsky among them. The novelist was thrown into a dungeon of the citadel, and when at last he came forth, it was to mount the scaffold in a public square with some of his companions. They stood there in shirt-sleeves, in an intense cold, expecting at first only to hear read the sentence of the Council of War. While they waited, Dostoiëwsky began to relate to a friend the plan of a new novel he had been thinking about in prison; but he suddenly exclaimed, as he heard the officer's voice, "Is it possible we are to be executed?" His friend pointed to a car-load of objects which, though covered with a cloth, were shaped much like coffins. The suspicion was soon confirmed; the prisoners were all tied to posts, and the soldiers formed in line ready to fire. Suddenly, as the order was about to be given, word arrived from the emperor commuting the death-sentence to exile to Siberia. The prisoners were untied. One of them had lost his reason. Dostoiëwsky and the others then set out upon their sad journey; on arriving at Tobolsk they were each shaved, laden with chains, and sent to a different station. During this painful experience a pathetic incident occurred which engraved itself indelibly upon the mind of the novelist, and is said to have largely influenced his works. The wives of the "Decembrists" (conspirators of twenty-five years before), most of them women of high rank who had voluntarily exiled themselves in order to accompany their husbands, came to visit in prison the new generation of exiles, and having nothing of material value to offer them, they gave each one a copy of the Gospels. During his four years of imprisonment, Dostoiëwsky never slept without this book under his pillow; he read it incessantly, and taught his more ignorant fellow-prisoners to read it also. He now found himself among outcasts and convicts, and his ears were filled with the sounds of unknown languages and dialects, and speech which, when understood, was profane and abhorrent, and mixed with yells and curses more dreadful than all complaints. What horrible martyrdom for a man of talent and literary vocation,--reckoned with evil-doers, compelled to grind gypsum, and deprived of every means of satisfying the hunger and activity of his mind! Why did he not go mad? Some may answer, because he was that already,--and perhaps they would not be far wrong; for no writer in Russia, not excepting even Gogol and Tolstoï, so closely approaches the mysterious dividing line, thin as a hair, which separates insanity and genius. The least that can be said is, that if Dostoiëwsky was not subject to mental aberration from childhood, he had a violent form of neurosis. He was a bundle of nerves, a harp with strings too tense; he was a victim of epilepsy and hallucinations, and the results are apparent in his life and in his books. But it is a strange fact that he himself said that had it not been for the terrible trials he endured, for the sufferings of the prison and the scaffold, he certainly _would have gone mad_, and he believed that these experiences fortified his mind; for, the year previous to his captivity, he declared that he suffered a terrible temptation of the Devil, was a victim to chimerical infirmities, and overwhelmed with an inexplicable terror which he calls _mystic fear_, and thus describes in one of his novels: "On the approach of twilight I was attacked by a state of soul which frequently comes upon me in the night; I will call it _mystic fear_. It is an overwhelming terror of _something_ which I can neither define nor imagine, which has no existence in the natural order of things, but which I feel may at any moment become real, and appear before me as an inexorable and horrible _thing_." It seems then quite possible that the writer was cured of his imaginary ills by real ones. I have remarked that Gogol's "Dead Souls" reminded me of "Don Quixote" more than any book I know; let me add that the book inspired by the prison-life of Dostoiëwsky--"The Dead House"--reminds me most strongly of Dante's Inferno. There is no exact likeness or affinity of literary style; for "The Dead House" is not a poem, but a plain tale of the sufferings of a few prisoners in a miserable Siberian fort. And yet it is certainly _Dantesque_. Instead of the laurel-crowned poet in scholar's gown, led by the bright genius of antiquity, we see the wistful-eyed, tearful Sclav, his compressed lips, his attitude of resignation,--and in his hands a copy of the Gospels; but the Florentine and the Russian manifest the same melancholy energy, use the same burin to trace their burning words on plates of bronze, and unite a prophetic vision with a brutal realism of miserable and sinful humanity. "The Dead House" also has the merit of being perhaps the most profound study written in Europe upon the penitentiary system and criminal physiology; it is a more powerful teacher of jurists and legislators than all didactic treatises. Dostoiëwsky shows especially, and with implacable clearness, the effect produced on the minds of the prisoners by the cruel penalty of the lash. The complacency of narration, the elaborateness of detail, the microscopic precision with which he notes every phase of this torture, inflict positive pain upon the nervous system of the reader. It is fascinating, it is the refinement of barbarism, but it was also a work of charity, for it finally brought about the abolition of that kind of punishment, and wiped out a foul stain upon the Russian Code. It makes one turn cold and shudder to read those pages which describe this torture,--so calmly and carefully related without one exclamation of pity or comment, and even sometimes painfully humorous. The trepidation of the condemned for days before it is inflicted, his frenzy after it is over, his subterfuges to avoid it, the blind fury with which sometimes he yields to it, throwing himself under the painful blows as a despairing man throws himself into the sea,--these are word-pictures never to be forgotten. Voguié makes a striking comparison of the different fates awarded to certain books, and says that while "My Prisons," by Silvio Pellico, went all over the world, this autobiographical fragment by Dostoiëwsky was unknown to Europe until very recently; yet it is far superior in sincerity and energy to that of the Italian prisoner. The most interesting and moving stories of captivity that I know of are Russian, and chief among them I would mention "Memories of a Nihilist," by Paulowsky. The tone of resignation, of melancholy simplicity, in all these tales, however, is sure to touch all hearts. I will not quote a line from "The Dead House;" it must be read, attentively and patiently, and, like most Russian books, it has not the merit of brevity. But the style is so shorn of artifice and rhetorical pretension, and the story runs along so unaffectedly, that I cannot select any one page as an example of excellence; for the excellence of the book depends on the whole,--on the accumulated force of observation, on the complete aspect of a soul that feels deeply and sees clearly,--and we must not break the icy ring of Siberian winter which encloses it. It is enhanced by the apparent serenity of the writer, by his sweetness, his half-Christian, half-Buddhist resignation. With the Gospels in his hand, Dostoiëwsky at last leaves his house of pain, without rancor or hatred or choleric protests; more than this, he leaves it declaring that the trial has been beneficial to him, that it has regenerated body and soul; that in prison he has learned to love the brethren, and to find the spark of goodness and truth lighted by God's hand even in the souls of reprobates and criminals; to know the charity that passes understanding and the pity that is foolishness to the wise; he has learned, in fact, _to love_,--the only learning that can redeem the condemned. Although he had been (at the time of writing this) four years released from prison, he delayed still six years longer before returning to Europe to publish his works. When he began his labors for the press, he did not unite himself to the liberal party, but, erratic as usual, he turned to the Sclavophiles,--the blind lovers of old usages and customs, the bitter enemies of the civilization of the Occident. Fate was not yet weary in persecuting him. After the death of his wife and brother he was obliged to flee the country on account of his creditors. His sorrows were not exactly of the sublime nature of Puchkine's and the melancholy poet's; they were on the contrary very prosaic,--lack of money, combined with terrible fits of epilepsy. To understand the mortifications of poverty to a proud and sensitive man, one must read Dostoiëwsky's correspondence,--so like Balzac's in its incessant complaints against pecuniary affairs. He exclaims, "The details of my poverty are shameful. I cannot relate them. Sometimes I spend the whole night walking my room like a caged beast, tearing my hair in despair. I must have such or such a sum to-morrow, without fail!" Gloomy and ill, he wandered through Germany, France, and Italy, caring nothing for the wonders of civilization, and impressed by no sights except the guillotine. He wrote during this time his three principal novels, whose very names are nightmares,--"Possessed with Devils," "The Idiot," and "Crime and Punishment." I know by experience the diabolical power of Dostoiëwsky's psychological analysis. His books make one ill, although one appear to be well. No wonder that they exercise a perturbing influence on Russian imaginations, which are only too prone to hallucination and mental ecstasy. I will briefly mention his best and most widely known book, "Crime and Punishment," of which the following is the argument: A student commits a crime, and then voluntarily confesses it to the magistrate. This seems neither more nor less than an ordinary notice in the newspaper, but what an analysis is conveyed by means of it! It is horrible to think that the sentiments so studiously wrought out can be human, and that we all carry the germs of them hidden in some corner of the soul; and not only human, but possessed even by a person of great intellectual culture, like the hero, whose crime is the result of great reading reduced to horrible sophisms. Those two Parisian students who, after saturating their minds with Darwin and Haeckel, cut a woman to pieces with their histories, must have been prototypes of Rodion Romanovitch, the hero of this novel of Dostoiëwsky. This young man is not only clever, but possesses really refined sentiments; one of the motives that lead to his crime is that one of his sisters, the most dearly loved, may have to marry an unworthy man in order to insure the welfare of the family. Such a _sale_ as this poor girl's marriage would be seems to the student a greater wrong than the assassination of the old money-lender. The first seed of the crime falls upon his soul on overhearing at a wine-shop a dialogue between another student and an officer. "Here you have on the one hand," says the student, "an old woman, sick, stupid, wicked, useful to nobody, and only doing harm to all the world about her, who does not know what she lives for, and who, when you least expect it, will die a natural death; you have on the other hand a young creature whose strength is being wasted for lack of sustenance, a hundred lives that might be guided into a right path, dozens of families that might be saved from destitution, dissolution, ruin, and vice if that old woman's money were only available. If somebody were to kill her and use her fortune for the good of humanity, do you not think that a thousand good deeds would compensate for the crime? It is a mathematical question. What weight has a stupid, evil-minded old shrew in the social scale? About as much as a bed-bug." "Without doubt," replies the officer, "the old woman does not deserve to live. But--what can you do? Nature--" "My friend," the other replies, "Nature can be corrected and amended. If it were not so we should all be buried to the neck in prejudices, and there would not be a great man amongst us." This atrocious ratiocination takes hold upon Rodion's mind, and he carries it out to terribly logical consequences. Napoleon sacrificed thousands of men on the altar of his genius; why had he not the right to sacrifice one ridiculous old woman to his own great needs? The ordinary man must not infringe the law; but the extraordinary man may authorize his conscience to do away with certain obstacles in his path. It has been said that Dostoiëwsky's talents were influenced in some measure by the fascinating personality of Edgar Poe. The analogies are apparent; but the author of "The Gold Beetle," with all his suggestive intensity and his feverish imagination, never achieved any such tremendous psychological analyses as those of "Crime and Punishment." It is impossible to select an example from it; every page is full of it. The temptation that precedes the assassination, the horrible moment of committing it, the manner of disposing of the traces of it, the agonizing terror of being discovered, the instinct which leads him back to the scene of the crime with no motive but to yield to a desire as irresistible as inexplicable, his fearful visit to the place where he lives over again the moment when he plunged the knife into the old woman's skull,--examining all the furniture, laying his hand upon the bell again, with a fiendish enjoyment of the sound of it, and looking again for the marks of blood on the floor,--it is too well done; it makes one excited, nervous, and ill. "Is this beautiful?" some will ask. All that Dostoiëwsky has written bears the same character; it wrings the soul, perverts the imagination, overturns one's ideas of right and wrong to an incredible degree. Sometimes one is lost in abysms of gloomy uncertainty, like Hamlet; again one sees the struggle of the evil genius against Providence, like Faust, or a soul lacerated by remorse like Macbeth; and all his heroes are fools, madmen, maniacs, and philosophers of hypochondria and desperation. And yet I say that this is beauty,--tortured, twisted, Satanic, but intense, grand, and powerful. Dostoiëwsky's are bad books to read during digestion, or on going to bed at night, when every dim object takes an unusual shape, and every breath stirs the window curtains; they are not good books to take to the country, where one sits under the spreading trees with a fresh and fragrant breeze and a soul expanded with contentment, and one thanks God only to be alive. But they are splendid books for the thinker who devours them with reflective attention,--his brow furrowed under the light of the student-lamp, and feeling all around him the stir and excitement of a great city like Paris or St. Petersburg. But there is a drop of balm in the cup of absinthe to which we may liken Dostoiëwsky's books; it is the Christianity which appears in them when and where its consoling presence is least expected. Face to face with the student who becomes a criminal through pride and injudicious reading, we see the figure of a pure, modest, pious girl, who redeems him by her love. This unfortunate girl is a flower that fades before its time; it is she who, being sacrificed to provide bread for her family, comes in time to convince the criminal of his sin, enlightens his mind with the lamp of the Gospels, and brings him to repentance, resignation, and the joy of regeneration, in the expiation of his crime by chastisement and the dungeon. There is one marked difference between "Crime and Punishment" and "The Dead House." The novel is feverish, the autobiography is calm. Dostoiëwsky is a madman who owes his lucid intervals to tribulations and torture. Suffering clears his mind and alleviates his pain; tears sweeten his bitterness, and sorrow is his supreme religion; like his student hero, he prostrates himself before human suffering. The best way of taking the measure of Dostoiëwsky's personality is to compare him with his competitor and rival, and perhaps his enemy, Ivan Turguenief. There could be no greater contrast. Turguenief is above all an artist, almost classic in his serenity, master of the arts of form, delicate, refined, exquisite, a perfect scene-painter, an always interesting narrator, reasonable and temperately liberal in his opinions, optimist, or, if I may be allowed the word, Olympic, to the extent that he could boast of being able to die tranquilly because he had enjoyed all that was truly beautiful in life. Dostoiëwsky is a rabid psychologist, almost an enemy to Nature and the sensuous world, a furious and implacable painter of prisons, hospitals, public houses and by-streets of great cities, awkward in his style, taking only a one-sided view of character, a revolutionary and yet a reactionary in politics, and not only adverse to every sort of paganism, but hazily mystical,--the apostle of redemption through suffering, and of the compassion which seeks wounds to cure with its healing lips. Their two lives are correlative to their characters,--Turguenief in the Occident, famous and fortunate; Dostoiëwsky in the Orient, a barbarian, the plaything of destiny, fighting with poverty shoulder to shoulder. It was only natural that sooner or later the two novelists should know each other as enemies. It is sad to relate that Dostoiëwsky attacked Turguenief in so furious a manner that it can only be attributed to envy and malice. In his own country, however, and in respect to his popularity and influence with young people, the author of "Crime and Punishment" ranked higher than the author of "Virgin Soil." Just in proportion as Turguenief was attractive to us in the West, Dostoiëwsky fascinated the people of his country. "Crime and Punishment" was an event in Russia. Dostoiëwsky had the honor--if honor it may be called--of dealing a blow upon the soul of his compatriots, and on this account, as he himself used sometimes to say, especially after his epileptic attacks, he felt himself to be a great criminal, and the guilt of a villanous act weighed upon his soul; and it happened that a certain student, after reading his book, thought himself possessed by the same impulses as the hero, and committed a murder with the same circumstances and details. After writing "Crime and Punishment," Dostoiëwsky's talent declined; his defects became more marked, his psychology more and more involved and painful, his heroes more insensate, lunatic, epileptic, and overwrought, absorbed in inexplicable contemplations, or wandering, rapt in delirious dreams, through the streets. His novels are, in fact, the antechamber to the madhouse. But we may once more notice the influence of Cervantes on Russian minds; for the most important character created by Dostoiëwsky, after the hero of "Crime and Punishment," is a type, imitated after Quixote, in "The Idiot,"--a righter of wrongs, a fool, or rather a sublime innocent. As much as Dostoiëwsky excels in originality, he lacks in rhythm and harmony. His way of looking at the world is the way of the fever-stricken. No one has carried realism so far; but his may be called a mystic realism. Neither he nor his heroes belong to our light-loving race or our temperate civilization; they are the outcome of Russian exuberance, to us almost incomprehensible. He is at one moment an apostle, at another a maniac, now a philosopher, then a fanatic. Voguié, in describing his physiognomy, says: "Never have I seen in any other face such an expression of accumulated suffering; all the agonies of flesh and spirit were stamped upon it; one read in it, better than in any book, the recollection of the prison, the long habits of terror, torture, and anguish. When he was angry, one seemed to see him in the prisoner's dock. At other times his countenance had the sad meekness of the aged saints in Russian sacred pictures." In his last years Dostoiëwsky was the idol of the youth of Russia, who not only awaited his novels most eagerly, but ran to consult him as they would a spiritual director, entreating his advice or consolation. The prestige of Turguenief was for the moment eclipsed. Tolstoï found his audience chiefly among _the intelligence_, and Dostoiëwsky of the lacerated heart was the object of the love and devotion of the new generation. When the monument to Puchkine was unveiled, in 1880, the popularity of Dostoiëwsky was at its height; when he spoke, the people sobbed in sympathy; they carried him in triumph; the students assaulted the drawing-rooms that they might see him near by, and one even fainted with ecstasy on touching him. He died, February 10, 1881, almost crazed with patriotic love and enthusiasm, like Gogol. The multitudes fought for the flowers that were strewn over his grave, as precious relics. His obsequies were an imposing manifestation. In a land without liberty this novelist was the Messiah of the new generations. IV. Tolstoï, Nihilist and Mystic. The youngest of the four great Russian novelists, the only one living to-day, and in general opinion the most excellent, is Léon, son of Nicholas Count Tolstoï. His biography may be put into a few lines; it has no element of the dramatic or curious. He was born in 1828; he was brought up, like most Russian noblemen of his class, in the country, on his patrimonial estates; he pursued his studies at the University of Kazan, receiving the cosmopolitan education--half French, half German--which is the nursery of the Russian aristocracy; he entered the military career, spent some years in the Caucasus attached to a regiment of artillery, was transferred to Sevastopol at his own desire, and witnessed there the memorable siege, the heroes of which he has immortalized in three of his volumes; on the conclusion of the peace he dedicated some time to travel; he resided by turns at both Russian capitals, frequenting the best society, his congenial atmosphere, yet without being captivated by it; he finally renounced the life of the world, married in 1860, and retired to his possessions near Toula, where he has lived in his own way for twenty-five years or more, and where to-day the famous novelist, the gentleman, the scholar, the sceptic,--after falling like Saul on the road to Damascus, blinded by a heavenly vision, and being converted, as he himself says,--shows himself, to all who go to visit him, dressed in peasant's garb, swinging the scythe or drawing the sickle. The more important biography of Count Tolstoï is that which pertains to his soul, always restless, always in pursuit of absolute truth and the divine essence,--a noble aspiration which ameliorates even error. There is no book of Tolstoï's but reveals himself, particularly so the autobiography entitled "My Memories," and certain passages of his novels, and lastly, his theologico-moral works. Tolstoï belongs to the class of souls that without God lose their hold on life; and yet, by his own confession, the novelist lived without any sort of faith or creed from his youth to maturity. Ever since the time when Tolstoï saw the dreams of his childhood vanish,--began to think for himself, and to experience the religious crisis which usually arrives between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five,--his soul, like a storm-tossed bark, has oscillated between pantheism and the blackest pessimism. What depths of despair a soul like that of Tolstoï can know, unable to rest upon the pillow of doubt, when it abnegates the noblest of human faculties,--thought and intelligence,--and makes choice of a merely vegetative life in preference to that of the rational being! Lost in the gloom of this dark wilderness, he falls into the region of absolute nihilism. He admits this in his confessions ("My Religion") when he says: "For thirty-five years of my life I have been a nihilist in the rigorous acceptation of the term; that is to say, not merely a revolutionary socialist, but a man who believes in nothing whatever." In fact, since the age of sixteen, as we read in his "Memoirs," his mind summoned to judgment all accepted and consecrated doctrines and philosophical opinions, and that which most suited the boy was scepticism, or rather a sort of transcendental egoism; he allows himself to think that nothing exists in the world but himself; that exterior objects are vain apparitions, no longer real to his mind; impressed and persuaded by this fixed idea, he believes he sees, materially, behind and all around him, the abyss of nothingness, and under the effect of this hallucination he falls into a state of mind that might be called truly motor madness, though it was transitory and momentary,--a state proper to the visionary peoples of the North, and to which they give an involved appellation difficult to pronounce; to translate it exactly, with all its shades of signification, I should have to mix and mingle together many words of ours, such as despair, fatalism, asceticism, intractability, brief delirium, lunacy, mania, hypochondria, and frenzy,--a species of dementia, in fine, which, snapping the mainspring of human will, induces inexplicable acts, such as throwing one's self into an abyss, setting fire to a house for the pleasure of it, holding the muzzle of a pistol to one's forehead and thinking, "Shall I pull the trigger?" or, on seeing a person of distinction, to pull him by the nose and shake him like a child. This momentary but real dementia--from which nobody is perhaps entirely exempt, and which Shakespeare has so admirably analyzed in some scenes of "Hamlet"--is to the individual what panic is to the multitude, or like _epidemia chorea_, or a suicidal monomania which sometimes seems to be in the air; its origin lies deep in the mysterious recesses of our moral being, where other strange psychical phenomena are hidden, such as, for example, the fascination of seeing blood flow, and the innate love of destruction and death. But let us turn to the real literary work of Tolstoï before referring to the actual cause of his perturbed conscience. After the beautiful story called "The Cossacks," he prepared himself, by other short novels, for works of larger importance. Among the former should be mentioned the sweet story of "Katia," which already reveals the profound reader of the human heart and the great realist writer. For Tolstoï, who knows how to cover vast canvases with vivid colors, is no less successful in small pictures; and his short novels, "The Death of Ivan Illitch" and the first part of "The Horse's Romance," for example, are hardly to be excelled. But his fame was chiefly assured by two great works,--"War and Peace" and "Anna Karénina." The former is a sort of cosmorama of Russian society before and during the French invasion, a series of pictures that might be called Russian national episodes. Like our own Galdos, Tolstoï studied the formative epoch of modern society, the heroic age in which the Great Captain of the century awoke in the nations of Europe, while endeavoring to subjugate them, a national conscience, just as he transmitted to them, though unwittingly, the impetus of the French Revolution. Russia heroically resisting the outsider is Tolstoï's hero. The action of the novel merely serves as a pretext to intertwine chapters of history, politics, and philosophy; it is rather a general panorama of Russian life than an artistic fiction. "War and Peace" is a complement to the poetic satire of Gogol, delineating the new society which was to rise upon the ruins of the past. If we apply the rules of composition in novel-writing, "War and Peace" cannot be defended; there is neither unity, nor hero, nor hardly plot; so loose and careless is the thread that binds the story together, and so slowly does the argument develop, that sometimes the reader has already forgotten the name of a character when he meets with it again ten chapters farther on. The vast incoherence of the Russian soul, its lack of mental discipline, its vagueness and liking for digressions, could have no more complete personification in literature. One therefore needs resolution to plunge into the perusal of works in which art mimics Nature, copying the inimitable extension of the Russian plains. I once asked a very clever friend how she was occupying herself. She replied, "I have fallen to the bottom of a Russian novel, and I cannot get out!" But scarcely has one finished the first two hundred pages, as a first mouthful, when one's interest begins to awaken,--not a mere vulgar curiosity as to events, but a noble interest of mind and heart. It is the stream of life, grand and majestic, which passes before our eyes like the expanse of a mighty flowing river. Tolstoï--more than Turguenief, who is always and first of all the artist, and more than Dostoiëwsky, who sees humanity from the point of view of his own turbulent mind and confused soul--Tolstoï produces a supreme and absolute impression of the truth, although, in the light of his harmonious union of faculties, it is impossible to say whether he hits the mark by means of external or internal realism,--whether he is more perfect in his descriptions, his dialogues, or his studies of character. In reading Tolstoï, we feel as though we were looking at the spectacle of the universe where nothing seems to us unreal or invented. Tolstoï's fictitious characters are not more vivid than his historical ones,--Napoleon or Alexander I., for example; he is as careful in the expression of a sublime sentiment as in a minute and vulgar detail. Every touch is wonderful. His description of a battle is amazing (and who else can describe a battle like Tolstoï!), but he is charming when he gives us the day-dreams and love-fancies of a child still playing with her dolls. And what a clear intuition he has of the motives of human actions! What a penetrating, unwavering, scrutinizing glance that "trieth the hearts and the reins," as saith the Scripture! Tolstoï does not exhaust his perspicacity in the study of instinct alone; with eagle eye he pierces the most complex souls, refined and enveloped in the veil of education,--courtiers, diplomats, princes, generals, ladies of high rank, and famous statesmen. No one else has described the drawing-room so exquisitely and so truly as Tolstoï; and it must be admitted that the picture of official good society is terribly embarrassing. Some chapters of "Anna Karénina" and "War and Peace" seem to exhale the warm soft air that greets us as we enter the door of a luxurious, aristocratic mansion. The master-painter controls the collectivity as well as the individual; he dissects the soul of the multitude, the spirit of the nation, with the same energy and dexterity as that of one man. The wonderful pictures of the invasion and burning of Moscow are continual examples of this. Is "War and Peace" a historical novel in the limited, archæological, false, and conventional conception? Certainly not. Tolstoï's historical novel has realized the conjunction of the novel and the epic, with the good qualities of both. In this novel--so broad, so deep, so human, and at times so patriotic, as Tolstoï understands patriotism--there is a subtle breath of nihilism, an essence of euphorbia, a poison of _ourare_, which colors the whole drift of Russian literature. This tendency is personified in the hero (if the book may be said to have one at all), Pierre Besukof, a true Sclavonic soul, expansive, full of unrest and disquietude, passionate, unstable, the character of a child united to the investigating intelligence of a philosopher,--a pre-nihilist (to coin a word) who goes in search of certainty and repose, and finds them not until he meets at last with one "poor in spirit," a wretched common soldier, a type of meek resignation and inconsequent fatalism, who shows him how to attain to his desires through a mystic indifferentism, a voluntary abrogation of the body, and a vegetative form of existence, in fact, a form of quietism, of Indian Nirvana. This same philosophical concept inspires all of Tolstoï's writings. Once a nihilist and now converted, culture and the exercise of reason are to him lamentable gifts; his ideal is not progression, but retrogression; the final word of human wisdom is to return to pure Nature, the eternal type of goodness, beauty, and truth. The Catholic Church has also honored the saintly lives of the poor in spirit, such as Pascual Bailon and Fray Junipero, _the Idiot_; but assuredly it has never presented them as models worthy of imitation in general, only as living examples of grace; and on the contrary, it is the intelligence of great thinkers, like Augustine, Thomas, and Buenaventura, that is revered and written about. In the whole catalogue of sins there is perhaps none more blasphemous than that of spurning the light given by the Creator to every creature. But to return to Tolstoï. His literary testament is to be found in "Anna Karénina," a novel but little less prolix than "War and Peace," published in 1877. While "War and Peace" pictured society at the beginning of the century, "Anna Karénina" pictures contemporary society,--a more difficult task, because it lacks perspective, yet an easier one, because one can better understand the mode of thought of one's contemporaries; therefore in "Anna Karénina" the epic quality is inferior to the lyric. The principal character is amply developed, and the study of passion is complete and profound. The argument in "Anna Karénina" is upon an illicit love, young, sincere, and overpowering. Tolstoï does not justify it; the whole tone of the book is austere. It would seem as though he proposed to demonstrate--indirectly, and according to the demands of art--that a generous soul cannot live outside the moral law; and that even when circumstances seem entirely favorable, and those obstacles which society and custom oppose to his passion have disappeared, the discord within him is enough to poison happiness and make life intolerable. In both of Tolstoï's novels there is much insistence on the necessity of believing and contemplating religious matters, the thirst of faith. Although Tolstoï observes the canon of literary impersonality with a rigorous care that is equal to that of Flaubert himself, yet it is plainly to be seen that Pierre Besukof in "War and Peace," and Levine in "Anna Karénina" are one and the same with the author, with his doubts, his painful anxiety to get away from indifferentism and to solve the eternal problem whose explanation Heine demanded of the waves of the North Sea. Tolstoï cannot consent to the idea of dying an atheist and a nihilist, or to living without knowing why or for what. Referring to the autobiography called "Memoirs," we see that from childhood he was troubled and tortured by the mystery of things about him and the hereafter. He tells there how his mind reasoned with, penetrated, and passed in review the diverse solutions offered to the great enigma; once he thought, like the Stoics, that happiness depends not upon circumstances, but upon our manner of accepting them, and that a man inured to suffering could not be afflicted by misfortunes; possessed with this idea he held a heavy dictionary upon his outstretched hand for five minutes, enduring frightful pains; he disciplined himself with a whip until his tears started. Then he turned to Epicurus; he remembered that life is short; that to man belongs only the disposition of the present; and under the influence of these ideas he abandoned his lessons for three days, and spent the time lying on his bed reading novels or eating sweets. He sees a horse, and at once inquires, "When this animal dies, where will his spirit go? Into the body of another horse? Into the body of a man?" And he wearies himself with questionings, with struggling over knotty problems, with thoughts upon thoughts, and all the while his ardent imagination conjures before him dreams of love, happiness, and fame. Beneath the restless effervescence of fancy and youth the religious sentiment was pulsating,--the strongest and most deeply rooted sentiment in his soul. One episode from the "Memoirs" will prove to us the innate religious nature of the novelist. He tells us that once, when he was still a child in his father's country-house, a certain beggar came to the door, a poor vagabond, one-eyed and pock-marked, half idiot and foolish,--one of those coarse clay vessels in which, according to contemporaneous Russian literature, the divine light is wont to be enclosed. He was offered shelter and hospitality, though none knew whence he came, nor why he followed a mysterious wandering life, always going from place to place, barefooted and poor, visiting the convents, distributing religious objects, murmuring incoherent words, and sleeping wherever a handful of straw was thrown down for him. Within the house, at supper-time, they fall to discussing him. Tolstoï's mother pities him, his father abuses him; the latter thinks him little better than a cheat and a sluggard, the former reveres him as one inspired of God, a holy man, who earns glory and reward every minute by wearing around his body a chain sixty pounds in weight. Nevertheless, the vagabond obtains shelter and food, and the children, whose curiosity has been excited by the discussion, go and hide in a dark room next to his, so as "to see Gricha's chain." Tolstoï was filled with awe in his dark corner to hear the beggar pray, to see him throw himself upon the floor and writhe in mystic transports amid the clanking of his chain. "Many things have happened since then," he exclaims, "many other memories have lost all importance for me; Gricha, the wanderer, has long since reached the end of his last journey, but the impression which he produced upon me will never fade; I shall never forget the feelings that he awoke in my soul. O Gricha! O great Christian! Thy faith was so ardent that thou couldst feel God near; thy love was so great that the words flowed of themselves from thy lips, and thou hadst not to ask thy reason for an examination of them. And how magnificently didst thou praise the Almighty when, words failing to express the feelings of thy heart, thou threwest thyself weeping upon the floor!" This episode of childhood will indeed never fade from the memory or the heart of Tolstoï. After seeking conviction and repose in arrogant human science and in philosophy, Tolstoï, like his two heroes, finds them at last in the meekness and simplicity of the most abject classes. Like his own Pierre Besukof, who receives the mystic illumination at the mouth of a common soldier who is to be shot by the French, or like his own Levine, who gets the same from a poor laboring peasant stacking hay, Tolstoï was converted by one Sutayef, one of those innumerable _mujiks_ who go about the country announcing the good tidings of the day of communist fraternity. "Five years ago," says Tolstoï in "My Religion," "my faith was given to me; I believed in the teachings of Jesus, and my whole life suddenly changed; I abhorred what I had loved, and loved what I had abhorred; what before seemed bad to me, now seemed good, and _vice versa_." It was a sad day for art when this change of spirit came upon Count Tolstoï. Its immediate effect was to suspend the publication of a novel he had begun, to make him despise his master-works, call them empty vanities, and accuse himself of having speculated with the public in arousing evil passions and fanning the fires of sensuality. A heretic and a rationalist (Tolstoï is clearly both; for what he calls his conversion is neither to Catholicism nor to the Greek Church), he now abuses the novel, like some persons nearer home with better intentions than intelligence, as being an incentive to loose actions, the Devil's bait, and agrees with Saint Francis de Sales that "novels are like mushrooms,--the best of them are good for nothing." Tolstoï has not cast aside the pen; he continues to write, but no more such superb pages as we find in "War and Peace" and "Anna Karénina," no more masterly silhouettes of fine society or the high ranks of the military, not the imperial profile of Alexander I. or the charming figure of the Princess Marie; he writes edifying apologies, Biblical parables dedicated to the enlightenment of village-folk; exegeses and religious controversies, professions of faith and dramas for the people. Has the great writer died? Nay, I believe that he still lives and breathes beneath the coarse tunic and rope girdle of the peasant-dress he wears, and which I have seen in his portraits; for in these same books, written with a moral and religious purpose, such as, for instance, that called "What to do?" in which he has endeavored to dispense with elegance and suppress beauty of rhetoric and style, the grace of the artist flows from his pen in spite of him; his descriptions are word-paintings, and the hand of the master is revealed in the admirable conciseness of diction; he controls every resource of art, and is inspired, will-he, nill-he. Tolstoï was right in reminding himself that genius is a divine gift, and there is no law that can annul it or cast it out. I cannot believe that Count Tolstoï will persevere in his present path. In the first place, I have little confidence in conversion to a rationalist faith; in the second place, from what I have heard of the disposition of the incomparable novelist, I think it impossible that he should long remain stationary and satisfied. In his vigorous, passionate nature imagination has the strongest part; he is enthusiastic, and given to extremes, like Prince Besukof in "War and Peace;" he is like a fiery charger dashing on at full gallop, that leaps and plunges, and stays not even upon the edge of the precipice. To-day, under the influence of an unbridled sentiment of compassion, he is playing the part of redeemer and apostle; he imitates in his proprietary mansion and in the neighboring towns the primitive fraternal customs of the early Christians; he follows the plough and swings the scythe, and waits on himself, rejecting every offer of service and everything that refines life. To-morrow, perhaps, his lofty understanding will tell him that he was not born to make shoes but novels, and he will perhaps regret having thrown away his best years, the prime of life and creative activity. At present, he has abandoned himself to the grace of God; and to those of us who are interested in intellectual phenomena, his religious ideas, which are closely interwoven with his imaginative creations, are extremely attractive. "My Religion" contains the fullest exposition of them. He states in it that the whole teaching of Jesus Christ is revealed in one single principle,--that of non-resistance to evil; it is to turn the other cheek, not to judge one's neighbor, not to be angry, not to kill. Tolstoï's experience with the Gospels is like that of the uninitiated who goes into a physical laboratory, and without having any previous instruction wishes to understand at once the management of this or that apparatus or machinery. The sublime and compendious message of the Son of Man has been for nineteen hundred years explained and defined by the loftiest minds in theology and philosophy, who have elucidated every real and profound phase of it as far as is compatible with human needs and laws; but Tolstoï, extracting at pleasure that passage from the sacred Book which most strikes his poetic imagination, deduces therefrom a social state impossible and superhuman; declares tribunals, prisons, authorities, riches, art, war, and armies, iniquitous and reprehensible. In his earliest years Tolstoï dwelt much on thoughts of the tragedy of war, and in "War and Peace" he gives utterance to some very original and extraordinary, and sometimes even most ingenious opinions concerning it. No historian that I know of can be compared to Tolstoï on this point; none has succeeded in putting in relief the mysterious moral force, the blind and irresistible impulse which determines the great collisions between two peoples independently of the external and trivial causes to which history attributes them. Nor has any one else brought out as clearly as Tolstoï the part played in war by the army, the anonymous mass always sacrificed to the personality of two or three celebrated chiefs,--not only in the campaign bulletins but in the narratives of Clio herself. I believe it will be long before such another man as Tolstoï will arise, not only in the realms of the art of depicting great battle-scenes, but so rich in the gifts of military psychology and physiology; one who can describe the trembling fear in the recruit as well as the strategic calculations of the commander; one who can transfer the impression made upon the soul by the whistling of the bombs carrying death through the air, as well as the sudden impulse that at a certain decisive moment seizes upon thousands of souls that were before vacillating and unstable, lifts them up to a heroic temperature, and decides, in spite of all strategic combinations, the fate of the battle. Though the strenuous enemy of war, Tolstoï is perhaps the man who has written about it better than any other in the world; in every other respect I can compare him to some one else, but not in this. In French writings I recall only one page that could be placed beside Tolstoï's; it is the admirable description of the battle of Waterloo, by Stendhal. In the name of his own gospel Tolstoï condemns not only human institutions in general, but the Church in particular (the Greek Church, of course), accusing it of having substituted the letter for the spirit, the word of the world for the word of God. It is not to our purpose to point out Tolstoï's theological errors, but his artistic and social errors fall within the scope of our investigations. We know that, applying the principle of non-resistance in the most rigorous acceptation, he proscribes war, and, as a logical consequence, he disapproves the sacred love of country, which he qualifies as an absurd prejudice, and reproaches himself whenever his own instincts lead him to wish for the triumph of Russia over other nations. In the light of his theory of non-resistance he condemns the revolution, and yet he is forwarding it all the while by his own radical socialism. Tolstoï's social ideal is, not to lift up and instruct the ignorant, nor even to suppress pauperism, but to create a state entirely composed of the poor, to annihilate wealth, luxury, the arts, all delicacy and refinement of custom, and lastly--the lips almost refuse to utter it--even cleanliness and care of the body. Yes, cleanliness and instruction, to wash and to learn, are, in Tolstoï's eyes, great sins, the cause of separation and estrangement among mankind. Besides this book in which he has set forth his religious ideas, he has written another called "My Confession" and "A Commentary on the Gospels." In "My Confession" he says that having lost faith when very young and given himself up for a time to the vanities of life, and to making literature in which he taught others what he himself knew nothing about, and then turning to science for light upon the enigma of life, he became at last inclined to suicide, when it suddenly occurred to him to look and see how the humbler classes lived, who suffer and toil and know the object of life; and it was borne in upon him that he must follow their example and embrace their simple faith. Thus Tolstoï formulated the principle enunciated by Gogol, and which is dominant in Russian literature,--the principle of a return to Nature, for which the way was prepared by Schopenhauer, and the sort of modern Buddhism which leads to a subjection of the reason to the animal and the idiot, and a feeling of unbounded tenderness and reverence for inferior creatures. I have devoted thus much attention to Tolstoï's social and religious ideas, not only because they are interlaced with his novels, and to a certain extent complement and explain them, but because Tolstoï, though he has allied himself with no political party, not even with the Sclavophiles, like Dostoiëwsky, is yet a representative of an order of ideas and sentiments common in his country and proper to it; he is the supreme artist of nihilism and pessimism, and at the same time the apostle of a Christian socialism newly derived from certain theories, dear to the Middle Ages, concerning the eternal Gospels; he is the interpreter, to the world of culture, society, letters, and arts, of that feverish mysticism which manifests itself in more violent forms among certain Russian sects, independent preachers, voluntary mortifiers of the body, the direct inheritors of those who, in dark ages past, declared themselves under the influence of spirits. The spectacle of the socialist fanatic united to the great writer, of the Quietist almost exceeding the limits of evangelical charity joined to the novelist of realism almost _à la_ Zola, is so interesting from an intellectual point of view, that it is hard to say which most attracts the attention, Tolstoï or his books. He has made great mistakes, not the least of which is his renunciation of novel-writing, if indeed that be his intention, though I have heard some Russians affirm the contrary. By condemning the arts and luxuries of urban life, and admitting only the good of the agricultural, for the sake of its simplicity and laboriousness, instead of helping on the Golden Age, he compels a retrogression to the age of the animal, as described by the Roman poet,--"the troglodyte snores, being satisfied with acorns." By anathematizing letters, poetry, theatres, balls, banquets, and all the pleasures of intelligence and civilization, he condemns the most delicate instincts that we possess, sanctions barbarism, justifies a new irruption of Huns and Vandals, and endeavors to arrest the faculty of the perception of the Beautiful, which is a glorious attribute of God himself. And all this for what? To find at the end of this harsh penance not the love of Jesus Christ, who bids us lean on his breast and rest after our labors, but a pantheistic numen, a blind and deaf deity hidden behind a gray mist of abstractions. With sorrow we hear Tolstoï, the great artist, blaspheme when he would pray; hear him spurn the gifts of Heaven, condemn that form of art in which his name shone brightest and shed lustre on his country and all the world,--calling the novel oil poured upon the flames of sensual love, a licentious pastime, food for the senses, and a noxious diversion. We see him, under the hallucination of his mysticism, making shoes and drawing water with the hands that God gave him for weaving forms and designs of artistic beauty into the texture of his marvellous narratives. V. French Realism and Russian Realism. The Russian naturalistic school seems to have reached its culmination in Tolstoï. Concerning Russian naturalism I would say a few words more before leaving the subject. The opinions expressed are impartial, though long confirmed in my own mind. In recapitulating half a century of Russian literature, we see that this _natural school_ followed close upon an imitation of foreign style and an effervescence of romanticism; it was founded by Gogol, and defended by Bielinsky, the estimable critic who did for Russia what Lessing did for Germany. The _natural school_ professed the principle of adhering with strict fidelity to the reality, and of copying life exactly in all its humblest and most trivial details. And this new school, born before romanticism was well worn-out, grew and prospered quickly, producing a harvest of novelists even more fertile than the poets of the antecedent school. The date of its appearance was the period denominated _the forties_,--the decade between 1840 and 1850. The general European political agitation, not being able to manifest itself in Russia by means of insurrections, tumults, and proclamations, took an intellectual form; and young Russia, returning from German universities intoxicated with metaphysics, saturated with liberalism and philanthropy, was eager to pour out its soul, and give vent to its plethora of ideas. A country without lecture-halls, free-press, or political liberty of any sort, had to recur to art as the only refuge. And making use of the sort of subterfuge that love employs when it hides itself under the veil of friendship, the political radical called himself in Russia a sort of left-handed Hegelian, to invent a phrase. Thus Russian letters, in assuming a national character, showed a strong social and political bias, which contains the clew to its qualities and defects, and especially to its originality. The academic idea of literature as a gentle solace and noble recreation has been for the last half-century less applicable in Russia than anywhere else in the world; never has literature in Russia become a profession as in France, where the writer is prone to become more or less the skilful artisan, quick to observe the variations of public taste, what sort of condiment most tickles its palate, and straightway takes advantage of it,--an artisan satisfied, with honorable exceptions, to sell his wares, and to snap his fingers at the world, at humanity, at France, and even at Paris, exclusive of that strip of asphalt which runs from the Madeleine to the Porte St. Martin. Russian literature stands for more than this; persuaded of the importance of its task, and that it is charged with a great social work and the conduct of the progress of its country,--Holy Russia, which is itself called to regenerate the world,--neither glory nor gold will satisfy it; its object is to enlighten and to teach the generations. It is but a short step from this to an admonitory and directive literature; and the noblest Russian geniuses have stumbled over this propensity at the end of their literary career. Gogol finished by publishing edificatory epistles, believing them more advantageous than "Dead Souls;" an analogous condition has to-day befallen Tolstoï. In spite of the severity of Nicholas I., literature enjoyed a relative ease and freedom under his sceptre, either because the Autocrat had a fondness for it, or was not afraid of it. Under the shelter afforded by literature, political Utopias, nihilistic germs, subversive philosophies, and dreams of social regeneration were fostered. The novel--more directly, actively, and efficaciously than the most careful treatises or occasional articles--propagated the seeds of revolution, and being filled with sociological ideas, was devoted to the study of the poor and humble classes, and was marked by realism and sincerity of design; while the flood of indignation consequent upon repressive and violent measures broke forth into copious satire. In this development of a literature aspiring to transform society, the love of beauty for beauty's sake plays a secondary part, though it is the proper end and aim of all forms of art. Therefore that which receives least attention in the Russian novel is perfection of form,--plot and method best revealing the æsthetic conception. It abounds in superb pages, admirable passages, prodigies of observation, and truth; but, except in the case of Turguenief, the composition is always defective, and there is a sort of incoherence, of palpable and fearful obscurity, amid which we seem to discover gigantic shapes, vaguer but grander than those we are accustomed to see about us. During a period of twenty or thirty years the novel and the critic were everything to Russia; the national intelligence lived in them, and within their precincts it elaborated a free world after its own heart. Like a maiden perpetually shut away from the outside world, dreaming of some romantic lover whom she has never known or seen, consoling herself with novels, and fancying that all the fine adventures in them have happened to herself, Russia has written into the national novel her own visionary nature, her thirst for political adventures, and her eagerness for transcendental reforms. One most important reform may be said to be directly the work of the novel, namely, the emancipation of the serfs. When the more clement Alexander II. succeeded the austere Nicholas I., and the restraints laid upon the political press were loosened so that it could spread its wings, the novel suffered in consequence. The hope of great events to come, the approaching liberation of the serfs, the formation of a sort of liberal cabinet, the efflorescence of new illusions that bud under every new régime, concurred to infuse the literature with civic and social tendencies. Beautiful and bright and poetical is art for art's sake, and as Puchkine understood it; but at the hour of doubt and strife we ask even art for positive service and practical solutions. Who stops to see whether the life-preservers thrown to drowning men struggling with death are of elegant workmanship? In speaking of nihilism I have mentioned the most important one of the directive Russian novels, called "What to Do?" by the martyr Tchernichewsky,--a work of no great literary merit, but which was the gospel of young Russia. In his wake followed a host of novelists of this tendency, but inferior, obscure, and without even the inventive power of their leader in dressing up their ideas as symbolic personages, like his ascetic socialist Rakmetof, who laid himself down upon a board stuck through with nail-points. In their turn came the reactionaries, or rather the conservatives, and in novels as absurd as those of their predecessors they clothed the nihilists in purple and gold; it finally resulted that everybody was as ready to produce a novel as to write a serious article, or to handle a gun at a barricade. If any one of the neophytes of the school of directive novels possessed genius, it was swallowed up in the froth of political passion. As an accomplice in guilt, criticism did not weigh these works of art in the golden scales of Beauty, but in the leaden ones of Utility. There were critics who went so far as to declare war upon art, undertaking to ruin the fame of great authors, because they wrought not in the interests of transcendentalism; their motive was like that which impelled the early Christians to destroy the great works of paganism. The popular novelists condemned the verses of Puchkine and the music of Glinka, in the name of the down-trodden and suffering people, just as Tolstoï, in remembrance of the hungry family he had just visited, refused to partake of the appetizing meal offered him by servants in livery. As art had not achieved the amelioration of the people's condition, they considered it not merely a futile recreation, but actually an obnoxious thing. Bielinsky, with a taint of this same mania, at last entertained scruples against the pure pleasure enjoyed in contemplation of the beautiful, and was almost inclined to stop his ears and shut his eyes so as not to fall into æsthetic sins. Are the authors and critics the only ones responsible for this directive character of most Russian novels? No. Two factors are requisite to the work of art,--the artist and the public. The Russians exact more of the novel than we; the Latins, at least, regard the novel as a means of beguiling a few evening hours, or a summer siesta,--a way to kill time. Not so the Russians. They demand that the novelist shall be a prophet, a seer of a better future, a guide of new generations, a liberator of the serf, able to face tyranny, to redeem the country, to reveal the ideal, in fine, an evangelist and an apostle. Given this conception, it ought not to astonish us that the students drag Turguenief's carriage through the streets, that they faint with emotion at Dostoiëwsky's touch, nor that the enthusiasm of the multitude--in itself contagious--should sometimes fill the heads of the novelists themselves. The novelists are, in reality and truth, a faithful echo of the aspirations and needs of the souls that feed upon their works. The Occidentalism of Turguenief, the mysticism of Dostoiëwsky, the pessimism of Tolstoï, the charity, the revolutionary spirit,--each is a manifestation of the national atmosphere condensed in the brains of two or three foremost geniuses. Who can doubt the reflex action which the anonymous multitude exercises on eminent persons, when he contemplates the great Russian novelists? There is a difference, however, between the novel which is purposely directive, the novel with a moral, so to speak, and the novel which is guided by a social drift, by "the spirit of the times." The former is liable to mediocrity and flatness, the latter is the patrimony of the loftiest minds. This spirit, this social sympathy, issued from every pore of Ivan Turguenief, the most able and exquisite of them all, indirectly and without detriment to his impersonality, and with the full conviction that it ought to be so; and novel-writing is useful in this way and no other. He says as much in a sort of autobiographical fragment, in which he explains how and why he left his country: "I felt that I must at all costs get away from my enemy in order the better to deal him a telling blow. And my enemy bore a well-known name; it was serfdom, slavery. Under the name of slavery I included everything that I proposed to fight without truce and to the death. This was my oath, and I was not alone in subscribing thereto. And in order to be faithful to it I came to the Occident." If I am not mistaken, the great difference between French and Russian naturalism lies in this predominant characteristic of social expression. The defects and merits of French naturalism are bound up with its condition as a purely literary insurrection and protest against the rhetoric of romanticism. In vain Zola exerts his Titanic energies to impress on his works this social significance, whose invigorating power is not unheeded by his perspicacious mind. He fights against egoism without and perhaps within; but only in the two which he conceives to be his master works, "L'Assommoir" and "Germinal," has he approached the desired mark. The condition of France is diametrically opposed to that of Russia. I am only repeating the opinion of a large number of illustrious Frenchmen who have judged themselves without any great amount of optimism. They say, "We are an old people, depraved and worn-out, our illusions vanished, our hopes faded. We have proved all things, and now we cannot be moved either by military glory which has undone and ruined us, or by revolutions which have discredited us and made Europe look upon us with suspicion. We have no religious faith, nor even social faith. We desire peace, and, if possible, that industry and commerce may flourish; we are not yet bereft of patriotism, and we expect art to entertain us, which is difficult,--for what new thing remains for the artist to discover? Criticism, spread abroad among the multitudes, has killed inspiration; the generative forces are exhausted. We demand so much of the novelists that they are at a loss how to whet our appetites, and neither ugliness, nor unnatural crime, nor monstrous aberrations are sufficient to stimulate our cloyed palates. They are touched with our coldness, and, like ourselves, spiritless and inert, sick and disgusted, they feel beforehand the irremediable and fatal decadence that is coming upon us, and they believe that art in the Latin races will die with the century." Thus mourn some of the men of France, and to my mind they have a basis of truth. The artist never goes beyond the line marked out by his epoch. And how should he? Of course there is, in every work of art, something that is the exclusive property of the individual, something of his own genius; but as the nature of the fish is to swim, but swim it cannot out of the water, and the nature of the bird is to fly, but lacking air it flies not, so, given a social atmosphere, the artist modifies and adapts himself to it. The novelist cannot have an ideal different from the society which reads him; and if one but perceives the rigor and inflexibility of this law, one may avoid many foolish sentiments expressed with the intent to censure the immorality of the novel. Take any one of them, Tolstoï's, Zola's, Goncourt's, Dostoiëwsky's, look at it well, study it closely, and you will find in it the exact expression and even the artistic interpretation of a tendency of his epoch, his nation, and his race. This is as evident as that two and two make four. Novelists are what they must be rather than what they would be, and it is not in their power to make a world after their own hearts or according to any ideal pattern. Melchior de Voguié, it seems to me, has not recognized this truth in accusing French novelists of materialism, dryness, egoism, and paganism, and has not taken into account the fact that the reflex action of the public upon the novelist is greater than that of the latter upon the former, or at least that the novelist is the first to be influenced, although afterward his works have an influence in turn, and in lesser proportion. "The French realists," says Voguié, "ignore the better part of humanity, which is the spirit." This is true; and I have said and thought for a long time that realism, to realize to the full its own program, must embrace matter and spirit, earth and heaven, human and superhuman. I entirely agree with Voguié in believing that naturalism--or to call it by a more comprehensive name, the School of Truth or Realism--should not close its eyes to the mystery that is beyond rational explanations, nor deny the divine as a known quantity. And so entirely is this my opinion, that I could never consent to the narrow and short-sighted idea of some who imagine that a Catholic, by the act of admitting the supernatural, the miraculous, and the verity of revelation, is incapacitated for writing a profound, serious, and good novel, a realistic novel, a novel that shall breathe a fragrant essence of truth. Aside from the fact that literary as well as scientific methods do not presuppose a negation of religion, when did it ever happen that Catholicism, in the days of liveliest faith, impeded the production of the best of realist novels, as for example "Don Quixote"? The truth is that the novel, given the epic element, will be neither Catholic nor religious in those societies which are neither one nor the other. The lyric element does not demand this harmony with society: a great Catholic poet may be found in a most agnostic country, but not a Catholic novelist. The novel is a clear mirror, a faithful expression of society, and the actual conditions of the novel in Europe are a proof of it. I think I have shown that the Russian novel reflects the dreams, sentiments, and changes of that country; it appears revolutionary and subversive, because the spirit of both Russian _intelligence_ and Russian educated people is so. In France, where to-day, in spite of the efforts of the spiritual and eclectic school, the traditions of the Encyclopædia have prevailed together with a frivolous sensualist materialism, the novel follows this road also, and without meaning to strike up Béranger's famous refrain,-- "C'est la faute de Rousseau, C'est la faute de Voltaire," I affirm that _animalism_, determined materialism, pessimism, and _decadentism_ may be explained by the light of the great writers of the eighteenth century, not only through their literary influence, but because the society which pores over the novels of the present day is the daughter of the French Revolution, and the latter is the daughter of the Encyclopædia. Who does not know the relation which exists between the novel and the fashion in England, and how the former is conditioned, shaped, and limited exclusively by the latter? In Germany another curious phenomenon is apparent. The novel in vogue is historical,--a condition appropriate to a country where everybody is interested only in epic life and the contingency of war. On account of this interdependence, or, in fact, unity, of the novel and society, I cannot agree with Voguié when he says that the books that are influencing and stimulating the multitudes, the general ideas that are transforming Europe, are proceeding nowadays not from France but from Russia. It may be true of the Northern races, but of Latin races it cannot be more than partially and indirectly so. Does Voguié find in the French novel as in the Russian the latent fermentation of the evangelical spirit, or are the currents of mysticism that impregnate Russia circulating through France? Russia is Christian, in spite of German materialist philosophers who for a time set her brains in a whirl, but whom she has finally rejected, as the sea gives up a dead body; and if I have succeeded in showing clearly the forms adopted by the social revolution in Russia, and the strange analogies these sometimes bear to the actions of the early Christians, if I have shown the love of sacrifice, the ardent charity, the sympathetic pity and tenderness not only toward the oppressed but toward even the criminal, the despised, the idiot, and the outcast, which characterize this society and this literature; if I have shown the degrees of mystic fervor by which it is permeated and consumed,--no one need be surprised at my statement and conclusion that although Buddha and Schopenhauer have a goodly share in the present condition of Russian thought, the larger part is nevertheless Christian. It is my opinion that the world is more Christian now than in the Middle Ages, not as to faith, but as to sentiments and customs; and if in hours of despondency I were sometimes inclined to doubt the efficiency of the word of Christ, the sight of its prodigious effects in Russia would certainly correct my doubts. The heterodox nature of the Russian faith is not a nullification of it. The most heretical heretic, if he be a sincere Christian, has more of truth than error in his faith. But error is like sin: one drop of poison is enough to permeate a glass of pure water; yet it is certain that there is more water than poison in the glass. To return to the literary question, the Russian novel demonstrates, if such demonstration be necessary, the futility of the censures directed against naturalism, and which confound general principles with the circumstances and social conditions which environ the novelist. The Russian novel proves that all the precepts of the art of naturalism may be realized and fulfilled without committing any of those sins of which it is accused by those who know it through the medium of half a dozen French novels. The charge that is oftenest made against the French realist is the having painted pictures of passion and vice too nakedly and with too much candor,--and the charge is certainly not without foundation; and it may be added that some novelists overload the canvas and go to the extreme of making humanity out to be more sinful than even physical possibilities admit; but they must not be made to bear the responsibility alone; the public that gloats and feeds on these comfits, and grumbles when they are not provided,--the public, I say, must share it. In Russia, where the readers do not ask the novelist for intricate plot or high-colored sketches, the novel is chaste: I do not mean in the English sense of being moral with an air of affectation, and frowns and false modesty; I mean chaste without effort, like an ancient marble statue. In "Anna Karénina" Tolstoï depicts an illicit passion, extravagant, vehement, full of youthful ardor; yet there is not a page of "Anna Karénina" which cannot be read aloud and without a blush. In "War and Peace" the most candid pages are models of decorum, of true decorum, such as education, reason, and the dignity of man approve. In "Crime and Punishment" Dostoiëwsky introduces the character of a prostitute; but this character is no such romantic creature as Marie Gautier or Nana. She is not made poetical, nor is she embellished or exaggerated; yet she produces an impression (let him read the novel who doubts) of purity, of suffering, of austerity. In Turguenief, by far the most sensual of the great Russian novelists, and in Pisemsky, of secondary rank, there is so much art in the disposition and harmony of detail and description, that the definitive impression, while less severe than in the case of the two others mentioned, is equally noble and lofty. Are they any the less Realists for this? They are rather more so, in my opinion. In order to carry out the great precept of modern art, the novelist must copy life,--the life that we live and that unfolds about us every day. But life does not unfold as it is represented in many novels that are the product of French naturalism. The Zola school makes use of abstraction and accumulation in uniting in one scene and one character all the aberrations, abominations, and vices that only a collection of profligates could be capable of, with the result offered us in pictures such as the house in "Pot-Bouille," that should be handled with tongs for fear of soiling one's fingers. We turn to the reality, and we find that all these colors exist, that all these vices are actual,--yes, but one at a time, intermingled with a thousand good or commonplace things; then we are in a rage with the novelist, and ever after bear him a grudge for having a mania for ugliness. The impression which life makes upon us is quite different; the alternative of good is evil, of poetry is vulgarity; we demand a recognition of this from the novelist, and this the Russian novelists have given us, yet without leaving the firm ground of realist art. They present the material, the bestial, the trivial, the vile, the obscene, the passionate, as they appear in life, in due proportion and no more. We have also to thank them for having recognized the psychical life, and the spiritual, moral, and religious needs of mankind. And I would make a distinction between the moral spirit of the English novel and the Russian. The English judge of human actions according to preconceived notions derived from a general standard accepted by society and officially imposed by custom and the Protestant religion. The Russian moralist feels deeper and thinks higher; morality is not for him a system of narrow and inalterable rules, but the aspiration of a creature advancing toward a higher plane, and learning his lessons in the hard school of truth and the great theatre of art. The spiritual element in the Russian novel is to me one of its most singular merits. The novel should not teach the supernatural, nor be the instrument of any religious propaganda. But from this premise to a condition of mutilation and mere dry chronicle of physiological functions is a long way. There are countless facts of our existence that cannot be explained by the most determined materialist; it is not the duty of art to explain them, but art cannot justly ignore them. Émile Zola is both a thinker and an artist. As an artist he is admirable, and is hardly behind Tolstoï either in poetic or descriptive faculties; but with the artist he combines the philosopher--may I call it so?--the philosopher of the lowest and coarsest fibre, whose influence upon French naturalism has been most pernicious, and has greatly limited the scope of the novel in his country. * * * * * In conclusion, it is my opinion that the only way to understand the naturalistic movement is in connection with its social environment; the impulse of our age toward a representation of truth in art everywhere prevails, and everywhere the novel has become a result of observation, an analytical study, as we notice in a general view of European literature for the last forty years. The century which began with lyric poetry is closing with a triumphant novel. But the great principle of reality is differently applied in different countries. Why was romanticism so much the same in England, Germany, Spain, and Russia? Because it was chiefly rhetoric,--a literary protest, an artistic insurrection. And why the differences between French naturalism, the Russian _natural school_, English and Spanish realism, and Italian _verismo_? Because each one of these phases of the religion of truth is adequate to the country that conceived it, and to the hour and the occasion upon which it is focused. It is no objection that between these various forms there is close communication and relation. Edmund de Goncourt once remarked to me that the Russian novel is not so original as people think, for besides the marked influence of Hoffmann and Edgar Poe upon the genius of Dostoiëwsky, it would not be difficult to trace in the other great writers the inspiration of Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal, and George Sand. Pie was right; and yet Russian literature is not the less indigenous. I should always prefer the art that is disinterested, that carries within itself its aim and object, to the art that is directive, with a moral purpose; between the art that is pagan and the art that is imbecile, I should choose the pagan. If we Spaniards, who are like the Russians, at once an ancient and a young people, still ignorant of what the future may lead us to, and never able to make our traditions harmonize with our aspirations,--if we could succeed in incorporating in our novel not merely bits of fragmentary reality, artistic individualisms, but the spirit, the heart, the blood of our country, what we are doing, what we are feeling as a whole,--it would indeed be well. Yet I think this impossible, not for lack of talent but for lack of preparation on the part of the public, upon whom at present the novel exercises no influence at all. The novel is read neither quantitatively nor qualitatively in Spain. As to quantity, let the authors who publish, and the booksellers who sell, speak what they know; of the quality, let the numerous lovers of Montepin and the eager readers of the translations in the _feuilletines_ tell us. The serious and profound novel dies here without an echo; criticism makes no comment upon it, and the public ignores its appearance. Is there a single modern novel that is popular, in the true meaning of the word, among us? Has any novel had any influence at all in Spanish political, social, or moral life? On coming from France, I have often noticed a significant fact, which is, that at the French station of Hendaye there is a stand for the sale of all the popular and celebrated novels; while at Irun, just across the frontier, only a few steps away, but Spanish, there is nothing to be had but a few miserable, trashy books, and not a sign of even our own best novelists' works. From the moment we set foot on Spanish soil the novel, as a social element, disappears. It is sad to say, but it is so true that it would be madness to build any illusions on this matter. And yet the instinct, the desire, the inexplicable anxiety of the artist to embody and transmit the great truths of life, the impulse that lifts men to great deeds, and to desire to be the voice of the people, is secretly stimulating the Spanish novelists to break the ice of general indifference, to put themselves in communication with the sixty million souls and intelligences that to-day speak our language. Is the goal which we desire to attain inaccessible? Perhaps; but as the immense difficulties in the way of penetrating to the Arctic regions and the discovery of the open Polar Sea are but an incentive to the explorer, so the impossible in this undertaking should incite and spur on the masters of the Iberian novel. A few words of humble confession, and I have done. I feel that there is a certain indecision and ambiguity running through these essays of mine. I could not quite condemn the revolution in Russia, nor could I altogether approve its doctrines and discoveries. A book must reflect an intellectual condition which, in my case, is one of uncertainty, vacillation, anxiety, surprise, and interest. My vision has not been perfectly clear, therefore I have offered no conclusive judgments,--for conviction and affirmation can only proceed from the mind they have mastered. Russia is an enigma; let those solve it who can,--I could not. The Sphinx called to me; I looked into the depths of her eyes, I felt the sweet and bewildering attraction of the unknown, I questioned her, and like the German poet I wait, with but moderate hope, for the answer to come to me, borne by voices of the ocean of Time. 
20980	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 20980-h.htm or 20980-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/9/8/20980/20980-h/20980-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/9/8/20980/20980-h.zip) Transcriber's notes 1. The Russian names normally do not have any accents; in this book they appear to represent the emphasized syllable. The use of accents has been standardized, with exception of Alexander vs. Alexánder. 2. Corrected the division into stanzas for a poem "God" (O Thou eternal One! whose presence bright) on page 94. The translator used nine lines where ten lines were used in the original Russian poem. 3. Several misprints and punctuation errors corrected. A list of corrections can be found at the end of the text. 4. Footnotes moved to chapter-ends. A SURVEY OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE, WITH SELECTIONS by ISABEL F. HAPGOOD Author of "Russian Rambles," and "The Epic Songs of Russia" [Illustration] [Illustration: CHURCH OF THE CATACOMBS MONASTERY AT KIEV.] [Illustration] New York Chautauqua Springfield Chicago The Chautauqua Press MCMII Copyright, 1902, by The Chautauqua Press The Lakeside Press, Chicago, Ill., U. S. A. R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE ANCIENT PERIOD, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY IN 988 1 II. THE ANCIENT PERIOD, FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE TATÁR DOMINION, 988-1224 39 III. SECOND PERIOD, FROM THE TATÁR DOMINION TO THE TIME OF IVÁN THE TERRIBLE, 1224-1330 47 IV. THIRD PERIOD, FROM THE TIME OF IVÁN THE TERRIBLE, 1530, TO THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 50 V. FOURTH PERIOD, FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO THE EPOCH OF REFORM UNDER PETER THE GREAT 61 VI. FIFTH PERIOD, THE REIGN OF PETER THE GREAT, 1689-1723 66 VII. SIXTH PERIOD, THE REIGN OF KATHERINE II. 1762-1796 80 VIII. SEVENTH PERIOD, FROM PÚSHKIN TO THE WRITERS OF THE FORTIES 123 IX. SEVENTH PERIOD: GONTCHARÓFF, GRIGORÓVITCH, TURGÉNEFF 161 X. SEVENTH PERIOD: OSTRÓVSKY, A. K. TOLSTÓY, POLÓNSKY, NEKRÁSOFF, SHEVTCHÉNKO, AND OTHERS 181 XI. DOSTOÉVSKY 212 XII. SEVENTH PERIOD: DANILÉVSKY, SALTYKÓFF, L. N. TOLSTÓY, GÓRKY, AND OTHERS 229 PREFACE. In this volume I have given exclusively the views of Russian critics upon their literature, and hereby acknowledge my entire indebtedness to them. The limits of the work, and the lack of general knowledge on the subject, rendered it impossible for me to attempt any comparisons with foreign literatures. ISABEL F. HAPGOOD. NEW YORK, June 6, 1902. RUSSIAN LITERATURE CHAPTER I THE ANCIENT PERIOD, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY IN 988. Whether Russia had any literature, or even a distinctive alphabet, previous to the end of the tenth century, is not known. In the year 988, Vladímir, Grand Prince of Kíeff, accepted Christianity for himself and his nation, from Byzantium, and baptized Russia wholesale. Hence his characteristic title in history, "Prince-Saint-equal-to-the-Apostles." His grandmother, Olga, had already been converted to the Greek Church late in life, and had established churches and priests in Kíeff, it is said. Prince Vladímir could have been baptized at home, but he preferred to make the Greek form of Christianity his state religion in a more decided manner; to adopt the gospel of peace to an accompaniment of martial deeds. Accordingly he compelled the Emperors of Byzantium, by force, to send the Patriarch of Constantinople to baptize him, and their sister to become his wife. He then ordered his subjects to present themselves forthwith for baptism. Finding that their idols did not punish Vladímir for destroying them, and that even great Perún the Thunderer did not resent being flung into the Dniépr, the people quietly and promptly obeyed. As their old religion had no temples for them to cling to, and nothing approaching a priestly class (except the _volkhvýe_, or wizards) to encourage them in opposition, the nation became Christian in a day, to all appearances. We shall see, however, that in many cases, as in other lands converted from heathendom, the old gods were merely baptized with new names, in company with their worshipers. Together with the religion which he imported from Byzantium, "Prince-Saint" Vladímir naturally imported, also, priests, architects, artists for the holy pictures (_ikóni_), as well as the traditional style of painting them, ecclesiastical vestments and vessels, and--most precious of all--the Slavonic translation of the holy Scriptures and of the Church Service books. These books, however, were not written in Greek, but in the tongue of a cognate Slavonic race, which was comprehensible to the Russians. Thus were the first firm foundations of Christianity, education, and literature simultaneously laid in the cradle of the present vast Russian empire, appropriately called "Little Russia," of which Kíeff was the capital; although even then they were not confined to that section of the country, but were promptly extended, by identical methods, to old Nóvgorod--"Lord Nóvgorod the Great," the cradle of the dynasty of Rúrik, founder of the line of sovereign Russian princes. Whence came these Slavonic translations of the Scriptures, the Church Services, and other books, and the preachers in the vernacular for the infant Russian nation? The books had been translated about one hundred and twenty-five years previously, for the benefit of a small Slavonic tribe, the Moravians. This tribe had been baptized by German ecclesiastics, whose books and speech, in the Latin tongue, were wholly incomprehensible to their converts. For fifty years Latin had been used, and naturally Christianity had made but little progress. Then the Moravian Prince Róstislaff appealed to Michael, emperor of Byzantium, to send him preachers capable of making themselves understood. The emperor had in his dominions many Slavonians; hence the application, on the assumption that there must be, among the Greek priests, many who were acquainted with the languages of the Slavonic tribes. In answer to this appeal, the Emperor Michael dispatched to Moravia two learned monks, Kyríll and Methódy, together with several other ecclesiastics, in the year 863. Kyríll and Methódy were the sons of a grandee, who resided in the chief town of Macedonia, which was surrounded by Slavonic colonies. The elder brother, Methódy, had been a military man, and the governor of a province containing Slavonians. The younger, Kyríll, had received a brilliant education at the imperial court, in company with the Emperor Michael, and had been a pupil of the celebrated Photius (afterwards Patriarch), and librarian of St. Sophia, after becoming a monk. Later on, the brothers had led the life of itinerant missionaries, and had devoted themselves to preaching the Gospel to Jews and Mohammedans. Thus they were in every way eminently qualified for their new task. The Slavonians in the Byzantine empire, and the cognate tribes who dwelt nearer the Danube, like the Moravians, had long been in sore need of a Slavonic translation of the Scriptures and the Church books, since they understood neither Greek nor Latin; and for the lack of such a translation many relapsed into heathendom. Kyríll first busied himself with inventing an alphabet which should accurately reproduce all the varied sounds of the Slavonic tongues. Tradition asserts that he accomplished this task in the year 855, founding it upon the Greek alphabet, appropriating from the Hebrew, Armenian, and Coptic characters for the sounds which the Greek characters did not represent, and devising new ones for the nasal sounds. The characters in this alphabet were thirty-eight in number. Kyríll, with the aid of his brother Methódy, then proceeded to make his translations of the Church Service books. The Bulgarians became Christians in the year 861, and these books were adopted by them. But the greatest activity of the brothers was during the four and a half years beginning with the year 862, when they translated the holy Scriptures, taught the Slavonians their new system of reading and writing, and struggled with heathendom and with the German priests of the Roman Church. These German ecclesiastics are said to have sent petition after petition to Rome, to Pope Nicholas I., demonstrating that the Word of God ought to be preached in three tongues only--Hebrew, Greek, and Latin--"because the inscription on the Cross had been written by Pilate in those tongues only." Pope Nicholas summoned the brothers to Rome; but Pope Adrian II., who was reigning in his stead when they arrived there, received them cordially, granted them permission to continue their preaching and divine services in the Slavonic language, and even consecrated Methódy bishop of Pannonia; after which Methódy returned to Moravia, but Kyríll, exhausted by his labors, withdrew to a monastery near Rome, and died there in 869. The language into which Kyríll and Methódy translated was probably the vernacular of the Slavonian tribes dwelling between the Balkans and the Danube. But as the system invented by Kyríll took deepest root in Bulgaria (whither, in 886, a year after Methódy's death, his disciples were banished from Moravia), the language preserved in the ancient transcripts of the holy Scriptures came in time to be called "Ancient Bulgarian." In this connection, it must be noted that this does not indicate the language of the Bulgarians, but merely the language of the Slavonians who lived in Bulgaria. The Bulgarians themselves did not belong to the Slavonic, nor even to the Indo-European race, but were of Ural-Altaic extraction; that is to say, they belonged to the family now represented in Europe by the Finns, Turks, Hungarians, Tatars, and Samoyéds. In the seventh century, this people, which had inhabited the country lying between the Volga and the Don, in southeastern Russia, became divided: one section moved northward, and settled on the Káma River, a tributary of the Volga; the other section moved westward, and made their appearance on the Danube, at the close of the seventh century. There they subdued a considerable portion of the Slavonic inhabitants, being a warlike race; but the Slavonians, who were more advanced in agriculture and more industrious than the Bulgarians, effected a peaceful conquest over the latter in the course of the two succeeding centuries, so that the Bulgarians abandoned their own language and customs, and became completely merged with the Slavonians, to whom they had given their name. When the Slavonic translations of the Scriptures and the Church Service books were brought to Russia from Bulgaria and Byzantium, the language in which they were written received the name of "Church Slavonic," because it differed materially from the Russian vernacular, and was used exclusively for the church services. Moreover, as in the early days of Russian literature the majority of writers belonged to the ecclesiastical class, the literary or book language was gradually evolved from a mixture of Church Slavonic and ancient Russian; and in this language all literature was written until the "civil," or secular, alphabet and language were introduced by Peter the Great, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Books were written in "Kyríllian" characters until the sixteenth century, and the first printed books (which date from that century) were in the same characters. The most ancient manuscripts, written previous to the fourteenth century, are very beautiful, each letter being set separately, and the capital letters often assuming the form of fantastic beasts and birds, or of flowers, or gilded. The oldest manuscript of Russian work preserved dates from the middle of the eleventh century--a magnificent parchment copy of the Gospels, made by Deacon Grigóry for Ostromír, the burgomaster of Nóvgorod (1056-1057), and hence known as "the Ostromír Gospels." But before we deal with the written and strictly speaking literary works of Russia, we must make acquaintance with the oral products of the people's genius, which antedate it, or at all events, contain traces of such hoary antiquity that history knows nothing definite concerning them, although they deserve precedence for their originality. Such are the _skázki_, or tales, the poetical folk-lore, the epic songs, the religious ballads. The fairy tales, while possessing analogies with those of other lands, have their characteristic national features. While less striking and original than, for example, the exquisite Esthonian legends, they are of great interest in the study of comparative folk-lore. More important is the poetical folk-lore of Russia, concerning which neither tradition nor history can give us any clue in the matter of derivation or date. One thing seems reasonably certain: it largely consists of the relics of an extensive system of sorcery, in the form of fragmentary spells, exorcisms, incantations, and epic lays, or _bylíny_. Song accompanies every action of the Russian peasant, from the cradle to the grave: the choral dances of spring, summer, and autumn, the games of the young people in their winter assemblies, marriages, funerals, and every phase of life, the sowing and the harvest, and so forth. The kazák songs, robber songs, soldiers' songs, and historical songs are all descendants or imitators of the ancient poetry of Russia. They are the remains of the third--the Moscow or imperial--cycle of the epic songs, which deals with really historical characters and events. The Moscow cycle is preceded by the cycles of Vladímir, or Kíeff, and of Nóvgorod. Still more ancient must be the foundations of the marriage songs, rooted in the customs of the ancient Slavonians. The Slavonians do not remember the date of their arrival in Europe. Tradition says that they first dwelt, after this arrival, along the Danube, whence a hostile force compelled them to emigrate to the northeast. At last Nóvgorod and Kíeff were built; and the Russians, the descendants of these eastern Slavonians, naturally inherited the religion which must at one time, like the language, have been common to all the Slavonic races. This religion, like that of all Aryan races, was founded on reverence paid to the forces of nature and to the spirits of the dead. Their gods and goddesses represented the forces of nature. Thus Ládo and Láda, who are frequently mentioned in these ancient songs, are probably the sun-god, and the goddess of spring and of love, respectively. Ládo, also, is mentioned as the god of marriage, mirth, pleasure, and general happiness, to whom those about to marry offered sacrifices; and much the same is said of the goddess Láda. Moreover, in the Russian folk-songs, _ládo_ and _láda_ are used, respectively, for lover, bridegroom, husband, and for mistress, bride, wife; and _lad_, in Russian, signifies peace, union, harmony. Nestor, the famous old Russian chronicler (he died in 1114), states that in ancient heathen times, marriage customs varied somewhat among the various Slavonian tribes in the vicinity of the Dniéster; but brides were always seized or purchased. This purchase of the bride is supposed to be represented in the game and choral song (_khorovód_), called "The Sowing of the Millet." The singers form two choirs, which face each other and exchange remarks. The song belongs to the vernal rites, hence the reference to Ládo, which is repeated after every line--_Did-Ládo_, meaning (in Lithuanian) Great Ládo: First Chorus: We have sown, we have sown millet, Oï, Did-Ládo, we have sown! Second Chorus: But we will trample it, Oï, Did-Ládo, we will trample it. First Chorus: But wherewith will ye trample it? Second Chorus: Horses will we turn into it. First Chorus: But we will catch the horses. Second Chorus: Wherewith will ye catch them? First Chorus: With a silken rein. Second Chorus: But we will ransom the horses. First Chorus: Wherewith will ye ransom them? Second Chorus: We will give a hundred rubles. First Chorus: A thousand is not what we want. Second Chorus: What is it then, that ye want? First Chorus: What we want is a maiden. Thereupon, one of the girls of the second choir goes over to the first, both sides singing together: "Our band has lost," and "Our band has gained." The game ends when all the girls have gone over to one side. The funeral wails are also very ancient. While at the present day a very talented wailer improvises a new plaint, which her associates take up and perpetuate, the ancient forms are generally used. From the side of the East, The wild winds have arisen, With the roaring thunders And the lightnings fiery. On my father's grave A star hath fallen, Hath fallen from heaven. Split open, O dart of the thunder! Damp Mother Earth, Fall thou apart, O Mother Earth! On all four sides, Split open, O coffin planks, Unfold, O white shroud, Fall away, O white hands From over the bold heart, And become parted, O ye sweet lips. Turn thyself, O mine own father Into a bright, swift-winged falcon; Fly away to the blue sea, to the Caspian Sea, Wash off, O mine own father, From thy white face the mold. Come flying, O my father To thine own home, to the lofty térem.[1] Listen, O my father, To our songs of sadness! The Christmas and New-Year carols offer additional illustrations of the ancient heathen customs, and mythic or ritual poetry. The festival which was almost universally celebrated at Christmas-tide, in ancient heathen times, seems to have referred to the renewed life attributed to the sun after the winter solstice. The Christian church turned this festival, so far as possible, into a celebration of the birth of Christ. Among the Slavonians this festival was called _Kolyáda_; and the sun--a female deity--was supposed to array herself in holiday robes and head-dress, when the gloom of the long nights began to yield to the cheerful lights of the lengthening days, to seat herself in her chariot, and drive her steeds briskly towards summer. She, like the festival, was called Kolyáda; and in some places the people used to dress up a maiden in white and carry her about in a sledge from house to house, while the _kolyádki_, or carols, were sung by the train of young people who attended her, and received presents in return. One of the _kolyádki_ runs as follows: Kolyáda! Kolyáda! Kolyáda has arrived! On the Eve of the Nativity, We went about, we sought Holy Kolyáda; Through all the courts, in all the alleys. We found Kolyáda in Peter's Court. Round Peter's Court there is an iron fence, In the midst of the Court there are three rooms; In the first room is the bright Moon; In the second room is the red Sun; And in the third room are the many Stars. A Christian turn is given to many of them, just as the Mermen bear a special Biblical name in some places, and are called "Pharaohs"; for like the seals on the coast of Iceland, they are supposed to be the remnants of Pharaoh's host, which was drowned in the Red Sea. One of the most prominent and interesting of these Christianized carols is the _Sláva_, or Glory Song. Extracts from it have been decoratively and most appropriately used on the artistic programmes connected with the coronation of the Emperor Nicholas II. This Glory Song is used in the following manner: The young people assemble together to deduce omens from the words that are sung, while trinkets belonging to each person present are drawn at random from a cloth-covered bowl, in which they have been deposited. This is the first song of the series: Glory to God in Heaven, Glory! To our Lord[2] on this earth, Glory! May our Lord never grow old, Glory! May his bright robes never be spoiled, Glory! May his good steeds never be worn out, Glory! May his trusty servants never falter, Glory! May the right throughout Russia, Glory! Be fairer than the bright sun, Glory! May the Tzar's golden treasury, Glory! Be forever full to the brim, Glory! May the great rivers, Glory! Bear their renown to the sea, Glory! The little streams to the mill, Glory! But this song we sing to the Grain, Glory! To the Grain we sing, the Grain we honor, Glory! For the old folks to enjoy, Glory! For the young folks to hear, Glory![3] Another curious old song, connected with the grain, is sung at the New-Year. Boys go about from house to house, scattering grain of different sorts, chiefly oats, and singing: In the forest, in the pine forest, There stood a pine-tree, Green and shaggy. O, Ovsén! O, Ovsén! The Boyárs came, Cut down the pine, Sawed it into planks, Built a bridge, Covered it with cloth, Fastened it with nails, O, Ovsén! O, Ovsén! Who, who will go Along that bridge? Ovsén will go there, And the New-Year, O, Ovsén! O, Ovsén! Ovsén, whose name is derived from Ovés (oats, pronounced _avyós_), like the Teutonic Sun-god, is supposed to ride a pig or a boar. Hence sacrifices of pigs' trotters, and other pork products, were offered to the gods at the New-Year, and such dishes are still preferred in Russia at that season. It must be remembered that the New-Year fell on March 1st in Russia until 1348; then the civil New-Year was transferred to September 1st, and January 1st was instituted as the New-Year by Peter the Great only in the year 1700. The highest stage of development reached by popular song is the heroic epos--the rhythmic story of the deeds of national heroes, either historical or mythical. In many countries these epics were committed to writing at a very early date. In western Europe this took place in the Middle Ages, and they are known to the modern world in that form only, their memory having completely died out among the people. But Russia presents the striking phenomenon of a country where epic song, handed down wholly by oral tradition for nearly a thousand years, is not only flourishing at the present day in certain districts, but even extending into fresh fields. It is only within the last sixty years that the Russians have become generally aware that their country possesses this wonderfully rich treasure of epic, religious, and ceremonial songs. In some cases, the epic lay and the religious ballad are curiously combined, as in "The One and Forty Pilgrims," which is generally classed with the epic songs, however. But while the singing of the epic songs is not a profession, the singing of the religious ballads is of a professional character, and is used as a means of livelihood by the _kalyéki perekhózhie_, literally, wandering cripples, otherwise known as wandering psalm-singers. These _stikhí_, or religious ballads, are even more remarkable than the epic songs in some respects, and practically nothing concerning them is accessible in English. In all countries where the Roman Church reigned supreme in early times, it did its best to consign all popular religious poetry to oblivion. But about the seventeenth century it determined to turn such fragments as had survived this procedure to its own profit. Accordingly they were written over in conformity with its particular tenets, for the purpose of inculcating its doctrines. Both courses were equally fatal to the preservation of anything truly national. Incongruousness was the inevitable result. The Greek, or rather the Russo-Greek, Church adopted precisely the opposite course: it never interfered, in the slightest degree, with popular poetry, either secular or religious. Christianity, therefore, merely enlarged the field of subjects. The result is, that the Slavonic peoples (including even, to some extent, the Roman Catholic Poles) possess a mass of religious poetry, the like of which, either in kind or in quantity, is not to be found in all western Europe. It is well to note, at this point, that the word _stikh_ (derived from an ancient Greek word) is incorporated into the modern Russian word for poetry, _stikhotvorénie_--verse-making, literally rendered--and it has now become plain that Lomonósoff, the father of Russian Literature, who was the first secular Russian poet, and polished the ancient tongue into the beginning of the modern literary language, about the middle of the eighteenth century, did not originate his verse-measures, but derived them from the common people, the peasants, whence he himself sprang. Modern Russian verse, therefore, is thus traced back directly, in its most national traits, to these religious ballads. It is impossible to give any adequate account of them here, and it is especially difficult to convey an adequate idea of the genuine poetry and happy phrasing which are often interwoven with absurdities approaching the grotesque. The ballads to which we shall briefly refer are full of illustrations of the manner in which old pagan gods became Christian deities, so to speak, of the newly baptized nation. For example: Perún the Thunder-god became, in popular superstition, "St. Ilyá" (or Elijah), and the day dedicated to him, July 20th (old style), is called "Ilyá the Thunder-bringer." Elijah's fiery chariot, the lightning, rumbling across the sky, brings a thunder-storm on or very near that date; and although Perún's name is forgotten in Russia proper, he still remains, under his new title, the patron of the husbandman, as he was in heathen times. In the epic songs of the Vladímir cycle, as well as in the semi-religious and religious ballads, he figures as the strongest and most popular hero, under the name of "Ilyá Múrometz (Ilyá of Múrom), the Old Kazák," and his characteristic feats, as well as those attributed to his "heroic steed, Cloud-fall," are supposed, by the school of Russian writers who regard all these poems as cosmic myths, rather than as historical poems, to preserve the hero's mythological significance as the Thunder-god Perún. He plays a similar part in the very numerous religious ballads on the Last Judgment. St. Michael acts as the judge. Some "sinful souls" commit the gross error of attempting to bribe him: whereupon, Michael shouts, "Ilyá the Prophet! Anakh! Take ye guns with great thunder! Move ye the Pharaoh mountains of stone! Let me not hear from these sinners, neither a whine nor a whimper!" In Lithuania the Thunder-god's ancient name is still extant in its original form of Perkun; the Virgin Mary is called, "Lady Mary Perkunatele" (or "The Mother of Thunder"), according to a Polish tradition; and in the Russian government of Vilna, the 2d of February is dedicated to "All-Holy Mary the Thunderer." It is evidently in this character that she plays a part similar to that of St. Michael and Ilyá the Prophet combined, as above mentioned, in another ballad of the Last Judgment. She appears in this ballad to be the sole inhabitant of heaven, judge and executioner. With her "thundering voice" she condemns to outer darkness all who have not paid her proper respect, promising to bury them under "damp mother earth and burning stones." To the just, that is, to those who have paid her due homage, she says: "Come, take the thrones, the golden crowns, the imperishable robes which I have prepared for you; and if this seem little to you, ye shall work your will in heaven." St. Yegóry the Brave--our St. George--possesses many of the attributes of Perún. He is, however, a purely mythical character, and the extremely ancient religious poems relating to him present the most amusing mixture of Christianity and Greek mythology, as in the following example: In the year 8008 (the old Russian reckoning, like the Jewish, began with the creation of the world), the kingdoms of Sodom, Komor (Gomorrah), and Arabia met their doom. Sodom dropped through the earth, Komor was destroyed by fire, and Arabia was afflicted by a sea-monster which demanded a human victim every day. This victim was selected by lot; and one day the lot fell upon the king; but at the suggestion of the queen, who hated her daughter, Elizabeth the Fair, the girl was sent in his place, under the pretext that she was going to meet her bridegroom. Yegóry the Brave comes to her assistance, as Perseus did to the assistance of Andromeda, but lies down for a nap while awaiting the arrival of the dragon. The beast approaches; Elizabeth dares not awaken Yegóry, but a "burning tear" from her right eye arouses him. He attacks the dragon with his spear, and his "heroic steed" (which is sometimes a white mule) tramples on it, after the fashion with which we are familiar in art. Then he binds Elizabeth's sash, which is "five and forty ells in length," about the dragon's jaws, and bids the maiden have three churches built in honor of her deliverance: one to St. Nicholas and the Holy Trinity, one to the All-Holy Birth-giver of God, and one to Yegóry the Brave. Elizabeth the Fair then returns to town, leading the tamed dragon by her sash, to the terror of the inhabitants and to the disgust of her mother. The three churches are duly built, and Christianity is promptly adopted as the state religion of Arabia. In another ballad, Yegóry is imprisoned for thirty years in a pit under the ground, because he will not accept the "Latin-Mussulman faith." Among the most ancient religious ballads, properly speaking, are: "The Dove Book," "The Merciful Woman of Compassion" (or "The Alleluia Woman"), "The Wanderings of the All-Holy Birth-giver of God," in addition to the songs about Yegóry the Brave, already mentioned. The groundwork of "The Dove Book" is of very ancient heathen origin, and almost identical with the oldest religious songs of the Greeks. The book itself is somewhat suggestive of the "little book" in Revelation. "The Dove Book" falls from Alatýr, the "burning white stone on the Island of Buyán," the heathen Paradise, which corresponds to our Fortunate Isles of the Blest, in the Western Sea, but lies far towards sunrise, in the "Ocean Sea." The heathen significance of this stone is not known, but it is cleverly explained in "The Dove Book" as the stone whereon Christ stood when he preached to his disciples. This "little book," "forty fathoms long and twenty wide," was written by St. John the Evangelist, and no man can read it. The prophet Isaiah deciphered only three pages of it in as many years. But the "Most Wise Tzar David" undertakes to give, from memory, the book's answers to various questions put to him by Tzar Vladímir, as spokesman of a throng of emperors and princes. A great deal of curious information is conveyed--all very poetically expressed--including some odd facts in natural history, such as: that the ostrich is the mother of birds, and that she lives, feeds, and rears her young on the blue sea, drowning mariners and sinking ships. Whenever she (or the whale on which the earth rests) moves, an earthquake ensues. There are several versions of this ballad. The following abridged extracts, from one version, will show its style. Among the questions put to "the Most Wise Tzar David" by Prince Vladímir are some touching "the works of God, and our life; our life of holy Russia, our life in the free world; how the free light came to us; why our sun is red; why our stars are thickly sown; why our nights are dark; what causes our red dawns; why we have fine, drizzling rains; whence cometh our intellect; why our bones are strong"; and so forth. Tzar David replies: "Our free white light began at God's decree; the sun is red from the reflection of God's face, of the face of Christ, the King of Heaven; the younger light, the moon, from his bosom cometh; the myriad stars are from his vesture; the dark nights are the Lord's thoughts; the red dawns come from the Lord's eyes; the stormy winds from the Holy Spirit; our intellects from Christ himself, the King of Heaven; our thoughts from the clouds of heaven; our world of people from Adam; our strong bones from the stones; our bodies from the damp earth; our blood from the Black Sea." In answer to other questions, Tzar David explains that "the Jordan is the mother of all rivers, because Jesus Christ was baptized in it; the cypress is the mother of all trees, because Christ was crucified on it; the ocean is the mother of all seas, because in the middle of the ocean-sea rose up a cathedral church, the goal of all pilgrimages, the cathedral of St. Clement, the pope of Rome; from this cathedral the Queen of Heaven came forth, bathed herself in the ocean-sea, prayed to God in the cathedral," which is a very unusual touch of Romanism. The ancient religious ballads have no rhyme; and, unlike the epic songs, no fixed rhythm. The presence of either rhyme or rhythm is an indication of comparatively recent origin or of reconstruction in the sixteenth century. "The Merciful Woman of Compassion," or "The Alleluia Woman," dates from the most ancient Christian tradition, and is a model of simplicity and beauty. It is allied to the English ballad of "The Flight into Egypt" (which also occurs among the Christmas carols of the Slavonians of the Carpathian Mountains), in which the Virgin Mary works a miracle with the peasant's grain, in order to save Christ from the Jews in pursuit. The Virgin comes to the "Alleluia Woman," with the infant Christ in her arms, saying: "Cast thy child into the oven, and take Christ the Lord in thy lap. His enemies, the Jews, are hastening hither; they seek to kill Christ the Lord with sharp spears." The Alleluia Woman obeys, without an instant's hesitation. When the Jews arrive, immediately afterwards, and inquire if Christ has passed that way, she says she has thrown him into the oven. The Jews are convinced of the truth of her statement, by the sight of a child's hand amid the flames; whereupon they dance for joy, and depart, after fastening an iron plate over the oven door. Christ vanishes from the arms of the merciful woman; she remembers her own child and begins to weep. Then Christ's voice assures her that he is well and happy. On opening the oven door, she beholds her baby playing with the flowers in a rich green meadow, reading the Gospels, or rolling an apple on a platter, and comforted by angels. "The Wanderings of the All-Holy Birth-giver of God," another very ancient ballad, represents the Virgin Mother wandering among the mountains in search of Christ. She encounters three Jews; and in answer to her query, "Accursed Jews, what have ye done with Christ?" they inform her that they have just crucified him on Mount Zion. She hastens thither, and swoons on arriving. When she recovers, she makes her lament, and her _plakh_, or wail, beginning: "O, my dear son, why didst thou not obey thy mother?" Christ comforts her, telling her that he shall rise again, and bidding her: "Do not weep and spoil thy beauty." A form of the ballad which is common in Little Russia reverses the situation. It is the Jews who inquire of Mary what she has done with her son. "Into the river I flung him," she promptly replies. They drain the river, and find him not. Again they ask, "Under the mountains I buried him." They dig up the mountains, and find him not. At last they discover a church, and in it three coffins. Over the Holy Virgin's, the birds are warbling or flowers are blossoming; over John the Baptist's, lights are burning; over Christ's, angels are singing. As might be expected, the Holy Virgin is a very popular subject of song. In numerous ballads she delivers a temperance lecture to St. Vasíly the Great on his drunkenness, putting to him various questions, such as, "Who sleeps through matins? Who walks and riots during the liturgy?" [St. Vasíly being the author of a liturgy which is used on certain important occasions during the church year.] "Who has unwashed hands? Who is a murderer?" and so on, through a long list of peccadilloes and crimes. The answer to each question is, "The drunkard." Poor St. Vasíly dashes his head against a stone, and threatens to put an end to himself on the spot, if his one lapse in five and twenty years be not forgiven. Accordingly the Holy Virgin steps down from her throne, gives him her hand, and informs him that the Lord has three mansions: one is the House of David, where the Last Judgment will take place; through the second flows a river of fire, the destination of wizards, drunkards, and the like; and the third is Paradise, the home of the elect. The imagery in the very numerous and ancient poems on the Last Judgment, by the way, is purely heathen in character. The ferryman over the river of fire sometimes acts as the judge, and the punishments to which sinners are condemned by him recall those mentioned in the Æneid, and in Dante's Divina Commedia, the frescoes on the walls of churches bearing out the same idea. Adam and Eve naturally receive a share of the minstrel's attention, and "Adam's Wail" before the gates of Paradise is often very touching. In a ballad from White Russia, Adam begs the Lord to permit him to revisit Paradise. The Lord accordingly gives orders to "St. Peter-Paul" to admit Adam to Paradise, to have the song of the Cherubim sung for him, and so forth; but not to allow him to remain. In the midst of Paradise Adam beholds his coffin and wails before it: "O, my coffin, coffin, my true home! Take me, O my coffin, as a mother her own child, to thy white arms, to thy ruddy face, to thy warm heart!" But "St. Peter-Paul" soon catches sight of him, and tells him that he has no business to be strolling about and spying out Paradise; his place is on Zion's hill, where he will be shown books of magic, and of life, and things in general. There is a great mass of poetry devoted to Joseph; and a lament to "Mother Desert," uttered as he is being led away into captivity by the merchants to whom his brethren have sold him, soon becomes the groundwork for variations in which the Scripture story is entirely forgotten. In these Joseph is always a "Tzarévitch," or king's son, his father being sometimes David, sometimes "the Tzar of India," or of "the Idolaters' Land," or some such country. He is confined in a tower, because the soothsayers have foretold that he will become a Christian (or because he is already a Christian he shuts himself up). One day he is permitted to ride about the town, and although all old people have been ordered to keep out of sight, he espies one aged cripple, and thus learns that his father has grossly deceived him, in asserting that no one ever becomes old or ill in his kingdom. He forthwith becomes a Christian, and flees to the desert. Then comes his wail to "Mother Desert Most Fair," as she stands "afar off in the valley": "O Desert fair, receive me to thy depths, as a mother her own child, and a pastor his faithful sheep, into thy voiceless quiet, beloved mother mine!" "Mother Desert" proceeds to remonstrate with her "beloved child": "Who is to rule," she says, "over thy kingdom, thy palaces of white stone, thy young bride? When spring cometh, all the lakes will be aflood, all the trees will be clothed with verdure, heavenly birds will warble therein with voices angelic: in the desert thou wilt have none of this; thy food will be fir-bark, thy drink marsh-water." Nevertheless, "Joseph Tzarévitch" persists in his intention, and Mother Desert receives him at last. Most versions of this ballad are full of genuine poetry, but a few are rather ludicrous: for example, "Mother Desert" asks Joseph, "How canst thou leave thy sweet viands and soft feather-beds to come to me?" Of David, strange to say, we find very little mention, save in the "Dove Book," or as the father of Joseph, or of some other equally preposterous person. Among the ballads on themes drawn from the New Testament, those relating to the birth of Christ, and the visit of the Wise Men; to John the Baptist, and to Lazarus, are the most numerous. The Three Wise Men sometimes bring queer gifts. One ballad represents them as being Lithuanians, and only two in number, who bring Christ offerings of _botvínya_--a savory and popular dish, in the form of a soup served cold, with ice, and composed of small beer brewed from sour, black, rye bread, slightly thickened with strained spinach, in which float cubes of fresh cucumber, the green tops of young onions, cold boiled fish, horseradish, bacon, sugar, shrimps, any cold vegetables on hand, and whatever else occurs to the cook. Joseph stands by the window, holding a bowl and a spoon, and stares at the gift. "Queer people, you Lithuanians," he remarks. "Christ doesn't eat _botvínya_. He eats only rolls with milk and honey (or rolls and butter)." In one case, the Three Wise Men appear as three buffaloes bringing gifts; in another as "the fine rain, the red sun, and the bright moon," showing that nature worship can assume a very fair semblance of Christianity. Christ's baptism is sometimes represented by his mother bathing him in the river; and this is thought to stand for the weary sun which is bathed every night in the ocean. A "Legend of the Sun," whose counterpart can be found in other lands, represents the sun as being attended by flaming birds, who dip their wings in the ocean at night and sprinkle him, and by angels who carry his imperial robe and crown to the Lord's throne every night, and clothe him again in them every morning, while the cock proclaims the "resurrection of all things." In the Christmas carols, angels perform the same offices, and the flaming phoenix-birds are omitted. The Apostle Peter's timid and disputatious character seems to be well understood by the people. One day, according to a ballad, he gets into a dispute with the Lord, as to which is the larger, heaven or earth. "The earth," declares St. Peter; "Heaven," maintains the Lord. "But let us not quarrel. Call down two or three angels to measure heaven and earth with a silken cord. So was it done; and lo! St. Peter was right, and the Lord was wrong! Heaven is the smaller, because it is all level, while the earth has hills and valleys!" On another occasion, "all the saints were sitting at table, except the Holy Spirit." "Peter, Peter, my servant," says the Lord, "go bring the Holy Spirit." Peter has not traversed half the road, when he encounters a wondrous marvel, a fearful fire. He trembles with fear and turns back. "Why hast thou not brought the Holy Spirit?" inquires the Lord. Peter explains. "Ho, Peter, that is no marvel! that is the Holy Spirit. Thou shouldst have brought it hither and placed it on the table. All the saints would have rejoiced that the Holy Spirit sat before them!" The Lazarus ballads illustrate how the people turn Scriptural characters into living realities, by incorporating their own observations on human nature with the sacred text. According to them, Lazarus and Dives were two brothers, both named Lazarus; the younger rich, the elder poor. Poor Lazarus begs alms of his brother: "How dare you call me brother?" retorts rich Lazarus. "I have brothers like myself--princes, nobles, wealthy merchants, who fare sumptuously and dress richly. Even the church dignitaries visit me. Your brethren are the fierce dogs which lie under my table and gather up the fragments. I fear not God, I will buy off intrusive death, I will attain to the kingdom of heaven; and if I attain not thereunto, I will buy it!" Thereupon, he sets the dogs on his brother, spits in his eye, locks the gates, and goes back to his feasting. The dogs which are set upon poor Lazarus bring him their food, instead of rending him. After three efforts to move his brother to compassion, poor Lazarus entreats the Lord to let him die: "Send sudden death, Lord, winged but not merciful," he prays. "Send two threatening angels; let them take out my unclean soul through my side with a hook, my little soul through my ribs, with a spear and with iron hooks; let them place my soul under their left wing, and carry it to the nethermost hell, to burning pitch and the river of fire. All my life have I suffered hunger and cold, and my whole body hath been full of pains. It is not for me, a poor cripple, to enter Paradise." (This is in accordance with the uncomfortable Russian belief that a man's rank and station in this life determine his fate in the other world.) But the Lord gives orders to have everything done in precisely the opposite way. Holy angels remove Lazarus's soul gently, through his "sugar mouth" (referring, possibly, to the Siberian belief that the soul is located in the windpipe) wrap it in a white cloth, and carry it to Abraham's bosom. After a while rich Lazarus is overtaken by misfortune and illness, and he, also, prays for speedy death, minutely specifying how his "large, clean soul," is to be handled and deposited in Abraham's bosom. He acknowledges that he has committed a few trivial sins, but mentions, with pride, in extenuation, that he has never worn anything but velvet and satin, and that he formerly possessed great store of "flowered garments." Again the Lord gives contrary orders, and rich Lazarus undergoes the treatment which his poor brother had indicated for his own soul. When rich Lazarus looks up from his torment and beholds poor Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, he addresses him as "Brother, my own brother." Here one version comes to a sudden end, and the collector who transcribed it, asked: "What?" "He repented," answered the peasant woman who sang it, "and called him 'brother' when he saw that he was well off." In other versions, a long conversation ensues, in the course of which poor Lazarus reminds rich Lazarus of numerous sins of omission and commission, and inquires, with great apparent solicitude, what has become of all his gold, silver, flowered garments, and so forth, and assures him that he would gladly give him not a drop but a whole bucketful of water were he permitted to do so. But to the share of no saint does a greater number of songs (and festivals) fall than to that of John the Baptist. In addition to June 24th, which still bears the heathen name of _Kupálo_, in connection with St. John's Eve, and which is celebrated by the peasants in as thoroughly heathen a fashion as is the Christmas festival, in honor of the Sun-goddess, Kolyáda, he has three special days dedicated to him. Two of these deserve mention, because of a curious superstition attached to them. On St. John's Day, May 25th, the peasants set out their cabbages; but on the autumn St. John's Day, August 29th, they must carefully avoid all contact with cabbages, because it is the anniversary of the beheading of John; no knife must be taken in the hand on that day, and it is considered a great crime to cut anything, particularly anything round, resembling a head. If a cabbage be cut, blood will flow; if anything round be eaten--onions, for example--carbuncles will follow. In concluding this brief sketch of the religious ballads of the Slavonians, I venture to quote at length, a masterpiece of the Wandering Cripples' art. It is a Montenegrin version of a legend which is common to all the Slavonic peoples, and contains, besides an interesting problem in ethics, an explanation of the present shape of the human foot. In some versions the emperor's crown is replaced, throughout, by "the bright sun," thus suggesting a mythological origin. It is called "The Emperor Diocletian and John the Baptist." Two foster brothers were drinking wine, On a sunny slope by the salt seaside; One was the Emperor Diocletian, The other, John the Baptist. Then up spake John the Baptist As they did drink the wine: "Foster brother, come now, let us play. Use thou thy crown; but I will take an apple." Then up they jumped, began to play, And St. John flung his apple. Down in the depths of the sea it fell And his warm tears trickled down. But the emperor held this speech to him: "Now weep not, dear my brother, Only carry thou not my crown away And I will fetch thy apple." Then did John swear to him by God That he would not steal the crown. The emperor swam out into the sea, But John flew up to heaven, Presented himself before the Lord, And held this speech to him: "Eternal God, and All-Holy Father! May I swear falsely by thee? May I steal the emperor's crown?" The Lord replied: "O John, my faithful servant! Thrice shalt thou swear falsely by me, Only, by my name must thou not swear." St. John flew back to the sunny slope, And the emperor emerged from the sea. Again they played; again John flung his apple; Again it fell into the depths of the sea. But Diocletian, the emperor, said to him: "Now, fear thou not, dear brother, Only carry thou my crown not away, And I will fetch thy apple." Then did John swear to him by God, Thrice did he swear to him by God That he would not steal his crown. The emperor threw his crown under his cap, Beside them left the bird of ill omen, And plunged into the blue sea. St. John froze over the sea, With a twelve-fold ice-crust he froze it o'er, Seized the golden crown, flew on high to heaven. And the bird of ill omen began to caw. The emperor, at the bottom of the sea, divined the cause, Raced up, as for a wager, Brake three of the ice-crusts with his head, Then back turned he again, took a stone upon his head, A little stone of three thousand pounds, And brake the twelve-fold ice. Then unfolded he his wings, Set out in pursuit of John, Caught up with him at the gate of heaven, Seized him by his right foot, And what he grasped, he tore away. In tears came John before the Lord; The bright sun brought he to heaven, And John complained unto the Lord, That the emperor had crippled him. And the Lord said: "Fear not, my faithful servant! I will do the same to every man." Such is the fact, and to God be the glory! "Therefore," say the Servians, in conclusion of their version of this ballad, "God has made a hollow in the sole of every human being's foot." The Epic Songs, properly speaking, are broadly divisible into three groups: the Cycle of Vladímir, or of Kíeff; that of Nóvgorod; and that of Moscow, or the Imperial Cycle, the whole being preceded by the songs of the elder heroes. With regard to the first two, and the Kíeff Cycle in particular, undoubtedly composed during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, authorities on the origin of Russian literature differ considerably. One authority maintains that, although the Russian epics possess a family likeness to the heroic legends of other Aryan races, the Russians forgot them, and later on, appropriated them again from Ural-Altaic sources, adding a few historical and geographical names, and psychical characteristics. But this view as to the wholesale appropriation of Oriental myths has not been established, and the authorities who combat it demonstrate that the heroes are thoroughly Russian, and that the pictures of manners and customs which they present are extremely valuable for their accuracy. They would seem, on the whole, to be a characteristic mixture of natural phenomena (nature myths), personified as gods, who became in course of time legendary heroes. Thus, Prince Vladímir, "the Fair Red Sun," may be the Sun-god, but he is also a historical personage, whatever may be said as to many of the other characters in the epic lays of the Vladímir cycle. "Sadkó, the rich Guest of Nóvgorod," also, in the song of that title, belonging to the Nóvgorod cycle, was a prominent citizen of Nóvgorod, who built a church in Nóvgorod, during the twelfth century, and is referred to in the Chronicles for a space of two hundred years. In fact, the Nóvgorod cycle contains less of the personified phenomena of nature than the cycle of the Elder Heroes, and the Kíeff cycle, and more of the genuine historical element. A regular tonic versification forms one of the indispensable properties of these epic poems; irregularity of versification is a sign of decay, and a complete absence of measure, that is to say, the prose form, is the last stage of decay. The airs to which they are sung or chanted are very simple, consisting of but few tones, yet are extremely difficult to note down. The peasant bard modifies the one or two airs to which he chants his lays with astonishing skill, according to the testimony of Rýbnikoff, who made the first large collection of the songs, in the Olónetz government (1859), and Hilferding, who made a still more surprising collection (1870), to the north and east of Olónetz. The lay of Sadkó, above mentioned, is perhaps the most famous--the one most frequently alluded to in Russian literature and art. Sadkó was a harper of "Lord Nóvgorod the Great." "No golden treasures did he possess. He went about to the magnificent feasts of the merchants and nobles, and made all merry with his playing." Once, for three days in succession, he was bidden to no worshipful feast, and in his sorrow he went and played all day long, upon the shore of Lake Ílmen. On the third day, the Water King appears to him, and thanks him for entertaining his guests in the depths. He directs Sadkó to return to Nóvgorod, and on the morrow, when he shall be bidden to a feast, and the banqueters begin the characteristic brags of their possessions, Sadkó must wager his "turbulent head" against the merchants' shop in the bazaar, with all the precious wares therein, that Lake Ílmen contains fishes with fins of gold. Sadkó wins the bet; for the Tzar Vodyanóy sends up the fish to be caught in the silken net. Thus did Sadkó become a rich guest (merchant of the first class) of Nóvgorod, built himself a palace of white stone, wondrously adorned, and became exceeding rich. He also held worshipful feasts, and out-bragged the braggers, declaring that he would buy all the wares in Nóvgorod, or forfeit thirty thousand in money. As he continues to buy, wares continue to flow into this Venice of the North, and Sadkó decides that it is the part of wisdom to pay his thirty thousand. He then builds "thirty dark red ships and three," of the dragon type, lades them with the wares of Nóvgorod, and sails out into the open sea, via the river Vólkhoff, Lake Ládoga, and the Nevá. After a while the ships stand still and will not stir, though the waves dash and the breeze whistles through the sails. Sadkó arrives at the conclusion that the Sea King demands tribute, as they have now been sailing the seas for twelve years, and have paid none. They cast into the waves casks of red gold, pure silver, and fair round pearls; but still the ships move not. Sadkó then proposes that each man on board shall prepare for himself a lot, and cast it into the sea, and the man whose lot sinks shall consider himself the sacrifice which the Sea King requires. Sadkó's lot persists in sinking, whether he makes it of hop-flowers or of blue damaskeened steel, four hundred pounds in weight; and all the other lots swim, whether heavy or light. Accordingly Sadkó perceives that he is the destined victim, and taking his harp, a holy image of St. Nicholas (the patron of travelers), and bowls of precious things with him, he has himself abandoned on an oaken plank, while his ships sailed off, and "flew as they had been black ravens." He sinks to the bottom, and finds himself in the palace of the Sea King, who makes him play, while he, the fair sea-maidens, and the other sea-folk dance violently. But the Tzarítza warns Sadkó to break his harp, for it is the waves dancing on the shore, and creating terrible havoc. The Tzar Morskóy then requests Sadkó to select a wife; and guided again by the Tzarítza's advice, Sadkó selects the last of the nine hundred maidens who file before him--a small, black-visaged maiden, named Tchernáva. Had he chosen otherwise, he is told, he would never again behold "the white world," but must "forever abide in the blue sea." After a great feast which the Sea King makes for him, Sadkó falls into a heavy sleep, and when he awakens from it, he finds himself on the bank of the Tchernáva River, and sees his dark red ships come speeding up the Vólkhoff River. Sadkó returns to his palace and his young wife, builds two churches, and roams no more, but thereafter takes his ease in his own town. Between these cycles of epic songs and the Moscow, or Imperial Cycle there is a great gap. The pre-Tatár period is not represented, and the cycle proper begins with Iván the Terrible, and ends with the reign of Peter the Great. Epic marvels are not wholly lacking in the Moscow cycle, evidently copied from the earlier cycles. But these songs are inferior in force. Fantastic as are some of the adventures in these songs, there is always a solid historical foundation. Iván the Terrible, for instance, is credited with many deeds of his grandfather (his father being ignored), and is always represented in rather a favorable light. The conquest of Siberia, the capture of Kazán and Ástrakhan, the wars against Poland, and the Tatárs of Crimea, and so forth, are the principal points around which these songs are grouped. But the Peter the Great of the epics bears only a faint resemblance to the real Peter. Perhaps the most famous hero of epic song in the seventeenth century is the bandit-chief of the Volga, Sténka Rázin, whose memory still lingers among the peasants of those regions. He was regarded as the champion of the people against the oppression of the nobles, and "Ilyá of Múrom, the Old Kazák" is represented as the captain of the brigands under him. To Sténka, also, are attributed magic powers. From the same period date also the two most popular dance-songs of the present day--the "Kamarýnskaya" and "Bárynya Sudárynya," its sequel. The Kamarýnskaya was the district which then constituted the Ukraína, or border-marches, situated about where the government of Orél now is. The two songs present a valuable historical picture of the coarse manners of the period on that lawless frontier; hence, only a few of the lines which still subsist of these poetical chronicles can be used to the irresistibly dashing music. The power of composing epic songs has been supposed to have gradually died out, almost ceasing with the reign of Peter the Great, wholly ceasing with the war of 1812. But very recently an interesting experiment has been begun, based on the discovery of several new songs about the Emperor Alexander II., which are sung by the peasants over a wide range of country. All these songs are being written down with the greatest accuracy as to the peculiarities of pronunciation and accentuation. If, in the future, variants make their appearance, containing an increasing infusion of the artistic and poetical elements, considerable light will be thrown upon the problem of the rise and growth of the ancient epic songs, and on the question of poetical inspiration among the peasants of the present epoch. One of these ballads, written down in the Province of the Don, from the lips of a blind beggar, says that Alexander II., "burned with love, wished to give freedom to all, kept all under his wing, and freed them from punishment. He reformed all the laws, heard the groans of the needy, and himself hastened to their aid." "So the wicked killed him," says the ballad, and proceeds to describe the occurrence, including the way in which "the black flag" was lowered on the palace, and "they sent a telegram about the eclipse of our sun." In the far northern government of Kostromá, on the Volga, two more ballads on the same subject have been taken down on the typewriter, so that the bard could readily correct them. The first, entitled "A Lay of Mourning for the Death of the Tzar Liberator," narrates how "a dreadful cloud of black, bloodthirsty ravens assembled, and invited to them the underground, subterranean rats, not to a feast-ball, not to a christening, but to undermine the roots of the olive-branch." Naturally this style demands that the emperor be designated as "the bright falcon, light winged, swift eyed." It describes the plot, and how the bombs were to be wrapped up in white cloths, and the conspirators were "to go for a stroll, as with watermelons." When the bombs burst, "the panes in the neighboring houses are shattered," and "the dark blue feathers" of the "bright falcon" are set on fire. "As there were no Kostromá peasants on hand to aid the emperor--no Komisároffs or Susánins," adds the ballad, with local pride (alluding to the legend of Iván Susánin saving the first Románoff Tzar from the Poles in 1612, which forms the subject of the famous opera by Glínka, "Life for the Tzar"), "he laid himself down in the bosom of his mother (earth)." The second ballad is "The Monument-Not Made-with-Hands to the Tzar Liberator"--the compound adjective here referring to that in the title of a favorite _ikóna_, or Holy Picture, which corresponds to the one known in western Europe as the imprint of the Saviour's face on St. Veronica's kerchief. There are four stanzas, of six lines each, of which the third runs as follows: He is our Liberator and our father! And we will erect a monument of hearts Whose cross, by its gleaming 'mid the clouds, Shall transmit the memory to young children and the babes in arms, And this shall be unto ages of ages So long as the world and man shall exist! In southwestern Russia, where the ancient epic songs of the Elder Heroes and the Kíeff Cycle originated, the memory of them has died out, owing to the devastation of southern Russia by the Tatárs in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the decay of its civilization under Lithuanian sway in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the sixteenth century the population of southern Russia reorganized itself in the forms of kazák communes, and fabricated for itself a fresh cycle of epic legends, which replaced those of Kíeff; and there the _kobzárs_ (professional minstrels who accompany their songs on the _kábza_, a mandolin-like, twelve-stringed instrument) celebrate the deeds of a new race of kazák heroes. But in the lonely wildernesses of the northeast, whither the Tatár invasion drove the descendants of those who composed and sang the great epic songs, no more recent upheavals have brought forward heroes to replace the historic paladins, who there hold undisputed sway to the present time. Of the songs still sung by the people, the following favorite (in the version from the Olónetz government) may serve as a sample. It is not rhymed in the original. Akh! Little guelder-rose, with pinkish azure bloom, And merry little company, where my dear one doth drink; My darling will not drink, until for me he sends. When I, a maiden, very young did dally, Tending the ducks, the geese, the swans, When I, a young maid, very young, along the stream-bank strolled, I trampled down all sickly leaves and grass, I plucked the tiny azure flowerets, At the swift little rivulet I gazed; Small was the hamlet there, four cots in all, In every cot four windows small. In every little window, a dear young crony sits. Eh, cronies dear, you darlings, friends of mine, Be ye my cronies, one another love, love me, When into the garden green ye go, then take me, too; When each a wreath ye twine, twine one for me; When in the Danube's stream ye fling them, drop mine, too; The garlands all upon the surface float, mine only hath sunk down. All your dear lover-friends have homeward come, mine only cometh not. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. How was Christianity introduced into Russia? 2. In what two important centers was it finally established? 3. How was the Greek Church able to supply these converts with a Slavonian translation of the Bible? 4. Who were Kyríll and Methódy? Describe their work. 5. Why was "Ancient Bulgarian" not the original language of the Bulgarians? 6. In what language was Russian literature written up to the time of Peter the Great? 7. Where, according to tradition, did the early Slavonians settle in Europe? 8. How are the forces of nature represented in the ancient marriage songs? 9. What custom is illustrated in "The Sowing of the Millet"? 10. What connection is there between the funeral wails of modern and of ancient Russia? 11. What was the festival of Kolyáda? 12. What Christian character has been given to the ancient "Glory Song"? 13. Why is pork commonly used at the Russian New-Year? 14. What different dates have been observed for the opening of the New-Year? 15. What remarkable fact is true of the preservation of the Russian epic songs? 16. How were the religious ballads brought before the people? 17. Describe some of the characteristics of these ballads. 18. Into what three groups do the epic songs naturally fall? 19. What is the Lay of Sadkó? 20. What are the favorite subjects of the songs of the "Imperial Cycle"? 21. What interesting discovery of modern epic songs has recently been made? 22. Why have the songs of the Kíeff Cycle died out in their own country? BIBLIOGRAPHY _The Epic Songs of Russia._ Isabel F. Hapgood. _Myths and Folk-Tales of Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars._ Jeremiah Curtin. _Cossack Fairy-Tales._ R. Nisbet Bain. _Sixty Folk-Tales from Exclusively Slavonic Sources._ A. H. Wratislaw. _Russian Fairy-Tales._ R. Nisbet Bain. _Fairy-Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen._ From the French of Alexander Chodsko. _Songs of the Russian People and Russian Folk-Tales._ W. R. S. Ralston. _Slavonic Fairy-Tales._ M. Gastner. _Slavonic Literature and its Relations to the Folk-Lore of Europe._ M. Gastner. _Russian Folk-Songs as Sung by the People._ Mme. Eugenie Lineff. FOOTNOTES: [1] A Tatár word, signifying "tower"; used to mean the part of the house where the women were secluded, in Oriental fashion. [2] Lord, in the original, is Gosudár, the word which, with a capital, is applied especially to the emperor. [3] The dramatist Ostróvsky has made effective use of this game, and the more prophetic couplets of the song, in his famous play: "Poverty is not a Vice." Other national customs and songs are used in his play. CHAPTER II THE ANCIENT PERIOD, FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE TATÁR DOMINION, 988-1224. As soon as Prince Saint Vladímir introduced Christianity into Russia, he and his sons began to busy themselves with the problem of general education. Priests came from Greece and Bulgaria to spread the Gospel in Russia; but they thought only of disseminating Christianity, and were, moreover, not sufficiently numerous to grapple with educational problems. Accordingly, Vladímir founded schools in Kíeff, and ordered that the children of the best citizens should be taken from their unwilling parents, and handed over to these schools for instruction. His son, Yároslaff I. ("the wise"), pursued the same policy, in Kíeff and elsewhere--the schools being attached to the churches, and having for their chief object the preparation of ecclesiastics. The natural result was, that in ancient Russia, most people who could read and write were ecclesiastics or monks, and religious literature was that most highly prized. Even so-called worldly literature was strongly tinctured with religion. The first Russian literary compositions took the form of exhortations, sermons, and messages addressed by the clergy to their flocks, and the first Russian authors were Ilarión, metropolitan of Kíeff (beginning in 1051), and Luká Zhidyáta, appointed bishop of Nóvgorod in 1036. The latter's "Exhortation to the Brethren" has come down to us, and is noteworthy for the simplicity of its language, and its conciseness of form. From Ilarión we have, "a Word Concerning the Law" (meaning, the Law of God), which deals with the opposing character of Judaism and Christianity. It proves not only that he was a cultivated man, capable of expressing himself clearly on complicated matters, but also that his hearers were capable of comprehending him. Other good writers of that period were: Feodósiy, elected in 1062, abbott of the Monastery of the Catacombs in Kíeff (which was fated to become one of the most important nurseries of enlightenment and literature in Russia); Nestor, who left a remarkable "Life of Feodósiy"; Nikifór, a Greek by birth, educated in Byzantium, who was metropolitan of Kíeff, 1104-1121; and Kyríll, bishop of Nóvgorod, 1171-1182. Thus, it will be seen, events took their ordinary course in Russia as in other countries: learning was, for a long time, confined almost exclusively to the monasteries, which were the pioneers in education and culture elements, such as they were. Naturally the bulk of the literature for a long time consisted of commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, translations from the works of the fathers of the church (Eastern Catholic), homilies, pastoral letters, and the like. But in the monasteries, also, originated the invaluable Chronicles; for not only did men speedily begin to describe in writing those phenomena of life which impressed them as worthy of note, but ecclesiastics were in a position to learn all details of importance from authoritative sources, and were even, not infrequently, employed as diplomatic agents, or acted as secretaries to the ruling princes. The earliest and most celebrated among these ancient Russian historical works is the Chronicle of Nestor, a monk of the Catacombs Monastery in Kíeff (born about 1056), the reputed author of the document which bears his name. Modern scientists have proved that he did not write this Chronicle, the earliest copy of which dates from the fourteenth century, but its standing as a priceless monument of the twelfth century has never been impunged, since it is evident that the author gathered his information from contemporary eye-witnesses. The Chronicle begins by describing how Shem, Ham, and Japhet shared the earth between them after the flood, and gives a detailed list of the countries and peoples of the ancient world. It then states that, after the building of the Tower of Babel, God dispersed all the peoples into seventy-two tribes (or languages), the northern and western lands falling to the tribe of Japhet. Nestor derives the Slavonians from Japhet--describes their life, first on the banks of the Danube, then their colonization to the northeast as far as the River Ílmen (the ancient Nóvgorod), the Oká, in central Russia, and the tributaries of the Dniépr, delineating the manners and customs of the different Slavonic tribes, and bringing the narrative down to the year 1110, in the form of brief, complete stories. The style of the Chronicle is simple and direct. For example, he relates how, in the year 945, the Drevlyáns (or forest-folk) slew Ígor, prince of Kíeff, and his band of warriors, who were not numerous. Then said the Drevlyáns, "Here we have slain the Russian Prince; let us now take his wife, Olga, for our Prince Malo; and we will take also Svyátoslaff (his son), and will deal with him as we see fit"; and the Drevlyáns dispatched their best men, twenty in number, in a boat, to Olga, and they landed their boat near Borítcheff, and Olga was told that the Drevlyáns had arrived, and Olga summoned them to her. "Good guests are come, I hear"; and the Drevlyáns said: "We are come, Princess." And Olga said to them, "Tell me, why are ye come hither?" Said the Drevlyáns: "The land of the Drevlyáns hath sent us," saying thus: "We have slain thy husband, for thy husband was like unto a wolf, he was ever preying and robbing; but our own princes are good. Our Drevlyán land doth flourish under their sway; wherefore, marry thou our Prince, Malo" for the Drevlyán Prince was named Malo. Olga said to them: "Your speech pleaseth me, for my husband cannot be raised from the dead; but I desire to show you honor, to-morrow, before my people; wherefore, to-day, go ye to your boat, and lie down in the boat, exalting yourselves; and to-morrow I will send for you, and ye must say: 'we will not ride on horses, we will not walk afoot, but do ye carry us in our boat.'" Thus did she dismiss them to the boat. Then Olga commanded a great and deep pit to be digged in the courtyard of the palace, outside the town. And the next morning, as Olga sat in her palace, she sent for the guests, and Olga's people came to them, saying: "Olga biddeth you to a great honor." But they said: "We will not ride on horses, nor on oxen, neither will we walk afoot, but do thou carry us in our boat." And the Kievlyáns said: "We must, perforce, carry you; our prince is slain, and our princess desireth to wed your prince," and they bore them in the boat, and those men sat there and were filled with pride; and they carried them to the courtyard, to Olga, and flung them into the pit, together with their boat. And Olga, bending over the pit, said unto them: "Is the honor to your taste?" and they made answer: "It is worse than Ígor's death"; and she commanded that they be buried alive, and they were so buried. The narrative goes on to state that Olga sent word to the Drevlyáns, that if they were in earnest, their distinguished men must be sent to woo her for their prince; otherwise, the Kievlyáns would not let her go. Accordingly, they assembled their best men, the rulers, and sent them for her. Olga had the bath heated and ordered them to bathe before presenting themselves to her, and when they began to wash, Olga had the bath-house set on fire, and burned them up. Then Olga sent again to the Drevlyáns, demanding that they collect a vast amount of hydromel in the town where her husband had been slain, that she might celebrate the ancient funeral feast, and weep over his grave. So they got the honey together, and brewed the hydromel (or mead), and Olga, taking with her a small body-guard, in light marching order, set out on the road and came to her husband's grave and wept over it; and commanded her people to erect a high mound over it; and when that was done, she ordered the funeral feast to be celebrated on its summit. Then the Drevlyáns sat down to drink, and Olga ordered her serving-boys to wait on them. And the Drevlyáns asked Olga where was the guard of honor which they had sent for her? And she told them that it was following with her husband's body-guard. But when the Drevlyáns were completely intoxicated, she ordered her serving-lads to drink in their honor, went aside, and commanded her men to slay the Drevlyáns, which was done, five hundred dying thus. Then Olga returned to Kíeff, and made ready an army against the remaining Drevlyáns. Such is one of the vivid pictures of ancient manners and customs which the chronicle of Nestor furnishes. The descendants of Prince-Saint Vladímir were not only patrons of education, but collectors of books. One of them, in particular, Vladímir Monomáchus, is also noted as the author of the "Exhortation of Vladímir Monomáchus" (end of the eleventh century), which he wrote for his children, in the style of a pastoral address from an ecclesiastic to his flock--a style which, in Russia, as elsewhere, was the inevitable result of the first efforts at non-religious literature, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. "Chiefest of all," he writes, among other things, "forget not the poor, and feed them according to your powers; give most of all to the orphans, and be ye yourselves the defenders of the widows, permitting not the mighty to destroy a human being. Slay ye not either the righteous or the guilty yourselves, neither command others to slay them. In discourse, whatsoever ye shall say, whether good or evil, swear ye not by God, neither cross ye yourselves; there is no need of it.... Reverence the aged as your father, the young as brethren. In thy house be not slothful, but see to all thyself; put not thy trust in a steward, neither in a servant, that thy guests jeer not at thy house, nor at thy dinner.... Love your wives, but give them no power over you. Forget not the good ye know, and what ye know not, as yet, that learn ye," and so forth. The beginning of the twelfth century witnessed other notable attempts at secular literature. To the twelfth century, also, belongs Russia's single written epic song, "The Word (or lay) Concerning Ígor's Raid," which contains an extremely curious mixture of Christianity and heathen views. By a fortunate chance, this epic was preserved and was discovered, in 1795, by Count Músin-Púshkin, among a collection which he had purchased from a monastery. Unhappily, Count Músin-Púshkin's valuable library was burned during the conflagration of Moscow, in 1812. But the _Slóvo_ had been twice published previous to that date, and had been examined by many learned paleographists, who decided that the chirography belonged to the end of the fourteenth century or the beginning of the fifteenth century. Ígor Svyátoslavitch was the prince of Nóvgorod-Syéversk, who in 1185, made a raid against the Pólovtzy, or Plain-dwellers, and the Word begins thus: Shall we not begin our song, oh brothers, With the story of the feuds of old; Song of the valiant troop of Ígor, And of him, the son of Svyátoslaff, And sing them as men now do sing, Striving not in thought after Boyán.[4] Making this ballad, he was wont the Wizard, As a squirrel swift to flit about the forest, As a gray wolf o'er the clear plain to trot, And as an eagle 'neath the clouds to hover; When he recalleth ancient feuds of yore, Then, from out the flock of swans he sendeth In pursuit, ten falcons, swift of wing. The whole expedition is described in this poetical style, in three hundred and eighty-four unrhymed lines, with a curious mingling of heathen beliefs and Christian views. God shows Ígor the road "to the land of Pólovetzk, to the Russian land," and on his return from captivity, Ígor rides to Kíeff to salute the Holy Birth-giver of God of Pirogóshtch, while the Pólovtzy are called "accursed," in contrast with the orthodox Russians. But the winds are called "the grandchildren of Stribog," and the Russian people are alluded to as "the grandsons of Dázhbog," both heathen divinities, and other mythical and obscure personages are introduced. With this epic lay, the first period of Russian literature closes. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. How did Vladímir and his son provide for the education of their people? 2. What kind of literature naturally grew out of the learning of the monasteries? 3. What was the chronicle of Nestor? What special interest has it? 4. Quote some of the precepts from the "Exhortation of Monomáchus." 5. By what good fortune has "Ígor's Raid" been preserved? 6. What is the character of this Epic Song? FOOTNOTES: [4] Evidently an ancient epic bard. CHAPTER III SECOND PERIOD, FROM THE TATÁR DOMINION TO THE TIME OF IVÁN THE TERRIBLE, 1224-1330. During the Tatár Dominion, or yoke (1224-1370), Kíeff lost its supremacy, and also ceased to be, as it had been up to this time, the center of education and literature. The dispersive influence of the Tatár raids had the effect of creating centers in the northeast, which were, eventually, concentrated in Moscow; and in so far it proved a blessing in disguise for Russia. The conditions of life under the Tatár sway were such, that any one, man or woman, who valued a peaceful existence, or existence at all, was driven to seek refuge in monasteries. The inevitable consequence was, that a religious, even an æsthetic, cast was imparted to what little literature was created. One celebrated production, dating from about the middle of the fourteenth century, will serve to give an idea of the sort of thing on which men then exercised their minds and pens. It is the Epistle of Archbishop Vasíly of Nóvgorod to Feódor, bishop of Tver, entitled, "Concerning the Earthly Paradise," wherein the author discusses a subject of contention which had arisen among the clergy of the latter's diocese, as to "whether the earthly paradise planted by God for Adam doth still exist upon the earth, or whether not the earthly but only an imaginary paradise doth still exist." The worthy archbishop, with divers arguments, defends his position, that the earthly paradise does still exist in the East, and hell in the West: which latter proposition is not surprising when we recall the historical circumstances under which it was enounced. The monks continued to be the leaders in the educational and literary army, and under the stress of circumstances, not only won immense political influence over the life of the people, but also developed a new and special type of literature--political sermons--which attained to particular development in the fourteenth century. Another curious phenomenon was presented by the narratives concerning various prominent personages, which contain precious facts and expressions of contemporary views. The authors always endeavored, after the time-honored fashion of biographers, to exalt and adorn their subjects; so that "decorated narratives," a most apt title for that sort of literature in general, was the characteristic name under which they came to be known. One peculiarity of all of these, it is worth noting, including that which dealt with the decisive battle with the Tatárs on the field of Kulikóvo, on the Don, in 1370, under Dmítry Donskóy (Dmítry of the Don), Prince of Moscow, is, that they are imitated, in style and language, from the famous "Word Concerning Ígor's Raid." Among the many purely secular tales of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries preserved in manuscript, not one has anything in common with Russian national literature. All are translations, or reconstructions of material derived from widely divergent sources, such as the stories of Alexander of Macedon, of the Trojan War, and various Oriental tales. About the middle of the sixteenth century, Makáry, metropolitan of Moscow, collected, in twelve huge volumes, the Legends (or Spiritual Tales) of the Saints, under the title of Tchetyá Mináya--literally, Monthly Reading. It was finished in 1552, and contains thirteen hundred Lives of Saints. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. What was the effect of the Tatár raids upon Kíeff? 2. What striking illustration have we of the weak religious literature of this time? 3. What were the "decorated narratives"? To what famous epic are they similar in style? 4. What foreign character have the secular tales of this period? 5. What famous collection of Legends of the Saints was made in the sixteenth century? CHAPTER IV THIRD PERIOD, FROM THE TIME OF IVÁN THE TERRIBLE, 1530, TO THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Political events had tended to concentrate absolute power in the hands of the Grand Princes of Moscow, beginning with Iván III. But no counterbalancing power had arisen in Russian society; there was no independent life, no respect for the individual, no public opinion to counteract the abuse of power. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Russian society had reached the extreme limits of development possible to it under its unfavorable conditions. The time for the Russian Renaissance had arrived. It is well to remember that at this time in other parts of Europe also the spirit of despotism and intolerance was holding individual liberty in check. This was the age of Henry VIII., of Catherine de Medici, of the Inquisition, and of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. In this century of transition, the sixteenth, the man who exerted over the spirit of the age more influence than any other was Maxím the Greek (1480-1556), a learned scholar, a monk of Mt. Athos, educated chiefly in Italy. He was invited to Russia by Grand Prince Vasíly Ivánovitch, for the purpose of cataloguing a rich store of Greek manuscripts in the library of the Grand Prince. To his influence is due one of the most noteworthy books of the sixteenth century, the "Stogláva," or "Hundred Chapters," a set of regulations adopted by the young Tzar Iván Vasílievitch (afterwards known as Iván the Terrible), the son of Vasíly, and by the most enlightened nobles of his time at a council held in 1551. Their object was to reform the decadent morals of the clergy, and various ecclesiastical and social disorders, and in particular, the absolute illiteracy arising from the lack of schools. Another famous work of the same century is the "Domostróy," or "House-Regulator," attributed to Pope (priest) Sylvester, the celebrated confessor and counselor of Iván the Terrible in his youth. In an introduction and sixty-three chapters Sylvester sets forth the principles which should regulate the life of every layman, the management of his household and family, his relations to his neighbors, his manners in church, his conduct towards his sovereign and the authorities, his duties towards his servants and subordinates, and so forth. The most curious part of the work deals with the minute details of domestic economy--one injunction being, that all men shall live in accordance with their means or their salary--and family relations, in the course of which the position of woman in Russia of the sixteenth century is clearly defined. This portion is also of interest as the forerunner of a whole series of articles in Russian literature on women, wherein the latter are depicted in the most absurd manner, the most gloomy colors--articles known as "About Evil Women"--and founded on an admiration for Byzantine asceticism. In his Household Regulations Sylvester thus defines the duties of woman: "She goeth to church according to opportunity and the counsel of her husband. Husbands must instruct their wives with care and judicious chastisement. If a wife live not according to the precepts of her husband, her husband must reprove her in private, and after that he hath so reproved her, he must pardon her, and lay upon her his further injunctions; but they must not be wroth one with the other.... And only when wife, son, or daughter accept not reproof shall he flog them with a whip, but he must not beat them in the presence of people, but in private; and he shall not strike them on the ear, or in the face, or under the heart with his fist, nor shall he kick them, or thrash them with a cudgel, or with any object of iron or wood. But if the fault be great, then, removing the offender's shirt, he shall beat him (or her) courteously with a whip," and so forth. We have seen that Iván IV. (the Terrible) took the initiative in reforms. After the conquest of Kazán he established many churches in that territory and elsewhere in Russia, and purchased an immense quantity of manuscript service-books for their use, many of which turned out to be utterly useless, on account of the ignorance and carelessness of the copyists. This circumstance is said to have enforced upon Iván's attention the advisability of establishing printing-presses in Russia; though there is reason to believe that Maxím the Greek had, long before, suggested the idea to the Tzar. Accordingly, the erection of a printing-house was begun in 1543, but it was only in April, 1563, that printing could be begun, and in March, 1564, the first book was completed--The Acts of the Apostles. The first book printed in Slavonic, however, is the "Októikh," or "Book of the Eight Canonical Tones," containing the Hymns for Vespers, Matins, and kindred church services, which was printed in Cracow seventy years earlier; and thirty years earlier, Venice was producing printed books in the Slavonic languages, while even in Lithuania and White Russia printed books were known earlier than in Moscow. After printing a second book, the "Book of Hours" (the Tchasoslóff)--also connected with Vespers, Matins, kindred services, and the Liturgy, in addition--in 1565, the printers, both Russians, were accused of heresy, of spoiling the book, and were compelled to flee from Moscow. In 1568 other printers produced in Moscow the Psalter, and other books. In 1580, in Ostróg, Government of Volhýnia, in a printing-house founded by Prince Konstantín Konstantínovitch Ostrózhsky, was printed the famous Ostrózhsky Bible, which was as handsome as any product of the contemporary press anywhere in Europe. Nevertheless, manuscripts continued to circulate side by side with printed books, even during the reign of Peter the Great. During the reign of Iván the Terrible, secular literature and authors from the highest classes of society again made their appearance; in fact, they had never wholly disappeared during the interval. Iván the Terrible himself headed the list, and Prince Andréi Mikháilovitch Kúrbsky was almost his equal in rank, and more than his equal in importance from a literary point of view. Iván the Terrible's writings show the influence of his epoch, his oppressed and agitated childhood, his defective education; and like his character, they are the perfectly legitimate expression of all that had taken place in the kingdom of Moscow. The most striking characteristic of Iván's writings is his malicious, biting irony, concealed beneath an external aspect of calmness; and it is most noticeable in his principal works, his "Correspondence with Prince Kúrbsky," and his "Epistle to Kozmá, Abbot of the Kiríllo-Byelózersk Monastery." They display him as a very well-read man, intimately acquainted with the Scriptures, and the translations from the Fathers of the Church, and the Russian Chronicles, as well as with general history. Abbot Kozmá had complained to the Tzar concerning the conduct of certain great nobles who had become inmates of his monastery, some voluntarily, others by compulsion, as exiles from court, and who were exerting a pernicious influence over the monks. Iván seized the opportunity thus presented to him, to pour out all the gall of his irony on the monks, who had forsaken the lofty, spiritual traditions of the great holy men of Russia. Of much greater importance, as illustrating Iván's literary talent, is his "Correspondence with Prince Kúrbsky" (1563-1579), a warrior of birth as good as Iván's own, a former favorite of his, who, in 1563, probably in consequence of the profound change in Iván's conduct, which had taken place, and weighed so heavily upon the remainder of his reign, fled to Iván's enemy, the King of Poland. The abuses of confidence and power, with the final treachery of Priest Sylvester (Iván's adviser in ecclesiastical affairs), and of Adásheff (his adviser in temporal matters), had changed the Tzar from a mild, almost benevolent, sovereign, into a raging despot. On arriving in Poland, Prince Kúrbsky promptly wrote to Iván announcing his defection, and plainly stating the reasons therefor. When Iván received this epistle--the first in the celebrated and valuable historical correspondence which ensued--he thrust his iron-shod staff through the foot of the bearer, at the bottom of the Red (or Beautiful) Staircase in the Kremlin, and leaning heavily upon it, had the letter read to him, the messenger making no sign of his suffering the while. Kúrbsky asserted the rights of the individual, as against the sovereign power, and accused Iván of misusing his power. Iván, on his side, asserted his omnipotent rights, ascribed to his own credit all the noteworthy events of his reign, accused Kúrbsky of treason, and demonstrated to the Prince (with abundant Scriptural quotations), that he had not only ruined his own soul, but also the souls of his ancestors--a truly Oriental point of view. "If thou art upright and pious," he writes, "why wert not thou willing to suffer at the hands of me, thy refractory sovereign lord, and receive from me the crown of life?... Thou hast destroyed thy soul for the sake of thy body ... and hast waxed wroth not against a man, but against God." Kúrbsky's letters reveal in him a far more cultivated man, with more sense of decency and self control, and even elegance of diction, than the Tzar. He even reproaches the latter, in one letter, for his ignorance of the proper way to write, and for his lack of culture, and tells him he ought to be ashamed of himself, comparing the Tzar's literary style with "the ravings of women," and accusing him of writing "barbarously." In addition to these letters, Kúrbsky wrote a remarkable history of Iván the Terrible's reign, entitled, "A History of the Grand Principality of Moscow, Concerning the Deeds Which We Have Heard from Trustworthy Men, and Have also Beheld with Our Own Eyes." It is brought down to the year 1578. This history is important as the first work in Russian literature in which a completely successful attempt was made to write a fluent historical narrative (instead of setting forth facts in the style of the Chronicles), and link facts to preceding facts in logical sequence, deducing effects from causes. To the reign of Iván the Terrible belong, also, "A History of the Kingdom of Kazán," by Priest Ioánn Glazátly; and the "Memoirs of Alexéi Adásheff"--the most ancient memoirs in the Russian language. In the mean time, during this same sixteenth century, a new culture was springing up in southwestern Russia, and in western Russia, then under the rule of Poland, and under the influence of the Jesuits. Many Russians had joined the Roman Church, or the "Union" (1596), by which numerous eastern orthodox along the western frontier acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope of Rome, on condition of being allowed to retain their own rites and vernacular in the church services. In the end, they were gradually deprived of these, almost entirely; and curiously enough, the solution of this problem has been found, within the last decade, in the United States, where the immigrant Uniates are returning by the thousand to the Russian Church. In order to counteract the education and the wiles of the Jesuits, philanthropic "Brotherhoods" were formed among the orthodox Christians of southwest Russia, and these brotherhoods founded schools in which instruction was given in the Greek, Slavonic, Latin, and Polish languages; and rhetoric, dialectics, poetics, theology, and many other branches were taught. One of these schools in Kíeff was presided over by Peter Moghíla (1597-1646), the famous son of the Voevóda of Wallachia, who was brilliantly educated on the Continent, and at one time had been in the military service of Poland. Thus he thoroughly understood the situation when, later on (1625), he became a monk in the Kíeff Catacombs Monastery, and eventually the archimandrite or abbot, and devoted his wealth and his life to the dissemination of education among his fellow-believers of the Orthodox Eastern Catholic Church. The influence of this man and of his Academy on Russia was immense. The earliest school-books were here composed. Peter Moghíla's own "Shorter Catechism" is still referred to. The Slavonic grammar and lexicon of Lavrénty Zizánie-Tustanóvsky and Melénty Smotrítzky continued in use until supplanted by those of Lomonósoff one hundred and fifty years later. The most important factor, next to the foundation of the famous Academy, was, that towards the middle of the seventeenth century learned Kievlyanins, like Simeón Polótzky, attained to the highest ecclesiastical rank in the country, and imported the new ideas in education, which had been evolved in Kíeff, to Moscow, where they prepared the first stable foundations for the future sweeping reforms of Peter the Great. Literature continued to bear an ecclesiastical imprint; but there were some works of a different sort. One of the compositions which presents a picture of life in the seventeenth century--among the higher and governing classes only, it is true--is Grigóry Kotoshíkin's "Concerning Russia in the Reign of Alexéi Mikháilovitch." Kotoshíkin was well qualified to deal with the subject, having been secretary in the foreign office, and attached to the service of Voevóda (field marshal), Prince Dolgorúky, in 1666-1667. Among other things, he points out that the "women of the kingdom of Moscow are illiterate," and deduces the conclusion that the chief cause of all contemporary troubles in the kingdom is excessive ignorance. He declares, "We must learn from foreigners, and send our children abroad for instruction"--precisely Peter the Great's policy, it will be observed. Another writer, Yúry Krizhánitz, must have exerted a very considerable influence upon Peter the Great, as it is known that the latter owned his work on "The Kingdom of Russia in the Middle of the Seventeenth Century." This book contains a discussion as to the proper means for changing the condition of affairs then prevailing; as to the degree in which foreign influence should be permitted; and precisely what measures should be adopted to combat this or that social abuse or defect. The programme of reforms, which he therein laid down, was, to proceed from the highest source, by administrative process, and without regard to the opposition of the masses. This programme Peter the Great carried out most effectually later on. Battle was also waged with the old order of things in the spiritual realm by the famous Patriarch Níkon (1605-1681), who, as a peasant lad of twelve, ran away from his father's house to a monastery. Although compelled by his parents to return home and to marry, he soon went back and became a monk in a monastery in the White Sea. Eventually he rose not only to the highest ecclesiastical post in the kingdom, but became almost more powerful than the Tzar himself. He may be classed with the great literary forces of the land, in that he caused the correction of the Slavonic Church Service-books directly from the Greek originals, and eliminated from them innumerable and gross errors, which the carelessness and ignorance of scribes and proof-readers had allowed to creep into them. The far-reaching effects of this necessary and important step, the resulting schism in the church, which still endures, Níkon's quarrels with the Tzar Alexéi Mikháilovitch, Peter the Great's father, are familiar matters of history; as is also the fact that the power he won and the course he held were the decisive factors in Peter the Great's resolve to have no more Patriarchs, and to intrust the government of the church to a College, now the Most Holy Governing Synod. When Níkon passed from power, lesser men took up the battle. Chief among these was Archimandrite Simeón Polótzky (already mentioned), who lived from 1626-1681, and was the first learned man to become tutor to a Tzarévitch. The spirit of the times no longer permitted the heir to the throne to be taught merely to read and write from the primer, the Psalter, and the "Book of Hours"; and Alexéi Mikháilovitch appointed Simeón Polótzky instructor to the Tzarévitch Feódor. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. What unfavorable conditions do we find in Russian society at the beginning of the sixteenth century? 2. Who was Maxím the Greek, and what service did he render to his times? 3. What was the purpose of the "House-Regulator" of Pope Sylvester? 4. How does he define the duties of woman? 5. What early attempts at printing were made in Russia? 6. What qualities of Iván the Terrible may be seen in his writings? 7. Describe his correspondence with Prince Kúrbsky. 8. How do Kúrbsky's qualities compare with those of the Tzar, as shown in this correspondence? 9. Why is Kúrbsky's history of Moscow a remarkable work? 10. What great work was done by Moghíla and his Academy? 11. How did his influence prove very far-reaching? 12. What did other writers of this time say of the need for better education in Russia? 13. Describe the career of the famous Patriarch Níkon. BIBLIOGRAPHY _History of Russia._ Rambaud, Chapter XV., Iván the Terrible, also Chapters XVI.-XX. _The Story of Russia._ W. R. Morfill. CHAPTER V FOURTH PERIOD, FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO THE EPOCH OF REFORM UNDER PETER THE GREAT. Even in far-away, northeastern Russia a break is apparent in the middle of the sixteenth century; and during the reign of Iván the Terrible, a new sort of historical composition came into vogue--the so-called "Stépennaya Kníga," or "Book of Degrees" (or steps), wherein the national history was set forth in order, according to the Degrees of the Princely Houses in the lines of descent from Rúrik to Iván the Terrible in twenty degrees. This method found favor, and another degree was added in the seventeenth century, bringing the history down to the death of the Tzar Alexéi Mikháilovitch. During the seventeenth century many attempts were made at collections and chronicles, the only one approaching fullness being the "Chronicle of Níkon," so-called, probably, because it was compiled by order of the Patriarch Níkon. During the seventeenth century a fad also sprang up of writing everything, even school-books, petitions, and calendars in versified form, which was known as _vírshi_, and imported from Poland to Moscow by Simeón Polótzky. At that time, also, it was the fashion for school-boys to act plays as a part of their regular course of study in the schools in southwest Russia; and in particular, in Peter Moghíla's Academy in Kíeff. Plays of a religious character had, naturally, been imported from western Europe, through Poland, in the seventeenth century, but as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century certain church ceremonies in Russia were celebrated in a purely dramatic form, suggestive of the mystery plays in western Europe. The most curious and famous of these was that which represented the casting of the Three Holy Children into the Fiery Furnace, and their miraculous rescue from the flames by an angel. This was enacted on the Wednesday before Christmas, during Matins, in Moscow and other towns, the first performance, so far as is known, having been in the beginning of the sixteenth century, it being mentioned, in the year 1548, in the finance-books of the archiepiscopal residence of St. Sophia at Nóvgorod. The "furnace" was a circular structure of wood, on architectural lines, gayly painted with the figures of appropriate holy men; specimens have been preserved, one being in the Archeological Museum in St. Petersburg. The second famous "Act" (for such was their title) was known under the name of "The Riding on the Foal of an Ass," and took place (beginning with the end of the sixteenth century) in Moscow and other towns, generally on Palm Sunday. It represented the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem, and in Moscow it was performed in accordance with a special ritual by the Patriarch, in the presence of the Tzar himself; the Patriarch represented Christ, the Tzar led the ass upon which he was mounted. In other towns it was acted by the archbishops and the Voevódas. The third, and simplest, of these religious dramas, the "Act of the Last Judgment," generally took place on the Sunday preceding the Carnival. In 1672 Tzar Alexéi Mikháilovitch ordered Johann Gregory, the Lutheran pastor in Moscow, to arrange "comedy acts," and the first pieces acted before the Tzar on a private court stage were translations from the German--the "Act of Artaxerxes," the comedy "Judith," and so forth. But under the influence of southwestern Russia, as already mentioned, it was not long before a Russian mystery play, "St. Alexéi, the Man of God," founded on a Polish original, thoroughly imbued with Polish influence, was written in honor of Tzar Alexéi, and acted in public by students of Peter Moghíla's College in Kíeff. A whole series of mystery plays followed from the fruitful pen of Simeón Polótzky. Especially curious was his "Comedy of King Nebuchadnezzar, the Golden Calf, and the Three Youths Who Were Not Consumed in the Fiery Furnace." He wrote many other "comedies," two huge volumes of them. Theatrical representations won instant favor with the Tzar and his court, and a theatrical school was promptly established in Moscow, even before the famous and very necessary Slavonic-Greco-Latin Academy, for "higher education," as it was then understood. None of the school dramas--several of which Peter Moghíla himself is said to have written--have come down to us; neither are there any specimens now in existence of the spiritual dramas and dramatic dialogues from the early years of the seventeenth century. In addition to the dramas of Simeón Polótzky, of the last part of that century, we have the dramatic works of another ecclesiastical writer, St. Dmítry of Rostóff (1651-1709), six in all, including "The Birth of Christ," "The Penitent Sinner," "Esther and Ahashuerus," and so forth. They stand half-way between mysteries and religio-allegorical pieces, and begin with a prologue, in which one of the actors sketches the general outline of the piece, and explains its connection with contemporary affairs; and end with an epilogue, recited by another actor, which is a reinforcement and inculcation of the moral set forth in the play. St. Dmítry's plays were first acted in the "cross-chamber," or banquet-hall, of the episcopal residence in Rostóff, where he was the Metropolitan, by the pupils of the school he had founded. He cleverly introduced scenes from real life into the middle of his spiritual dramas. Collections of short stories and anecdotes current in western Europe also made their way to Russia, via Poland; and freed from puritanical, religious, and conventional bonds, light satirical treatment of topics began to be met with in the seventeenth century, wherein, among other things ridiculed, are the law-courts, the interminable length of lawsuits, the covetousness and injustice of the judges, and so forth. Among such productions are: "The Tale of Judge Shemyák" (Herring), "The Description of the Judicial Action in the Suit Between the Pike and the Perch"; or, applying personal names to the contestants, "The Story of Yórsha Yórshoff (Perch, the son of Perch) and the Son of Shtchetínnikoff (the Bristly)." A similar production is "The Story of Kúra (the Cock) and Lisá (the Fox)." The first place among such works, for simplicity of style and truth of description, belongs to "The History of the Russian Nobleman, Frol Skovyéeff, and Anna, Daughter of Table-Decker Nárdin Nashtchókin." But many writers of that age could not take a satirical view of things, and depicted life as a permanent conflict between the powers of evil and good--wherein the Devil chiefly got the upper hand--and man's principal occupation therein, the saving of his soul. One of the best compositions of ancient Russian secular literature belongs to this gloomy category, "The Tale of Góre-Zloshtchástye; How Góre-Zloshtchástye Brought the Young Man to the Monastic State," Góre-Zloshtchástye being, literally, "Woe-Misfortune." Woe-Misfortune persecutes the youth, who finds no safety from him, save on one road, where, alone, he does not besiege him--the road to the monastery. It will be seen that the spirit of the age was deeply influenced by the state of material things. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. What kind of historical writing sprang up in northeastern Russia during the time of Iván the Terrible? 2. Describe the fashion of acting plays in the schools. 3. What were the "comedy acts" given before the Tzar? 4. For what is Dmítry of Rostóff to be remembered? 5. What kind of anecdotes and short stories came from western Europe to Russia in the seventeenth century? 6. What picture of Russian life do they bring before us? BIBLIOGRAPHY _History of Russia._ Alfred Rambaud. _The Story of Russia._ W. R. Morfill. CHAPTER VI FIFTH PERIOD, THE REIGN OF PETER THE GREAT (1689-1723). The Fifth Period of Russian literature is that which comprises the reign of Peter the Great, with its reforms, scientific aims, and utter change of views upon nearly all conceivable practical and spiritual subjects. With the general historical aspects of that reign we cannot deal here. The culture which Peter I. introduced into Russia was purely utilitarian; and moreover, in precisely that degree which would further the attainment of his ends. But however imperatively his attention was engaged with other matters, he never neglected to maintain and add to the institutions of general education and special schools, and to order the translation of such works as were adapted to the requirements of his people, as he understood those requirements. His views on the subject of literature were as peculiar as those on culture, and were guided by the same sternly practical considerations. But it must be said, that under him the printing-press first acquired in Russia its proper position of importance, and became the instrument for the quick, easy, and universal dissemination and exchange of thought, instead of serving merely as an indifferent substitute for manuscript copies. Not only were books printed, but also speeches and official poetry for special occasions; and at last the "Russian News" (January, 1703), the first Russian newspaper, keenly and carefully supervised by Peter the Great himself, made its appearance. At the end of the seventeenth century, only two typographical establishments existed in all Russia: one in the Kíeff Catacombs Monastery (which does an immense business in religious books, and cheap prints and paper _ikóni_, or holy pictures); the other in Moscow, in the "Printing-House." In 1711 the first typographical establishment appeared in St. Petersburg, and in 1720 there were already four in the new capital, in addition to new ones in Tchernígoff, Nóvgorod-Syéversk, and Nóvgorod; while another had been added in Moscow. Yet Peter the Great distrusted the literary activity of the monks--and with reason, since most of them opposed his reforms, while many deliberately plotted against him--and in 1700-1701 ordered that monks in the monasteries should be deprived of pens, ink, and paper. His official, machine-made literature offers nothing of special interest. But one of the curious phenomena of the epoch was the peasant writer Iván Tikhonóvitch Posóshkoff (born about 1670), a well-to-do, even a rich, man for those days, very well read, and imbued with the spirit of reform. Out of pure love for his fatherland he began to write projects and books in which he endeavored to direct the attention of the government to many social defects, and to point out means for correcting them. One of the most interesting works of Peter the Great's period was Posóshkoff's written "Plan of Conduct" for his son (who was one of the first young Russians sent abroad, in 1708, for education), entitled, "A Father's Testamentary Exhortation." His "Book on Poverty and Wealth" is also noteworthy, inasmuch as it affords a complete survey of Russia under Peter the Great. During this reign, the highly educated and eminently practical Little Russians acquired more power than ever. The most notable of them all was Feofán Prokópovitch, Archbishop of Nóvgorod (born in Kíeff, 1681), who had been brilliantly educated in Kíeff and Rome, and was the most celebrated of Peter the Great's colaborers, the most zealous and clever executor of his sovereign's will, who attained to the highest secular and ecclesiastical honors, and prolonged his influence and his labors into succeeding reigns. His sermons were considered so important that they were always printed immediately after their delivery, and forwarded to the Emperor abroad, or wherever he might chance to be. Like others at that period, he indulged in dramatic writing, for acting on the school stage; and at Peter the Great's request he drew up a set of "Ecclesiastical Regulations" for the Ecclesiastical College, and was appointed to be the head of the church government, though Stepán Yavórsky was made head of the Holy Governing Synod when it was established, in 1721. Peter the Great's ideas were not only opposed but persecuted, after his death (1723), until the accession to the throne of his daughter Elizabeth, in 1741. It was a long time before literature was regarded seriously, on its own merits; before literary and scientific activity were looked upon as separate departments, or any importance was attributed to literature. Science usurped the first place, and literature was regarded as merely a useful accessory thereto. This view was held by all the first writers after Peter the Great's time: Kantemír, Tatíshtcheff, Trediakóvsky, and even the gifted Lomonósoff, Russia's first secular writers, in the present sense of that word. The first of these, in order, Prince Antiókh Dmítrievitch Kantemír, was born in 1708, and brought to Moscow at the age of three by his father, the Hospodár of Moldavia (after the disastrous campaign on the Pruth), who assumed Russian citizenship. Prince Kantemír published his first work, "A Symphony (concordance) of the Psalter," at the age of eighteen, being at that time in the military service, and a member of Feofán Prokópovitch's circle, and his close friend. His father had left a will by which he bequeathed his entire estate and about one hundred thousand serfs to that one of his children who should prove "the most successful in the sciences"; and one of Prince Antiókh's brothers having married a daughter of Prince D. M. Galítzyn, one of the most influential men of the day, Peter the Great naturally adjudged him the heir to the estate. This embittered Prince Antiókh Kantemír, and he revealed his wrath against the Emperor and his party in his first two notable satires, which appeared about the time the Empress Anna Ioánnovna ascended the throne (1730). Galítzyn was one of the nobles who were ruined by this event, and Prince Kantemír recovered a portion of his rightful possessions. In 1731 his powerful protection secured him the appointment of diplomatic resident in London. Thence he was, later on, transferred to Paris, and never returned to Russia. Before his departure to London, he wrote five satires, several fables and epistles, none of which were printed, however, though they won him great reputation in cultivated society, where they circulated in manuscript copies. Satire was quite in the spirit of the age, and Kantemír devoted himself to it. He displayed much wit and keen observation. In all, he produced nine satires, four being written during his sojourn abroad. In Satire Second, entitled, "Filarét and Evgény," or "On the Envy and Pride of Cantankerous Nobles," he describes the arrogance of the nobility, and their pretensions to the highest posts, without any personal exertion or merit, solely on the merits of their ancestors; and here he appears as a zealous advocate of Peter the Great's "Table of Ranks," intended to put a stop to precisely this state of affairs, by making rank depend on personal services to the state. The Third and Sixth Satires are curious in that they clearly express the author's views on his own literary activity, and also on society and literature in general. The Sixth Satire, written in 1738, is the most important, as showing Kantemír's own nature, both as a man and as a writer. One of the men most in sympathy with Peter the Great was Vasíly Nikítitch Tatíshtcheff (1686-1750), who was educated partly in Russia, partly abroad. He applied his brilliant talents and profound mind to the public service, first in the Artillery, then in the Department of Mines, later on as Governor of Ástrakhan. In pursuance of a general plan for useful literary labors, Tatíshtcheff collected materials for a geography, which he did not finish, and for a history of Russia, which he worked out with considerable fullness, in five volumes. It was published thirty years after his death, by command of Katherine II. It is not history in the sense of that word at the present day, but merely a very respectable preliminary study of materials; and the author's expressions of opinion are valuable features, as setting forth the spirit of the Epoch of Reformation. He is generally mentioned as a historian, but far more important are his "Spiritual Testament" (Last Will) and "Exhortation to his son Evgráff" (1733), and "A Discussion between Two Friends as to the Advantages of Sciences and Schools" (probably written 1731-1736). The Testament consists of a general collection of rules concerning worldly wisdom, applied to contemporary needs and views, though his son was already grown up and in the government service, so that much of its contents are of general application only, and were introduced to round out the work, and for the edification of the rising generation. It is the last specimen of a class of works in which, as has been seen, Russian literature is rich. The first Russian who devoted himself exclusively to literature was Vasíly Kiríllovitch Trediakóvsky (born at Ástrakhan in 1703), the son and grandson of priests, who was educated in Russia and abroad. When he decided, on his return from abroad in 1730, to adopt literature as a profession, the times were extremely unpropitious. He had, long before, during his student days in Moscow, written syllabic verses, an elegy on the death of Peter the Great, and a couple of dramas, which were acted by his fellow-students. In 1732 he became the court poet, or laureate and panegyrist, and wrote, to the order of the Empress Anna Ioánnovna, speeches and laudatory addresses, which he presented to the grandees, receiving in return various gifts in accordance with the custom of the epoch. But neither his official post nor his personal dignity prevented his receiving, also, violent and ignominious treatment at the hands of the powerful nobles. His "New and Brief Method of Composing Russian Verses" constituted an epoch in the history of Russian poetry, since therein was first set forth the theory of Russian tonic versification. But although he endeavored to create a distinct Russian style, and to put his own system into practice, he wrote worse than many of his contemporaries, and his poems were all below mediocrity; while not a single line of them supported the theory he announced. They enjoy as little consideration from his literary posterity as he enjoyed personally in the society of Anna Ioánnovna's day. Yet his work was very prominent in the transition period between the literature of the seventeenth century and the labors of Lomonósoff, and he undoubtedly rendered a great service to Russian culture by his translations, as an authority on literary theories and as a philologist. The first writer of capital importance in modern Russian literature in general was the gifted peasant-academician Mikháil Vasílievitch Lomonósoff (1711-1755)--a combination of the scientific and literary man, such as was the fashion of the period in general, and almost necessarily so in Russia. Born in a village of the Archángel Government, near Kholmogóry on the White Sea, he was a fisherman, like his father, until the age of sixteen, having learned to read and write from a peasant neighbor. A tyrannical stepmother forced him to endure hunger and cold, and to do his modest studying and reading in desert spots. Accordingly, when he obtained from the village authorities the permission requisite for absenting himself for the space of ten months, he failed to return, and was inscribed among the "fugitives." In the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy at Moscow, which he managed to enter, and where he remained for five years, he distanced all competitors (though he lived, as he said, "in incredible poverty," on three kopeks a day), devoting himself chiefly to the natural sciences. At the age of twenty-two he was sent abroad by the government to study metallurgy at Freiburg. There and elsewhere abroad, in England, France, and Holland, he remained for five years, studying various practical branches. In 1742 he became assistant professor at the Academy of Science in St. Petersburg, at a wretched salary, and in 1748 professor, lecturing on physical geography, chemistry, natural history, poetry, and the Russian language. He also was indefatigable in translating scientific works from the French and German, in writing a work on mining, a rhetoric-book, and so forth. By 1757 he had written many odes, poetical epistles, idyls, and the like; verses on festival occasions and tragedies, to order; a Russian grammar; and had collected materials for a history, and planned extensive philological researches. Eager to benefit his country, and conscious that he was capable of doing so, he made practical application of many important improvements in architecture, navigation, mining, and manufacturing industries. For example: in 1750 he zealously engaged in the manufacture of glass (with the aid of the government), set up a glass-factory, and applied his chemical knowledge to colored glass for mosaics. The great mosaic pictures which glorify Peter the Great, and the vast, magnificent _ikóni_ (holy pictures) which adorn the Cathedral of St. Isaac of Dalmatia, in St. Petersburg, are the products of those factories, which still exist and thrive. It is impossible to narrate in detail all Lomonósoff's enterprises for the improvement of the economic condition of the masses, his government surveys of Russia, ethnographical and geographical aims, and the like. His administrative labors absorbed most of his time leaving little for literary work. Like others of his day, he regarded literature as an occupation for a man's leisure hours, and even openly ridiculed those who busied themselves exclusively with it; though he ascribed to it great subsidiary importance, as a convenient instrument for introducing to society new ideas, and for expounding divers truths, both abstract and scientific. Thus he strove to furnish Russia with models of literary productions in all classes, and to improve the language of literature and science. Nevertheless, although he rendered great services in these directions, and is known as "the Father of Russian Literature," he was far more important as a scientific than as a literary man. It is true that precisely the opposite view of him was held during the period immediately succeeding him, and he became an authority and a pattern for many Russian writers, who imitated his pseudo-classical poetry, and even copied his language, as the acme of literary perfection. In reality, although he acquired a certain technical skill, he was a very mediocre poet; yet he was as an eagle among barnyard fowls, and cleverly made use of the remarkable possibilities of the Russian language as no other man did, although he borrowed his models from the pseudo-classical productions then in vogue in foreign countries. A few of his versified efforts which have come down to us deserve the name of poetry, by virtue of their lofty thoughts and strong, sincere feeling, expressed in graceful, melodious style. Among the best of these are: "A Letter Concerning the Utility of Glass," "Meditations Concerning the Grandeur of God," and his triumphal ode, "On the Day of the Accession to the Throne of the Empress Elizavéta Petróvna"--this last being the expression of the general rapture at the accession of Peter the Great's daughter. The most important feature of all Lomonósoff's poetical productions is the fine, melodious language, which was a complete novelty at that time, together with smooth, regular versification. Not one of his contemporaries possessed so profound and varied a knowledge of the Russian popular and book languages, and this knowledge it was which enabled him to make such a wide choice between the ancient Church Slavonic, ancient Russian, the popular, and the bookish tongues. In Peter the Great's Epoch of Reform, the modern "secular" or "civil" alphabet was substituted for the ancient Church Slavonic, and the modern Russian language, which Lomonósoff did so much to improve, began to assume shape, literature and science at last freeing themselves completely from ecclesiasticism and monasticism. The first writer to divorce literature and science, like Lomonósoff, a talent of the transition period, between the Epoch of Reform and the brilliant era of Katherine II.--a product, in education and culture, of the Reform Epoch, though he strove to escape from its traditions--was Alexander Petróvitch Sumarókoff (1717-1777). Insignificant in comparison with Lomonósoff, the most complete contrast with the peasant-genius by his birth and social rank, which were of the highest, he was plainly the forerunner of a new era; and in the sense in which Feofán Prokópovitch is called "the first secular Russian writer," Sumarókoff must be described as "the first Russian literary man." The Empress Anna Ioánnovna had had a troop of Italian actors, early in her reign; and in 1735 a troop of actors and singers. The Empress Elizavéta Petróvna revived the theater, and during her reign there were even two troops of actors, one French, the other Italian, for ballet and opera-bouffe (1757), both subsidized by the court. Sometimes an audience was lacking at their performances, and on one occasion at least, Elizavéta Petróvna improved upon the Scripture parable; when an insufficient number of spectators presented themselves at the French comedy, she forthwith dispatched mounted messengers to numerous persons of rank and distinction, with a categorical demand to know why they had absented themselves, and a warning that henceforth a fine of fifty rubles would be exacted for such dereliction of duty. A distinctive feature of Elizavéta's reign was the growth of closer relations with France, which at this period represented the highest culture of Europe. Dutch and German influences which had hitherto impressed themselves upon Russian society, now gave place to French ideas. Translations of the French classics of the brilliant age of Louis XIV. were made in Russian, and the new Academy of Fine Arts established by Elizavéta in St. Petersburg was put under the care of French masters. It was in her reign also that the University of Moscow was founded. In 1746 Feódor Grigórievitch Vólkhoff, the son of a merchant, built in Yaroslávl (on the upper Volga), the first Russian theater, to hold about one thousand spectators. Five years later, the news of the fine performances of the actors and actresses of Vólkhoff's theater reached St. Petersburg, and the troop was ordered to appear before the court. Four years later still, the existence of the Russian theater was assured, by imperial decree. Sumarókoff was appointed the director, having, evidently, for a long time previously had full charge of all dramatic performances at court; and also, evidently, been expected to furnish plays. His first tragedy, "Khóreff," dates from 1747. In the following year "Hamlet" appeared. Until the arrival of the Vólkhoff troop, all his plays were acted in St. Petersburg only, by the cadets and officers of the "Nobles' Cadet Corps," where he himself had been educated. Towards the end of Elizavéta Petróvna's reign, Sumarókoff acquired great renown, almost equaling that of Lomonósoff in his literary services, and the admirers of Russian literature of that day were divided into hostile camps, which consisted of the friends and advocates of these two writers, the Empress Elizabeth being at the head of the first, the Empress Katherine II. (then Grand Duchess) at the head of the second. For about ten years (1759-1768), Sumarókoff published a satirical journal, "The Industrious Bee," after which he returned to his real field and wrote a tragedy, "Výsheslaff," and the comedies, "A Dowry by Deceit," "The Usurer," "The Three Rival Brothers," "The Malignant Man," and "Narcissus." In all he wrote twenty-six plays, including the tragedies "Sínav and Trúvor," "Aristona," and "Semira," before the establishment of the theater in St. Petersburg, in addition to "Khóreff" and "Hamlet," "Dmítry the Pretender," and "Mstíslaff." "Semira" was regarded as his masterpiece, and among his comedies "Tressotinius" attracted the most attention. All these, however, were merely weak imitations of the narrow form in which all French and pseudo-classical dramas were molded, the unities of time, place, and action exerting an embarrassing restriction on the action; and the heroes, although they professed to be Russians, with obscure historical names (like Sínav and Trúvor), or semi-mythical (like Khóreff), or genuinely historical (like Dmítry the Pretender), were the stereotyped declaimers of the bombastic, pseudo-classical drama. Sumarókoff's dramatic work formed but a small part of his writings, which included a great mass of odes, eclogues, elegies, ballads, and so forth; and although he ranks as a dramatist, he is most important in his series of fables, epigrams, and epitaphs, which are permeated with biting satire on his own period, though the subjects are rather monotonous--the bad arrangement of the courts of justice, which permitted bribery and other abuses among lawyers, the injurious and oppressive state monopolies, attempts at senseless imitations of foreigners in language and customs, and ignorance concealed by external polish and culture. Coarse and imperfect as are these satires, they vividly reproduce the impressions of a contemporary gifted with keen observation and the ability to deal dispassionately with current events. As we shall see later on, this protest against the existing order of things continued, and blossomed forth in the succeeding--the sixth--period of literature in productions, which not only form the flower of the century, but also really belong to modern literature, and hold the public attention at the present day. This Sumarókoff's dramatic and other works do not do, and their place is rather in the archives of the preparatory school. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. What was the general character of the reign of Peter the Great? 2. How important did the printing press become in his time? 3. Why did Peter the Great deprive the monks of pens, ink, and paper? 4. What interesting works were written by Posóshkoff? 5. Who was Feofán Prokópovitch? 6. Give an account of the life and writings of Kantemír. 7. What literary influence had Tatíshtcheff and Trediakóvsky? 8. Describe the early life of Lomonósoff. 9. Give an account of his many activities. 10. How did he regard literature, and what were his best works. 11. In what way did he exert a strong literary influence? 12. What attention did the Court give to theatrical representations at this time? 13. What new relations with Europe marked the reign of Elizavéta? 14. When and where was Vólkhoff's theater established? 15. What share had Sumarókoff in developing the Russian drama? 16. How did he protest against the abuses of his times? BIBLIOGRAPHY _History of Russia._ Alfred Rambaud. Vol. II., Chapter VI. _The Story of Russia._ W. R. Morfill. _Specimens from the Russian Poets._ Two volumes, Sir John Bowring, contain many specimens from Lomonósoff to Zhukóvsky inclusive. CHAPTER VII SIXTH PERIOD, THE REIGN OF KATHERINE II. (1762-1796). Under the brilliant sway of Katherine II. (1762-1796) literature and literary men in Russia first began to acquire legitimate respect and consideration in the highest circles--the educated minority, which ruled tastes and fashions. Wealthy patrons of literature had existed even in the Empress Elizabeth's day it is true; and a taste for the theater had been implanted or engendered, partly by force, as we have seen. Western ideas had made much progress in a normal way, through the close contact with western European nations, brought about by Elizabeth's great political genius, which had made St. Petersburg the diplomatic center and law-giver; and Katherine's own interest in literature before her accession to the throne had also had much to do with raising the standard and the respect in which literature and writers were held, and in preparing the ground for the new era. During her reign, life and literature may be said to have come into close contact for the first time. Katherine II. herself may be placed at the head of the writers of her day, in virtue not only of her rank and her encouragement of literature, at home and abroad, but because of her own writings. One of her comedies, "O, Ye Times! O, Ye Manners!" is still occasionally given on the stage. Her own Memoirs and her Correspondence with Voltaire, Diderot, and others, furnish invaluable pictures of contemporary views and manners. Her satires, comedies, and journalistic work and polemical articles are most important, however, because most original. In 1769 she began to publish a newspaper called "All Sorts of Things" (or "Varieties"), to which she personally contributed satirical articles attacking abuses--chiefly the lack of culture, and superficiality of education. It was extremely popular with the public, and imitators started up, which the Empress eventually suppressed, because of their virulent attacks on her own journal. She ceased journalistic work in 1774, and then introduced on the stage, in her comedies, the same types and aspects of Russian life which she had previously presented in her satirical articles. Of the fourteen comedies, nine operas, and seven proverbs which she wrote, in whole or in part (she had the skeletons of some filled out with choruses and verses according to her own plans), up to 1790, eleven comedies, seven operas, and five proverbs have come down to us. The comedies are not particularly artistic, but they are important in a history of the national literature, as noteworthy efforts to present scenes and persons drawn from contemporary life--the first of that sort on the Russian stage--the most remarkable being the one already referred to, and "The Gambler's Name-day" (1772). The personages whom she copied straight from life are vivid; those whom she invented as ideals, as foils for contrast, are lifeless shadows. Her operas are not important. Towards the close of her literary activity she once more engaged in journalism, writing a series of satirical sketches, "Facts and Fiction" (published in 1783), for a new journal, issued on behalf of the Academy of Sciences by the Princess Dáshkoff, the director of that academy, and chairman of the Russian Academy, founded in that year on the Princess's own plan. This Princess Ekaterína Románovna Dáshkoff (born Vorontzóff, 1743-1810) was a brilliantly educated woman, with a pronounced taste for political intrigue, who had a great share in the conspiracy which disposed of Peter III., and placed Katherine II. on the throne. Katherine richly rewarded the Princess, but preserved her own independence and supremacy, which offended Princess Dáshkoff, the result being a coldness between the former intimate friends. This, in turn, obliged the Princess to leave the court and travel at home and abroad. During one trip abroad she received a diploma as doctor of laws, medicine, and theology from Edinburg University. Her Memoirs are famous, though not particularly frank, or in agreement with Katherine II.'s statements, naturally. The Empress never ceased to be suspicious of her, but twenty years later a truce was patched up between them, and Katherine appointed her to the offices above mentioned--never held before or since by a woman. Princess Dáshkoff wrote much on educational subjects, and in the journal referred to above, she published not only her own articles and Katherine II.'s, but also the writings of many new and talented men, among them, Von Vízin and Derzhávin. This journal, "The Companion of the Friends of the Russian Language," speedily came to an end when the Princess-editor took umbrage at the ridicule heaped on some of her projects and speeches by the Empress and her courtiers. If Katherine II. was the first to introduce real life on the Russian stage, Von Vízin was the first to do so in a manner sufficiently artistic to hold the stage, which is the case with his "Nédorosl," or "The Hobbledehoy." He is the representative of the Russian type, in its best aspects, during the reign of Katherine II., and offers a striking contrast to the majority of his educated fellow-countrymen of the day. They were slavish worshipers of French influences. He bore himself scornfully, even harshly, towards everything foreign, and always strove to counteract each foreign thing by something of native Russian origin. Denís Ivánovitch Von Vízin (1744-1792), as his name suggests, was the descendant of an ancient German family, of knightly rank. An ancestor had been taken prisoner in the reign of Iván the Terrible, and had ended by settling in Russia and assuming Russian citizenship. The family became thoroughly Russified when they joined the Russian Church. Von Vízin was of a noble and independent character, to which he added a keen, fine mind, and a caustic tongue. His father, he tells us, in his "A Frank Confession of Deeds and Thoughts" (imitated from Rousseau's "Confession"), was also of an independent character in general, and in particular--contrary to the custom of the epoch--detested extortion and bribery, and never accepted gifts. "Sir!" he was accustomed to say to persons who asked favors of him in his official position, "a loaf of sugar affords no reason for condemning your opponent; please take it away and bring legal proof of your rights." Denís Von Vízin received a thorough Russian education at home--which was unusual at that era of overwhelming foreign influence; and his inclination for literature having manifested itself in his early youth, while still at the University School for Nobles, he made various translations from foreign languages before entering the Moscow University, at the age of fifteen. During a visit which he made to St. Petersburg, while still a student at the University, he saw the theater for the first time, and soon made acquaintance with F. G. Vólkhoff (already mentioned), and one of the actors. These things exerted a great influence upon him. During a visit of the Court to Moscow, in 1755, he was appointed translator to the Foreign College (Office), with the inevitable military rank, and went to live in the new capital. After divers vicissitudes of service, he wrote "The Brigadier," which he was promptly asked to read before royalty and in society. It won for him great reputation with people who were capable of appreciating the first play which was genuinely Russian in something more than externals. It jeers at ignorance coated over with an extremely thin veneer of pretentious foreign culture. The types in "The Brigadier" (written about 1747) had long been floating about in literature, and as it were, awaiting a skillful pen which should present them in full relief to the contemporary public. Von Vízin set forth these types on the stage in a clearer, more vivid manner than all previous writers who had dealt with them, as we have seen, in satires and dramas, from Kantemír to Katherine II. The characters, as Von Vízin depicted them, were no longer abstract monsters, agglomerations of evil qualities, but near relations to everybody. Moreover, the drama was gay, playful--not even the moral was gloomy--with not a single depressing line. Totally different is "The Hobbledehoy" ("Nédorosl," 1782), which is even more celebrated, and was written towards the close of a long career in the service, filled with varied and trying experiences--part of which arose from the difficulties of the author's own noble character in contact with a different type of men and from his attacks on abuses of all sorts--after a profound study of life in the middle and higher classes of Russian court and diplomatic circles. The difference between "The Brigadier" and "The Hobbledehoy" is so great that they must be read in the order of their production if the full value of the impression created by the earlier play is to be appreciated. "The Hobbledehoy" was wholly unlike anything which had been seen hitherto in Russian literature. Had the authorities permitted Von Vízin to print his collection of satires, he would have stood at the head of that branch of literature in that epoch; as it was, this fine comedy contains the fullest expression of his dissatisfaction at the established order of things in general. The merits of the play rest upon its queer characters from life, who are startlingly real, and represent the genuine aims and ideas of the time. The contrasting set of characters, whom he introduced as the exponents of his ideals, do not express any aims and ideas which then existed, but merely what he personally would have liked to see. Katherine II., with whose comedies Von Vízin's have much in common, always tried to offset her disagreeable real characters by honorable, sensible types, also drawn from real life as ideals. But Von Vízin's ideal characters are almost hostile in their bearing towards his characters drawn from real life. Altogether, Von Vízin must be regarded as the first independent, artistic writer in Russia, and therefore epoch-making, just as Feofán Prokópovitch must be rated as the first Russian secular writer, and Sumarókoff as the first Russian literary man and publicist in the modern meaning of the words. It is worth noting (because of a tendency to that sort of thing in later Russian writers down to the present day) that towards the end of his life a stroke of paralysis, in 1785, and other unfortunate circumstances, threw Von Vízin into a gloomy religious state of mind, under the influence of which he judged himself and his works with extreme severity, and condemned them with excessive harshness. The general outline of "The Hobbledehoy" is as follows: Mrs. Prostakóff (Simpleton), a managing woman, of ungovernable temper, has an only child, Mitrofán (the Hobbledehoy), aged sixteen. She regards him as a mere child, and spoils him accordingly. He is, in fact, childish in every way, deserving his sobriquet, and is followed about everywhere by his old nurse, Eremyéevna. Mr. Simpleton has very little to say, and that little, chiefly, in support of his overbearing wife's assertions, and at her explicit demand. She habitually addresses every one, except her son, as "beast," and by other similar epithets. She has taken into her house, about six months before the play opens, Sophia, a fairly wealthy orphan, and a connection of hers by marriage, whom she ill-treats to a degree. She is on the point of betrothing her to Skotínin (Beastly), her brother, who frankly admits that he cares nothing for the girl, and not very much for her estate, which adjoins his own, but a very great deal for the extremely fine pigs which are raised on it--a passion for pigs, which he prefers to men, constituting his chief interest in life. Mr. Beastly, who says that he never goes to law, no matter what losses he may suffer, no matter how much his neighbors injure him, because he simply wrings the deficit out of his peasants, and that ends it, declares that Sophia's pigs, for which he expresses a "deadly longing," are so huge that "there is not one of them which, stood up on its hind legs, would not be a whole head taller than any one of us," is eager for the match. While this is under discussion (Sophia being entirely ignorant of their intentions), the young girl enters, and announces that she has received good news: her uncle, who has been in Siberia for several years in quest of fortune, and is supposed to be dead, has written to inform her of his speedy arrival. Mrs. Simpleton takes the view that he is dead, ought to be dead; and roughly tells Sophia that the latter need not try to frighten her into giving her her liberty, and asserts that the letter must be from the officer who has been in love with her, and whom she wishes to marry. Sophia offers her the letter, in proof of innocence, saying, "Read it yourself." "Read it myself!" cries Mrs. Simpleton; "no, madam, thank God, I was not brought up in that way. I may receive letters, but I always order some one else to read them," whereupon she orders her husband to read it. Her husband gives it up as too difficult, and Mr. Beastly, on being asked, replies, "I! I have never read anything since I was born, my dear sister! God has delivered me from that boredom." Právdin (Mr. Upright), an official charged with inspecting the condition of the peasants, also empowered to put under arrest cruel proprietors, and under guardianship of the state those who have been ill-treated, enters and reads the letter to them. When Mrs. Simpleton learns from it that Uncle Starodúm (Oldidea) has a large income, and that Sophia is to inherit it, she immediately overwhelms Sophia with flattery and affection, and decides to marry her to her precious "child," Mitrofán. This leads to violent quarrels during the rest of the play between her and her brother, who wants the pigs; and to violence from the latter to Mitrofán, who declares that he has long wished to marry, and intends to have Sophia. In the mean time a company of soldiers, on the march to Moscow, arrives, and is quartered in the village, while their commanding officer, Mílon, a friend of Mr. Upright, makes his appearance at the house, where to his surprise, he finds his lady-love, Sophia, who promptly explains to him the situation of affairs. Mitrofán is still under teachers, consisting of Vrálman (Liar), a former gunner, who is supposed to be teaching him French and all the sciences; Tzýfirkin (Cipherer), a retired army-sergeant, who instructs him in arithmetic, and Kutéikin, who, as his name implies, is the son of a petty ecclesiastic, and teaches him reading and writing, talking always in ecclesiastical style, interlarded with old Church-Slavonic words and phrases. He is always doing "reviews," never advancing to new lessons, and threatens to drown himself if he be not allowed to wed Sophia at once. There is a most amusing lesson-scene. The teacher of arithmetic sets him a problem: three people walking along the road find three hundred rubles, which they divide equally between them; how much does each one get? Mitrofán does the sum on his slate: "Once three is three, once nothing is nothing, once nothing is nothing." But his mother exclaims, that if he finds such a sum, he must not divide it, but keep it all, and that arithmetic, which teaches such division, is a fool of a science. Another sum is worked out in equally absurd style, with equally intelligent comments from the mother. Kutéikin then takes his turn, and using a pointer, makes Mitrofán repeat after him a ridiculously appropriate sentence from the Psalms, in the "Tchasoslóff," the "Book of Hours," or first reader. Vrálman enters, meddles with everybody, in a strong foreign accent, and puts an end to the lessons, as quite unnecessary for the precious boy; for which, and his arrogance (when Mrs. Simpleton and the Hobbledehoy have retired), the other teachers attack him with slate and book. Meanwhile, Uncle Starodúm has arrived, and talks in long paragraphs and stilted language to Právdin and Sophia, expressing the ideal view of life, conduct, service to the state, and so forth. He, as well as Sophia, Právdin Mílon, are quite colorless. The Simpletons overwhelm Starodúm with stupid courtesies, and Mrs. S. gets Právdin to examine Mitrofán, in order to prove to Starodúm that her darling child is fit to be Sophia's husband. The examination is even more brilliant than the lesson. Mitrofán says that door, that is to say, the door to that room, is an adjective, because it is added, or affixed, to its place; but the door of the store-house is a noun, because it has been standing off its hinges for six weeks. Further examination reveals the fact, that Vrálman's instruction in history has impressed his pupil with the idea that the histories (stories) told by Khavrónya, the herd-girl, constitute that science. When asked about geography, the Hobbledehoy declares that he does not know what is meant, and his mother prompts him with "'Eography," after asking Právdin what he said. On inquiring further as to its meaning and its use, and on being informed that it is a description of the earth, and its first use is to aid people in finding their way about, she makes the famous speech, frequently quoted, "Akh, good gracious! What are the cabmen for, then? That's their business. That's not a science for the nobility. All a noble has to do is to say, 'Drive me to such a place!' and you're driven whithersoever you wish. Believe me, my good sir, everything that Mitrofán does not know is nonsense." Uncle Starodúm makes acquaintance with Mílon, whose good qualities he has learned through an old friend, and betroths him to Sophia. Mrs. Simpleton, on learning of this, and that Starodúm and Sophia are to set out for Moscow early the next morning, arranges to have Mitrofán abduct Sophia at a still earlier hour, and marry her. Sophia escapes; Mrs. Simpleton raves and threatens to beat to death her servants who have failed to carry out her plan. Právdin then announces that the government has ordered him to take charge of the Simpletons' house and villages, because of Mrs. S.'s notorious inhumanity. Vrálman, whom Starodúm recognizes as a former coach-man of his, mounts the box, and Starodúm, Sophia, and Mílon set out for Moscow, virtue reigning triumphant, and wickedness being properly punished--which, again, is an ideal point of view. But the man who, taken as a whole, above all others in the eighteenth century, has depicted for us governmental, social, and private life, is Gavríl Románovitch Derzhávin (1743-1816). His memoirs and poetical chronicle furnish the most brilliant, vivid, and valuable picture of the reign of Katherine II. Moreover, in his own person, Derzhávin offers a type of one of the most distinguished Russians of the last half of the eighteenth century, in his literary and official career. He presented a great contrast to his contemporary and friend, Von Vízin, in that, while the latter was a noteworthy example of all the best sides in contemporary social life, with very few defects, Derzhávin was an example of all the defects of contemporary life, and of several distinctly personal merits, which sharply differentiated him from others in the same elevated spheres of court and official life. He was the son of a poor noble. His opportunities for education were extremely limited, and in 1762 he entered the military service as a common soldier, in the famous Preobrazhénsky (Transfiguration) infantry regiment of the Guards. As he had neither friends nor relatives in St. Petersburg, he lived in barracks, where with difficulty he followed his inclinations, and read all the Russian and German books he could obtain, scribbling verses at intervals. In 1777 he managed to obtain a small estate and the rank of bombardier-lieutenant, and left the service to become an usher in one department of the Senate, where he made many friends and acquaintances in high circles. Eventually he became governor of Olónetz, then of Tambóff. In 1779 he began "in a new style," among other compositions therein being an ode "To Felitza," meaning the Empress Katherine II. He continued to write verses, but published nothing under his own name until his famous ode, "God" and "The Murza's Vision," in 1785. We cannot here enter into his official career further than to say, that all his troubles arose from his own honesty, and from the combined hostile efforts of the persons whose dishonest practices he had opposed. Towards the end of Katherine's reign he became a privy councilor (a titular rank) and senator; that is to say, a member of the Supreme Judicial Court. Under Paul I. he was President of the Commerce College (Ministry of Commerce), and Imperial Treasurer. Under Alexander I. he was made Minister of Justice. "Katharine's Bard," as he was called, like several of his predecessors, cherished an idea of fixing a style in Russian literature, his special aim being to confine it to the classical style, and to oppose the new school of Karamzín. In this he was upheld by I. I. Dmítrieff, who was looked upon as his successor. But after Derzhávin heard Púshkin read his verses, at the examination in the Tzárskoe Seló Lyceum (1815), he frankly admitted that the lad had already excelled all living writers of Russia; and he predicted that this school-boy would become the new and brilliant star. Despite the burdens of his official life, Derzhávin wrote a great deal; towards the end of his life, much dramatic matter; yet he really belongs to the ranks of the lyric poets. He deserved all the fame he enjoyed, because he was the first poet who was so by inspiration, not merely by profession or ambition. Even in his most insignificant works of the stereotyped sort, with much sound and very little thought and feeling, the hand of a master is visible, and talent is perceptible; while many passages are remarkable for their poetic figures, melody of versification, and beauty and force of expression. No poet previous to Púshkin can be compared to him for talent, and for direct, independent inspiration. His poetry is chiefly the poetry of figures and events, of solemn, loudly trumpeted victories and feats, descriptions of banquets, festivals, noisy social life, and endless hymns of praise to the age of Katherine II. It is not very rich in inward contents or in ideas. But he possessed one surpassing merit: he, first of all among Russian poets, brought poetry down from its lofty, classical flights to the every-day life of his fatherland at that age, and to nature, and freed Russian poetry from that monotonous, stilted, tiresome, official form which had been introduced by Lomonósoff and copied by all the latter's followers. Derzhávin's language is powerful, picturesque, and expressive, but still harsh and uneven, the ordinary vernacular being mingled with Church-Slavonic, and frequently obscuring the meaning; also, and owing to his deficient education, he often had recourse to inelegant, tasteless forms. If we compare him with Lomonósoff and Sumarókoff, it is evident that Russian poetry had made a great stride in advance under him, both as to external and internal development, in that he not only brought it nearer to life, but also perfected its forms, to a considerable degree, and applied it to subjects to which his predecessors would never have dreamed of applying it. His famous ode "God" will best serve to illustrate his style: GOD[5] O Thou eternal One! whose presence bright All space doth occupy, all motion guide; Unchanged through time's all-devastating flight; Thou only God! There is no God beside! Being above all beings! Three in One! Whom none can comprehend and none explore; Who fill'st existence with _thyself_ alone: Embracing all,--supporting,--ruling o'er,-- Being whom we call GOD--and know no more! In its sublime research, philosophy May measure out the ocean deep, may count The sands or the sun's rays--but God! for Thee There is no weight nor measure:--none can mount Up to Thy mysteries; Reason's brightest spark, Though kindled by Thy light, in vain would try To trace Thy counsels, infinite and dark: And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high, Even like past moments in eternity. Thou from primeval nothingness didst call, First chaos, then existence. Lord! on Thee Eternity had its foundation; all Sprung forth from Thee:--of light, joy, harmony, Sole origin:--all life, all beauty Thine. Thy word created all, and doth create; Thy splendor fills all space with rays divine. Thou wert, and art, and shalt be! Glorious! Great! Light-giving, life-sustaining Potentate! Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround: Upheld by Thee, by Thee inspired with breath! Thou the beginning with the end has bound, And beautifully mingled life and death! As sparks mount upwards from the fiery blaze, So suns are born, so worlds spring forth from Thee; And as the spangles in the sunny rays Shine round the silver snow, the pageantry Of heaven's bright army glitters in Thy praise. A million torches lighted by Thy hand Wander unwearied through the blue abyss: They own Thy power, accomplish Thy command; All gay with life, all eloquent with bliss. What shall we call them? Piles of crystal light-- A glorious company of golden streams-- Lamps of celestial ether burning bright-- Suns lighting systems with their joyous beams? But Thou to these art as the noon to night. Yes, as a drop of water in the sea, All this magnificence in Thee is lost:-- What are ten thousand worlds compared to Thee? And what am _I_ then? Heaven's unnumber'd host, Though multiplied by myriads, and array'd in all the glory of sublimest thought; Is but an atom in the balance weighed Against Thy greatness; is a cypher brought Against infinity! What am I, then? Naught! Naught! But the effluence of Thy light divine, Pervading worlds, hath reach'd my bosom, too; Yes! In my spirit doth Thy spirit shine As shines the sunbeam in a drop of dew. Naught! But I live, and on hope's pinions fly Eager towards Thy presence; for in Thee I live, and breathe, and dwell; aspiring high, Even to the throne of Thy divinity. I am, O God! and surely _Thou_ must be! Thou art! directing, guiding all, Thou art! Direct my understanding then to Thee: Control my spirit, guide my wandering heart: Though but an atom midst immensity, Still I am something fashioned by Thy hand! I hold a middle rank 'twixt heaven and earth, On the last verge of mortal being stand, Close to the realms where angels have their birth, Just on the boundaries of the spirit-land! The chain of being is complete in me: In me is matter's last gradation lost, And the next step is spirit--Deity! I can command the lightning, and am dust! A monarch, and a slave; a worm, a god! Whence came I here, and how? so marvelously Constructed and conceived? Unknown! This clod Lives merely through some higher energy; For from itself alone it could not be! Creator, yes! Thy wisdom and thy word Created me! Thou source of light and good! Thou spirit of my spirit, and my Lord! Thy light, Thy love, in their bright plenitude Fill'd me with an immortal soul, to spring O'er the abyss of death, and bade it wear The garments of eternal day, and wing Its heavenly flight beyond this little sphere, Even to its source--to Thee--its author there. O thoughts ineffable! O visions blest! Though worthless our conceptions all of Thee, Yet shall Thy shadowed image fill our breast, And waft its homage to Thy Deity. God! Thus alone my lowly thoughts can soar; Thus seek Thy presence--Being wise and good! Midst Thy vast works admire, obey, adore; And when the tongue is eloquent no more, The soul shall speak in tears of gratitude. But the literary activity of Katherine II.'s reign was not confined to its two most brilliant representatives--Von Vízin and Derzhávin; many less prominent writers, belonging to different parties and branches of literature, were diligently at work. Naturally, there was as yet too little independent Russian literature to permit of the existence of criticism, or the establishment of a fixed standard of taste. Among the worthy writers of the second class in that brilliant era, were Kheraskóff, Bogdanóvitch, Khémnitzer, and Kápnist. Mikháil Matvyéevitch Kheraskóff (1733-1801), the author of the epic "The Rossiad," and of other less noteworthy works, was known during his lifetime only to the very restricted circle of his friends. In his convictions and views on literature he belonged to the epoch of Lomonósoff and Sumarókoff; by birth and education to the highest nobility. More faithfully than any other writer of his century does Kheraskóff represent the pseudo-classical style in Russian epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry, for he wrote all sorts of things, including sentimental novels. To the classical enthusiasts of his day he seemed the "Russian Homer," and his long poems, "The Rossiad" (1789) and "Vladímir" (1786), were confidently believed to be immortal, being the first tolerable specimens of the epic style in Russian literature. In twelve long cantos he celebrates the capture of Kazán by Iván the Terrible in "The Rossiad." "Vladímir" (eighteen cantos) celebrates the Christianizing of Russia by Prince-Saint Vladímir. Ippolít Feódorovitch Bogdanóvitch (1743-1803), who was developed under the immediate supervision and patronage of Kheraskóff, belonged, by education and his comprehension of elegance and of poetry, to a later epoch--on the borderland between pseudo-classicism and the succeeding period, which was ruled by sentimentalism. His well-known poem, "Dúshenka" ("Dear Little Soul"), was the first light epic Russian poem, with simple, intelligible language, and with a jesting treatment of a gay, playful subject. This subject Bogdanóvitch borrowed from La Fontaine's novel, "The Loves of Psyche and Cupid," which, in turn, was borrowed from Apuleius. The third writer of this group, Iván Ivánovitch Khémnitzer (1745-1784), the son of a German physician, was unknown during his lifetime; enjoyed no literary fame, and cared for none, regarding his capacities and productions as unworthy of notice. In 1779, at the instigation of his friends, he published a collection of his "Fables and Tales." At this time there existed not a single tolerable specimen of the fable in Russian; but by the time literary criticism did justice to Khémnitzer's work, Karamzín, and Dmítrieff had become the favorites of the public, and Khémnitzer's productions circulated chiefly among the lower classes, for whom his Fables are still published. His works certainly aided Dmítrieff and Krylóff in handling this new branch of poetical literature in Russia. His "The Metaphysician" still remains one of the greatest favorites among Russian fables for cultivated readers of all classes. Briefly told, the contents of "The Metaphysician" are as follows: A father, who had heard that children were sent beyond sea to be educated, and that those so reared were more respected than those brought up at home, determined, being wealthy, to send his son thither. The son, despite his studies, from being stupid when he went, returned more stupid than before, having fallen into the clutches of educational quacks, of whom there is no lack. Aforetime, he had babbled stupidities simply, but now he began to expound such things in learned wise; aforetime, only the stupid had failed to understand him, now he was beyond the comprehension of the wise. The whole house, and town, and world were bored to death with his chatter. He was possessed with a mania for searching out the cause of everything. With his wits thus woolgathering as he walked, he one day suddenly tumbled into a pit. His father, who chanced to be with him, rushed off to get a rope, wherewith to drag out "his household wisdom." Meanwhile, his thoughtful child, as he sat in the pit, reasoned with himself as to what might be the cause of his fall, and came to the conclusion that it was an earthquake; also, that his sudden flight into the pit might create an atmospheric pressure, from the earth and the pit, which would wipe out the seven planets. The father rushed up with a rope. "Here's a rope for you," says he, "catch hold of it. I'll drag you out; look out that you don't fall off!" "No, wait; don't pull me out yet; tell me first, what sort of a thing is a rope?" "Although the father was not learned, he was gifted by nature with common sense," winds up the fable. Another, called "The Skinflint," runs thus: "There was once a Skinflint, who had a vast amount of money. And, as he was wont to say, he had grown rich, Not by crooked deeds. Not by stealing or ruining men. No, he took his oath to that: That God had sent all this wealth to his house, And that he feared not, in the least, to be convicted of injustice towards his neighbor. And to please the Lord for this, His mercy, And to incline Him unto favors in time to come-- Or, possibly, just to soothe his conscience-- The Skinflint took it into his head to build a house for the poor. The house was built, and almost finished. My Skinflint, gazing at it, Beside himself with joy, cheers up and reasons with himself. How great a service he to the poor hath rendered, in ordering a refuge to be built for them! Thus was my Skinflint inwardly exulting over his house. Then one of his acquaintances chanced along. The Skinflint said, with rapture, to his friend, 'I think a great lot of the poor can be housed here!' 'Of course, a great many can live here; But you cannot get in all whom you've sent wandering homeless o'er the earth!'" One of Khémnitzer's most intimate friends, and also one of the most notable members of Derzhávin's circle (being related to the latter through his wife), was Vasíly Vasílievitch Kápnist (1757-1824), whose ancestors had been members of an Italian family, the Counts Capnissi. He owed his fame chiefly to his ode on "Slavery" (1783); to another, "On the Extirpation in Russia of the Vocation of Slave by the Empress Katherine II." (1786); and to a whole series celebrating the conquests of the Russian arms in Turkey and Italy. But far more important are his elegies and short lyrics, many of which are really very light and graceful; and his translations of "The Monument," from Horace, which was quite equal to Derzhávin's, or even Púshkin's. His masterpiece was the comedy "Yábeda" (Calumny), which was written probably at the end of Katherine's reign, and was printed under Paul I., in 1798. It contains a sharp condemnation of the morals in the provincial courts of justice, and of the incredible processes of chicanery and bribery through which every business matter was forced to pass. The types which Kápnist put on the stage, especially the pettifogger Právoloff, and the types of the presiding judge and members of the bench, were very accurately drawn, and can hardly fail to have been taken from life. Alarmed by the numerous persecutions of literary men which took place during the last years of Katherine II.'s reign, Kápnist dared not publish his comedy until the accession of the Emperor Paul I., when he dedicated it to the Emperor, and set forth in a poetical preface the entire harmlessness of his satire. But even this precaution was of no avail. The comedy created a tremendous uproar and outcry from officialdom in general; the Emperor was petitioned to prohibit the piece, and to administer severe punishment to the "unpatriotic" author. The Emperor is said to have taken the petition in good faith and to have ordered that Kápnist be dispatched forthwith to Siberia. But after dinner his wrath cooled (the petitioners had even declared that the comedy flagrantly jeered at the monarchical power), and he began to doubt the justice of his command. He ordered the piece to be played that very evening in the Hermitage Theater (in the Winter Palace). Only he and the Grand Duke Alexander (afterwards Alexander I.), were present at the performance. After the first act the Emperor, who had applauded incessantly, sent the first state courier he could put his hand on to bring Kápnist back on the instant. He richly rewarded the author on the latter's return, and showed him favor until he died. Another amusing testimony to the lifelikeness of Kápnist's types is narrated by an eye-witness. "I happened," says this witness, "in my early youth, to be present at a representation of 'Calumny' in a provincial capital; and when Khvatáïko (Grabber), sang, 'Take, there's no great art in that; Take whatever you can get; What are hands appended to us for If not that we may take, take, take?' all the spectators began to applaud, and many of them, addressing the official who occupied the post corresponding to that of Grabber, shouted his name in unison, and cried, 'That's you! That's you!'" Towards the end of Katherine II.'s reign, a new school, which numbered many young writers, arose. At the head of it, by reason of his ability as a journalist, literary man, poet, and savant, stood Nikolái Mikháilovitch Karamzín (1766-1826). Karamzín was descended from a Tatár princeling, Karamurza, who accepted Christianity in the days of the Tzars of Moscow. He did much to disseminate in society a discriminating taste in literature, and more accurate views in regard to it. During the first half of his sixty years' activity--that under Katherine II.--he was a poet and literary man; during the latter and most considerable part of his career--under Alexander I.--he was a historian. His first work to win him great renown was his "Letters of a Russian Traveler," written after a trip lasting a year and a half to Germany, Switzerland, France, and England, begun in 1789, and published in the "Moscow Journal," which he established in 1791. For the next twelve years Karamzín devoted himself exclusively to journalism and literature. It was his most brilliant literary period, and during it his labors were astonishing in quantity and varied in subject, as the taste of the majority of readers in that period demanded. During this period he was not only a journalist, but also a poet, literary man, and critic. His poetical compositions are rather shallow, and monotonous in form, but were highly esteemed by his contemporaries. They are interesting at the present day chiefly because of their historical and biographical details, as a chronicle of history, and of the heart of a profoundly sincere man. Their themes are, generally, the love of nature, of country life, friendship; together with gentleness, sensibility, melancholy, scorn for rank and wealth, dreams of immortality with posterity. His greatest successes with the public were secured by "Poor Liza," and "Natálya, the Boyár's Daughter," which served as much-admired models for sentimentalism to succeeding generations. Sentimentality was no novelty in Russia; it had come in with translations from English novels, such as Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe," and the like; and imitations of them in Russia. "Sensibility" was held to be the highest quality in human nature, and a man's--much more a woman's--worth was measured by the amount of "sensibility" he or she possessed. This new school paid scant heed to the observation and study of real life. An essential tenet in the cult consisted of a glorification of the distant past, "the good old times," adorned by fancy, as the ideal model for the present; the worship of the poor but honest country folk, the ideal of equality, freedom, happiness, and nearness to nature. Of this style, Karamzín's "Poor Liza" is the most perfect and admired specimen. Liza, a poor country lass, is "beautiful in body and soul," supremely gifted with tenderness and sensibility. Erást, a wealthy noble, possessed of exceptional brains and a kind heart, but weak and trifling by nature, falls in love with her. He begins to dream of the idyllic past, "in which people strolled, care-free, through the meadows, bathed in crystal clear pools, kissed like turtle-doves, reposed amid roses and myrtle, and passed their days in happy idleness." So he feels himself summoned to the embrace of nature, and determines to abandon the high society, for a while at least. He even goes so far as to assure Liza that it is possible for him to marry her, despite the immense difference in their social stations; that "an innocent soul, gifted with sensibility, is the most important thing of all, and Liza will ever be the nearest of all persons to his heart." But he betrays her, involuntarily. When she becomes convinced of his treachery, she throws herself into a pond hard by, beneath the ancient oaks which but a short time before had witnessed their joys. "Natálya, the Boyár's Daughter," is a glorification of a fanciful past, far removed from reality, in which "Russians were Russians"; and against this background, Karamzín sets a tale, even simpler and more innocent, of the love of Natálya and Alexéi, with whom Natálya falls in love, "in one minute, on beholding him for the first time, and without ever having heard a single word about him." These stories, and Karamzín's "Letters of a Russian Traveler," already referred to, had an astonishing success; people even learned them by heart, and the heroes of them became the favorite ideals of the young; while the pool where Liza was represented as having drowned herself (near the Simónoff Monastery, in the suburbs of Moscow) became the goal for the rambles of those who were also "gifted with sensibility." The appearance of these tales is said to have greatly increased the taste for reading in society, especially among women. Although Karamzín did not possess the gift of artistic creation, and although the imaginative quality is very deficient in his works, his writings pleased people as the first successful attempts at light literature. In his assumption that people should write as they talked, Karamzín entirely departed from Lomonósoff's canons as to the three styles permissible, and thereby imparted the final impulse to the separation of the Russian literary language from the bookish, Church-Slavonic diction. His services in the reformation and improvement of the Russian literary language were very important, despite the violent opposition he encountered from the old conservative literary party.[6] When Alexander I. ascended the throne, in 1801, Karamzín turned his attention to history. In 1802 he founded the "European Messenger" (which is still the leading monthly magazine of Russia), and began to publish in it historical articles which were, in effect, preparatory to his extended and famous "History of the Russian Empire," published in 1818, fine in style, but not accurate, in the modern sense of historical work. Karamzín's nearest followers, the representatives of the sentimental tendency in literature, and of the writers who laid the foundations for the new literary language and style, were Dmítrieff and Ózeroff. Iván Ivánovitch Dmítrieff (1760-1810), and Vladisláff Alexándrovitch Ózeroff (1769-1816), both enjoyed great fame in their day. Dmítrieff, while under the guidance of Karamzín, making sentimentalism the ruling feature in Russian epic and lyric poetry, perfected both the general style of Russian verse, and the material of the light, poetical language. Ózeroff, under the same influence and tendency, aided in the final banishment from the Russian stage of pseudo-classical ideals and dramatic compositions constructed according to theoretical rules. Dmítrieff's most prominent literary work was a translation of La Fontaine's Fables, and some satirical writings. Ózeroff, in 1798, put on the stage his first, and not entirely successful, tragedy, "Yáropolk and Olég."[7] His most important work, both from the literary and the historical points of view--although not so regarded by his contemporaries--was his drama "Fingal," founded on Ossian's Songs, and is a triumph of northern poetry and of the Russian tongue, rich in picturesqueness, daring, and melody. His contemporaries regarded "Dmítry Donskóy" as his masterpiece, although in reality it is one of the least noteworthy of his compositions, and it enjoyed a brilliant success. But the most extreme and talented disciples of the Karamzín school were Vasíly Andréevitch Zhukóvsky (1783-1852) and Konstantín Nikoláevitch Bátiushkoff (1786-1855), who offer perfectly clear examples of the transition from the sentimental to the new romantic school, which began with Púshkin. Everything of Zhukóvsky's that was original, that is to say, not translated, was an imitation, either of the solemn, bombastic productions of the preceding poets of the rhetorical school, or of the tender, dreamy, melancholy works of the sentimental school, until he devoted himself to translations from the romantic German and English schools. He was not successful in his attempts to create original Russian work in the romantic vein; and his chief services to Russian literature (despite the great figure he played in it during his day) must be regarded as having consisted in giving romanticism a chance to establish itself firmly on Russian soil; and in having, by his splendid translations, among them Schiller's "Maid of Orleans," Byron's "The Prisoner of Chillon," and de la Mott Fouqué's "Undine," brought Russian literature into close relations with a whole mass of literary models, enlarged the sphere of literary criticism, and definitively deprived pseudo-classical theories and models of all force and influence. Zhukóvsky's own history and career were romantic. He was the son of a wealthy landed proprietor named Búnin, who already had eleven children; when his peasants, on setting out for Rumyántzoff's army as sutlers, asked their owner, "What shall we bring thee from the Turkish land, little father?" Búnin replied, in jest, "Bring me a couple of pretty Turkish lasses; you see my wife is growing old." The peasants took him at his word, and brought two young Turkish girls, who had been captured at the siege of Bender. The elder, Salkha, aged sixteen, first served as nurse to Búnin's daughters. In 1783, shortly after seven of his children had died within a short time of each other, she bore him a son, who was adopted by one of his friends, a member of the petty nobility, Búnin's daughter standing as godmother to the child, and his wife receiving it into the family, and rearing it like a son, in memory of her dead, only son. This baby was the future poet Zhukóvsky. When Búnin died, he bequeathed money to the child, and his widow and daughters gave him the best of educations. Zhukóvsky began to print bits of melancholy poetry while he was still at the university preparatory school. When he became closely acquainted with Karamzín (1803-1804), he came under the latter's influence so strongly that the stamp remained upon all the productions of the first half of his career, the favorite "Svyetlána" (Amaryllis), written in 1811, being a specimen. In 1812 Zhukóvsky served in the army, and wrote his poem "The Bard in the Camp of the Russian Warriors,"[8] which brought him more fame than all his previous work, being adapted to the spirit of the time, and followed it up with other effusions, which made much more impression on his contemporaries than they have on later readers. But even in his most brilliant period, the great defect of Zhukóvsky's poetry was a total lack of coloring or close connection with the Russian soil, which he did not understand, and did not particularly love. His poetical "Epistle to Alexander I. after the Capture of Paris, in 1824," he sent in manuscript to the Emperor's mother, the Empress Márya Feódorovna. The result was, that the Empress ordered it printed in luxurious style, at government expense, had him presented to her, and made him her reader. He was regarded as a great poet, became a close friend of the imperial family, tutor to the Grand Duchess Alexándra Feódorovna (wife of Nikolái Pávlovitch, afterwards the Emperor Nicholas I.), and his fortune was assured. His career during the last twenty-five years of his life, beginning with 1817, belongs to history rather than to literature. In 1853, wealthy, loaded with imperial favors, richly pensioned, he went abroad, and settled in Baden-Baden, where he married (being at the time sixty years of age, while his bride was nineteen), and never returned to Russia. During the last eleven years of his semi-invalid life, with disordered nerves, he approached very close to mysticism.[9] Bátiushkoff, as a poet, was the exact opposite of Zhukóvsky, being the first to grasp the real significance of the mood of the ancient classical poets, and to appropriate not only their views on life and enjoyment, but even their plastic and thoroughly artistic mode of expression. While Zhukóvsky removed poetry from earth and rendered it ethereal, Bátiushkoff fixed it to earth and gave it a body, demonstrating all the entrancing charm of tangible reality. Yet, in language, point of view, and literary affiliations, he belongs, like Zhukóvsky, to the school of Karamzín. But his versification, his subject-matter are entirely independent of all preceding influences. In beauty of versification and plastic worth, Bátiushkoff had no predecessors in Russian literature, and no competitors in the school of Karamzín. He was of ancient, noble family, well educated, and began to publish at the age of eighteen. We now come, chronologically, to a writer who cannot be assigned either to the old sentimental school of Karamzín, or to the new romantic school of which Púshkin was the first and greatest exponent in Russian literature; to a man who stood apart, in a lofty place, all his own, both during his lifetime and in all Russian literary history; whose name is known to every Russian who can read and write, and whose work enjoys in Russia that popularity which the Odyssey did among the ancient Greeks. Iván Andréevitch Krylóff (1763-1844) began his literary work almost simultaneously with Karamzín, but was not, in the slightest degree, influenced by the style which the latter introduced into Russian literature; and bore himself in no less distant and hostile a manner to the rising romantic school of Púshkin. He was the son of an army officer, who was afterwards in the civil service, a very competent, intelligent man, who left his family in dire poverty at his death. At the age of fifteen, Krylóff produced his first, and very creditable, specimen of his future talent, though obliged, by extreme need, to enter government service at the age of fourteen, at his father's death. He filled several positions in different places at a very meager salary, until the death of his mother (1788), when he resigned and determined to devote himself exclusively to literature. He engaged in journalistic work, became an editor, and soon published a paper of his own. But his real sphere was that of fabulist. In 1803 he offered his first three fables, partly translated, partly worked over from La Fontaine, and from the moment of their publication, his fame as a writer of fables began to grow. But he wrote two comedies and a fairy-opera before, in 1808, he finally devoted himself to fables, to which branch of literature he remained faithful as long as he lived. By 1811-1812 his fables were so popular that he was granted a government pension, and became a member of the Empress Márya Feódorovna's circle of court poets and literary men. From 1812-1840, or later, Krylóff had an easy post in the Imperial Public Library, and in the course of forty years, wrote about two hundred fables. He is known to have been extremely indolent and untidy; but all his admirers, and even his enemies, recognized in him a power which not one of his predecessors in the literary sphere had possessed--a power which was thoroughly national, bound in the closest manner to the Russian soil. His fables bear an almost family likeness to the proverbs, aphorisms, adages, and tales produced by the wisdom of the masses, and are quite in their spirit. All the Russian poets had tried their hand at that favorite form of poetic composition--the fable--ever since its introduction from western Europe, in the eighteenth century; and Krylóff's success called forth innumerable imitators. But up to that time, out of all the sorts of poetry existing in Russian literature, only the fable, thanks to Krylóff, had become, in full measure, the organ of nationality, both in spirit and in language; and these two qualities his fables possess in the most profound, national meaning of the term. His language is peculiar to himself. He was the first who dared to speak to Russian society, enervated by the harmonious, regular prose of Karamzín, in the rather rough vernacular of the masses, which was, nevertheless, energetic, powerful, and contained no foreign admixture, or any exclusively bookish elements. One of the most popular of his fables, to which allusion is often made in Russian literature and conversation, is "Demyán's Fish-Soup." The manner in which the lines are rhymed in the original is indicated by corresponding figures. DEMYÁN'S FISH-SOUP "Neighbor, dear, my light! (1) Eat, I pray thee." (2) "Neighbor, dear, I'm full to the throat,"--"No matter. (1) Another little plateful; hearken: (2) This fish soup, I assure you, is gloriously cooked." (3) "Three platefuls have I eaten."--"O, stop that, why keep count, (4) If only you feel like it, (4) Why, eat and health be yours: eat to the bottom! (3) What fish-soup! and how rich in fat (3) As though with amber covered. (3) Enjoy yourself, dear friend! (5) Here's tender bream, pluck, a bit of sterlet here! Just another little spoonful! Come, urge him, wife!" In this wise did neighbor Demyán neighbor Fóka entertain. And let him neither breathe nor rest; But sweat from Fóka long had poured in streams. Yet still another plateful doth he take, Collects his final strength--and cleans up everything. "Now, that's the sort of friend I like!" Demyán did shout: "But I can't bear the stuck-up; come, eat another plateful, my dear fellow!" Thereupon, my poor Fóka, Much as he loved fish-soup, yet from such a fate, In his arms seizing his girdle and his cap-- Rushed madly, quickly home, And since that day, hath never more set foot in Demyán's house. Writer, thou art lucky if the real gift thou hast, But if thou dost not know enough to hold thy peace in time, And dost not spare thy neighbor's ears, Then must thou know, that both thy prose and verse, To all will prove more loathsome than Demyán's fish-soup. Another good specimen is called: THE SWAN, THE PIKE, AND THE CRAB When partners cannot agree, their affair will not work smoothly, And torment, not business, will be the outcome. Once on a time, the Swan, the Crab, and the Pike, Did undertake to haul a loaded cart, And all three hitched themselves thereto; They strained their every nerve, but still the cart budged not. And yet, the load seemed very light for them; But towards the clouds the Swan did soar, Backwards the Crab did march, While the Pike made for the stream. Which of them was wrong, which right, 'tis not our place to judge. Only, the cart doth stand there still. We have seen that Lomonósoff began the task of rendering the modern Russian language adaptable to all the needs of prose and verse; and that the writers who followed him, notably Karamzín, contributed their share to this great undertaking. Púshkin practically completed it and molded the hitherto somewhat harsh and awkward forms into an exquisite medium for every requirement of literature. Alexánder Sergyéevitch Púshkin (1799-1837), still holds the undisputed leadership for simplicity, realism, absolute fidelity to life, and he was the first worthy forerunner of the great men whose names are world-synonyms at the present day for those qualities. Almost every writer who preceded him had been more or less devoted to translations and servile copies of foreign literature. Against these, and the mock-classicism of the French pattern, which then ruled Europe, he waged relentless battle. He vitalized Russian literature by establishing its foundations firmly on Russian soil; by employing her native traditions, life, and sentiment as subjects and inspiration, in place of the worn-out conventionalities of foreign invention. The result is a product of the loftiest truth, as well as of the loftiest art. His ancestors were nobles who occupied important posts under Peter the Great. His mother was a granddaughter of Hannibal, the negro of whom Púshkin wrote under the title of "Peter the Great's Arab." This Hannibal was a slave who had been brought from Africa to Constantinople, where the Russian ambassador purchased him, and sent him to Peter the Great. The latter took a great fancy to him, had him baptized, and would not allow his brothers to ransom him, but sent him, at the age of eighteen, abroad to be educated. On his return, Peter kept his favorite always beside him. Under the reign of the Empress Anna Ioánnovna he was exiled to Siberia, in company with other court favorites of former reigns; and like them, returned to Russia, and was loaded with favors by Peter's daughter, the Empress Elizabeth. His son was a distinguished general of Katherine II.'s day. Púshkin, the poet, had blue eyes, and very fair skin and hair, but the whole cast of his countenance in his portraits is negro. His father was a typical society man, and in accordance with the fashion of the day, Púshkin was educated exclusively by French tutors at home, and his first writings (at the age of ten) were in French, and imitated from writers of that nation. When his father retired from the military service, he settled in Moscow, and the boy knew all the literary men of that day and town before he was twelve years of age, and there can be no doubt that this literary atmosphere had a great influence upon him. When, at the age of twelve, he was placed in the newly founded Lyceum,[10] at Tzárskoe Seló (sixteen miles from St. Petersburg), whence so many famous men were afterwards graduated, he and the other pupils amused themselves in their play hours by writing a little newspaper, and by other literary pursuits. Here the lad was compelled to learn Russian, and the first use he made of it was to write caustic epigrams. At the school examination in 1815, the aged poet Derzhávin was among the visitors; and when he heard the boy read his "Memories of Tzárskoe Seló," he at once predicted his coming greatness. As is natural at his age, there was not much originality of idea in the poem; but it was amazing for its facility and mastery of poetic forms. Karamzín and Zhukóvsky were not long in adding their testimony to the lad's genius, and the latter even acquired the habit of submitting his own poems to the young poet's judgment. Púshkin was an omnivorous reader, but his parents had never been pleased with his progress in his studies, or regarded him as clever. The praise of competent judges now opened their eyes; but he had a good deal to endure from his father, later on, in spite of this. At this period, Púshkin imitated the most varied poetical forms with wonderful delicacy, and yielded to the most diverse poetical moods. But even then he was entering on a new path, whose influence on later Russian literature was destined to be incalculably great. While still a school-boy, he began to write his famous fantastic-romantic poem, "Ruslán and Liudmíla" (which Glínka afterwards made the subject of a charming opera), and here, for the first time in Russian literary history, a thoroughly national theme was handled with a freedom and naturalness which dealt the death-blow to the prevailing inflated, rhetorical style. The subject of the poem was one of the folk-legends, of which he had been fond as a child; and when it was published, in 1820, the critics were dumb with amazement. The gay, even dissipated, society life which he took up on leaving the Lyceum came to a temporary end in consequence of some biting epigrams which he wrote. The Prefect of St. Petersburg called him to account for his attacks on prominent people, and transferred him from the ministry of foreign affairs to southern Russia--in fact, to polite exile--giving him a corresponding position in another department of the government. For four years (1820-1824) he lived chiefly in southern Russia, including the Crimea and the Caucasus, and wrote, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," "The Fountain of Baktchesarái," "The Gypsies," and a part of his famous "Evgény Onyégin," being, at this period, strongly influenced by Byron, as the above-mentioned poems and the short lyrics of the same period show. Again his life and his poetry were changed radically by a caustic but witty and amusing epigram on his uncongenial official superior in Odessa; and on the latter's complaint to headquarters--the complaint being as neat as the epigram, in its way--Púshkin was ordered to reside on one of the paternal estates, in the government of Pskoff. Here, under the influence of his old nurse, Arína Rodiónovna, and her folk-tales, he became thoroughly and definitively Russian, and entered at last on his real career--poetry which was truly national in spirit. His talents were now completely matured. His wonderfully developed harmony of versification has never been approached by any later poet, except, in places, by Lérmontoff. Quite peculiar to himself, at that day--and even much later--are his vivid delineations of character, and his simple but startlingly lifelike and truthful pictures of every-day life. If his claim to immortality rested on no other foundation than these, it would still be incontestable, for all previous Russian writers had scorned such commonplaces. In 1826 he returned to the capital, having been restored to favor, and resumed his gay life, which on the whole, had a deleterious influence on his talents. In 1831 he married a very beautiful and extravagant woman, after which he was constantly in financial distress, his own social ambitions and lavish expenditure being equally well developed with the same tastes in his wife. His inclination to write poetry was destroyed. He took to historical research, wrote a "History of Pugatchéff's Rebellion," and a celebrated tale, "The Captain's Daughter" (the scene of the latter being laid in the same epoch), and other stories. In these, almost simultaneously with Gógol, he laid the foundations for the vivid, modern school of the Russian novel. He was killed in a duel with Baron George Hekkeren-Dantes, who had been persecuting his wife with unwelcome attentions, in January, 1837. Baron Hekkeren-Dantes died only a year or two ago. As a school-boy he had instinctively turned into a new path, that of national Russian literature. For this national service, and because he was the first to realize the poetic ideal, his countrymen adored him. To the highest external elegance and the most exquisite beauty, he fitly wedded inward force and wealth of thought, in the most incomparable manner. His finest effort, "Evgény Onyégin" (1822-1829), exhibits the poet in the process of development, from the Byronic stage to the vigorous independence of a purely national writer. The hero, Evgény Onyégin, begins as a society young man of the period; that is to say, he was inevitably a Byronic character. His father's death calls him from the dissipations of the capital to the quiet life of a country estate. He regards his neighbors as his inferiors, both in culture and social standing, and for a long time will have nothing to do with them. At last, rather accidentally, he strikes up a friendship with Lénsky, a congenial spirit, a young poet, who has had the advantage of foreign education, the son of one of the neighbors. Olga Lárin, the young daughter of another neighbor, has long been betrothed to Lénsky, and the latter naturally introduces Onyégin to her family. Olga's elder sister, Tatyána, promptly falls in love with Onyégin, and in a letter, which is always quoted as one of the finest passages in Russian literature, and the most perfect portrait of the noble Russian woman's soul, she declares her love for him. Onyégin politely snubs her, lecturing her in a fatherly way, and no one is informed of the occurrence, except Tatyána's old nurse, who, though stupid, is absolutely devoted to her, and does not betray the knowledge which she has, involuntarily, acquired. Not long afterwards, Tatyána's name-day festival is celebrated by a dinner, at which Onyégin is present, being urged thereto by Lénsky. He goes, chiefly, that no comment may arise from any abrupt change of his ordinary friendly manners. The family, ignorant of what has happened between him and Tatyána, and innocently scheming to bring them together, place him opposite her at dinner. Angered by this, he revenges himself on the wholly innocent Lénsky, by flirting outrageously with Olga (the wedding-day is only a fortnight distant), and Olga, being as vain and weak as she is pretty, does her share. The result is, that Lénsky challenges Onyégin to a duel, and the seconds insist that it must be fought, though Onyégin would gladly apologize. He kills Lénsky, unintentionally, and immediately departs on his travels. Olga speedily consoles herself, and marries a handsome officer. Tatyána, a girl of profound feelings, remains inconsolable, refuses all offers of marriage, and at last, yielding to the entreaties of her anxious relatives, consents to spend a season in Moscow. As a wall-flower, at her first ball, she captivates a wealthy prince, of very high standing in St. Petersburg, and is persuaded by her parents to marry him. When Onyégin returns to the capital he finds the little country girl, whose love he had scorned, one of the greatest ladies at the court and in society; and he falls madly in love with her. Her cold indifference galls him, and increases his love. He writes three letters, to which she does not reply. Then he forces himself into her boudoir and finds her reading one of his letters and weeping over it. She then confesses that she loves him still, but dismisses him with the assurance that she will remain true to her noble and loving husband. Tatyána is regarded as one of the finest, most vividly faithful portraits of the genuine Russian woman in all Russian literature; while Olga is considered fully her equal, as a type, and in popular sympathy; and the other characters are almost equally good in their various lines. Besides a host of beautiful lyric poems, Púshkin left several dramatic fragments: "The Rusálka" or "Water Nymph," on which Dargomýzhsky founded a beautiful opera, "The Stone Guest,"[11] "The Miserly Knight," and chief of all, and like "Evgény Onyégin," epoch-making in its line, the historical dramatic fragment "Borís Godunóff." This founded a school in Russian dramatic writing. It is impossible to do justice in translation to the exquisite lyrics; but the following soliloquy, from "Borís Godunóff," will serve to show Púshkin's power in blank verse. Borís Godunóff, brother-in-law to the Tzar Feódor Mikháilovitch, has at last reached the goal of his ambition, and mounted the throne, at what cost his own speech shows: Scene: The Imperial Palace. The Tzar enters: I've reached the height of power; 'Tis six years now that I have reigned in peace; But there's no happiness within my soul. Is it not thus--in youth we thirst and crave The joy of love; but once that we have quenched Our hungry heart with brief possession, We're tired, and cold, and weary on the instant! The sorcerers in vain predict long life; And promise days of undisturbed power. Nor power, nor life, nor aught can cheer my heart; My soul forebodeth heaven's wrath and woe. I am not happy. I did think to still With plenty and with fame my people here; To win for aye their love by bounties free. But vain are all my cares and empty toils: A living power is hated by the herd; They love the dead alone, only the dead. What fools we are, when popular applause, Or the loud shout of masses thrills our heart! God sent down famine on this land of ours; The people howled, gave up the ghost in torment; I threw the granaries open, and my gold I showered upon them; sought out work for them. Made mad by suffering, they turned and cursed me! By conflagrations were their homes destroyed; I built for them their dwellings fair and new; And they accused me--said I had set the fires! That's the Lord's judgment;--seek its love who will! Then dreamed I bliss in mine own home to find; I thought to make my daughter blest in wedlock: Death, like a whirlwind, snatched her betrothed away, And rumor craftily insinuates That I am author of my own child's widowhood:-- I, I, unhappy father that I am! Let a man die--I am his secret slayer. I hastened on the death of Féodor; I gave my sister, the Tzarítza, poison; I poisoned her, the lovely nun,--still I! Ah, yes, I know it: naught can give us calm, Amid the sorrows of this present world; Conscience alone, mayhap: Thus, when 'tis pure, it triumphs O'er bitter malice, o'er dark calumny; But if there be in it a single stain, One, only one, by accident contracted, Why then, all's done; as with foul plague The soul consumes, the heart is filled with gall, Reproaches beat, like hammers, in the ears, The man turns sick, his head whirls dizzily, And bloody children float before my eyes.[12] I'd gladly flee--yet whither? Horrible! Yea, sad his state, whose conscience is not clean. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. How did the reign of Katherine II. mark a distinct advance in the development of Russian literature? 2. Describe the literary activities of Katherine II. 3. Who was Princess Dáshkoff? 4. Describe the early life and character of Von Vízin. 5. What qualities did he show in his play "The Brigadier"? 6. How did the characters in his "The Hobbledehoy" compare with those in the plays of Katherine II.? 7. Give an account of this play. 8. Give the chief events in the life of Derzhávin. 9. Why is he especially worthy to be remembered? 10. What are some of the beautiful thoughts in the ode "God"? 11. How was Kheraskóff regarded in his own day? 12. What was the character of Bogdanóvitch's poem, "Dúshenka"? 13. What influence had the fables of Khémnitzer? 14. Give examples of them. 15. What incidents show the effect of his comedy "Calumny"? 16. Give an account of the life of Karamzín. 17. Give examples of the character of some of his sentimental tales. 18. What real services did he render to Russian literature? 19. What importance had Dmítrieff and Ózeroff? 20. How did the translations of German and French writers, made by Zhukóvsky, affect the literary ideals of his time? 21. Give the chief facts in the life of Krylóff. 22. Give examples of his fables. 23. Describe the ancestry and early life of Púshkin. 24. What is his position in Russian literature? 25. How were his talents shown in Evgény Onyégin? 26. What is the character of the soliloquy from Borís Godunóff? BIBLIOGRAPHY _The Memoirs of the Empress Katherine II._ Written by herself. _The Princess Dáshkoff._ Memoirs written by herself, and containing letters of the Empress Katherine II. _Original Fables._ Krylóff. (The translation by Mr. Harrison, London, 1884, is regarded as the best of the twelve translations of Krylóff's works.) _Specimens from the Russian Poets._ 2 volumes. By Sir John Bowring. Specimens of poetry from Lomonósoff through Zhukóvsky. _Prose Tales._ Alexánder Púshkin. Translated by T. Keane. _Translations from Púshkin, in Memory of the Hundredth Anniversary of the Poet's Birthday._ C. E. Turner. FOOTNOTES: [5] I take this translation from Sir John Bowring's "Specimens of the Russian Poets," rather than attempt a metrical translation myself. It is reasonably close to the original--as close as most metrical translations are--and gives the spirit extremely well. Sir John Bowring adds the following footnote: "This is the poem of which Golovnin says in his narrative, that it has been rendered into Japanese, by order of the emperor, and hung up, embroidered in gold, in the Temple of Jeddo. I learn from the periodicals that an honor somewhat similar has been done in China to the same poem. It has been translated into the Chinese and Tartar languages, written on a piece of rich silk, and suspended in the imperial palace at Pekin." There are several editions of Sir John's book, the one here used being the second, 1821; but the author admits that in the first edition he stretched the poetic license further than he had a right to do, in this first verse. The book is now rare, but this statement will serve as a warning to those who may happen upon the first edition. [6] Karamzín's youngest daughter, by his second marriage, was alive when I was in Russia,--a charming old lady. She gave me her own copy of her "favorite book," a volume (in French) by Khomyakóff, very rare and difficult to obtain; and in discussing literary matters, wound up thus: "They may say what they will about the new men, but no one ever wrote such a beautiful style as my dear papa!" I also knew some of Ózeroff's relatives. [7] Pronounced Alyóg. [8] A translation of this--which is too long to quote here--may be found in Sir John Bowring's "Specimens of the Russian Poets," Vol. II. [9] These imperial favors and pensions were continued to his children. His son, an artist, regularly visited Russia as the guest of Alexander III. I met him on two occasions and was enabled to judge of his father's charms of mind and manner. [10] This building still exists, with its garden alluded to in the "Memories." But though it still bears its name, it is connected by a glazed gallery with the old palace, famous chiefly as Katherine II.'s residence, across the street; and it is used for suites of apartments, allotted for summer residence to certain courtiers. The exact arrangement of the rooms in Púshkin's day is not now known. [11] "The Stone Guest" is founded on the Don Juan legend, like the familiar opera "Don Giovanni." Músorgsky set it to music, in sonorous, Wagnerian recitative style (though the style was original with him, not copied from Wagner, who came later). It is rarely given in public, but I had the pleasure of hearing it rendered by famous artists, accompanied by the composer Balakíreff, at the house of a noted art and musical critic in St. Petersburg. [12] The reference is to Godunóff's presumptive share in the murder, at Úglitch, of Iván the Terrible's infant heir, the Tzarévitch Dmítry. CHAPTER VIII SEVENTH PERIOD, FROM PÚSHKIN TO THE WRITERS OF THE FORTIES. Even Karamzín's vast influence on his contemporaries cannot be compared with that exercised by Púshkin on the literature of the '20's and '30's of the nineteenth century; and no Russian writer ever effected so mighty a change in literature as Púshkin. Among other things, his influence brought to life many powerful and original talents, which would not have ventured to enter the literary career without Púshkin's friendly support and encouragement. He was remarkably amiable in his relations with all contemporary writers (except certain journalists in St. Petersburg and Moscow), and treated with especial respect three poets of his day, Délvig, Baratýnsky, and Yázykoff. He even exaggerated their merits, exalting the work of the last two above his own, and attributing great significance to Délvig's most insignificant poems and articles. Hence their names have become so closely connected with his, that it is almost impossible to mention him without mentioning them. Baron Antón Antónovitch Délvig (1798-1831) the descendant of a Baltic Provinces noble, was one of Púshkin's comrades in the Lyceum, and published his first collection of poems in 1829. Evgény Abrámovitch Baratýnsky (1800-1844) came of a noble family of good standing. His poetry was founded on Byronism, like all European poetry of that day, and was also partly under the influence of the fantastic romanticism introduced by Zhukóvsky. He never developed beyond a point which was reached by Púshkin in his early days in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," "The Gypsies," "The Fountain of Baktchesarái," and the first chapters of "Evgény Onyégin." He wrote one very fine poem, devoted to Finland. Nikolái Mikháilovitch Yázykoff (1803-1846) was of noble birth, and published a number of early poems in 1819. One of his best and longest, published about 1836, was a dramatic tale of "The Fire Bird." Between 1837-1842 his "The Lighthouse," "Gastún," "Sea Bathing," "The Ship," "The Sea," and a whole series of elegies, are also very good. Yázykoff's poetry is weaker and paler in coloring than Délvig's or Baratýnsky's, yet richer than all of theirs in really incomparable outward form of the verse, and in poetical expression of thought; in fact, he was "the poet of expression," and rendered great service by his boldness and originality of language, in that it taught men to write not as all others wrote, but as it lay in their individual power to write; in other words, he inculcated individuality in literature. The only one of the many poets of Púshkin's epoch in Russia who did not repeat and develop, in different keys, the themes of their master's poetry, was Alexánder Sergyéevitch Griboyédoff (1795-1829). He alone was independent, original, and was related to the Púshkin period as Krylóff was to the Karamzín period--merely by the accident of time, not by the contents of his work. Griboyédoff was the first of a series of Russian poets who depicted life in absolutely faithful, but gloomy, colors; and it was quite in keeping with this view, that he did not live to see in print the comedy in which his well-earned fame rested, at the time, and which still keeps it fresh, by performances on the stage at the present day. There was nothing very cheerful or bright about the social life of the '20's in the nineteenth century to make Russian poets take anything but a gloomy view of matters in general. Griboyédoff, as an unprejudiced man, endowed with great poetical gifts, and remarkable powers of observation, was able to give a faithful and wonderfully complete picture of high life in Moscow of that day, in his famous comedy "Woe from Wit" ("Góre ot Umá"), and introduce to the stage types which had never, hitherto, appeared in Russian comedy, because no one had looked deep enough into Russian hearts, or been capable of limning, impartially and with fidelity to nature, the emptiness and vanity of the characters and aims which preponderated in Russian society. He was well born and very well educated. After serving in the army in 1812, like most patriotic young Russians of the day, he entered the foreign office, in 1817. There he probably made the acquaintance of Púshkin, but he never became intimate with him, as he belonged to a different literary circle, which included actors and dramatic writers. His first dramatic efforts were not very promising, though his first comedy, "The Young Married Pair," was acted in St. Petersburg in 1816. In 1819 he was offered the post of secretary of legation in Persia, which he accepted; and this took him away from the gay and rather wild society existence which he was leading, with bad results in many ways. In Persia, despite his multifarious occupations, and his necessary study of Oriental languages, Griboyédoff found time to plan his famous comedy in 1821, and in 1822 he wrote it in Georgia, whither he had been transferred. But he remodeled and rewrote portions of it, and it was finished only in 1823, when he spent a year in Moscow, his native city. When it was entirely ready for acting, he went to St. Petersburg, but neither his most strenuous efforts, nor his influence in high quarters, sufficed to secure the censor's permission for its performance on stage, or to get the requisite license for printing it. But it circulated in innumerable manuscript copies, and every one was in raptures over it. Even the glory of Púshkin's "Evgény Onyégin," which appeared at about the same time, did not overshadow Griboyédoff's glory. Strange to say, Púshkin, who had magnified Délvig, Baratýnsky, and Yázykoff far above their merits, and in general, was accustomed to overrate all talent, whether it belonged to his own friends or to strangers, was extremely severe on Griboyédoff's comedy, and detected many grave defects in it. Griboyédoff was greatly irritated by his failure to obtain proper public recognition of his comedy. He expressed his feelings freely, became more embittered than ever against mankind in general, and went back to Georgia, in 1825, where he added to his previous poems, and took part in the campaign against Persia, in which he rendered great services to the commander-in-chief. As a reward, he was sent to St. Petersburg (1828), to present the treaty of peace to the Emperor. He was promptly appointed minister plenipotentiary to Persia, and on his way thither, in Tiflís, married a Georgian princess. His stern course of action and his disregard of certain rooted Oriental customs aroused the priesthood and the ignorant masses of Teheran against him, and a riot broke out. After a heroic defense of the legation, all the Russians, including Griboyédoff, were torn to pieces. His wife had been left behind in Tabreez and escaped. She buried his remains at a monastery near Tiflís, in accordance with a wish which he had previously expressed. There is not much plot to "Woe from Wit." Moltchálin, Famúsoff's secretary, a cold, calculating, fickle young man, has been making love to Famúsoff's only child, an heiress, Sophia, an extremely sentimental young person. Famúsoff rails against foreign books and fashions, "destroyers of our pockets and our hearth," and lauds Colonel Skalozúb, an elderly pretender to Sophia's hand, explaining the general servile policy of obtaining rank and position by the Russian equivalent of "pull," which is called "connections." He compares his with Tchátsky, to the disadvantage of the latter, who had been brought up with Sophia, and had been in love with her before his departure on his travels three years previously, though he had never mentioned the fact. Tchátsky gives rise to this diatribe by returning from his travels at this juncture, asking for Sophia's hand, and trying to woo the girl herself with equal unsuccess. Tchátsky's arraignment of the imitation of foreign customs then everywhere prevalent, does not win favor from any one. Worse yet, he expresses his opinion of Moltchálin; and Sophia, in revenge, drops a hint that Tchátsky is crazy. The hint grows apace, and the cause is surmised to be a bullet-wound in the head, received during a recent campaign. Another "authority" contradicts this; it comes from drinking champagne by the gobletful--no, by the bottle--no, by the case. But Famúsoff settles the matter by declaring that it comes from knowing too much. This takes place at an evening party at the Famúsoffs, and Tchátsky returns to the room to meet with an amazing reception. Eventually, he discovers that he is supposed to be mad, and that he is indebted to Sophia for the origin of the lie; also, that she is making rendezvous with the low-minded, flippant Moltchálin. At last Sophia discovers that Moltchálin is making love to her maid through inclination, and to her only through calculation. She casts him off, and orders him out of the house. Tchátsky, cured of all illusions about her, renounces his suit for her hand, and declares that he will leave Moscow forever. Tchátsky, whose woe is due to his persistence in talking sense and truth to people who do not care to hear it, and to his manly independence all the way through, comes to grief through having too much wit; hence the title. Not one of Púshkin's successors, talented as many of them were, was able to attain to the position of importance which the great poet had rendered obligatory for future aspirants. It is worth noting that Púshkin's best work, in his second, non-Byronic, purely national style, enjoyed less success among his contemporaries than his early, half-imitative efforts, where the characters were weak, lacking in independent creation, and where the whole tone was gloomy. This gloomy tone expressed the sentiments of all Russia of the period, and it was natural that Byronic heroes should be in consonance with the general taste. At this juncture, a highly talented poet arose, Mikháil Yúrievitch Lérmontoff (1814-1841), who, after first imitating Púshkin, speedily began to imitate Byron--and that with far more success than Púshkin had ever done--with great delicacy and artistic application to the local conditions. Thus, as a vivid, natural echo of this epoch in Russian life, the poet became dear to the heart of Russians; and in the '40's they regarded him as the equal of the writers they most loved. Lérmontoff, the son of a poor but noble family, was reared by his grandmother, as his mother died when he was a baby, and his father, an army officer, could not care for him. The grandmother did her utmost to give him the best education possible at that time, and to make him a brilliant society man. The early foreign influence over Púshkin was, as we have seen, French. That over Lérmontoff was rather English, which was then becoming fashionable. But like many another young Russian of that day, Lérmontoff wrote his first poems in French, imitating Púshkin's "The Fountain of Baktchesarái" and Byron's "The Prisoner of Chillon." He finished the preparatory school with the first prize for composition and history, and entered the University, which he was soon compelled to leave, in company with a number of others, because of a foolish prank they had played on a professor. In those days, when every one was engrossed in thoughts of military service and a career, and when the few remaining paths which were open to a poor young man had thus been closed to him, but one thing was left for him to do--enter the army. Accordingly, in 1832, Lérmontoff entered the Ensigns' School in St. Petersburg; but during his two years there he did not abandon verse-making, and here he first began to imitate Byron. A couple of poems, "Ismail Bey" (1832) and "Hadji Abrek" (1833) were published by a comrade, without Lérmontoff's knowledge, at this time. In general, it may be said of Lérmontoff at that period that he cared not in the least for literary fame, and made no haste to publish his writings, as to which he was very severe. Many were not published until five or six years after they were written. Soon after leaving the military school Lérmontoff wrote a drama, "The Masquerade" (1834), and the fine poem, "Boyárin Órsha," but his fame began only in 1837, with his splendid poem on the death of Púshkin, "The Death of the Poet," beginning, "The poet perished, the slave of honor," in which he expressed his entire sympathy with the poet in his untimely death, and poured out all his bitterness upon the circle which was incapable of appreciating and prizing the genius. This, in a multitude of manuscript copies, created a great sensation in St. Petersburg. Soon afterwards, on hearing contradictory rumors as to the duel and Púshkin's death, he added sixteen verses, beginning, "And you, ye arrogant descendants." One of the prominent persons therein attacked having had his attention called to the matter in public by an officious gossip (he had probably known all about it before, and deliberately ignored the matter), felt obliged to report Lérmontoff. The result was that Lérmontoff was transferred as ensign to a dragoon regiment which was serving in Georgia, and early in 1837 he set out for the Caucasus. Through his grandmother's efforts he was permitted to return from the Caucasus about eight months later, to a hussar regiment. By this time people were beginning to appreciate him; he had written his magnificent "Ballad of Tzar Iván Vasílievitch, the Young Lifeguardsman, and the Bold Merchant Kaláshnikoff," which every one hailed as an entirely new phenomenon in Russian literature, amazing in its highly artistic pictures, full of power and dignity, combined with an exterior like that of the inartistic productions of folk-poetry. This poem was productive of all the more astonishment, because his "The Demon,"[13] written much earlier (1825-1834), was little known. "The Demon" is poor in contents, but surprisingly rich in wealth and luxury of coloring, and in the endless variety of its pictures of Caucasian life and nature. In 1838, while residing in St. Petersburg, Lérmontoff wrote little at first, but in 1839 he wrote "Mtzyri," and a whole series of fine tales in prose, which eventually appeared under the general title of "A Hero of Our Times." This work, which has lost much of its vivid interest for people of the present day, must remain, nevertheless, one of the most important monuments of that period to which Lérmontoff so completely belonged. In the person of the hero, Petchórin, he endeavored to present "a portrait composed of the vices of the generation of which he was a contemporary," and he "drew the man of the period as he understood him, and as, unfortunately, he was too often met with." Lérmontoff admitted that in Petchórin he had tried to point out the "malady" which had attacked all Russian society of that day. All this he said in a preface to the second edition, after people had begun to declare that in the novel he had represented himself and his own experiences. Naturally Petchórin was drawn on Byronic lines, in keeping with the spirit of the '30's, when individuality loudly protested against the oppressive conditions of life. Naturally, also, all this now appears to be a caricature, true to the life of the highest Russian society as it was when it was written. Before he had quite completed this work, in February, 1840, Lérmontoff fought a duel with the son of Baron de Barante, a well-known French historian, and was transferred, in consequence, to an infantry regiment in the Caucasus, whither he betook himself for the third time. A year later, after being permitted to make a brief stay in St. Petersburg, he returned to the Caucasus, and three months afterwards he was killed in a duel (on July 25, O. S., 1841) with a fellow officer, Martýnoff, and was buried on the estate in the government of Pénza, where he had been reared by his grandmother. The latest work of the poet, thus cut off almost before his prime, consisted of lyrics, which were full of power and perfection, and gave plain promise of the approaching maturity of the still young and not fully developed but immense talent. His famous "Ballad of Tzar Iván Vasílievitch, the Young Lifeguardsman, and the Bold Merchant Kaláshnikoff" must be given in a summary and occasional quotations, as it is too long to reproduce in full. It lends itself better to dignified and adequate reproduction than do his lyrics, because it is not rhymed.[14] After a brief preface, the poet says: "We have composed a ballad in the ancient style, and have sung it to the sound of the dulcimer." The red sun shineth not in the heaven, The blue clouds delight not in it; But at his banqueting board, in golden crown, Sitteth the Terrible Tzar Iván Vasílievitch. Behind him stand the table-deckers, Opposite him all the boyárs and the princes, At his side, all about, the lifeguardsmen; And the Tzar feasteth to the glory of God, To his own content and merriment. The ballad goes on to relate how the Tzar then ordered the beakers to be filled with wine from beyond the seas, and how all drank and lauded the Tzar. One brave warrior, a gallant youth, did not dip his mustache in the golden cup, but dropped his eyes, drooped his head, and meditated. The Tzar frowned, rapped on the floor with his iron-tipped staff, and finding that the young man still paid no heed, called him to account. "Hey, there, our faithful servant Kiribyéevitch, art thou concealing some dishonorable thought? Or art thou envious of our glory? Or hath our honorable service wearied thee?" and he reproaches the youth. Then Kiribyéevitch answered him, bowing to his girdle, begging the Tzar not to reproach his unworthy servant, but if he has offended the Tzar, he begs that the latter will order his head to be cut off. "It oppresseth my heroic shoulders, and itself unto the damp earth doth incline." The Tzar inquires why the lifeguardsman is sad. "Has his kaftan of gold brocade grown threadbare? Has his cap of sables got shabby? Has he exhausted his treasure? Has his well-tempered saber got nicked? Or has some merchant's son from across the Moscow River overcome him in a boxing match?" The young lifeguardsman shakes his curly head, and says that all these things are as they should be, but that while he was riding his mettlesome steed in the Trans-Moscow River quarter of the town (the merchant's quarter), with his silken girdle drawn taut, his velvet cap rimmed jauntily with black sables, fair young maidens had stood at the board gates, gazing at him, admiring and whispering together; but one there was who gazed not, admired not, but covered her face with her striped veil, "and in all Holy Russia, our Mother, no such beauty is to be found or searched out. She walketh swimmingly, as though she were a young swan. She gazeth sweetly, as though she were a dove. When she uttereth a word, 'tis like a nightingale warbling. Her cheeks are aflame with roses, like unto the dawn in God's heaven. Her tresses of ruddy gold, intertwined with bright ribbons, flow rippling down her shoulders, and kiss her white bosom. She was born in a merchant's family. Her name is Alyóna[15] Dmítrievna." He describes how he has fallen in love with her at first sight, and cares no more for anything in all the world save her, and begs that he may be sent away to the steppes along the Volga, to live a free kazák life, where he may lay his "turbulent head" on a Mussulman's spear (in the fights with the Tatars of Kazán is what is meant), where the vultures may claw out his tearful eyes, and his gray bones be washed by the rain, and his wretched dust, without burial, may be scattered to the four quarters of the compass. Tzar Iván Vasílievitch laughs, advises him to send gifts to his Alyóna, and celebrate the wedding. The lifeguardsman then confesses that he has not told the whole truth; that the beauty is already the wife of a young merchant. In Part II., the young merchant is represented as seated at his shop-board, a stately, dashing young fellow, Stepán Paramónovitch Kaláshnikoff, spreading out his silken wares, beguiling his patrons (or "guests") with flattering speech, counting out gold and silver. But it is one of his bad days; the wealthy lords pass and do not so much as glance at his shop. "The bells of the holy churches have finished chiming for Vespers. The cloudy glow of evening burneth behind the Kremlin. Little clouds are flitting athwart the sky. The great Gostíny Dvor[16] is empty." And Stepán Paramónovitch locks the oaken door of his shop with a German (that is, a foreign) spring-lock, fastens the fierce, snarling dog to the iron chain, and goes thoughtfully home to his young housewife beyond the Moscow River. On arriving there he is surprised that his wife does not come to meet him, as is her wont. The oaken table is not set, the taper before the _ikóna_ (the holy picture) is almost burned out. He summons the old maid-servant and asks where his wife is at that late hour, and what has become of his children? The servant replies that his wife went to Vespers as usual, but the priest and his wife have already sat down to sup, yet the young housewife has not returned, and his little children are neither playing nor in bed, but weeping bitterly. As young Merchant Kaláshnikoff then looks out into the gloomy street he sees that the night is very dark, snow is falling, covering up men's tracks, and he hears the outer door slam, then hasty footsteps approaching, turns round and beholds his young wife, pale, with hair uncovered (which is highly improper for a married woman), her chestnut locks unbraided, sprinkled with snow and hoarfrost, her eyes dull and wild, her lips muttering unintelligibly. The husband inquires where she has been, the reason for her condition, and threatens to lock her up behind an iron-bound oaken door, away from the light of day. She, weeping bitterly, begs her "lord, her fair little red sun," to slay her or to listen to her, and she explains, that as she was coming home from Vespers she heard the snow crunching behind her, glanced round, and beheld a man running. She covered herself with her veil, but the man seized her hands, bade her have no fear, and said that he was no robber, but the servant of the Terrible[17] Tzar, Kiribyéevitch, from the famous family of Maliúta, promised her her heart's desire--gold, pearls, bright gems, flowered brocades--if she would but love him, and grant him one embrace. Then he caressed and kissed her, so that her cheeks are still burning, while the neighbors looked on, laughed, and pointed their fingers at her in scorn. Tearing herself from his hands, she fled homewards, leaving in his hands her flowered kerchief (her husband's gift) and her Bokhará veil. She entreats her husband not to give her over to the scorn of their neighbors, she is an orphan, her elder brother is in a foreign land, her younger brother still a mere child. Stepán Paramónovitch thereupon sends for his two younger brothers, but they send back a demand to know what has happened that he should require their presence on a dark, cold night. He informs them that Kiribyéevitch, the lifeguardsman, has dishonored their family; that such an insult the soul cannot brook, neither a brave man's heart endure. On the morrow there is to be a fight with fists in the presence of the Tzar himself, and it is his intention to go to it, and stand up against that lifeguardsman and fight him to the death until his strength is gone. He asks them, in case he is killed, to step forth for "Holy Mother right," and as they are younger than he, fresher in strength, and with fewer sins on their heads, perchance the Lord will show mercy upon them. And this reply his brethren spake: "Whither the breeze bloweth beneath the sky, thither hasten the dutiful little clouds. When the dark blue eagle summoneth with his voice to the bloody vale of slaughter, summoneth to celebrate the feast, to clear away the dead, to him do the little eaglets wing their flight. Thou art our elder brother, our second father, do what thou see'st fit, and deemest best, and we will not fail thee, our own blood and bone." Part III. picturesquely and vividly describes the scene of the encounter; the challenge to the combatants to stand forth, by command of the Tzar, with a promise in the latter's name that the victors shall receive from him rewards. Then the redoubtable Lifeguardsman Kiribyéevitch steps forth. Thrice the challenge is repeated before any one responds. Then young Merchant Kaláshnikoff comes forward, makes his reverence to the Tzar, and when Kiribyéevitch demands his name, he announces it, and adds that he was born of an honorable father and has always lived according to God's law; he has not cast his eyes on another man's wife, nor played the bandit on a dark night, nor hid from the light of heaven, and that he means to fight to the death. On hearing this, Kiribyéevitch "turned pale as snow in autumn, his bold eyes clouded over, a shiver ran through his mighty shoulders, on his parted lips the words fell dead." With one blow, the young merchant crushes in the lifeguardsman's breast, and the latter falls dead, the death being beautifully described in stately, picturesque language. At sight thereof, the Tzar Iván Vasílievitch waxed wroth, stamped on the earth, scowled with his black brows; ordered that the young merchant be seized and hauled before him. He then demands whether Kaláshnikoff has slain his faithful servant Kiribyéevitch "voluntarily, involuntarily, or against his will." Kaláshnikoff boldly makes answer that he has done it with deliberate intent, and that the reason therefor he will not tell to the Tzar, but only to God alone. He tells the Tzar to order him to be executed, but not to deprive his little children or his young widow and his brothers of his favor. The Tzar replies that it is well Kaláshnikoff has answered truthfully; he will give the young widow and the children a grant from his treasury, and give command that, from that day forth, his brothers may traffic throughout the wide Russian realm free of taxes. But Kaláshnikoff must mount the scaffold, lay down his turbulent head, and the executioner shall be ordered to make his axe very sharp, and the great bell shall be tolled in order that all the men of Moscow may know that the Tzar has not deprived him of his favor. The execution and Kaláshnikoff's farewell speeches to his brothers, with his last messages to his wife not to grieve so greatly, and his commands that she is not to tell his children how their father died, together with requests for prayers for his soul, are described in very touching and lofty terms, as are also the burial, and the scenes at the grave. * * * * * The influence of Schelling's philosophy on the society of Moscow (the literary center until half-way through the '30's of the nineteenth century) was very great. This philosophy held that every historical nation should express some idea or other; that a nation could be called historical only on condition of its being independent in this respect; and that its importance in the progress of general civilization is determined by its degree of independence. This set all thoughtful people to considering the place of Russia among the European nations; and all the problems suggested by this philosophy came up with special force in the Russian literature of the end of the '30's, and split society into two great camps--the Slavyanophils (slavophils)[18] and the Westerners. These camps had existed earlier, but had concerned themselves only with the purification of the Russian language, or with sentimental admiration for everything Russian, or for everything foreign, as the case might be. But now both parties undertook to solve the problems connected with the fate of the nation. Schelling's philosophy also suggested new views as to the theory of art and the significance of literature in the life of a nation, and evolved the conclusion, that a nation's literature, even more than its civilization, should be entirely independent. This naturally led the Slavyanophils to reflect upon the indispensability of establishing Russian literature on a thoroughly national, independent basis. Naturally, also, this led to the Slavyanophils contesting the existence of a Russian literature in the proper sense of the term; since the whole of it, from Lomonósoff to Púshkin, had been merely a servile imitation of Western literature, and did not in the least express the spirit of the Russian people, and of the Schellingists. A number of the professors in the Moscow University belonged to this party. Naturally the students in their department--the philological faculty--came under their influence, and under this influence was reared the famous Russian critic, Vissarión Grigórievitch Byelínsky (1811-1848). His name is chiefly identified with the journal "The Annals of the Fatherland" (of St. Petersburg), where he published his brilliant critical articles on Griboyédoff, Gógol's "The Inspector," on Lérmontoff's works, and on those of other writers; on French contemporary literature, and on current topics at home and abroad, among them articles condemning many characteristics of Russian society, both intellectual and moral, such as the absence of intellectual interests, routine, narrowness, and egotism in the middle-class merchants; self-satisfied philistinism; the patriarchal laxity of provincial morals; the lack of humanity and the Asiatic ferocity towards inferiors; the slavery of women and children under the weight of family despotism. His volume of articles on Púshkin constitutes a complete critical history of Russian literature, beginning with Lomonósoff and ending with Púshkin. By these Byelínsky's standing as an important factor in literature was thoroughly established, and all the young writers of the succeeding epoch, that of the '50's, gathered around him. Grigoróvitch, Turgéneff, Gontcharóff, Nekrásoff, Apollón Máikoff, Dostoévsky, Tolstóy, and the rest, may be said to have been reared on Byelínsky's criticism, inspired by it to creative activity, and indebted to it for much of their fame. Byelínsky, moreover, educated the minds of that whole generation, and prepared men for the social movement of the '60's, which was characterized by many reforms. After 1846 Byelínsky was connected with the journal, "The Contemporary," published by the poet Nekrásoff, and I. I. Panáeff, to which the best writers of the day contributed. Here, during the brief period when his health permitted him to work, he expressed even bolder and more practical ideas, and became the advocate of the "natural school," of which he regarded Gógol as the founder, wherein poetry was treated as an integral part of every-day life. Turgéneff has declared, that Byelínsky indisputably possessed all the chief qualities of a great critic, and that no one before him, or better than he, ever expressed a correct judgment and an authoritative verdict, and that he was, emphatically, "the right man in the right place." One author who deserves to be better known outside of Russia produced the really original and indescribably fascinating works on which his fame rests during the last ten or twelve years of his long life, late in the '40's and '50's, although he was much older than the authors we have recently studied, and began to write much earlier than many of them. His early writing, however, was in the classical style, and does not count in comparison with his original descriptions of nature, and of the life of the (comparatively) distant past. Sergyéi Timoféevitch Aksákoff (1791-1859), the descendant of a very ancient noble family, was born in far-away eastern Russia, in Ufá, and was very well educated by his mother, at schools, and at Kazán University. His talents first revealed themselves in 1847, in his "Notes on Angling," and his "Diary of a Sportsman with a Gun," in the Orenburg Government (1852). Most famous of all, and most delightful, are the companion volumes, "A Family Chronicle and Souvenirs" (1856) and "The Childhood's Years of Bagróff's Grandson" (1858). In these Russian descriptive language made a great stride in advance, even after Púshkin and Gógol; and as a limner of landscape, he has no equal in Russian literature. The most noteworthy point about his work is that there is not a trace of creative fancy or invention; he describes reality, takes everything straight from life, and describes it with amazing faithfulness and artistic harmony. He was the first Russian writer to look on Russian life from a positive instead of from a negative point of view.[19] Púshkin's period had been important, not only in rendering Russian literature national, but still more so in bringing literature into close connection with life and its interests. This had in turn led to a love of reading and of literature all over the country, and had developed latent talents. This love spread to classes hitherto unaffected by it; and among the talents it thus developed, none was more thoroughly independent than that of Alexéi Vasílievitch Koltzóff (1809-1842), who was so original, so wholly unique in his genius, that he cannot rightly be assigned to any class, and still stands as an isolated phenomenon. He was the son of a merchant of Vorónezh, who was possessed of considerable means, and he spent the greater part of his youth on the steppes, helping his father, a drover, who supplied tallow-factories. After being taught to read and write by a theological student, young Koltzóff was sent to the district school for four months, after which his education was regarded as finished, because he knew as much as the people about him, and because no more was required for business purposes. But the lad acquired a strong love of reading, and devoted himself to such literature as he could procure, popular fairy-tales, the "Thousand and One Nights," and so forth. He was sixteen years of age when Dmítrieff's works fell into his hands, and inspired him with a desire to imitate them, and to "make songs" himself. As yet he did not understand the difference between poetry and popular songs, and did not read verses, but sang them. The local book-seller was the first to recognize his poetical tendency, and in a degree, guided him on the right road with a "Russian Prosody," and other suitable books, such as the works of Zhukóvsky, Púshkin, and other contemporary poets. A passion for writing poetry was in the air in the '20's. But although he yielded to this and to the promptings of his genius, it was a long time before he was able to clothe his thoughts in tolerable form. An unhappy love had a powerful influence on the development of his poetical talent, and his versified efforts suddenly became fervent songs of love and hate, of melancholy, soulful cries of grief and woe, full of melodious expressions of the world about him. One of Byelínsky's friends, whose family lived near Vorónezh, made his acquaintance, read his poems and applauded much in them. Three years later, in 1833, at the request and expense of this new friend, Koltzóff published a small collection, containing eighteen poems selected by him, which showed that he possessed an original and really noteworthy poetical gift. In 1835 Koltzóff visited St. Petersburg and made acquaintance with Púshkin, Zhukóvsky, and many other literary men, and between 1836 and 1838 his fame penetrated even to the knowledge of the citizens in his native town. He continued to aid his father in business, but his heart was elsewhere--he longed for the intellectual companionship of his friends in Moscow, and all this rendered him extremely unhappy. In 1840 he spent three months with Byelínsky in St. Petersburg, and after that he remained in Vorónezh, had another unhappy love affair, and dreamed continually of the possibility of quitting the place for good. But his father would not give him a kopék for such a purpose. His health gave way, and he died in 1842, aged thirty-three. His poems are few in number, and the best of them belong to an entirely peculiar style, which he alone in Russian literature possesses, to which he alone imparted significance--the ballad, the national ballad compact, powerful, rich in expression, and highly artistic. The charm of nationality is so great, as expressed in Koltzóff's songs, that it is almost impossible to read them; one wants to sing them as the author sang the verses of others in his boyhood. Even his peculiar measures, which are not at all adapted to popular songs, do not destroy the harmonious impression made by them, and such pieces as "The Forest," "The Ballads of Cabman Kudryávitch," "The Perfidy of the Affianced Bride," and others, not only belong to the most notable productions of Russian lyric poetry, but are also representatives of an important historical phenomenon, as the first attempt to combine in one organic whole Russian artistic literature and the inexhaustible vast inartistic poetry of the people. "The Perfidy of the Affianced Bride," which is not rhymed in the original, runs as follows: Hot in heaven the summer sun doth shine, But me, young though I be, it warmeth not! My heart is dead with cold Through the perfidy of my affianced bride. Woe-sadness upon me hath fallen, Upon my sorrowful head; My soul by deadly anguish is tormented, And from my body my soul doth long to flee. Unto men have I resorted for help-- With a laugh have they turned away; To the grave of my father, my mother-- But they rise not at my call. The world grew dark before mine eyes, Upon the grass I swooned. At dead of night, in a dreadful storm, They lifted me from the grave. At night, in the storm, I saddled my steed; I set out, caring not whither I went-- To lead a wretched life, to console myself, With rancor to demand satisfaction from men. Romanticism established, as its first principles, freedom of creation and nationality of poetry, and these principles survived romanticism itself. Now, while romanticism preached freedom of creation, it circumscribed this freedom by selecting as subjects for poetical compositions chiefly the extraordinary sides of life, its majestic moments. Its heroes were always choice, powerful natures, who suffered profoundly because of the lot of all mankind, and were capable of gigantic conflicts against the whole world. Classicism had bequeathed this habit of regarding as worthy of poetical treatment only heroes who stood out from the mass, and of depicting these heroes only at critical crises. All this depended, in a great degree, upon the political and social conditions which prevailed at that epoch--the beginning of the nineteenth century. But quieter, more peaceful times dawned, and with them men's tastes and habits of mind underwent a change. They grew tired of scorning and hating reality, because it did not conform to their cherished dreams, and they began coolly to study it. The titanic heroes, who had become tiresome and anti-pathetic to the last degree, made way for ordinary mortals in their everyday surroundings. Lyrical exaltation was superseded by calm observation, or disintegrating analysis of the different elements of life; pathetic misery made way for cold irony, or jeeringly melancholy humor; and at last poetry was succeeded by prose, and the ruling poetical forms of the new epoch became the romance and the novel. This change took place almost simultaneously in all the literatures of Europe. We have seen that Púshkin, towards the end of his career, entered upon this new path, with his prose tales, "The Captain's Daughter," "Dubróvsky," and so forth, and throughout the '30's of the nineteenth century, the romance and novel came, more and more, to occupy the most prominent place in Russian literature. We may pass over the rather long list of second-class writers who adventured in this field (of whom Zagóskin and Márlinsky are most frequently referred to), and devote our attention to the man who has been repeatedly called "the father of modern Russian realism," Nikolái Vasílievitch Gógol (1809-1852). He is credited with having created all the types which we encounter in the works of the great novelists who followed him, and this is almost literally true, at least so far as the male characters are concerned. In particular, this applies to his famous "Dead Souls," which contains if not the condensed characterization in full of these types, at least the readily recognized germs of them. But in this respect, his early Little Russian Stories, "Tales from a Farm-house Near Dikánka," and the companion volume, "Mírgorod," as well as his famous comedy, "The Inspector," must not be forgotten, for they contributed their full quota. Púshkin was one of Gógol's earliest and most ardent admirers, and it was because he recognized the latter's phenomenal talent in seizing the national types that he gave to him the idea for "Dead Souls," which he had intended to use himself. Thanks to his own genius (as well as to the atmosphere of the epoch in which he lived), he solved for himself, quite independently of any foreign influence, the problem of bringing Russian literature down from the clouds to everyday real life. He realized that the world was no longer living in a sort of modern epic, as it had been during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic campaigns, and that literature must conform to the altered conditions. Naturally, in his new quest after truth, Gógol-Yanóvsky (to give him his full name) mingled romanticism and realism at first. But he soon discovered the true path. He was born and reared in Little Russia, at Sorótchinsky, Government of Poltáva, and was separated only by two generations from the famous epoch of the Zaporózhian kazáks, who lived (as their name implies) below the rapids of the Dniépr. He has depicted their life in his magnificent novel "Tarás Búlba." His grandfather had been the regimental scribe--a post of honor--of that kazák army, and the spirit of the Zaporózhian kazáks still lingered over the land which was full of legends, fervent, superstitious piety, and poetry. Gógol's grandfather, who figures as "Rúdy Pánko, the bee-farmer," in the two volumes of Little Russian stories which established his fame, narrated to him at least one-half of those stories. His father, also, who represented the modern spirit, was an inimitable narrator of comic stories, and the talents of father and grandfather rendered their house the popular center of a very extensive neighborhood. At school Gógol did not distinguish himself, but he wrote a good deal, all of an imitative character. After leaving school, it was with difficulty that he secured a place as copying-clerk, at a wretched salary, in St. Petersburg. He promptly resigned this when fame came, and secured the appointment as professor of history. But he was a hopelessly incompetent professor of history, despite his soaring ambitions, both on account of his lack of scholarship and the natural bent of his mind. The literary men who had obtained the position for him had discerned his immense talent in a perfectly new style of writing; and after failure had convinced him that heavy, scientific work was not in his line, he recognized the fact himself, and decided to devote himself to the sort of work for which nature had intended him. The first volume of his "Tales from a Farm-house Near Dikánka" appeared at the end of 1831, and had an immense success. The second volume, "Mírgorod," was equally successful, all the more so, as it introduced, together with the pure merriment which had characterized the earlier tales, and the realism which was his specialty, so to speak, a new element--pathos; "laughter piercing through a mist of tears." In this style "Old-fashioned Gentry"[20] and "How Iván Ivánovitch Quarrelled with Iván Nikifórovitch" are famous examples. Success always turned Gógol's head, and he immediately aspired to some undertaking far beyond his powers. In this case, for instance, despising, as usual, what he could do best, he planned a huge work, in nine volumes, on the history of the Middle Ages. Fortunately, his preparatory studies in the history of Little Russia led him to write his splendid epic, which is a composition of the highest art, "Tarás Búlba," and diverted him from his ill-digested project. He began to recognize that literary work was not merely a pastime, but his moral duty; and the first result of this conviction was his great play "The Inspector," finished in April, 1836. The authorities refused to produce it, but the Emperor Nicholas I. heard about it, read it, and gave imperative orders that it should be put on the stage, upholding Gógol with rapturous delight. Everybody--officials, the police, literary people, merchants--attacked the author. They raged at this comedy, refused to recognize their too lifelike portraits, and still endeavored to have the play prohibited. Gógol's health and spirits failed under this persecution, and he fled abroad, whence thereafter he returned to Russia only at long intervals and for brief visits, chiefly to Moscow, where most of his faithful friends resided. He traveled a great deal, but spent most of his time in Rome, where his lavish charities kept him perennially poor despite the eventual and complete success, both artistically and financially, of "The Inspector," and of Part I. of "Dead Souls," which would have enabled him to live in comfort. He was wont to say that he could see Russia plainly only when he was at a distance from her, and in a measure, he proved the truth of his contention in the first volume of "Dead Souls." Thereby he justified Púshkin's expectations in giving him the subject of that work, which he hoped would enable Gógol to depict the classes and localities of the fatherland in the concentrated form of types. But he lived too long in Rome. The Russian mind in general is much inclined to mysticism, and Little Russia, in Gógol's boyhood, was exceptionally permeated with exaggerated religious sentiment. Mysticism seems to be peculiarly fatal to Russian writers of eminence; we have seen how Von Vízin and Zhukóvsky were affected toward the end of their lives; we have a typical and even more pronounced example of it in a somewhat different form at the present time in Count L. N. Tolstóy. Lérmontoff had inclined in that direction. Hence, it is not surprising that the moral and physical atmosphere of Rome, during a too prolonged residence there, eventually ruined Gógol's mind and health, and extinguished the last sparks of his genius, especially as even in his school-days he had shown a marked tendency (in his letters to his mother) to religious exaltation. Now, under the pressure of his personal tendencies and friendships, and the clerical atmosphere of Rome, he developed into a mystic and an ascetic of the most extreme type. He regarded all his earlier writings as sins which must be atoned for (precisely as Count L. N. Tolstóy regards his masterpieces at the present time); and nevertheless, his overweening self-esteem was so flattered by the tremendous success of "The Inspector" and the first part of "Dead Souls" that he began to regard himself as a sort of divinely commissioned prophet, on whom it was incumbent to preach to his fellow-men. It will be seen that the parallel holds good in this respect also. Extracts from his hortatory letters which he published proved to Russians that his day was over. His failure in his self-imposed mission plunged him into the extremes of self-torment, and his lucid moments grew more and more rare. He destroyed what he had written of the second part of "Dead Souls," in the attacks of ecstatic remorse at such profane work which followed. (By some authorities it is believed that he did this unintentionally, meaning to destroy an entirely different set of papers.) In 1848 he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and went thence to Moscow, where he resided until his death, becoming more and more extreme in his mysticism and asceticism. He spent sleepless nights in prayer; he tried to carry fasting to the extent of living for a week on one of the tiny double loaves which are used for the Holy Communion in the Eastern Catholic Church, a feat which it is affirmed can be performed with success, and even to more exaggerated extent, by practiced ascetics. Gógol died. His observation was acute; his humor was genuine, natural, infectious; his realism was of the most vivid description; his power of limning types was unsurpassed, and it is these types which have entered, as to their essential ingredients, into the works of his successors, that have rendered the Russian realistic literary school famous. He wrote only one complete play besides "The Inspector," and it is still acted occasionally, but it is not of a sort to appeal to the universal public, as is his famous comedy. The fantastic but amusing plot of this lesser comedy, "Marriage," is founded upon a young girl's meditations on that theme, and the actions which lead up to and follow them. The wealthy heroine of the merchant class, being desirous of marrying, enlists the services of the professional match-maker, the old-time Russian matrimonial agent, in the merchant and peasant classes. This match-maker offers for her choice several eligible suitors (all strangers), and the girl makes her choice. She is well pleased with it, but suddenly begins to speculate on the future; is moved to tears by the prospect that her daughter may be unhappy in a hypothetical marriage, in the dim future; and at last, driven to despair by this painful picture of her fancy, she evades her betrothed and breaks off the match. The interest of "The Inspector" is perennial and universal; official negligence, corruption, bribery, masculine vanity and boastfulness, and feminine failings to match, are the exclusive prerogatives of no one nation or epoch. The comedy is not a caricature, but it is a faithful society portrait and satire, with intense condensation of character, and traits which are not only truly and typically Russian, but come within the ken of all fair-minded persons of other lands. The scene opens in a room at the house of the Chief of Police in a provincial town. Those present are: The Chief himself, the Curator of the Board of Benevolent Institutions, the Superintendent of Schools, the Judge, the Commissioner of Police, the Doctor, and two policemen. CHIEF.--I have summoned you hither, gentlemen, in order to communicate to you an unpleasant piece of news. An Inspector is coming. JUDGE.--What! An Inspector? CHIEF.--An Inspector from St. Petersburg, incognito, and with secret orders, to boot. JUDGE.--I thought so! CURATOR.--If there's not trouble, I'm mistaken! CHIEF.--I have warned you, gentlemen. See to it! I have made some arrangements in my own department, and I advise you to do the same. Especially you, Artémy Philípp'itch! Without a doubt, this traveling official will wish, first of all, to inspect your institutions, and therefore, you must arrange things so that they will be decent. The nightcaps should be clean, and the sick people should not look like blacksmiths, as they usually do in private. CURATOR.--Well, that is a mere trifle. We can put clean nightcaps on them. CHIEF.--Moreover, you ought to have written up, over the head of each bed, in Latin or some other language--that's your affair--the name of each disease; when each patient was taken sick, the day and the hour. It is not well that your sick people should smoke such strong tobacco that one has to sneeze every time he goes in there. Yes, and it would be better if there were fewer of them; it will be set down at once to bad supervision, or to lack of skill on the doctor's part. CURATOR.--Oh, so far as the doctoring is concerned, Christián Iván'itch and I have already taken measures; the nearer to nature, the better--we don't use any expensive medicines. Man is a simple creature; if he dies, why then, he dies; if he gets well, why then, he gets well; and moreover, it would have been difficult for Christián Iván'itch to make them understand him; he doesn't know one word of Russian. CHIEF.--I should also advise you, Ammós Feódor'itch, to turn your attention to court affairs. In the anteroom, where the clients usually assemble, your janitor has got a lot of geese and goslings, which waddle about under foot. Of course it is praiseworthy to be thrifty in domestic affairs, and why should not the janitor be so, too? Only, you know, it is not proper in that place. I intended to mention it to you before, but always forgot it. JUDGE.--I'll order them to be taken to the kitchen this very day. Will you dine with me? CHIEF.--And moreover, it is not well that all sorts of stuff should be put to dry in the court-room, and that over the very desk with the documents, there should be a hunting-whip.... Yes, and strange to say, there is no man who has not his faults. God himself has arranged it so, and it is useless for free-thinkers to maintain the contrary. JUDGE.--What do you mean by 'faults,' Antón Antón'itch? There are various sorts of faults. I tell every one frankly that I take bribes; but what sort of bribes? Greyhound pups. That's quite another thing. CHIEF.--Well, greyhound pups or anything else, it's all the same. JUDGE.--Well, no, Antón Antón'itch. But, for example, if some one has a fur coat worth five hundred rubles, and his wife has a shawl-- CHIEF.--Well, and how about your taking greyhound pups as bribes? Why don't you trust in God? You never go to church. I am firm in the faith, at all events, and go to church every Sunday. But you--oh, I know you! If you begin to talk about the creation, one's hair rises straight up on his head. JUDGE.--It came of itself, of its own accord. CHIEF.--Well, in some cases, it is worse to have brains than to be entirely without them. As for you, Luká Lúk'itch, as superintendent of schools, you must bestir yourself with regard to the teachers. One of them, for instance, the fat-faced one--I don't recall his name--cannot get along without making grimaces when he takes his seat--like this (_makes a grimace_); and then he begins to smooth his beard out from under his neckerchief with his hand. In short, if he makes such faces at the scholars, there is nothing to be said; it must be necessary; I am no judge as to that. But just consider--if he were to do that to a visitor, it might be very unpleasant; the Inspector, or anyone else, might take it as personal. The Devil knows what might come of it.... And I must also mention the teacher of history. He's a learned man, that's plain; but he expresses himself with so much warmth that he loses control of himself. I heard him once; well, so long as he was talking about the Assyrians and the Babylonians, it was all right; but when he got to Alexander of Macedon, I can't describe to you what came over him. I thought there was a fire, by heavens! He jumped up from his seat, and dashed his chair down against the floor with all his might. Alexander of Macedon was a hero, no doubt; but why smash the chairs?([21]) There will be a deficit in the accounts, just as the result of that. SUPERINTENDENT.--Yes, he is hasty! I have spoken to him about it several times. He says: "What would you have? I would sacrifice my life for science." CHIEF.--Yes, such is the incomprehensible decree of Fate; a learned man is always a drunkard, or else he makes faces that would scare the very saints. As the play proceeds in this lively vein, two men about town--in a humble way--the public busybodies, happen to discover at the Inn a traveler who has been living on credit for two weeks, and going nowhere. The landlord is on the point of putting the man in prison for debt, when the busybodies jump to the conclusion that he is the Inspector. The Prefect and the other officials accept their suggestion in spite of the traveler's plain statement as to his own identity as an uninfluential citizen. They set about making the town presentable, entertain him, bribe him against his will, and bow down before him. He enters into the spirit of the thing after a brief delay, accepts the hospitality, asks for loans, makes love to the Prefect's silly wife and daughter, betroths himself to the latter, receives the petitions and the bribes of the downtrodden townspeople, and goes off with the best post-horses the town can furnish, ostensibly to ask the blessing of a rich old uncle on his marriage. The Postmaster intercepts a cynically frank letter which the man has written to a friend, and in which he heaps ridicule on his credulous hosts. This opens their eyes at last, and at that moment, a gendarme appears and announces that the Inspector has arrived. Tableau. Gógol's two volumes of Little Russian Tales, above-mentioned, must remain classics, and the volume of St. Petersburg Tales contains essentially the same ingredients, so that they may be considered as a whole. All the tales in the first two volumes are from his beloved native Little Russia. Some are merely poetical renderings of popular legends, counterparts of which are to be found in the folk-lore of many lands; such are "Vy," and "St. John's Eve's" and the exquisite "May Night," where the famous poetical spirit of the Ukraína (borderland) is displayed in its fullest force and beauty. "Know ye the night of the Ukraína?" he writes. "O, ye do not know the Ukraína night! Look upon it; from the midst of the sky gazes the moon; the illimitable vault of heaven has withdrawn into the far distance, has spread out still more immeasurably; it burns and breathes; the earth is all bathed in silvery light; and the air is wondrous, and cool, and perfumed, and full of tenderness, and an ocean of sweet odors is abroad. A night divine! An enchanting night! The forests stand motionless, inspired, full of darkness, and cast forth a vast shadow. Calm and quiet are the pools; the coldness and gloom of their waters is morosely hemmed in by the dark green walls of gardens. The virgin copses of wild bird-cherry and black cherry trees stretch forth their roots towards the coolness of the springs, and from time to time their leaves whisper as though in anger and indignation, when a lovely little breeze, and the wind of the night, creeping up for a moment, kisses them. All the landscape lies in slumber. But on high, everything is breathing with life, everything is marvelous, everything is solemnly triumphant. And in the soul there is something illimitable and wondrous, and throngs of silvery visions make their way into its depths. Night divine! Enchanting night! And all of a sudden, everything has become instinct with life; forests, pools, and steppes. The magnificent thunder of the Ukraína nightingale becomes audible, and one fancies that the moon, in the midst of the sky, has paused to listen to it.... As though enchanted, the hamlet dreams upon the heights. The mass of the cottages gleams still whiter, still more agreeably under the light of the moon; still more dazzlingly do their lowly walls stand out against the darkness. The songs have ceased. Everything is still. Pious people are all asleep. Only here and there are the small windows still a-glow. In front of the threshold of a few cottages only is a belated family eating its late supper." Others of the tales are more exclusively national; such as "The Lost Document," "Sorótchinsky Fair," "The Enchanted Spot," and the like. But they display the same fertility of invention, combined with skill in management, and close study of every-day customs, superstitions, and life, all of which render them invaluable, both to Russians and to foreigners. More important are such stories as "Old-fashioned Gentry," "The Cloak" (from the volume of "St. Petersburg Tales"), wherein kindly wit is tempered with the purest, deepest pathos, while characters and customs are depicted with the greatest art and fidelity. "The Portrait," again, is semi-fantastic, although not legendary; and the "Diary of a Madman" is unexcelled as an amusing but affecting study of a diseased mind in the ranks of petty officialdom, where the tedious, insignificant routine disperses what few wits the poor man was originally endowed with by nature. In Gógol's greatest work, "Dead Souls," all his qualities are developed to the highest degree, though there is less pathos than in some of the short stories. This must forever rank as a Russian classic. The types are as vivid, as faithful, for those who know the Russia of to-day, as when they were first introduced to an enthusiastic Russian public, in 1847. In the pre-emancipation days, a "soul" signified a male serf. Women were not taken account of in the periodical revisions; although the working unit, or _tyagló_, consisted of a man, his wife, and his horse--the indispensable trinity in agricultural labors. In the interval between revisions, a landed proprietor continued to pay taxes on all the male serfs accredited to him on the official list, births being considered as an exact offset to deaths, for the sake of convenience. Another provision of the law was, that no one should purchase serfs without the land to which they belonged, except for the purpose of colonization. An ingenious fraud, suggested by a combination of these two laws, forms the basis of plot for "Dead Souls." The hero, Tchítchikoff, is an official who has struggled up, cleverly but not too honestly, through the devious ways of bribe-taking, extortion, and not infrequent detection and disgrace, to a snug berth in the customs service, from which he has been ejected under conditions which render further upward flight quite out of the question. In this dilemma, he hits upon the idea of purchasing from landed proprietors of mediocre probity all their "souls" which are dead, though still nominally alive, and are taxed as such. Land is being given away gratuitously in the southern governments of Khersón and Taúris to any one who will settle on it. This is a matter of public knowledge, and Tchítchikoff's plan consists in buying a thousand non-existent serfs--"dead souls"--at a maximum of one hundred rubles apiece, for colonization on an equally non-existent estate in the south. He will then mortgage them to the loan bank of the nobility, known as the Council of Guardians, and obtain a capital. In pursuance of this clever scheme, the adventurer sets out on his travels, visits provincial towns, and the estates of landed gentry of every shade of character, honesty, and financial standing; and from them he buys for a song (or cajoles from them for nothing, as a gift, when they are a trifle scrupulous over the tempting prospect of illegal gain) huge numbers of "dead souls." Púshkin himself could not have used with such tremendous effect the phenomenal opportunities which this plot of Tchítchikoff's wanderings offered for setting forth Russian manners, characters, customs, all Russian life, in town and country, as Gógol did. The author even contrives, in keen asides and allusions, to throw almost equal light on the life of the capital as well. His portraits of women are not exactly failures; they are more like composite photographs. His portraiture of men is supreme. In fact, there is no such thing in the whole of Gógol's work as a heroine, properly speaking, who plays a first-class part, or who is analyzed in modern fashion. The day was not come for that as yet. "Tarás Búlba," his great historical novel, offers a vivid picture of the famous kazák republic on the Dniépr, and equally with his other volumes, it stands in the first rank for its poetry, its dramatic force, its truth to life. It alone may be said to have a passionate love story. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. What special gift as a writer had Yázykoff? 2. Give the chief events in the career of Griboyédoff. 3. What was the character of Russian social life at this time? 4. What was the plot of "Woe from Wit"? 5. Describe the influence of Lérmontoff. 6. What is the story of his famous "Ballad of the Tzar, the Lifeguardsman, and the Merchant"? Supply full title. 7. What was Schelling's philosophy, and how did it affect Russian thinkers? 8. What important influence had Byelínsky? 9. What marked powers of description had Aksákoff? 10. How does Koltzóff's life illustrate the widening influence of Russian literature? 11. How did the change from poetry to prose writing come about? 12. Give an account of the chief events in the life of Gógol. 13. How was the Russian tendency to mysticism illustrated in his case? 14. Describe his famous play "The Inspector." What qualities does he show in this? 15. What are the characteristics of his "Tales"? 16. Why is "Dead Souls" regarded as his greatest work? 17. What is the character of "Tarás Búlba"? BIBLIOGRAPHY _A Hero of To-Day._ M. Y. Lérmontoff. (Several translations.) Works of Gógol: _The Inspector._ (Translated by Arthur Sykes.) _Tarás Búlba._ (Translated by I. F. Hapgood.) _Dead Souls, St. John's Eve, and Other Stories._ (Selections from the two volumes of _Little Russian and St. Petersburg Tales_. Translated by I. F. Hapgood.) FOOTNOTES: [13] Rubinstein used this as a foundation for the libretto of his delightful opera, with the same title. [14] Rubinstein used this as the libretto foundation for his opera of the same title, which was produced once, prohibited by the censor, produced once again after a lapse of eight or ten years, and again promptly prohibited. After another interval of years it was again permitted. [15] An unaristocratic form of Eléna--Helen. [16] The "Guests' Court," that is, the bazaar. [17] His Russian name, "Grózny," means, rather, "menacing, threatening," than "terrible," the customary translation, being derived from "grozá," a thunderstorm. [18] Most Russians prefer to have the world "Slavyáne" translated Slavonians, rather than Slavs, as the latter is calculated to mislead. [19] His "Family Chronicle" was the favorite book (during her girlhood) of Márya Alexándrovna, the daughter of Alexander II., afterwards Duchess of Edinburg, and now Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. I made acquaintance with this fascinating work by reading aloud from her copy to a mutual friend, a Russian. [20] Literally, "Old-fashioned Landed Proprietors," who would, as a matter of course, belong to the gentry, or "nobility," as the Russian term is. This title is often translated, "Old-fashioned Farmers." [21] This expression has become proverbial in Russia, and is used to repress any one who becomes unduly excited. CHAPTER IX SEVENTH PERIOD: GONTCHARÓFF. GRIGORÓVITCH. TURGÉNEFF. Under the direct influence of Byelínsky's criticism, and of the highly artistic types created by Gógol, a new generation of Russian writers sprang up, as has already been stated--the writers of the '40's: Grigoróvitch, Gontcharóff, Turgéneff, Ostróvsky, Nekrásoff, Dostoévsky, Count L. N. Tolstóy, and many others. With several of these we can deal but briefly, for while they stand high in the esteem of Russians, they are not accessible in English translations. Despite the numerous points which these writers of the '40's possessed in common, and which bound them together in one "school," this community of interests did not prevent each one of them having his own definite individuality; his own conception of the world, ideals, character, and creative processes; his own literary physiognomy, so to speak, which did not in the least resemble the physiognomy of his fellow-writers, but presented a complete opposition to them in some respects. Perhaps the one who stands most conspicuously apart from the rest in this way is Iván Alexándrovitch Gontcharóff (1812-1890). He was the son of a wealthy landed proprietor in the southeastern government of Simbírsk, pictures of which district are reproduced in his most famous novel, "Oblómoff." This made its appearance in 1858. No one who did not live in Russia at that time can fully comprehend what an overwhelming sensation it created. It was like a bomb projected into the midst of cultivated society at the moment when every one was profoundly affected by the agitation which preceded the emancipation of the serfs (1861), when the literature of the day was engaged in preaching a crusade against slumberous inactivity, inertia, and stagnation. The special point about Gontcharóff's contribution to this crusade against the order of things, and in favor of progress, was that no one could regard "Oblómoff" from the objective point of view. Every one was compelled to treat it subjectively, apply the type of the hero to his own case, and admit that in greater or less degree he possessed some of Oblómoff's characteristics. In this romance the gift of generalization reached its highest point. Oblómoff not only represented the type of the landed proprietor, as developed by the institution of serfdom, but the racial type, which comprised the traits common to Russians in general, without regard to their social rank, class, or vocation. In fact, so typical was this character that it furnished a new word to the language, "oblómovshtchina,"--the state of being like Oblómoff. Oblómoff carried the national indolence--"_khalátnost_," or dressing-gown laziness, the Russians call it in general--to such a degree that he not only was unable to do anything, but he was not able even to enjoy himself. Added to this, he was afflicted with aristocratic enervation of his faculties, unhealthy timidity, incapacity to take the smallest energetic effort, dove-like gentleness, and tenderness of soul, rendering him utterly incapable of defending his own interests or happiness in the slightest degree. And these characteristics were recognized as appertaining to Russians in general, even to those who had never owned serfs, and thus the type presented by Oblómoff may be said to be not only racial, but to a certain extent universal--one of the immortal types, like Don Quixote, Don Juan, Hamlet, and the like. The chief female character in the book, Olga, can hardly be called the heroine; she appears too briefly for that. But she is admitted to be a fine portrait of the Russian woman as she was about to become, not as she then existed. Gontcharóff's "An Every-day Story" is also celebrated; equally so is his "The Ravine," a very distressing picture of the unprincipled character of an anarchist. As the author changed his mind about the hero in part while writing the book, it is not convincing. Another of the men who made his mark at this time was Dmítry Vasílievitch Grigoróvitch (born in 1812), who wrote a number of brilliant books between 1847-1855. His chief merit is that he was the first to begin the difficult study of the common people; the first who talked in literature about the peasants, their needs, their virtues, their helplessness, their misfortunes, and their sufferings. Of his early short stories, "Antón Goremýka" (wretched fellow) is the best. In it he is free from the reproach which was leveled at his later and more ambitious long stories, "The Emigrants" and "The Fishermen." In the latter, for the sake of lengthening the tale, and of enlisting interest by making it conform to the general taste of readers, he made the interest center on a love-story, in which the emotions and procedure were described as being like those in the higher walks of life; and this did not agree with the facts of the case. But the remainder of the stories are founded on a genuine study of peasant ways and feelings. Grigoróvitch had originally devoted himself to painting, and after 1855 he returned to that profession, but between 1884-1898 he again began to publish stories. Among the writers who followed Grigoróvitch in his studies of peasant life, was Iván Sergyéevitch Turgéneff (1818-1883), who may be said not only to have produced the most artistic pictures of that sphere ever written by a Russian, but to have summed up in his longer novels devoted to the higher classes, in a manner not to be surpassed, and in a language and style as polished and brilliant as a collection of precious stones--a whole obscure period of changes and unrest. He was descended from an ancient noble family, and his father served in a cuirassier regiment. On the family estate in the government of Orél[22] (where, later in life, he laid the scene of his famous "Notes of a Sportsman"), he was well provided with teachers of various nationalities--Russian excepted. One of his mother's serfs, a man passionately fond of reading, and a great admirer of Kheraskóff, was the first to initiate the boy into Russian literature, with "The Rossiad." In 1834 Turgéneff entered the Moscow University, but soon went to St. Petersburg, and there completed his course in the philological department. Before he graduated, however, he had begun to write, and even to publish his literary efforts. After spending two years in Berlin, to finish his studies, he returned to Moscow, in 1841, and there made acquaintance with the Slavyanophils--the Aksákoffs, Khomyakóff (a military man, chiefly known by his theological writings), and others, the leaders of the new cult. But Turgéneff, thoroughly imbued with western ideas, did not embrace it. He entered the government service, although there was no necessity for his so doing, but soon left it to devote himself entirely to literature, Byelínsky having written an enthusiastic article about a poem which Turgéneff had published under another name. But poetry was not Turgéneff's strong point, any more than was the drama, though he wrote a number of plays later on, some of which have much merit, and are still acted occasionally. He found his true path in 1846, when the success of his first sketch from peasant life, "Khor and Kalínitch," encouraged him to follow it up with more of the same sort; the result being the famous collection "The Notes (or Diary) of a Sportsman." These, together with numerous other short stories, written between 1844-1850, won for him great and permanent literary fame. The special strength of the "school of the '40's" consisted in its combining in one organic and harmonious whole several currents of literature which had hitherto flowed separately and suffered from one-sidedness. The two chief currents were, on the one hand, the objectivity of the Púshkin school, artistic contemplation of everything poetical in Russian life; and on the other hand, the negatively satirical current of naturalism, of the Gógol school, whose principal attention was directed to the imperfections of Russian life. To these were added, by the writers of the '40's, a social-moral movement, the fermentation of ideas, which is visible in the educated classes of Russian society in the '40's and '50's. As this movement was effected under the influence of the French literature of the '30's and '40's, of which Victor Hugo and Georges Sand were the leading exponents (whose ideas were expressed under the form of romanticism), these writers exercised the most influence on the Russian writers of the immediately succeeding period. But it must be stated that their influence was purely intellectual and moral, and not in the least artistic in character. The influence of the French romanticists on the Russian writers of the '40's consisted in the fact that the latter, imbued with the ideas of the former, engaged in the analysis of Russian life, which constitutes the strength and the merit of the Russian literature of that epoch. Of all the Russian writers of that period, Turgéneff was indisputably the greatest. No one could have been more advantageously situated for the study of the mutual relations between landed proprietors and serfs. The Turgéneff family offered a very sharp type of old-fashioned landed-proprietor manners. Not one gentle or heartfelt trait softened the harshness of those manners, which were based wholly upon merciless despotism, and weighed oppressively not only upon the peasants, but upon the younger members of the family. Every one in the household was kept in a perennial tremor of alarm, and lived in hourly, momentary expectation of some savage punishment. Moreover, the author's father (who is depicted in the novel "First Love"), was much younger than his wife, whom he did not love, having married her for her money. His mother's portrait is to be found in "Púnin and Babúrin." Extremely unhappy in her childhood and youth, when she got the chance at last she became a pitiless despot, greedy of power, and indulged the caprices and fantastic freaks suggested by her shattered nerves upon her family, the house-servants, and the serfs. It is but natural that from such an experience as this Turgéneff should have cherished, from the time of his miserable childhood (his disagreements with his mother later in life are matters of record also), impressions which made of him the irreconcilable foe of serfdom. In depicting, in his "Notes of a Sportsman," the tyranny of the landed gentry over their serfs, he could have drawn upon his personal experience and the touching tale "Mumú;" actually is the reproduction of an episode which occurred in his home. His "Notes of a Sportsman" constitutes a noteworthy historical monument of the period, not only as a work of the highest art, but also as a protest against serfdom. In a way these stories form a worthy continuation of Gógol's "Dead Souls." In them, as in all his other stories, at every step the reader encounters not only clear-cut portraits of persons, but those enchanting pictures of nature for which he is famous. The publication of his short sketches from peasant life in book form--"Notes of a Sportsman"--aroused great displeasure in official circles; officialdom looked askance upon Turgéneff because also of his long residence abroad. Consequently, when, in 1852, he published in a Moscow newspaper a eulogistic article on Gógol (when the latter died), which had been prohibited by the censor in St. Petersburg, the authorities seized the opportunity to punish him. He was arrested and condemned to a month in jail, which the daughter of the police-officer who had charge of him, contrived to convert into residence in their quarters, where Turgéneff wrote "Mumú"; and to residence on his estate, which he was not allowed to leave for about two years. In 1855 he went abroad, and thereafter he spent most of his time in Paris, Baden-Baden (later in Bougival), returning from time to time to his Russian estate. During this period his talent attained its zenith, and he wrote all the most noteworthy works which assured him fame: "Rúdin," "Faust," "A Nest of Nobles," "On the Eve," and "First Love," which alone would have sufficed to immortalize him. In 1860 he published an article entitled "Hamlet and Don Quixote," which throws a brilliant light upon the characters of all his types, and upon their inward springs of action. And at last, in 1862, came his famous "Fathers and Children." The key to the comprehension of his works is contained in his "Hamlet and Don Quixote." His idea is that in these two types are incarnated all the fundamental, contrasting peculiarities of the human race--both poles of the axis upon which it revolves--and that all people belong, more or less, to one of these two types; that every one of us inclines to be either a Hamlet or a Don Quixote. "It is true," he adds, "that in our day the Hamlets have become far more numerous than the Don Quixotes, but the Don Quixotes have not died out, nevertheless." Such is his hero "Rúdin," that central type of the men of the '40's--a man whose whole vocation consists in the dissemination of enlightening ideas, but who, at the same time, exhibits the most complete incapacity in all his attempts to realize those ideas in practice, and scandalous pusillanimity when there is a question of any step which is, in the slightest degree, decisive--a man of the head alone, incapable of doing anything himself, because he has no nature, no blood. Such, again, is Lavrétzky ("A Nest of Nobles"), that concentrated type, not only of the man from the best class of the landed gentry, but in general, of the educated Slavonic man--a man who is sympathetic in the highest degree, full of tenderness, of gentle humanity and kindliness, but who, at the same time, does not contribute to life the smallest active principle, who passively yields to circumstances, like a chip borne on the stormy torrent. Such are the majority of Turgéneff's heroes, beginning with the hero of "Ásya," and ending with Sánin, in "Spring Floods," and Litvínoff, in "Smoke." Several Don Quixotes are to be found in his works, but not many, and they are of two sorts. One typically Russian category includes Andréi Kólosoff, and Yákoff Pásinkoff, Púnin, and a few others; the second are Volýntzeff and Uvár Ivánovitch, in "On the Eve." A third type, invented by Turgéneff as an offset to the Hamlets, is represented by Insároff in "On the Eve." With the publication, in 1862, of "Fathers and Children," a fateful crisis occurred in Turgéneff's career. In his memoirs and in his letters he insists that in the character of Bazároff he had no intention of writing a caricature on the young generation, and of bearing himself in a negative manner towards it. "My entire novel," he writes, "is directed against the nobility as the leading class." Nevertheless, the book raised a tremendous storm. His mistake lay in not recognizing in the new type of men depicted under the character of Bazároff enthusiasts endowed with all the merits and defects of people of that sort; but on the contrary, they impressed him as skeptics, rejecters of all conventions, and he christened them with the name of "nihilists," which was the cause of the whole uproar, as he himself admitted. But he declares that he employed the word not as a reproach, or with the aim of insulting, but merely as an accurate and rational expression of an historical fact, which had made its appearance. Turgéneff always regarded himself as a pupil of Púshkin, and a worthy pupil he was, but he worked out his own independent style, and in turn called forth a horde of imitators. It may be said of Turgéneff, that he created the artistic Russian novel, carrying it to the pitch of perfection in the matter of elegance, and finely proportioned exposition and arrangement of its parts--its architecture, so to speak--combined with artless simplicity and realism. The peculiarity of Turgéneff's style consists in the remarkable softness and tenderness of its tones, combined with a certain mistiness of coloring, which recalls the air and sky of central Russia. Not a single harsh or coarse line is to be found in Turgéneff's work; not a single glaring hue. The objects depicted do not immediately start forth before you, in full proportions, but are gradually depicted in a mass of small details with all the most delicate shades. Turgéneff is most renowned artistically for the landscapes which are scattered through his works, and principally portray the nature of his native locality, central Russia. Equally famous, and executed with no less mastery and art, are his portrayal and analysis of the various vicissitudes of the tender passion, and in this respect, he was regarded as a connoisseur of the feminine heart. A special epithet, "the bard of love," was often applied to him. Along with a series of masculine types, Turgéneff's works present a whole gallery of Russian women of the '50's and '60's, portrayed in a matchless manner with the touch of absolute genius. And it is a fact worth noting that in his works, as in those of all the "authors of the '40's," the women stand immeasurably higher than the men. The heroines are frequently set forth in all their moral grandeur, as though with the express intention of overshadowing the insignificance of the heroes who are placed beside them. Towards the beginning of the '60's, the germs of pessimism began to make their appearance in Turgéneff's work, and its final expression came in "Poems in Prose." The source of this pessimism must be sought in his whole past, beginning with the impressions of his childhood, and the disintegrating influence of the reaction of the '50's, when the nation's hopes of various reforms seemed to have been blighted, and ending with a whole mass of experiences of life and the literary failures and annoyances which he underwent during the second half of his life. And in this connection it must not be forgotten that the very spirit of analysis and skepticism wherewith the school of writers of the '40's is imbued, leads straight to pessimism, like any other sort of skepticism. The following specimen, from "The Notes of a Sportsman," is selected chiefly for its comparative brevity: "THE WOLF." I was driving from the chase one evening alone in a racing gig.[23] I was about eight versts from my house; my good mare was stepping briskly along the dusty road, snorting and twitching her ears from time to time; my weary dog never quitted the hind wheels, as though he were tied there. A thunderstorm was coming on. In front of me a huge, purplish cloud was slowly rising from behind the forest; overhead, and advancing to meet me, floated long, gray clouds; the willows were rustling and whispering with apprehension. The stifling heat suddenly gave way to a damp chill; the shadows swiftly thickened. I slapped the reins on the horse's back, descended into a ravine, crossed a dry brook, all overgrown with scrub-willows, ascended the hill, and drove into the forest. The road in front of me wound along among thick clumps of hazel-bushes, and was already inundated with gloom; I advanced with difficulty. My gig jolted over the firm roots of the centenarian oaks and lindens, which incessantly intersected the long, deep ruts--the traces of cart-wheels; my horse began to stumble. A strong wind suddenly began to drone up above, the trees grew turbulent, big drops of rain clattered sharply, and splashed on the leaves, the lightning and thunder burst forth, the rain poured in torrents. I drove at a foot-pace, and was speedily compelled to halt; my horse stuck fast. I could not see a single object. I sheltered myself after a fashion under a wide-spreading bush. Bent double, with my face wrapped up, I was patiently awaiting the end of the storm, when, suddenly, by the gleam of a lightning-flash, it seemed to me that I descried a tall figure on the road. I began to gaze attentively in that direction--the same figure sprang out of the earth as it were beside my gig. "Who is this?" asked a sonorous voice. "Who are you yourself?" "I'm the forester here." I mentioned my name. "Ah, I know; you are on your way home?" "Yes. But you see what a storm--" "Yes, it is a thunderstorm," replied the voice. A white flash of lightning illuminated the forester from head to foot; a short, crashing peal of thunder resounded immediately afterwards. The rain poured down with redoubled force. "It will not pass over very soon," continued the forester. "What is to be done?" "I'll conduct you to my cottage if you like," he said, abruptly. "Pray do." "Please take your seat." He stepped to the mare's head, took her by the bit, and turned her from the spot. We set out. I clung to the cushion of the drózhky, which rocked like a skiff at sea, and called the dog. My poor mare splashed her feet heavily through the mire, slipped, stumbled; the forester swayed from right to left in front of the shafts like a specter. Thus we proceeded for rather a long time. At last my guide came to a halt. "Here we are at home, master," he said, in a calm voice. A wicket gate squeaked, several puppies began to bark all together. I raised my head, and by the glare of the lightning, I descried a tiny hut, in the center of a spacious yard, surrounded with wattled hedge. From one tiny window a small light cast a dull gleam. The forester led the horse up to the porch, and knocked at the door. "Right away! right away!" resounded a shrill little voice, and the patter of bare feet became audible, the bolt screeched, and a little girl, about twelve years of age, clad in a miserable little chemise, girt about with a bit of list, and holding a lantern in her hand, made her appearance on the threshold. "Light the gentleman," he said to her:--"and I will put your carriage under the shed." The little lass glanced at me, and entered the cottage. I followed her. The forester's cottage consisted of one room, smoke-begrimed, low-ceiled and bare, without any sleeping-shelf over the oven, and without any partitions; a tattered sheepskin coat hung against the wall. On the wall-bench hung a single-barreled gun; in the corner lay scattered a heap of rags; two large pots stood beside the oven. A pine-knot was burning on the table, sputtering mournfully, and on the point of dying out. Exactly in the middle of the room hung a cradle, suspended from the end of a long pole. The little maid extinguished the lantern, seated herself on a tiny bench, and began to rock the cradle with her left hand, while with her right she put the pine-knot to rights. I looked about me, and my heart grew sad within me; it is not cheerful to enter a peasant's hut by night. The baby in the cradle was breathing heavily and rapidly. "Is it possible that thou art alone here?" I asked the little girl. "Yes," she uttered, almost inaudibly. "Art thou the forester's daughter?" "Yes," she whispered. The door creaked, and the forester stepped across the threshold, bending his head as he did so. He picked up the lantern from the floor, went to the table, and ignited the wick. "Probably you are not accustomed to a pine-knot," he said, as he shook his curls. I looked at him. Rarely has it been my fortune to behold such a fine, dashing fellow. He was tall of stature, broad-shouldered, and splendidly built. From beneath his dripping shirt, which was open on the breast, his mighty muscles stood prominently forth. A curly black beard covered half of his surly and manly face; from beneath his broad eyebrows, which met over his nose, small, brown eyes gazed bravely forth. He set his hands lightly on his hips, and stood before me. I thanked him, and asked his name. "My name is Fomá," he replied--"but my nickname is 'The Wolf'."[24] "Ah, are you The Wolf?" I gazed at him with redoubled curiosity. From my Ermoláï and from others I had often heard about the forester, The Wolf, whom all the peasants round about feared like fire. According to their statements, never before had there existed in the world such a master of his business. "He gives no one a chance to carry off trusses of brushwood, no matter what the hour may be; even at midnight, he drops down like snow on one's head, and you need not think of offering resistance--he's as strong and as crafty as the Devil.... And it's impossible to catch him by any means; neither with liquor nor with money; he won't yield to any allurement. More than once good men have made preparations to put him out of the world, but no, he doesn't give them a chance." That was the way the neighboring peasants expressed themselves about The Wolf. "So thou art The Wolf," I repeated. "I've heard of you, brother. They say that thou givest no quarter to any one." "I perform my duty," he replied, surlily; "it is not right to eat the master's bread for nothing." He pulled his axe from his girdle, sat down on the floor, and began to chop a pine-knot. "Hast thou no housewife?" I asked him. "No," he replied, and brandished his axe fiercely. "She is dead, apparently." "No--yes--she is dead," he added, and turned away. I said nothing; he raised his eyes and looked at me. "She ran away with a petty burgher who came along," he remarked, with a harsh smile. The little girl dropped her eyes; the baby waked up and began to cry; the girl went to the cradle. "There, give it to him," said The Wolf, thrusting into her hand a soiled horn.[25] "And she abandoned him," he went on, in a low tone, pointing at the baby. He went to the door, paused, and turned round. "Probably, master," he began, "you cannot eat our bread; and I have nothing but bread." "I am not hungry." "Well, suit yourself. I would boil the samovár for you, only I have no tea.... I'll go and see how your horse is." He went out and slammed the door. I surveyed my surroundings. The hut seemed to me more doleful than before. The bitter odor of chilled smoke oppressed my breathing. The little girl did not stir from her place, and did not raise her eyes, from time to time she gave the cradle a gentle shove, or timidly hitched up on her shoulder her chemise which had slipped down; her bare legs hung motionless. "What is thy name?" I asked. "Ulíta," she said, drooping her sad little face still lower. The forester entered, and seated himself on the wall-bench. "The thunderstorm is passing over," he remarked, after a brief pause; "if you command, I will guide you out of the forest." I rose. The Wolf picked up the gun, and inspected the priming. "What is that for?" I inquired. "They are stealing in the forest. They're felling a tree at the Hare's Ravine," he added, in reply to my inquiring glance. "Can it be heard from here?" "It can from the yard." We went out together. The rain had ceased. Heavy masses of cloud were piled up in the distance, long streaks of lightning flashed forth, from time to time; but over our heads, the dark blue sky was visible; here and there, little stars twinkled through the thin, swiftly flying clouds. The outlines of the trees, besprinkled with rain and fluttered by the wind, were beginning to stand out from the gloom. We began to listen. The forester took off his cap and dropped his eyes. "The--there," he said suddenly, and stretched out his arm; "you see what a night they have chosen." I heard nothing except the rustling of the leaves. The Wolf led my horse out from under the shed. "But I shall probably let them slip this way," he added aloud--"I'll go with you, shall I?"--"All right," he replied, and backed the horse. "We'll catch him in a trice, and then I'll guide you out. Come on." We set out, The Wolf in advance, I behind him. God knows how he found the road, but he rarely halted, and then only to listen to the sound of the axe. "You see," he muttered between his teeth. "You hear? do you hear?" "But where?" The Wolf shrugged his shoulders. We decended into a ravine, the wind died down for an instant, measured blows clearly reached my ear. The Wolf glanced at me and shook his head. We went on, over the wet ferns and nettles. A dull, prolonged roar rang out.... "He has felled it," muttered The Wolf. In the meantime the sky had continued to clear; it was almost light in the forest. We made our way out of the ravine at last. "Wait here," the forester whispered to me, bent over, and raising his gun aloft, vanished among the bushes. I began to listen with strained intentness. Athwart the constant noise of the wind, I thought I discerned faint sounds not far away: an axe was cautiously chopping on branches, a horse was snorting. "Where art thou going? Halt!" the iron voice of The Wolf suddenly thundered out. Another voice cried out plaintively, like a hare.... A struggle began. "Thou li-iest. Thou li-iest," repeated The Wolf, panting; "thou shalt not escape." ... I dashed forward in the direction of the noise, and ran to the scene of battle, stumbling at every step. Beside the felled tree on the earth the forester was moving about: he held the thief beneath him, and was engaged in tying the man's hands behind his back with his girdle. I stepped up. The Wolf rose, and set him on his feet. I beheld a peasant, soaked, in rags, with a long, disheveled beard. A miserable little nag, half-covered with a small, stiff mat, stood hard by, with the running-gear of a cart. The forester uttered not a word; the peasant also maintained silence, and merely shook his head. "Let him go," I whispered in The Wolf's ear. "I will pay for the tree." The Wolf, without replying, grasped the horse's foretop with his left hand; with his right he held the thief by the belt. "Come, move on, simpleton!" he ejaculated surlily. "Take my axe yonder," muttered the peasant. "Why should it be wasted," said the forester, and picked up the axe. We started. I walked in the rear.... The rain began to drizzle again, and soon was pouring in torrents. With difficulty we made our way to the cottage. The Wolf turned the captured nag loose in the yard, led the peasant into the house, loosened the knot of the girdle, and seated him in the corner. The little girl, who had almost fallen asleep by the oven, sprang up, and with dumb alarm began to stare at us. I seated myself on the wall-bench. "Ekh, what a downpour," remarked the forester. "We must wait until it stops. Wouldn't you like to lie down?" "Thanks." "I would lock him up in the lumber-room, on account of your grace," he went on, pointing to the peasant, "but, you see, the bolt...." "Leave him there, don't touch him," I interrupted The Wolf. The peasant cast a sidelong glance at me. I inwardly registered a vow that I would save the poor fellow at any cost. He sat motionless on the wall-bench. By the light of the lantern I was able to scrutinize his dissipated, wrinkled face, his pendant, yellow eyebrows, his thin limbs.... The little girl lay down on the floor, at his very feet, and fell asleep again. The Wolf sat by the table with his head propped on his hands. A grasshopper chirped in one corner..... The rain beat down upon the roof and dripped down the windows; we all maintained silence. "Fomá Kúzmitch," began the peasant suddenly, in a dull, cracked voice: "hey there, Fomá Kúzmitch!" "What do you want?" "Let me go." The Wolf made no reply. "Let me go ... hunger drove me to it ... let me go." "I know you," retorted the forester, grimly. "You're all alike in your village, a pack of thieves." "Let me go," repeated the peasant. "The head clerk ... we're ruined, that's what it is ... let me go!" "Ruined!... No one ought to steal!" "Let me go, Fomá Kúzmitch ... don't destroy me. Thy master, as thou knowest, will devour me, so he will." The Wolf turned aside. The peasant was twitching all over as though racked with fever. He kept shaking his head, and he breathed irregularly. "Let me go," he repeated with melancholy despair. "Let me go, for God's sake, let me go! I will pay, that I will, by God. By God, hunger drove me to it ... the children are squalling, thou knowest thyself how it is. It's hard on a man, that it is." "All the same, don't go a-thieving." "My horse," continued the peasant, "there's my horse, take it if you choose ... it's my only beast ... let me go!" "Impossible, I tell thee. I also am a subordinate, I shall be held responsible. And it isn't right, either, to connive at thy deed." "Let me go! Poverty, Fomá Kúzmitch, poverty, that's what it is ... let me go!" "I know thee!" "But let me go!" "Eh, what's the use of arguing with you; sit still or I'll give it to you, don't you know? Don't you see the gentleman?" The poor fellow dropped his eyes.... The Wolf yawned, and laid his head on the table. The rain had not stopped. I waited to see what would happen. The peasant suddenly straightened himself up. His eyes began to blaze, and the color flew to his face. "Well, go ahead, devour! Go ahead, oppress! Go ahead," he began, screwing up his eyes, and dropping the corners of his lips, "go ahead, accursed murderer of the soul, drink Christian blood, drink!" The forester turned round. "I'm talking to thee, to thee, Asiatic blood-drinker, to thee!" "Art thou drunk, that thou hast taken it into thy head to curse!" said the forester with amazement. "Hast thou gone crazy?" "Drunk!... It wasn't on thy money, accursed soul-murderer, wild beast, beast, beast!" "Akh, thou ... I'll give it to thee!" "What do I care? It's all one to me--I shall perish anyway; where can I go without a horse? Kill me--it comes to the same thing; whether with hunger or thus, it makes no difference. Deuce take them all: wife, children--let them all perish.... But just wait, thou shalt hear from us!" The Wolf half-rose to his feet. "Kill, kill----" the peasant began again in a savage voice; "Kill, go ahead, kill...." (The little girl sprang up from the floor, and riveted her eyes on him.) "Kill, kill!" "Hold thy tongue!" thundered the forester, and advanced a couple of strides. "Enough, that will do, Fomá," I shouted--"let him alone.... Don't bother with him...." "I won't hold my tongue," went on the unfortunate man. "It makes no difference how he murders me. Thou soul-murderer, thou wild beast, hanging is too good for thee.... But just wait. Thou hast not long to vaunt thyself! They'll strangle thy throat for thee. Just wait a bit!" The Wolf seized him by the shoulder.... I rushed to the rescue of the peasant. "Don't touch us, master!" the forester shouted at me. I did not fear his threats, and was on the point of stretching out my arm, but to my extreme amazement, with one twist, he tore the girdle from the peasant's elbow, seized him by the collar, banged his cap down over his eyes, flung open the door, and thrust him out. "Take thyself and thy horse off to the devil!" he shouted after him; "and see here, another time I'll...." He came back into the cottage, and began to rake over the ashes. "Well, Wolf," I said at last, "you have astonished me. I see that you are a splendid young fellow." "Ekh, stop that, master," he interrupted me, with vexation. "Only please don't tell about it. Now I'd better show you your way," he added, "because you can't wait for the rain to stop." The wheels of the peasant's cart rumbled through the yard. "You see, he has dragged himself off," he muttered; "but I'll give it to him!" Half an hour later he bade me farewell on the edge of the forest. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. At what critical period of Russian history was Gontcharóff's famous novel "Oblómoff" written? 2. Why did it furnish a new word to the Russian language? 3. What traits did this word represent? 4. What was the peculiar merit of the short stories of Grigoróvitch? 5. What was the special strength of the "School of the Forties"? 6. Give an account of the life of Turgéneff. 7. What did he try to show in "Hamlet and Don Quixote"? 8. What opposition arose to his "Fathers and Children"? 9. What are the striking features of his style? 10. What characteristics of this style are shown in "The Wolf"? BIBLIOGRAPHY The works of Turgéneff are easily accessible in several English translations. FOOTNOTES: [22] Pronounced Aryól. [23] This vehicle, which is also the best adapted as a convenient runabout for rough driving in the country, consists merely of a board, attached, without a trace of springs, to two pairs of wheels, identical in size. [24] In the government of Orél (pronounced Aryól) a solitary, surly man is called a wolf-_biriúk_. [25] For a nursing-bottle, the Russian peasants use a cow's horn, with a cow's teat tied over the tip. CHAPTER X SEVENTH PERIOD: OSTRÓVSKY, A. K. TOLSTÓY, POLÓNSKY, NEKRÁSOFF, SHEVTCHÉNKO, AND OTHERS. The new impulse imparted to all branches of literature in Russia during the '50's and the '60's could not fail to find a reflection in the fortunes of the drama also. Nowhere is the spirit of the period more clearly set forth than in the history of the Russian theater, by the creation of an independent Russian stage. Russian comedy had existed from the days of Sumarókoff, as we have seen, and had included such great names as Von Vízin, Griboyédoff, and Gógol. But great as were the works of these authors, they cannot be called its creators, in the true sense of the word, because their plays were like oases far apart, separated by great intervals of time, and left behind them no established school. Although Von Vízin's comedies contain much that is independent and original, they are fashioned after the models of the French stage, as is apparent at every step. "Woe from Wit" counts rather as a specimen of talented social satire than as a model comedy, and in its type, this comedy of Griboyédoff also bears the imprint of the French stage. Gógol's comedies, despite their great talent, left behind them no followers, and had no imitators. In the '30's and the '40's the repertory of the Russian theater consisted of plays which had nothing in common with "Woe from Wit," "The Inspector," or "Marriage," and the latter was rarely played. As a whole, the stage was given over to translations of sensational French melodramas and to patriotic tragedies. The man who changed all this and created Russian drama, Alexánder Nikoláevitch Ostróvsky (1823-1886), was born in Moscow, the son of a poor lawyer, whose business lay with the merchant class of the Trans-Moscow River quarter, of the type which we meet with in Alexánder Nikoláevitch's celebrated comedies. The future dramatist, who spent most of his life in Moscow, was most favorably placed to observe the varied characteristics of Russian life, and also Russian historical types; for Moscow, in the '30's and '40's of the nineteenth century, was the focus of all Russia, and contained within its walls all the historical and contemporary peculiarities of the nation. On leaving the University (where he did not finish the course), in 1843, Ostróvsky entered the civil service in the commercial court, where he enjoyed further opportunities of enlarging his observations on the life of the Trans-Moscow quarter. In 1847 he made his first appearance in literature, with "Scenes of Family Happiness in Moscow," which was printed in a Moscow newspaper. Soon afterwards he printed, in the same paper, several scenes from his comedy "Svoí liúdi--sotchtyémsya," which may be freely translated, "It's All in the Family: We'll Settle It Among Ourselves." This gained him more reputation, and he resigned from the service to devote himself entirely to literature, as proof-reader, writer of short articles, and so forth, earning a miserably small salary. When the comedy just mentioned was printed, in 1847, it bore the title of "The Bankrupt," and was renamed in deference to the objections of the censor. It made a tremendous commotion in Russian society, where it was read aloud almost daily, and one noted man remarked of it, "It was not written; it was born." But the Moscow merchants took umbrage at the play, made complaints in the proper quarter, and the author was placed under police supervision, while the newspapers were forbidden to mention the comedy. Naturally it was not acted. The following summary will not only indicate the reason therefor, and for the wrath of the merchants, but will also afford an idea of his style in the first comedy which was acted, his famous "Don't Seat Yourself in a Sledge Which is not Yours" ("Shoemaker, Stick to Your Last," is the English equivalent), produced in 1853, and in others: IT'S ALL IN THE FAMILY: WE'LL SETTLE IT AMONG OURSELVES. Samsón Sílitch Bolshóff (Samson, son of Strong Big), a Moscow merchant, has a daughter, Olympiáda, otherwise known as Lípotchka. Lípotchka has been "highly educated," according to the ideas of the merchant class, considers herself a lady, and despises her parents and their "coarse" ways. This remarkable education consists in a smattering of the customary feminine accomplishments, especial value being attached to a knowledge of French, which is one mark of the gentry in Russia. Like all merchants' daughters who have been educated above their sphere, Lípotchka aspires to marry a noble, preferably a military man. The play opens with a soliloquy by Lípotchka, who meditates upon the pleasures of the dance. "What an agreeable occupation these dances are! Just think how fine! What can be more entrancing? You enter an assembly, or some one's wedding, you sit down; naturally, you are all decked with flowers, you are dressed up like a doll, or like a picture in a paper; suddenly a cavalier flies up, 'Will you grant me the happiness, madam?' Well, you see if he is a man with understanding, or an army officer, you half-close your eyes, and reply, 'With pleasure!' Ah! Cha-a-arming! It is simply beyond comprehension! I no longer like to dance with students or shop-clerks. 'Tis quite another thing to distinguish yourself with military men! Ah, how delightful! How enchanting! And their mustaches, and their epaulets, and their uniforms, and some even have spurs with bells.... I am amazed that so many women should sit with their feet tucked up under them. Really, it is not at all difficult to learn. Here am I, who was ashamed to take a teacher. I have learned everything, positively everything, in twenty lessons. Why should not one learn to dance? It is pure superstition! Here is mama, who used to get angry because the teacher was always clutching at my knees. That was because she is not cultured. Of what importance is it? He's only the dancing-master." Lípotchka proceeds to picture to herself that she receives a proposal from an officer, and that he thinks she is uneducated because she gets confused. She has not danced for a year and a half, and decides to practice a little. As she is dancing, her mother enters, and bids her to stop--dancing is a sin. Lípotchka refuses, and an acrimonious wrangle ensues between mother and daughter, about things in general. The mother reproaches Lípotchka for her ways, reminds her that her parents have educated her, and so forth. To this Lípotchka retorts that other people have taught her all she knows--and why have her parents refused that gentleman of good birth who has asked for her hand? Is he not a Cupid? (she pronounces it "Capid.") There is no living with them, and so forth. The female match-maker comes to inform them how she is progressing in her search for a proper match for Lípotchka, and the latter declares stoutly, that she will never marry a merchant. The match-maker, a famous figure in old Russia life, and irresistibly comic on the stage, habitually addresses her clients as, "my silver ones," "my golden ones," "my emerald ones," "my brilliant (or diamond) ones," which she pronounces "bralliant." Matters are nearly arranged for Lípotchka's marriage with a man of good birth. Old Bolshóff, however, is represented as being in a financial position where he can take his choice between paying all his debts and being thus left penniless but honest; and paying his creditors nothing, or, at most, a quarter of their dues, and remaining rich enough to indulge in the luxury of a noble son-in-law, the only motive on whose part for such a marriage being, naturally, the bride's dowry. Old Bolshóff decides to defraud his creditors, with the aid of a pettifogging lawyer, and he makes over all his property to his clerk, Podkhaliúzin. The latter has long sighed for Lípotchka, but his personal repulsiveness, added to his merchant rank, has prevented his ever daring to hint at such a thing. Now, however, he sees his chance. He promises the legal shyster a round sum if he will arrange matters securely in his favor. He bribes the match-maker to get rid of the noble suitor, and to bring about his marriage with Lípotchka, promising her, in case of success, two thousand rubles and a sable-lined cloak. Matters have gone so far that Lípotchka is gorgeously arrayed to receive her nobly born suitor, and accept him. Her mother is feasting her eyes on her adored child, in one of the intervals of her grumbling and bickering with her "ungrateful offspring," and warning the dear idol not to come in contact with the door, and crush her finery. But the match-maker announces that the man has beaten a retreat; Lípotchka falls in a swoon. Her father declares that there is no occasion for that, as he has a suitable match at hand. He calls in Podkhaliúzin, whom Lípotchka despises, and presents him, commanding his daughter to wed. Lípotchka flatly refuses. But after a private interview with the ambitious clerk, in which the latter informs her that she no longer possesses a dowry wherewith to attract a noble suitor, and in which he promises that she shall have the greatest liberty and be indulged in any degree of extravagance, she consents. The marriage takes place. But old Bolshóff has been put in prison by his enraged creditors, while the young couple have been fitting up a new house in gorgeous style on the old merchant's money. The pettifogging lawyer comes for his promised reward. Podkhaliúzin cheats him out of it. The match-maker comes for her two thousand rubles and sable-lined cloak and gets one hundred rubles and a cheap gown. As these people depart cursing, old Bolshóff is brought in by his guard. He has come to entreat his wealthy son-in-law to pay the creditors twenty-five per cent and so release him from prison. Podkhaliúzin declares that this is impossible; the old man has given him his instructions to pay only ten per cent, and really, he cannot afford to pay more. The old man's darling Lípotchka joins in and supports her husband's plea that they positively cannot afford more. The old man is taken back to prison, preliminary to being sent to Siberia as a fraudulent bankrupt. The young couple take the matter quite coolly until the policeman comes to carry off Podkhaliúzin to prison, for collusion. Even then the rascally ex-clerk does not lose his coolness, and when informed by the policeman--in answer to his question as to what is to become of him--that he will probably be sent to Siberia, "Well, if it is to be Siberia, Siberia let it be! What of that! People live in Siberia also. Evidently there is no escape. I am ready." Although "Shoemaker, Stick to Your Last," the central idea of which is that girls of the merchant class will be much happier if they marry in their own class than if they wed nobles, who take them solely for their money (the usual reason for such alliances, even at the present day), had an immense success, both in Moscow and in St. Petersburg, Ostróvsky received not a penny from it. In the latter city, also, the censor took a hand, because "the nobility was put to shame for the benefit of the merchant class," and the theater management was greatly agitated when the Emperor and all the imperial family came to the first performance. But the Emperor remarked, "There are very few plays which have given me so much pleasure; it is not a play, it is a lesson." "The Poor Bride" (written in 1852) was then put on the stage, and the author received a small payment on the spot. In 1854 "Poverty is not a Vice" appeared, and confirmed the author's standing as a writer of the first class. This play, a great favorite still, contains many presentations of old Russian customs. It was the first from which the author received a regular royalty, ranging from one-twentieth to two-thirds of the profits. After many more comedies, all more or less noted, all more or less objected to by the censor, for various reasons, and hostility and bad treatment on the part of the theatrical authorities, Ostróvsky attained the zenith of his literary fame with his masterpiece, "Grozá" ("The Thunderstorm"). It was not until 1856, in his comedy "A Drunken Headache from Another Man's Banquet" (meaning, "to bear another's trouble"), that Ostróvsky invented the words which have passed into the language, _samodúr_ and _samodúrstvo_ (which mean, literally, "self-fool" and "the state of being a self-fool"). The original "self-fool" is "Tit Tititch Bruskóff" (provincially pronounced "Kit Kititch" in the play), but no better example of the pig-headed, obstinate, self-complacent, vociferous, intolerable tyrant which constitutes the "self-fool" can be desired than that offered in "The Thunderstorm" by Márfa Ignátievna Kabánoff, the rich merchant's widow. She rules her son, Tíkhon, and his wife, Katerína, with a rod of iron. Her daughter, Varvára, gets along with her by consistent deceitfulness, and meets her lover, Kudryásh, whenever she pleases. Tíkhon goes off for a short time on business, and anxious to enjoy a little freedom, he persistently refuses to take his wife with him, despite her urgent entreaties. She makes the request because she feels that she is falling in love with Borís. After his departure, Varvára takes charge of her fate and persuades her to indulge her affection and to see Borís. Katerína eventually yields to Varvára's representations. A half-mad old lady, who wanders about attended by a couple of lackeys, has previously frightened the sensitive Katerína (who was reared amid family affection, and cannot understand or endure the tyranny of her mother-in-law) by vague predictions and threats of hell; and when a thunderstorm suddenly breaks over the assembled family, after her husband's return, and the weird old lady again makes her appearance, Katerína is fairly crazed. She thinks the terrible punishment for her wayward affections has arrived; she confesses to her husband and mother-in-law that she loves Borís. Spurned by the latter--though the husband is not inclined to attach overmuch importance to what she says, in her startled condition--she rushes off and drowns herself. The savage mother-in-law, who is to blame for the entire tragedy, sternly commands her son not to mourn for his dead wife, whom he has loved in the feeble way which such a tyrant has permitted. This outline gives hardly an idea of the force of the play, and its value as a picture of Russian manners of the old school in general, and of the merchant class (who retained them long after they were much ameliorated in other classes of society) in particular. But Ostróvsky did not confine his dramas within narrow limits. On the contrary, they present a wonderfully broad panorama of Russian life, and attain to a universality which has been reached by no other Russian writer save Púshkin and Count L. N. Tolstóy. There are plays from prehistoric, mythical times, and historical plays, which deal with prominent epochs in the life of the nation. A great favorite, partly because of its pictures of old Russian customs, is "The Voevóda" or "The Dream on the Volga" (1865). "Vasilísa Meléntieff" is popular for the same reasons (1868). Ostróvsky's nervous organization was broken down by the incessant toil necessary to support his family, and these historical plays were written, with others, to relieve the pressure. His dramas were given all over Russia, and he received more money from private than from the government theaters. But towards the end of his life comfort came, and during the last year of his life he was in charge of the Moscow (government) Theater. At last he was master of the Russian stage, and established a school of dramatic art on the lines laid down by himself. But the toil was too great for his shattered health, and he died in 1886. His plays are wonderfully rich as a portrait-gallery of contemporary types, as well as of historical types, and the language of his characters is one of the most surprising features of his work. It is far too little to say of it that it is natural, and fits the characters presented: in nationality, in figurativeness, in keen, unfeigned humor and wit it represents the richest treasure of the Russian speech. Only three writers are worthy of being ranked together in this respect: Púshkin, Krylóff, and Ostróvsky. While, like all the writers of the '40's, Ostróvsky is the pupil of Gógol, he created his own school, and attained an independent position from his very first piece. His plays have only one thing in common with Gógol's--he draws his scenes from commonplace, every-day life in Russia, his characters are unimportant, every-day people. Gógol's comedies were such in the strict meaning of the word, and their object was to cast ridicule on the acting personages, to bring into prominence the absurd sides of their characters; and this aim accomplished, the heroes leave the stage without having undergone any change in their fates. With Ostróvsky's comedies it is entirely different. The author is not felt in them. The persons of the drama talk and act in defiance of him, so to speak, as they would talk and act in real life, and decided changes in their fate take place. But Ostróvsky accomplished far more than the creation of a Russian theater: he brought the stage to the highest pitch of ideal realism, and discarded all ancient traditions. The subjects of his plays are distinguished for their classic simplicity; life itself flows slowly across the stage, as though the author had demolished a wall and were exhibiting the actual life within the house. His plays, like life, break off short, after the climax, with some insignificant scene, generally between personages of secondary rank, and he tries to convince the audience that in life there are no beginnings, no endings; that there is no moment after which one would venture to place a full period. Moreover, they are "plays of life" rather than either "comedies" or "tragedies," as he chanced to label them; they are purely presentations of life. In their scope they include almost every phase of Russian life, except peasant and country life, which he had no chance to study. For the sake of convenience we may group the other dramatic writers here. The conditions under which the Russian stage labored were so difficult that the best literary talent was turned into other channels, and the very few plays which were fitted to vie with Ostróvsky's came from the pens of men whose chief work belonged to other branches of literature. Thus Iván Sergyéevitch Turgéneff, who wrote more for the stage than other contemporary writers, and whose plays fill one volume of his collected works, distinguished himself far more in other lines. Yet several of these plays hold the first place after Ostróvsky's. "The Boarder" (1848), "Breakfast at the Marshal of Nobility's" (1849), "The Bachelor" (1849), "A Month in the Country" (1850), "The Woman from the Rural Districts" (1851) are still acted and enjoyed by the public. Alexéi Feofiláktovitch Písemsky (best known for his "Thousand Souls" and his "Troubled Sea," romances of a depressing sort) contributed to the stage a play called "A Bitter Fate" (among others), wherein the Russian peasant appeared for the first time in natural guise without idealization or any decoration whatever. Count Alexéi Konstantínovitch Tolstóy (1817-1875) wrote a famous trilogy of historical plays: "The Death of Iván the Terrible" (1866), "Tzar Feódor Ivánovitch" (1868), and "Tzar Borís" (1870). The above are the dates of their publication. They appeared on the stage, the first in 1876, the other two in 1899, though they had been privately acted at the Hermitage Theater, in the Winter Palace, long before that date. They are fine reading plays, offering a profound study of history, but the epic element preponderates over the dramatic element, and the characters set forth their sentiments in extremely long monologues and conversations. There have been many other dramatic writers, but none of great distinction. * * * * * Count A. K. Tolstóy stood at the head of the school of purely artistic poets who claimed that they alone were the faithful preservers of the Púshkin tradition. But in this they were mistaken. Púshkin drew his subjects from life; they shut themselves up in æsthetic contemplation of the beautiful forms of classical art of ancient and modern times, and isolated themselves from life in general. The result was, that they composed poetry of an abstract, artistically dainty, elegantly rhetorical sort, whose chief defect lay in its lack of individuality, and the utter absence of all colors, sounds, and motives by which Russian nationality and life are conveyed. The poetry of this school contains no sharply cut features of spiritual physiognomy. All of them flow together into a featureless mass of elegantly stereotyped forms and sounds. Count A. K. Tolstóy, who enjoyed all the advantages of education and travel abroad (where he made acquaintance with Goethe), began to scribble verses at the age of six, he says in his autobiography. Born in 1817, he became Master of the Hounds at the imperial court in 1857, and died in 1875. He made his literary debut in 1842 with prose tales, and only in 1855 did he publish his lyric and epic verses in various newspapers. His best poetical efforts, beautiful as they are in external form, are characterless, and remind one of Zhukóvsky's, in that they were influenced by foreign or Russian poets--Lérmontoff, for instance. But they have not a trace of genuine, unaffected feeling, of vivid, burning passion, of inspiration. His best work is his prose historical romance, "Prince Serébryany," which gives a lively and faithful picture of Iván the Terrible, his court, and life in his day. The dramas already mentioned are almost if not equally famous in Russia, though less known abroad. "Prince Serébryany," and "War and Peace" by the former author's more illustrious cousin, Count L. N. Tolstóy, are the best historical novels in the Russian language. Another poet of this period was Apollón Nikoláevitch Máikoff, born in 1821, the son of a well-known painter. During his first period he gave himself up to classical, bloodless poems, of which one of the most noted is "Two Worlds," which depicts the clash of heathendom and Christianity at the epoch of the fall of Rome. This poem he continued to write all his life; the prologue, "Three Deaths," begun in 1841, was not finished until 1872. To this period, also, belong "Two Judgments," "Sketches of Rome," "Anacreon," "Alcibiades," and so forth. His second and best period began in 1855, when he abandoned his cold classicism and wrote his best works: "Clermont Cathedral," "Savonarola," "Foolish Dúnya," "The Last Heathens," "Pólya," "The Little Picture," and a number of beautiful translations from Heine. Still another poet was Afanásy Afanásievitch Shénshin, who wrote under the name of Fet. Born in 1820, he began to write at the age of nineteen. About that time, on entering the Moscow University, he experienced some difficulty in furnishing the requisite documents, whereupon he assumed the name of his mother during her first marriage--Fet. He reacquired his own name, Shénshin, in 1875, by presenting the proper documents, whereupon an imperial order restored it to him. From 1844 to 1855 he served in the army, continuing to write poetry the while. Before his death, in 1892, he published numerous volumes of poems, translations from the classics, and so forth. Less talented than Count Alexéi K. Tolstóy, Apollón Máikoff, and other poets of that school, his name, in Russian criticism, has become a general appellation to designate a poet of pure art, for he was the most typical exponent of his school. Most of his poems are short, and present a picture of nature, or of some delicate, fleeting psychical emotion, but they are all filled with enchanting, artistic charm. His poetry is the quintessence of æsthetic voluptuousness, such as was evolved on the soil of the sybaritism of the landed gentry in the circles of the '40's of the nineteenth century. The oldest of all these worshipers of pure art was Feódor Ivánovitch Tiútcheff (1803-1873). At the age of seventeen he made a remarkably fine translation of some of Horace's works. He rose to very fine positions in the diplomatic service and at court. Although his first poems were printed in 1826, he was not widely known until 1850-1854. His scope is not large, and he is rather wearisome in his faultless poems. The majority of them are rather difficult reading. A poet who did not wholly belong to this school, but wrote in many styles, was Yákoff Petróvitch Polónsky (1820-1898).[26] Under different conditions he might have developed fire and originality, both in his poems and his prose romances. His best known poem is "The Grasshopper-Musician" (1863). He derived his inspiration from various foreign poets, and also from many of his fellow-countrymen. Among others, those in the spirit of Koltzóff's national ballads are not only full of poetry and inspiration, art and artless simplicity, but some of them have been set to music, have made their way to the populace, and are sung all over Russia. Others, like "The Sun and the Moon" and "The Baby's Death" are to be found in every Russian literary compendium, and every child knows them by heart. But while the poetry of this period could not boast of any such great figures as the preceding period, it had, nevertheless, another camp besides that of the "pure art" advocates whom we have just noticed. At the head of the second group, which clung to the æsthetic doctrine that regarded every-day life as the best source of inspiration and contained several very talented expositors, stood Nikolái Alexyéevitch Nekrásoff (1821-1877). Nekrásoff belonged to an impoverished noble family, which had once been very wealthy, and was still sufficiently well off to have educated him in comfort. But when his father sent him to St. Petersburg to enter a military school he was persuaded to abandon that career and take a course at the University. His father was so enraged at this step that he cast him off, and the lad of sixteen found himself thrown upon his own resources. He nearly starved to death and underwent such hardships that his health was injured for life, but he did not manage to complete the University course. These very hardships contributed greatly, no doubt, to the power of his poetry later on, even though they exerted a hardening effect upon his character, and aroused in him the firm resolve to acquire wealth at any cost. Successful as his journalistic enterprises were in later life, it is known that he could not have assured himself the comfortable fortune he enjoyed from that source alone, and he is said to have won most of it at the gambling-table. This fact and various other circumstances may have exercised some influence upon the judgment of a section of the public as to his literary work. There is hardly any other Russian writer over whose merits such heated discussions take place as over Nekrásoff, one party maintaining that he was a true poet, with genuine inspiration; the other, that he was as clever with his poetry in a business sense, as he was with financial operations, and that he possessed no feeling, inspiration, or poetry.[27] The truth would seem to lie between these two extremes. Like all the other writers of his day--like writers in general--he was unconsciously impressed by the spirit of the time, and changed his subjects and treatment as it changed; and like every other writer, some of his works are superior in feeling and truth to others. The most important period of his life was that from 1841 to 1845, when his talent was forming and ripening. Little is known with definiteness regarding this period, but it is certain that while pursuing his literary labors, he moved in widely differing circles of society--fashionable, official, literary, theatrical, that of the students, and others--which contributed to the truth of his pictures from these different spheres in his poems. In 1847 he was able (in company with Panáeff) to buy "The Contemporary," of which, eventually, he became the sole proprietor and editor, and with which his name is indelibly connected. When this journal was dropped, in 1866, he became the head, in 1868, of "The Annals of the Fatherland," where he remained until his death. It was during these last ten years of his life that he wrote his famous poems, "Russian Women" and "Who in Russia Finds Life Good," with others of his best poems. He never lost his adoration of the critic Byelínsky, to whom he attributed his own success, as the result of judicious development of his powers. One of the many conflicting opinions concerning him is, that he is merely a satirist, "The Russian Juvenal," which opinion is founded on his contributions to "The Whistle," a publication added, as a supplement, to "The Contemporary," about 1857. Yet his satirical verses form but an insignificant part of his writings. And although there does exist a certain monotony of gloomy depression in the tone of all his writings, yet they are so varied in form and contents that it is impossible to classify them under any one heading without resorting to undue violence. He is not the poet of any one class of society, of any one party or circle, but expresses in his poetry the thoughts of a whole cycle of his native land, the tears of all his contemporaries and fellow-countrymen. This apparently would be set down to the credit of any other man, and regarded as a proof that he kept in intimate touch with the spirit and deepest sentiments of his time, instead of being reckoned a reproach, and a proof of commercialism. Moreover, he wrote things which were entirely peculiar to himself, unknown hitherto, and which had nothing in common with the purely reflective lyricism of the '40's of the nineteenth century. These serve to complete his significance as the universal bard of his people and his age, to which he is already entitled by his celebration of all ranks and elements of society, whose fermentation constitutes the actual essence of that period. There is one point to be noted about Nekrásoff which was somewhat neglected by the critics during his lifetime. No other Russian poet of that day was so fond of calling attention to the bright sides of the national life, or depicted so many positive, ideal, brilliant types with such fervent, purely Schilleresque, enthusiasm as Nekrásoff. And most significant of all, his positive types are not of an abstract, fantastic character, clothed in flesh and blood of the period and environment, filled with conflicting, concrete characteristics--not one of them resembles any other. He sought and found them in all classes of society; in "Russian Women" he depicts the devoted princesses in the highest circle of the social hierarchy, with absolute truth, as faithful representatives of Russian life and Russian aristocrats, capable of abandoning their life of ease and pleasure, and with heroism worthy of the ancient classic heroines, accompanying their exiled husbands to Siberia, and there cheerfully sharing their hardships. His pictures of peasant life are equally fine; that in "Red-Nosed Frost" (the Russian equivalent of Jack Frost) is particularly famous, and the peasant heroine, in her lowly sphere, yields nothing in grandeur to the ladies of the court. The theme of "Red-Nosed Frost" may be briefly stated in a couple of its verses, in the original meter: There are women in Russian hamlets With a dignified calmness of face; With a beautiful strength in their movements, With mien and glance of an empress in grace. A blind man alone could ignore them; And he who can see them must say: "She passes--'tis as though the sun shineth! She looks--'tis giving rubles away!" A noble-minded, splendid peasant woman, who has worthily fulfilled all the duties of her hard lot, at last becomes a widow. The manner of it; the quaint folk-remedies employed to heal the sick man; the making of the shroud by the bereaved wife; the digging of his grave by his father; the funeral; all are described. The widow drives the sledge with the coffin to the grave. On her return home she finds that the fire is out and that there is no wood on hand. Intrusting her two children to the care of a neighbor, she drives off with the sledge to the forest to cut some. As she collects the fuel, her thoughts wander back over the past, and she sees a vision of her life, its joys and sorrows. Just as she is about to set out for home, she pauses, approaches a tall pine-tree with her axe, and there Jack Frost woos and wins her, and she remains, frozen stiff. The beauty and interest of the poem quite escape in this (necessarily) bald summary. The same is the case with "Russian Women." The first poem of this is entitled "Princess Trubetzkóy." It begins by narrating how the "Count-father" prepares the covered traveling sledge for the Princess, who is bent upon the long journey to Siberia, to join her husband, one of the "Decembrists," exiled for participation in the tumults of 1825, on the accession to the throne of Nicholas I. He spreads a thick bear-skin rug, puts in down-pillows, hangs up a holy image (_ikóna_) in the corner, grieving the while. After this prologue, the journey of the devoted wife is described; the monotonous way being spent in great part by the noble woman in vision-like memories of her happy childhood, girlhood, and married life. On arriving at Irkútsk she receives a visit from the governor, an old subordinate of her father, who endeavors by every possible means to deter her from pursuing her journey. She persists in demanding that fresh horses be put to her sledge, and that she be allowed to proceed to the Nertchínsk mines, where her husband is. Failing to frighten her by the description of the hardships she will be compelled to endure, by telling her that she will have to live in the common ward of the prison with hundreds of prisoners, never see her husband alone, and the like, he at last informs her that she can proceed only on condition that she renounces all her rights, title, property. She demands the document on the instant and signs it, and again demands her horses. The governor (who, by pleading illness, has already detained the impatient woman a whole week) then tells her that, having renounced her rights, she must traverse the remaining eight hundred versts[28] on foot, like a common prisoner, and that the majority fall by the way in so doing. Her only thought is the extra time which this will require. The governor, having done his duty, tells her that she shall have her horses and sledge as before; he will assume the responsibility. She proceeds. Here the poem ends. But the second poem, entitled "Princess Volkónsky," and dated 1826-1827 carries the story further for both women. It takes the form of a tale told to her grandchildren, to whom says the Princess Volkónsky, she will bequeath flowers from her sister Muraviéff's grave (in Siberia), a collection of butterflies, the flora of Tchitá, views of that savage country, and an iron bracelet forged by their grandfather from his chains. She narrates how, at the age of seventeen, she married the Prince, a friend of her father, and the hero of many campaigns, much older than herself, who even after the wedding, is absent the greater part of the time on his military duties. Once, when they meet again after one of these prolonged separations, he is suddenly seized with panic, burns many documents in her presence, and takes her home to her father without, however, explaining anything. After that she hears nothing about him for many months; no letters reach her, every one professes ignorance as to his whereabouts, but assures her he is engaged in his duties. Even when her son is born he makes no sign, and all further efforts to pacify her prove useless. She goes to St. Petersburg, finds out the truth, and insists on joining her husband who, with Prince Trubetzkóy and the other noble Decembrists, is in Siberia. Every effort on the part of friends and relatives to prevent her leaving her baby and taking this step prove of no avail. She obtains the Emperor's permission, and sets out. The description of her journey is even more graphic and touching than that of Princess Trubetzkóy's. She hears on the way about the efforts which have been made to turn the latter from her purpose, and that probably the same measures will be used with her. At one point she meets the caravan which is bringing the silver from the Nertchínsk mines to the capital, and she asks the young officer in charge if the exiles are alive and well. He replies insultingly that he knows nothing about such people. But one of the peasant-soldiers of the caravan quietly gives her the desired information, and she adds, that invariably throughout her long and trying experience the peasant men have been truly sympathetic, helpful, and kind to the last degree, when their superiors were not. Efforts to turn her aside fail. She overtakes Princess Trubetzkóy, and the two friends pursue their sad journey together. On arriving in Nertchínsk, the commandant questions their right to see their husbands, refuses to recognize the Emperor's own signature, says he will send to Irkútsk for information (they had offered to go back themselves for it), and until it is received, they will not be permitted to hold communication with those whom they have come so far to see. The women resign themselves, and pass the night in a peasant hut, so small that their heads touch the wall, their feet the door. Princess Volkónsky, waking early, sets out on a stroll through the village, and comes to the mouth of the mine-shaft, guarded by a sentry. She prevails upon this sentry to let her descend, contrary to orders, and after a long and arduous passage through the rough, dripping corridors, and after running the risk of discovery by an official, and even of death (when she extinguishes her torch to escape the official, and proceeds in the dark), she reaches her husband and the other Decembrist exiles, and delivers to them the letters from their friends, which she has with her. The poem is most beautiful and affecting. A third very famous poem is "Who in Russia Finds Life Good?" Seven peasants meet by chance on the highway, and fall into a dispute on that theme. One says, "the landed proprietor"; another, "the official"; a third, "the priest." Others say, respectively, "the fat-bellied merchant," "the minister of the empire," "the Tzar." All of the peasants had started out at midday upon important errands, but they argue hotly until sundown, walking all the while, and do not notice even that until an old woman happens along and asks them, "Where are they bound by night?" On glancing about them, the peasants perceive that they are thirty versts from home, and they are too fatigued to undertake the return journey at once. They throw the blame on the Forest-Fiend, seat themselves in the woods, and light a fire. One man goes off to procure liquor, another for food, and as they consume these, they begin the discussion all over again in such vehement wise that all the beasts and birds of the forest are affrighted. At last Pakhóm, one of the peasants, catches a young bird in his hand and says that, frail and tiny as it is, it is more mighty than a peasant man, because its wings permit it to fly whithersoever it wishes; and he beseeches the birdling to give them its wings, so that they may fly all over the empire and observe and inquire, "Who dwelleth happily and at ease in Russia?" Surely, Iván remarks, wings are not needed; if only they could be sure of half a pud (eighteen pounds) of bread a day (meaning the sour, black rye bread), they could "measure off Mother Russia" with their own legs. Another of the peasants stipulates for a vedró (two and three-quarters gallons) of vódka; another for cucumbers every morning; another for a wooden can of kvas (small beer, brewed from the rye bread, or meal) every noon; another for a teapot of boiling tea every evening. A peewit circles above them in the air, listening, then alights beside their bonfire, chirps, and addresses them in human speech. She promises that if they will release her offspring she will give them all they desire. The compact is made; she tells them where to go in the forest and dig up a coffer containing a "self-setting table-cloth," which will carry them all over the country at their behest. They demand, in addition, that they shall be fed and clothed; granted. They get the carpet; their daily supply of food appears from its folds, on demand (they may double, but not treble the allowance), and they vow not to return to their families until they shall have succeeded in their quest of a happy man in Russia. Their first encounter is with a priest, who in response to their questions, asks if happiness does not consist in "peace, wealth, and honor?" He then describes his life, and demonstrates that a priest gets none of these things. As they proceed on their way, they meet and interrogate people from all ranks and classes. This affords the poet an opportunity for a series of pictures from Russian life, replete with national characteristics, stories, arguments, songs, described in varying meters. The whole forms a splendid and profoundly interesting national picture-gallery. The movements of the '40's and the '60's brought to the front several poets who sprang directly from the people. On the borderland of the two epochs stands the most renowned of Little Russian poets, Tarás Grigórievitch Shevtchénko (1814-1861). He was the contemporary of Koltzóff and Byelínsky, rather than of Nekrásoff; nevertheless, he may be regarded as a representative of the latter's epoch, in virtue of the contents and the spirit of his poetry. His history is both interesting and remarkable. He was the son of a serf, in the government of Kíeff. When he was eight years old his mother died, and his father married again. His stepmother favored her own children, and to constant quarrels between the two broods, incessant altercation between the parents was added. At the age of eleven, when his father died, he began a roving life. He ran away from a couple of ecclesiastics who had undertaken to teach him to read and write (after having acquired the rudiments of those arts), and made numerous ineffectual attempts to obtain instruction in painting from various wretched daubers of holy pictures, having been addicted, from his earliest childhood, to scrawling over the walls of the house and the fences with charcoal drawings. He was obliged to turn shepherd. In 1827 he was taken on as one of his master's household servants, and sent to Vílna, where at first he served as scullion. Later on, it was decided that he "was fitted to become the household painter." But he served at first as personal attendant on his master and handed him a light for his pipe, until his master caught him one night drawing a likeness of Kazák Plátoff, whereupon he pulled Shevtchénko's ears, cuffed him, ordered him to be flogged, but simultaneously acquired the conviction that the lad might be converted into a painter to the establishment. So Shevtchénko began to study under a Vílna artist, and a year and a half later, by the advice of his teacher, who recognized his talent, the master sent the lad to a portrait-painter in Warsaw. In 1831 he was sent to his master in St. Petersburg on foot by the regular police "stages" (_étape_), arriving almost shoeless, and acted as lackey in the establishment. At last his master granted his urgent request, and apprenticed him for four years to an instructor in painting. Here Shevtchénko made acquaintance with the artist I. M. Sóshenko, and through him with an author of some little note, who took pity on the young fellow's sorry plight, and began to invite him to his house, give him books to read, furnish him with various useful suggestions, and with money. Thus did Shevtchénko come to know the Russian and western classical authors, history, and so forth. Through Sóshenko's agency, the aid of the secretary of the Academy of Arts was invoked to rescue the young man from his artist master's intolerable oppression, and his literary friend introduced Shevtchénko to Zhukóvsky, who took an ardent interest in the fate of the talented young fellow. They speedily began operations to free Shevtchénko from serfdom; and the manner in which it was finally affected is curious. A certain general ordered a portrait of himself from Shevtchénko for which he was to pay fifty rubles. The general was not pleased with the portrait, and refused to accept it. The offended artist painted the general's beard over with a froth of shaving-soap, and sold the picture for a song to the barber who was in the habit of shaving the general, and he used it as a sign. The general flew into a rage, immediately purchased the portrait, and with a view to revenging himself on the artist, he offered the latter's master a huge sum for him. Shevtchénko was so panic-stricken at the prospect of what awaited him, that he fled for aid to the artist Briulóff, entreating the latter to save him. Briulóff told Zhukóvsky, and Zhukóvsky repeated the story to the Empress Alexándra Feódorovna, wife of Nicholas I. Shevtchénko's master was ordered to stop the sale. The Empress then commanded Briulóff to complete a portrait of her which he had begun, and she put it up as the prize in a lottery among the members of the imperial family for the sum of ten thousand rubles--the price offered for Shevtchénko by the enraged general. Shevtchénko thus received his freedom in May, 1838, and immediately began to attend the classes in the Academy of Arts, and speedily became one of Briulóff's favorite pupils and comrades. In 1840 he published his "Kobzár"[29] which made an impression in Little Russia. In 1842 he began the publication of his famous poem, "The Haïdamák" (A Warrior of Ancient Ukraína). In 1843 he was arrested and sent back to Little Russia, where he lived until 1847, and during this period his talent bore its fairest blossoms, and his best works appeared: "The Banquet of the Dead," "The Hired Woman," "The Dream," "The Prisoner," "Iván Gus" (the goose), "The Cold Hillside," and so forth. His literary fame reached its zenith, and brought with it the friendship of the best intellectual forces of southern Russia, and with the aid of Princess Ryépnin (cousin to the minister of public education) and Count Uvároff, he obtained the post of drawing-master in Kíeff University. But in 1847 some one overheard and distorted a conversation in which Shevtchénko and several friends had taken part, the result being that all were arrested, while Shevtchénko, after being taken to St. Petersburg, was sent to the Orenburg government in the far southeast, to serve as a common soldier in the ranks, and was forbidden to paint or to write. There he remained for ten years, when he returned to the capital, and settled down at the Academy of Arts, where he was granted a studio, in accordance with his right as an academician. He never produced anything of note in the literary line thereafter, and the last three years of his life were chiefly devoted to releasing his relatives from serfdom, and furnishing them with land for cottages, which object he accomplished a few months before the general emancipation of the serfs. In the work of Shevtchénko it is possible to follow the curious transformation from what may be called the collective-folk creative power, to the purely individual. His figures, subjects, and the quiet, heart-rending sadness of his poems are precisely the same as those to be met with in any Little Russian folk-ballad. The majority of his poems are not inventions, but are taken directly from popular legends and traditions, and the personality of the poet vanishes in a flood of purely popular poetry. Nevertheless, he is not a slavish copyist of this folk-poetry. The language of his compositions is strikingly simple, and comprehensible not only to native-born Little Russians, but also to those who are not acquainted with the dialect of that region. Most writers who have employed the Little Russian dialect are difficult of comprehension not only to educated Great Russians, but also to ordinary Little Russians, because their language is artificial, intermingled with a mass of new words and expressions invented in educated circles of Little Russia. But Shevtchénko wrote in the living tongue of the Ukraína, in which its people talk and sing. His best work, after he came under the influence of Zhukóvsky, is "The Hired Woman." This is the story of a girl who is betrayed, then forced by outsiders to abandon her child, after which she hires herself out as servant to the people at whose door she has left the child, and so is enabled to rear it, only revealing the secret to her child on her deathbed. The sufferings of the people in serfdom form the subject of another series of his poems, and in this category, "Katerína" is the best worked out and most dramatic of his productions. A third category comprises the historical ballads, in which he celebrates the days of kazák freedom. This class comprises two long poems, "The Haïdamák" (The Kazák Warrior of Ancient Ukraína) and "Gamáliya," besides a number of short rhapsodies. In these poems the writer has expressed his political and social views, and they are particularly prized by his fellow-landsmen of the Ukraína. The fourth (or, in the order of their appearance, the first) class of Shevtchénko's poems consists of ballads in the folk-style, and sentimental, romantic pieces, which have no political or social tendencies. Such are the ballads, "The Cause," "The Drowned Woman," "The Water Nymph," "The Poplar Tree," which he wrote in St. Petersburg on scraps of paper in the summer garden. Of less talent and importance was a fellow-citizen of Koltzóff, Iván Sávitch Nikítin (1824-1861). Perhaps the most interesting thing about him is that Count L. N. Tolstóy took a lively interest in this gifted plebeian, and offered to bear the cost of publishing his poems, regarding him as a new Koltzóff. Count Tolstóy has since arrived at the conclusion that all poetry is futile and an unnecessary waste of time, as the same ideas can be much better expressed in prose, and with less labor to both writer and reader. The poet from the educated classes of society who deserves the most attention as a member of Nekrásoff's camp, is Alexyéi Nikoláevitch Pleshtchéeff (1825-1893), the descendant of an ancient family of the nobility. In 1849 he was arrested for suspected implication in what is known as "The Petrashévsky Affair" (from the name of the leader), and imprisoned in the Peter-Paul Fortress. Together with Dostoévsky and nineteen others he was condemned to be shot, but all the prisoners were pardoned by the Emperor (the charge was high treason) at the last moment, and after spending nine months in the fortress, Pleshtchéeff was sent to serve as a common soldier in the troops of the line, in the Orenburg government, with the loss of all his civil rights. There he remained nine years, taking part in several border campaigns, and rising to the rank of ensign, after which he entered the civil service. In 1859 he was allowed to return to Moscow, whence he removed to St. Petersburg in 1872.[30] The principal writers of satirical verse during this period were: Alexyéi Mikháilovitch Zhemtchúzhnikoff (1822), V. S. Kúrotchkin (1831-1875), who founded the extremely popular journal "The Spark," in 1859, and D. D. Mináeff (1835-1889). QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. What had been the progress of the drama in Russia up to the time of Ostróvsky? 2. How did "It Is All in the Family" make its appearance, and with what result? 3. What especial value has the play "The Thunderstorm"? 4. What variety of subjects are treated in Ostróvsky's plays? 5. Why does his work rank so high? 6. What plays by Turgéneff hold the next place to Ostróvsky's? 7. What are the best historical novels in the Russian language? 8. What was the character of the poetry of this period? 9. What ballads by Polónsky have a national reputation? 10. Give the chief events in the life of Nekrásoff. 11. What hostile criticism have his works received? 12. What may be said in his favor? 13. What is the story of "Red-Nosed Frost"? 14. What pictures of Russian society are given in "Russian Women"? 15. How is the poet's wide knowledge shown in his poem "Who in Russia Finds Life Good"? 16. Give an account of the eventful career of Shevtchénko. 17. What are the noteworthy features of his poetry? BIBLIOGRAPHY _The Thunderstorm._ Ostróvsky. _Prince Serébryany_; _The Death of Iván the Terrible_. Count Alexéi K. Tolstóy. _Red-Nosed Frost._ N. A. Nekrásoff. FOOTNOTES: [26] I had the pleasure of knowing Polónsky and his wife, a gifted sculptress. He was a great favorite in society, for his charming personality, as well as for his poetry. He served on the Committee of Foreign Censure. [27] I permit myself to quote from my "Russian Rambles" Count L. N. Tolstóy's opinion, in which he succinctly expressed to me the view of this second party: "There are three requisites which go to make a perfect writer. First, he must have something worth saying. Second, he must have a proper way of saying it. Third, he must have sincerity. Dickens had all three of these qualities. Thackeray had not much to say; he had a great deal of art in saying it, but he had not enough sincerity. Dostoévsky possessed all three requisites. Nekrásoff knew well how to express himself, but he did not possess the first quality; he forced himself to say something--whatever would catch the public at the moment, of which he was a very keen judge, as he wrote to suit the popular taste, believing not at all in what he said. He had none of the third requisite." [28] A verst is about two-thirds of a mile. [29] The player on the Little Russian twelve-stringed guitar, the Kóbza, literally translated. [30] I saw him, a majestic old man, surrounded by an adoring throng of students and young men, at one of the requiem services for M. E. Saltykóff (Shtchedrín), in the Kazán Cathedral, St. Petersburg, in April, 1889. CHAPTER XI DOSTOÉVSKY All the writers of the '40's of the nineteenth century had their individual peculiarities. But in this respect, Feódor Mikháilovitch Dostoévsky (1821-1880) was even more sharply separated from all the rest by his characteristics, which almost removed him from the ranks of the writers of the epoch, and gave him a special place in literature. The chief cause of this distinction lies in the fact that while most of the other writers sprang from the country regions, being members of the landed gentry class, Dostoévsky represents the plebeian, toiling class of society, a nervously choleric son of the town; and in the second place, while the majority of them were well-to-do, Dostoévsky alone in the company belonged to the class of educated strugglers with poverty, which had recently made its reappearance. His father was staff physician in the Márya Hospital in Moscow, and he was the second son in a family of seven children. The whole family lived in two rooms, an ante-room and kitchen, which comprised the quarters allotted to the post by the government. Here strictly religious and patriarchal customs reigned, mitigated by the high cultivation of the head of the family. In 1837 Feódor Mikháilovitch and his elder brother were taken to St. Petersburg by their father to be placed in the School for Engineers, but the elder did not succeed in entering, on account of feeble health. Dostoévsky had already evinced an inclination for literature, and naturally he was not very diligent in his studies of the dry, applied sciences taught in the school. But he found time to make acquaintance with the best works of Russian, English, French, and German classical authors. In 1843 he completed his course, and was appointed to actual service in the draughting department of the St. Petersburg engineer corps. With his salary and the money sent to him by his guardian (his father being dead), he had about five thousand rubles a year, but as he was extremely improvident, bohemian, and luxurious in his tastes, he could never make both ends meet. He was still more straitened in his finances when, in 1844, he resigned from the service, which was repugnant to him, and utterly at variance with his literary proclivities, and was obliged to resort to making translations. In May, 1844, he completed his first romance, "Poor People," and sent it to Nekrásoff by his school-friend Grigoróvitch. In his "Diary" Dostoévsky has narrated the manner of its reception by Nekrásoff (who was preparing to publish a collection), and by Byelínsky, to whom the latter gave it. Grigoróvitch and Nekrásoff sat up all night to read it, so fascinated were they, and then hastened straight to communicate their rapture to the author. Nekrásoff then gave the manuscript to Byelínsky with the exclamation, "A new Gógol has made his appearance!" to which Byelínsky sternly replied, "Gógols spring up like mushrooms with you." But when he had read the romance, he cried out, with emotion, "Bring him, bring him to me!" Even before the romance made its appearance in print (early in 1846), Dostoévsky had won a flattering literary reputation. The young author's head was fairly turned with his swift success, and he grew arrogant, the result of which was that he soon quarreled with Byelínsky, Nekrásoff, and their whole circle, and published his later writings (with one exception) elsewhere than in "The Contemporary." His coolness towards the circle of "The Contemporary" was not a little aided by the difference in opinions which began to make themselves felt. Dostoévsky was carried away by the political and social ideas which reigned in that circle, but at the same time he obstinately upheld his own religious views. The result of this was, that the members of the circle began to regard him as behind the times. He became more and more interested in socialism, and soon went to live with his new friends in quarters where the principles of association ruled. He then entered the Dúroff circle of Fourierists, the most moderate of all the Petrashévsky circles, which a good authority declares to have entertained no purely revolutionary ideas whatever. They rebelled against the maintenance of the strict censorship then in force, serfdom, and administrative abuses, but paid little attention to the question of a change in the form of government, and attributed no importance to political upheavals. Dostoévsky himself was, in general, very far from cherishing any revolutionary designs; he enthusiastically declaimed Púshkin's verses about slavery falling "at the wave of the Tzar's hand," and insisted that no socialistic theories had the slightest importance for Russians, since in the commune, and the working unions (_artél_), and mutual guarantee system there had long existed in their land more solid and normal foundations than all the dreams of Saint Simon and his school, and that life in a community and phalanstery seemed to him more terrible and repulsive than that of any galley-slave. Notwithstanding this, in May, 1849, Dostoévsky was arrested, along with the other followers of Petrashévsky, confined in the fortress, and condemned by court-martial on the charge of having "taken part in discussions concerning the severity of the censorship, and in one assembly, in March, 1849, had read a letter from Byelínsky to Gógol, received from Pleshtchéeff in Moscow, and had then read it aloud in the assemblies at Dúroff's, and had given copies of it to Mombelli to copy. In the assemblies at Dúroff's he had listened to the reading of articles, knew of the intention to set up a printing-press, and at Spyéshneff's had listened to the reading of 'A Soldier's Conversation.'" All the Petrashévskyians were condemned to be shot, and the sentence was read to them on January 3, 1850, on the scaffold, where they stood stripped, in the freezing cold, for twenty minutes, in momentary expectation of their execution. But the death sentence was mitigated in different degrees by the Emperor, Dostoévsky's sentence being commuted to exile with hard labor for four years, and then service as a common soldier in the ranks. He was dispatched to Siberia two days later, which was on Christmas Eve, according to the Russian reckoning. The wives of the Decembrists (the men exiled for revolutionary plots in 1825, at the accession to the throne of the Emperor Nicholas I.), visited the Petrashévskyians in prison at Tobólsk and gave Dostoévsky a copy of the Gospels. No other book made its way within the prison walls, and after reading nothing else for the next three years, Dostoévsky, according to his own words, "forced by necessity to read the Bible only, was enabled more clearly and profoundly to grasp the meaning of Christianity." In his "Notes from a Dead House" he has described in detail his life in the prison at Omsk, and all his impressions. Prison life produced an extremely crushing and unfavorable impression on him. He was brought into close contact with the common people, was enabled to study them, but he also became thoroughly imbued with that spirit of mysticism which is peculiar to ignorant and illiterate people. His own view of the universe was that of childlike faith, and prison life strengthened this view by leading him to see in it the foundation of the national spirit and the national life. During the last year of his prison life, under a milder commandant, he was able to renew his relations with former schoolmates and friends in the town, and through them obtain more money, write home, and even come into possession of books. But his health was much affected, his nerves having been weak from childhood, and already so shattered that, in 1846, he was on the verge of insanity. Even at that time he had begun to have attacks by night of that "mystical terror," which he has described in detail in "Humiliated and Insulted," and he also had occasional epileptic fits. In Siberia epilepsy developed to such a point that it was no longer possible to entertain any doubt as to the character of his malady. On leaving prison, in 1854, and becoming a soldier, Dostoévsky was much better off. He was soon promoted to the rank of ensign, wrote a little, planned "Notes from a Dead House," and in 1856 married. At last, after prolonged efforts, he received permission to return to European Russia, in July, 1859, and settled in Tver. In the winter of that year, his rights, among them that of living in the capital, were restored to him, and in 1861 he and his elder brother began to publish a journal called "The Times." The first number contained the first installment of "Humiliated and Insulted," and simultaneously, during 1861-1862, "Notes from a Dead House" appeared there also, in addition to critical literary articles from his pen. This and other editorial and journalistic ventures met with varying success, and he suffered many reverses of fortune. In 1865-1866 he wrote his masterpiece, "Crime and Punishment." His first wife having died, he married his stenographer, in 1867, and traveled in western Europe for the next four years, in the course of which he wrote his romances: "The Idiot" (1868), "The Eternal Husband" (1870), and "Devils" (1871-72). After his return to Russia he wrote (1875) "The Stripling," and (1876) began the publication of "The Diary of a Writer," which was in the nature of a monthly journal, made up of his own articles, chiefly of a political character, and bearing on the Serbo-Turkish War. But it also contained literary and autobiographical articles, and had an enormous success, despite the irregularity of its appearance. In June, 1880, he delivered a speech before the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, which won him such popularity as he had never before enjoyed, and resulted in a tremendous ovation, on the part of the public, at the unveiling of the monument to Púshkin. He was besieged with letters and visits; people came to him incessantly from all parts of St. Petersburg and of Russia, with expressions of admiration, requests for aid, questions, complaints against others, and expressions of opinions hostile to him personally. In the last half of 1880 he finished "The Karamázoff Brothers." His funeral, on February 15, 1881, was very remarkable; the occasion of an unprecedented "manifestation," which those who took part in it are still proud of recalling. Forty-two deputations bearing wreaths and an innumerable mass of people walked miles after his coffin to the cemetery of the Alexander Névsky Monastery. Under the various influences to which Dostoévsky was subjected, he eventually became what is known in Russia as "a native-soiler," in literature--the leader, in fact, of that semi-Slavyánophil, semi-Western school--and towards the end of his life was converted into a genuine Slavophil and mystic. In this conversion, as well as in the mystical theories which he preached in his "Diary," and afterwards in his romances, beginning with "Crime and Punishment," Dostoévsky has something in common with Count L. N. Tolstóy. Both writers were disenchanted as to European progress, admitted the mental and moral insolvency of educated Russian society, and fell into despair, from which the only escape, so it seemed to them, was becoming imbued with the lively faith of the common people, and both authors regarded this faith as the sole means of getting into real communion with the people. Then, becoming more and more imbued with the spirit of the Christian doctrine, both arrived at utter rejection of material improvement of the general welfare; Count Tolstóy came out with a theory of non-resistance to evil by force, and Dostoévsky with a theory of moral elevation and purification by means of suffering, which in essence are identical; for in what manner does non-resistance to evil manifest itself, if not in unmurmuring endurance of the sufferings caused by evil? Nevertheless, a profound difference exists between Count Tolstóy and Dostoévsky. In the former we see an absence of conservatism and devotion to tradition. His attitude towards all doctrines is that of unconditional freedom of thought, and subjecting them to daring criticism, he chooses from among them only that which is in harmony with the inspirations of his own reason. He is a genuine individualist, to his very marrow. By the masses of the common people, he does not mean the Russian nation only, but all the toilers and producers of the earth, without regard to nationality; while by the faith which he seeks among those toilers, he does not mean any fixed religious belief, but faith in the reasonableness and advantageousness of life, and of everything which exists, placing this faith in dependence upon brisk, healthy toil. Dostoévsky, on the contrary, is a communist, or socialist. He cares nothing for freedom and the self-perfection of the individual. The individual, according to his teaching, should merely submit, and resignedly offer itself up as a sacrifice to society, for the sake of fulfilling that mission which Russia is foreordained, as God's chosen nation, to accomplish. This mission consists in the realization upon earth of true Christianity in orthodoxy,[31] to which the Russian people remain faithful and devoted; union with the common people is to be accomplished in that manner alone; like the common people, with the same boundless faith and devotion, orthodoxy must be professed, for in it alone lies all salvation, not only for the world as a whole, but for every individual. The character of Dostoévsky's works is determined by the fact that he was a child of the town. In their form they possess none of that elegant regularity, of that classical finish and clear-cut outline, which impress us in the works of Turgéneff and Gontcharóff. On the contrary, they surprise us by their awkwardness, their prolixity, their lack of severe finish, which requires abundant leisure. It is evident that they were written in haste, by a man who was eternally in want, embarrassed with debts, and incapable of making the two ends meet financially. At the same time one is struck by the entire absence in Dostoévsky's works of those artistic elements in which the works of the other authors of the '40's are rich. They contain no enchanting pictures of nature, no soul-stirring love scenes, meetings, kisses, the bewitching feminine types which turn the reader's head, for which Turgéneff and Tolstóy are famous. Dostoévsky even ridicules Turgéneff for his feminine portraits, in "Devils," under the character of the writer Karmazínoff, with his passion for depicting kisses not as they take place with all mankind, but with gorse or some such weed growing round about, which one must look up in a botany, while the sky must not fail to be of a purplish hue, which, of course, no mortal ever beheld, and the tree under which the interesting pair is seated must infallibly be orange-colored, and so forth. Dostoévsky's subjects also present a sharp difference from those of his contemporaries, whose subjects are characterized by extreme simplicity and absence of complication, only a few actors being brought on the stage--not more than two, three, or four--and the entire plot being, as a rule, confined to the rivalry of two lovers, and to the question upon which of them the heroine will bestow her love. It is quite the contrary with Dostoévsky. His plots are complicated and entangled, he introduces a throng of acting personages. In reading his romances, one seems to hear the roar of the crowd, and the life of a town is unrolled before one, with all its bustle, its incessantly complicated and unexpected encounters, and relations of people one to another. Like a true child of the town, Dostoévsky does not confine himself to fashionable drawing-rooms, or to the educated classes; he is fond of introducing the reader to the dens of poverty and vice, which he invests, also, with their own peculiar, gloomy poetry. In his pictures of low life, he more resembles Dickens than the followers of Georges Sand of his day. But the most essential quality of Dostoévsky's creative art is the psychical analysis, which occupies the foreground in the majority of his romances, and constitutes their chief power and value. A well-known alienist doctor, who has examined these romances from a scientific point of view, declares himself amazed by the scientific accuracy wherewith Dostoévsky has depicted the mentally afflicted. In his opinion, about one-fourth of this author's characters are more or less afflicted in this manner, some romances containing as many as three who are not normal, in one way or another. This doctor demonstrates that Dostoévsky was a great psychopathologist, and that, with his artistic insight, he anticipated even exact science. And much that he has written will certainly be incorporated in psychological text-books. It is superfluous, after such competent testimony, to insist upon the life-likeness and the truth to nature of his portraits. The effect of his books on a reader is overwhelming, even stunning and nerve-shattering. One further point is to be noted: that notwithstanding the immense number of characters presented to the reader by Dostoévsky, they all belong to a very limited number of types, which are repeated, with slight variations, in all his romances. Thus, in conformity with the doctrine of the "native-soilers," he places at the foundation of the majority of his works one of the two following types: (1) The gentle type of the man overflowing with tender affection of utter self-sacrifice, ready to forgive everything, to justify everything, to bear himself compassionately towards the treachery of the girl he loves, and to go on loving her, even to the point of removing the obstacles to her marriage with another man, and so forth. Such is the hero of "Crime and Punishment"; such is Prince Mýshkinh in "The Idiot," and so on; (2) The rapacious type, the type of the egoist, brimming over with passion, knowing no bounds to his desires, and restrained by no laws, either human or divine. Such are: Stavrógin in "Devils," Dmítry Karamázoff ("The Karamázoff Brothers"), and so forth. His women also can be divided into two similar, contrasting types; on the one hand, the gentle--the type of the woman who possesses a heart which is tender and loving to self-abnegation, like Nelly and Natásha, in "Humiliated and Insulted"; Raskólnikoff's mother and Sónya, in "Crime and Punishment"; Nétotchka Nezvánoff, in "The Stripling." On the other hand, there are the rapacious types of capricious, charming women who are tyrannical to the point of cruelty, like Polína, in "The Gambler," Nastásya Filíppovna in "The Idiot," Grúshenka and Katerína Ivánovna in "The Karamázoff Brothers," and Varvára Petróvna, in "Devils." The reactionary tendency made its appearance in Dostoévsky almost contemporaneously with its appearance in Turgéneff and Gontcharóff, unhappily. The first romance in which it presented itself was "Crime and Punishment," the masterpiece in which his talent attained its zenith. This work, in virtue of its psychical and psychological analyses, deserves to rank among the greatest and best monuments of European literary art in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, it produced a strange impression on all reasonable people, because of the fact that the author suddenly makes the crime of his hero, Raskólnikoff, dependent upon the influence of new ideas, as though they justified crimes, committed with good objects. No less surprising is the manner in which the romance winds up with the moral regeneration of Raskólnikoff under the influence of exile with hard labor. Dostoévsky, to be fully appreciated, requires--perhaps more than most writers--to be read at length. But the following brief extract will afford a glimpse of his manner. The extract is from the "Notes from a Dead House." Sushíloff was a prisoner who had been sent to Siberia merely for colonization, for some trifling breach of the laws. During a fit of intoxication he had been persuaded by a prisoner named Mikháiloff to exchange names and punishments, in consideration of a new red shirt and one ruble in cash. Such exchanges were by no means rare, but the prisoner to whose disadvantage the bargain redounded, generally demanded scores of rubles; hence, every one ridiculed Sushíloff for the cheap rate at which he had sold his light sentence. Had he been able to return the ruble (which he had immediately spent for liquor), he might have bought back his name, but the prisoners' artél, or guild, always insisted upon the strict fulfilment of such bargains in default of the money being refunded; and if the authorities suspected such exchanges, they did not pry into them, it being immaterial to the officials (in Siberia at least) what man served out the sentence, so long as they could make their accounts tally. Thus much in explanation abbreviated from Dostoévsky's statement. "Sushíloff and I lived a long time together, several years in all. He gradually became greatly attached to me; I could not help perceiving this, as I had, also, become thoroughly used to him. But one day--I shall never forgive myself for it--he did not comply with some request of mine, although he had just received money from me, and I had the cruelty to say to him, 'Here you are taking my money, Sushíloff, but you don't do your duty.' Sushíloff made no reply, but seemed suddenly to grow melancholy. Two days elapsed. I said to myself, it cannot be the result of my words. I knew that a certain prisoner, Antón Vasílieff, was urgently dunning him for a petty debt. He certainly had no money, and was afraid to ask me for any. So on the third day, I said to him: 'Sushíloff, I think you have wanted to ask me for money to pay Antón Vasílieff. Here it is.' I was sitting on the sleeping-shelf at the time; Sushíloff was standing in front of me. He seemed very much surprised that I should offer him the money of my own accord; that I should voluntarily remember his difficult situation, the more so as, in his opinion, he had already, and that recently, taken altogether too much from me in advance, so that he dared not hope that I would give him any more. He looked at the money, then at me, abruptly turned away and left the room. All this greatly amazed me. I followed him and found him behind the barracks. He was standing by the prison stockade with his face to the fence, his head leaning against it, and propping himself against it with his arm. 'Sushíloff, what's the matter with you?' I asked him. He did not look at me, and to my extreme surprise, I observed that he was on the verge of weeping. 'You think--Alexánder Petróvitch--'[32] he began, in a broken voice, as he endeavored to look another way, 'that I serve you--for money--but I--I--e-e-ekh!' Here he turned again to the fence, so that he even banged his brow against it--and how he did begin to sob! It was the first time I had beheld a man weep in the prison. With difficulty I comforted him, and although from that day forth, he began to serve me more zealously than ever, if that were possible, and to watch over me, yet I perceived, from almost imperceptible signs, that his heart could never pardon me for my reproach; and yet the others laughed at us, persecuted him at every convenient opportunity, sometimes cursed him violently--but he lived in concord and friendship with them and never took offense. Yes, it is sometimes very difficult to know a man thoroughly, even after long years of acquaintance!" Dostoévsky, in all his important novels, has much to say about religion, and his personages all illustrate some phase of religious life. This is nowhere more apparent than in his last novel, "The Karamázoff Brothers," wherein the religious note is more powerfully struck than in any of the others. The ideal of the Orthodox Church of the East is embodied in Father Zosím, and in his gentle disciple, Alexyéi (Alyósha) Karamázoff; the reconciling power of redemption is again set forth over the guilty soul of the principal hero, Dmítry Karamázoff, when he is overtaken by chastisement for a suspected crime. The doubting element is represented by Iván Karamázoff, who is tortured by a constant conflict with anxious questions. In "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor," which the author puts into Iván's mouth, Dostoévsky's famous and characteristic power of analysis reached its greatest height. Belonging to no class, and famous for but one book, which does not even count as literature, yet chronologically a member of this period, was Nikolái Gavrílovitch Tchernyshévsky (1828-1889). After 1863 he exerted an immense influence on the minds of young people of both sexes; and of all the writers of the "storm and stress" period, he is the most interesting, because, in his renowned book, "What Is to Be Done?" he applied his theories to practical life. His success was due, not to the practicability of his theories, to his literary qualities, to his art, but to the fact that he contrived to unite two things, each one of which, as a rule, is found in a writer; he simultaneously touched the two most responsive chords in the human heart--the thirst for easy happiness, and the imperative necessity for ascetic self-sacrifice. Hence, he won a response from the most diametrically conflicting natures. "What Is to Be Done" is the story of a young girl who, with the greatest improbability, is represented as being of the purest, most lofty character and sentiments, yet the daughter of two phenomenally (almost impossibly) degraded people. Instead of marrying the rich and not otherwise undesirable man whom her parents urge on her, and who is deeply in love with her, she runs away with her teacher, and stipulates in advance for life in three rooms. She is only seventeen, yet she promptly establishes a fashion-shop which thrives apace, and puts forth numerous branches all over the capital. Her working-girls are treated ideally and as equals, she working with them, in which lies the answer to "What Is to Be Done?" After a while she falls in love with her husband's dearest friend, who is described as so exactly like him that the reader is puzzled to know wherein she descried favorable difference, and the husband, perceiving this, makes things easy by pretending to drown himself, but in reality going off to America. Several years later he returns--as an American--and his ex-wife's present husband, having become a medical celebrity, helps him to a bride by informing her panic-stricken parents (who oppose the match, although they are ignorant at first of any legal impediment to the union), that she will certainly die if they do not yield. The two newly assorted couples live in peace, happiness, and prosperity ever after. Work and community life are the chief themes of the preachment. He was exiled to Siberia in 1864, and on his return to Russia (when he settled in Ástrakhan, and was permitted to resume his literary labors), he busied himself with translations, critical articles, and the like, but was unable to regain his former place in literature. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. Describe the early life of Dostoévsky. 2. How were his first writings received? 3. What relation had he to the social agitations of the times? 4. Upon what charge was he exiled to Siberia? 5. How were his views affected by his prison life? 6. Give some account of his literary activities. 7. How did his views resemble those of Tolstóy? 8. How did they differ? 9. What are the characteristics of Dostoévsky's style? 10. What are the chief types portrayed in his novels? 11. What two periods of his life are represented by his "Notes From a Dead House" and his later works? 12. Why has "What Is to Be Done?" achieved such popularity? BIBLIOGRAPHY _Buried Alive; or, Ten Years' Penal Servitude in Siberia._ ("Notes From a Dead House.") There are also other translations bearing various titles. _Poor Folk._ _Crime and Punishment._ _Humbled and Insulted._ (The last two abbreviated are translated by F. Wishaw.) F. M. Dostoévsky. _What is to be Done? A Vital Question._ (Two translations of the same work.) N. G. Tchernyshévsky. FOOTNOTES: [31] Meaning the faith of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church of the East. A great many Russians believe this, and that Russia's mission on earth is a moral and spiritual one, founded upon precisely this basis. [32] The narrator, in "Notes from a Dead House," is assumed to be a prisoner named Alexánder Petróvitch Goryántchikoff. CHAPTER XII SEVENTH PERIOD: DANILÉVSKY, SALTYKÓFF, L. N. TOLSTÓY, GÓRKY, AND OTHERS. Under the influence of the romantic movement in western Europe, in the '30's of the nineteenth century, and in particular under the deep impression made by Sir Walter Scott's novels, historical novels and historical studies began to make their appearance in Russia, and in the '50's underwent two periods of existence, which totally differed from each other. During the first period the romance-writers, including even Púshkin, treated things from a governmental point of view, and dealt only with such epochs, all more or less remote, as the censorship permitted. For example, Zagóskin, the best known of the historical novelists, wrote "Áskold's Grave," from the epoch of the baptism of the Russians, in the tenth century, and "Yúry Miloslávsky," from the epoch of the Pretender, early in the seventeenth century; while Lazhétchnikoff wrote "The Mussulman," from the reign of Iván III., sixteenth century, and "The Last Court Page," from the epoch of Peter the Great's wars with Sweden. The historical facts were alluded to in a slight, passing way, or narrated after the fashion of Karamzín, in lofty terms, with artificial patriotic inspiration. As the authors lacked archæological learning, the manners and accessories of the past were merely sketched in a general, indefinite way, and often inaccurately, while the pages were chiefly filled with the sentimental love-passages of two or three virtuous heroes of stereotyped patterns, who were subjected to frightful adventures, perished several times, and were resuscitated for the purpose of marrying in ordinary fashion at the end. In the '50's people became far too much interested in the present to pay much heed to the past. Yet precisely at that time the two finest historians came to the front, Sergyéi M. Soloviéff and N. I. Kostomároff, and effected a complete revolution in historiography. Soloviéff's great history brings the narrative down to the reign of Katherine II. Kostomároff dealt with periods, giving a complete picture of each one; hence each study, while complete in itself, does not of necessity always contain the whole career of the personages who figure in it. But both writers are essentially (despite Kostomároff's not very successful attempts at historical novels) serious historians. As we have already seen, the novels of the two Counts Tolstóy, "War and Peace" and "Prince Serébryany," stand quite apart, and far above all others. But among the favorites of lesser rank are Grigóry Petróvitch Danilévsky (born in 1829), whose best historical novel is "Miróvitch," though it takes unwarrantable liberties with the personages of the epoch depicted (that of Katherine II.) and those in the adjacent periods. Less good, though popular, is his "Princess Tarakánoff," the history of a supposed daughter of the Empress Elizabeth. Half-way between the historians and the portrayers of popular life, and in a measure belonging to both ranks, are several talented men. The most famous of them was Pável Ivánovitch Mélnikoff (1819-1883), whose official duties enabled him to make an exhaustive study of the "Old Ritualists"[33] along the middle Volga. His two novels, "In the Forests" and "On the Hills" (of the eastern and western banks of the Volga, respectively), are utterly unlike anything else in the language, and are immensely popular with Russians. They are history in that they faithfully reproduce the manners and beliefs of a whole class of the population; they are _genre_ studies of a very valuable ethnographical character in their fidelity to nature. Long as they are, the interest never flags for a moment, but it is not likely that they will ever appear in an English translation. Too extensive and intimate a knowledge of national ways and beliefs (both of the State Church and the schismatics) are required to allow of their being popular with the majority of foreigners who read Russian; for the non-Russian reading foreigner an excessive amount of explanatory notes would be required, and they would resemble treatises. But they are two of the most delightful books of the epoch, and classics in their way. Mélnikoff wrote, for a long time, under the pseudonym of "Andréi Petchérsky." Nikolái Seménovitch Lyeskóff (1837-1895), who long wrote under the pseudonym of "M. Stebnítzky," is another author famous for his portraits of a whole class of the population, his specialty being the priestly class. He was of noble birth, and was reared in luxury, but was orphaned and ruined at a very early age, so that he was obliged to earn a hard living, first in government service, then as traveler for a private firm. This extensive traveling afforded him the opportunity of making acquaintance with the life of all classes of the population. He began to write in 1860, but a few incautious words, in 1862, raised a storm against him in the liberal press, which accused him of instigating the police to their attacks upon young people. As Count Tolstóy remarked to me, this incident prevented Lyeskóff ever receiving the full meed of recognition which his talent merited; a large and influential section of the press was permanently in league against him. This, eventually, so exasperated and embittered Lyeskóff that he really did go over to the conservative camp, and the first result of his wrath was the romance "No Thoroughfare," published in 1865. Its chief characters are two ideal socialists, a man and a woman, recognized by contemporaries as the portraits of living persons. Both are represented as finding so-called socialists to be merely crafty nihilists. This raised another storm, and still further embittered Lyeskóff, who expressed himself in "To the Knife" (in the middle of the '70's), a mad production, wherein revolutionists (or "nihilists," as they were then generally called) were represented as condensed incarnations of the seven deadly sins. These works had much to do with preventing Lyeskóff from taking that high place in the public estimation which his other works (a mass of novels and tales devoid of political tendency) and his great talent would have otherwise assured to him. Of his large works, "The Cathedral Staff," with its sympathetic and life-like portraits of Archpriest Savély Tuberósoff and his athletic Deacon Achilles, and his "Episcopal Trifles" rank first. The latter volume, which consists of a series of pictures setting forth the dark sides of life in the highest ecclesiastical hierarchy, created a great sensation in the early '80's, and raised a third storm, and the author fell into disfavor in official circles. Perhaps the most perfect of his works is one of the shorter novels, "The Sealed Angel," which deals with the ways and beliefs of the Old Ritualists (though in the vicinity of Kíeff, not in Mélnikoff's province), and is regarded as a classic, besides being a pure delight to the initiated reader. Count L. N. Tolstóy greatly admired (he told me) Lyeskóff's "At the End of the World," a tale of missionary effort in Siberia, which is equally delightful in its way, though less great. Towards the end of his career, Lyeskóff was inclined to mysticism, and began to work over ancient religious legends, or to invent new ones in the same style.[34] The direct and immediate result of the democratic tendency on Russian thought and attraction to the common people during this era was the creation of a school of writers who devoted themselves almost exclusively to that sphere, in addition to the contributions from Turgéneff, Tolstóy, Dostoévsky. Among these was a well-known woman writer, Márya Alexándrovna Markóvitch, who published her first Little Russian Tales, in 1859, under the name of "Márko Vovtchék." She immediately translated them into Russian, and they were printed in the best journals of the day. I. S. Turgéneff translated one volume into Russian (for her Little Russian language was not of the supreme quality that characterized Shevtchénko's, which needed no translating), and Dobroliúboff, an authoritative critic of that period, expressed himself in the most flattering manner about them. But her fame withered away as quickly as it had sprung up. The weak points of her tales had been pardoned because of their political contents; in ten years they had lost their charm, and their defects--a too superficial knowledge of the people's life, the absence of living, authentic coloring in portraiture, its restriction to general, stereotyped types, such as might have been borrowed from popular tales and ballads, and excess of sentimentality--became too apparent to be overlooked by a more enlightened public. The only other woman writer of this period who acquired much reputation may be mentioned here, although she cannot be classed strictly with portrayers of the people: Nadézhda Dmítrievna Khvóshtchinsky, whose married name was Zaióntchkovsky, and who wrote under the pseudonym of "V. Krestóvsky" (1825-1889). She published a great many short stories of provincial town life, rather narrow as to their sphere of observation. Her best work was "The Great Bear" (referring to the constellation), which appeared in 1870-1871.[35] When literature entered upon a fresh phase of development in the '70's of the last century, the careful study of the people, two men headed the movement, Glyeb Ivánovitch Uspénsky and Nikolái Nikoláevitch Zlatovrátsky. Uspénsky (1840) took the negative and pessimistic view. Zlatovrátsky (1845) took the positive, optimistic view.[36] Like many authors of that period, adverse conditions hindered Uspénsky's march to fame. Shortly after his first work, "The Manners of Rasteryáeff Street," began to appear in "The Contemporary," that journal was stopped. He continued it in another journal, which also was stopped before his work was finished, and that after he had been forced to cut out everything which gave a hint at its being a "continuation," so that it might appear to be an independent whole. He was obliged to publish the mangled remains in "The Woman's News," because there was hardly any other journal then left running. After the Servian War (generally called abroad "the Russo-Turkish War") of 1877-1878, Uspénsky abandoned the plebeian classes to descend to "the original source" of everything--the peasant. When he published the disenchanting result of his observations, showing to what lengths a peasant will go for money, there was a sensation. This was augmented by his sketch, "Hard Labor"; and a still greater sensation ensued on the publication of his "'Tis Not a Matter of Habit" (known in book form as "The Eccentric Master"). In "Hard Labor" he set forth, contrary to all theoretical beliefs, that the peasants of villages which had belonged to private landed proprietors prior to the emancipation, were incomparably and incontestably more industrious and moral than the peasants on the crown estates, who had always been practically free men.[37] Readers were still more alarmed by the deductions set forth in his "An Eccentric Master." The hero is an educated man, Mikháil Mikháilovitch, who betakes himself to the rural wilds with the express object of "toiling there exactly like the rest, as an equal in morals and duties, to sleep with the rest on the straw, to eat from one pot with them" (the Tolstóyan theory, but in advance of him), "while the money acquired thus by general toil was to be the property of a group of people to be formed from peasants and from actually ruined former members of the upper classes." But the peasants, not comprehending the master's lofty aims, treated him as an eccentric fool, and began to rob him in all directions, meanwhile humoring him to the top of his bent in all his instincts of master. It ends in Mikháil Mikháilovitch becoming thoroughly disillusioned, dejected, and taking to drink after having expended the whole of his capital on the ungrateful peasants. This will serve to illustrate Uspénsky's pessimistic point of view, for which he certainly had solid grounds. While Uspénsky never sought artistic effects in his work, and his chief strength lay in humor, in ridicule which pitilessly destroyed all illusions, Zlatovrátsky never indulges in a smile, and is always, whether grieving or rejoicing, in a somewhat exalted frame of mind, which often attains the pitch of epic pathos, so that even his style assumes a rather poetical turn, something in the manner of hexameters. Moreover, he is far from despising the artistic element. He established his fame in 1874 by his first large work, "Peasant Jurors." As Zlatovrátsky (whose father belonged to the priestly class) regards as ideal the commune and the peasant guild (_artél_), with their individualistic, moral ideals of union in a spirit of brotherly love and solidarity, both in work and in the enjoyment of its products, his pessimism is directed against the Russian educated classes, not excepting even their very best representatives. This view he expresses in all his works which depict the educated classes: "The Golden Heart," "The Wanderer," "The Kremléff Family," "The Karaváeffs," "The Hetman," and so forth. In these he represents educated people--the better classes, called "intelligent" people by Russians--under the guise of sheep who have strayed from the true fold, and the only thing about them which he regards as a sign of life (in a few of the best of them) is their vain efforts to identify themselves with the common people, and thus, as it were, restore the lost paradise[38]. There are many others who have written sketches and more ambitious works founded on a more or less intimate study and knowledge of the peasants. On one of these we must turn our attention, briefly, as the author of one famous and heartrending book, "The Inhabitants of Podlípovo." Feódor Mikháilovitch Ryeshétnikoff (1841-1871) was one of three middle-class ("plebeian" is the Russian word) writers who made a name, the others being Alexánder Ivánovitch Levítoff and Nikolái Ivánovitch Naúmoff. For in proportion as culture spread among the masses of society, and the center of the intellectual movement was transferred from the noble class to the plebeian, in the literary circles towards the end of the '50's there appeared a great flood of new forces from the lower classes. The three writers above mentioned, as well as Uspénsky and Zlatovrátsky, belonged to the priestly plebeian class. Ryeshétnikoff's famous romance--rather a short story--was the outcome of his own hardships, sufferings, and experiences. He was scantily educated, had no æsthetic taste, wrote roughly, not always grammatically, and always in excessively gloomy colors, yet he had the reputation of being a passionate lover of the people, despite the fact that his picture of the peasants in his best known work is generally regarded as almost a caricature in its exaggerated gloom, and he enjoys wide popularity even at the present time. * * * * * The spirits of people rose during the epoch of Reform (after the Emancipation of the serfs in 1861) and the general impulse to take an interest in political and social questions was speedily reflected in literature by the formation of a special branch of that art, which was known as "tendency literature," although its more accurate title would have been "publicist literature." The peculiarity of most writers of this class was their pessimistic skepticism. This publicist literature was divided into three classes: democratic, moderately liberal, and conservative. At the head of the democratic branch stood the great writer who constituted the pride and honor of the epoch, as the one who most profoundly and fully reflected it, Mikháil Evgráfovitch Saltykóff (1826-1889). He was the son of landed proprietors, of an ancient family, with a famous name of Tatár descent. He finished his education in the Tzárskoe Seló Lyceum, which, from the time of Púshkin on, graduated so many notable statesmen and distinguished men. The authorities of the Lyceum were endeavoring to exterminate the spirit of Púshkin, who had died only the year before, and severely repressed all scribbling of poetry, which did not in the least prevent almost every boy in the school from trying his hand at it and dreaming of future fame. Thus incited, Saltykóff, from the moment of his entrance, earned the ill-will of the authorities by his passionate love of verse writing and reading, and when he graduated, in 1844, it was in the lower half of his class, and with one rank lower in the civil service than the upper half of the class. In 1847 he published (under the name of "M. Nepánoff") his first story, "Contradictions," and in 1848 his second, "A Tangled Affair," both in "The Annals of the Fatherland." When the strictness of the censorship was augmented during that same year, after "the Petrashévsky affair," all literary men fell under suspicion. When Saltykóff asked for leave of absence from the service to go home during the holidays, he was commanded to produce his writings. Although these early writings contained hardly a hint of the satirical talents which he afterwards developed, the person to whom was intrusted the task of making a report of them (and who was a sworn enemy to the natural school and "The Annals of the Fatherland") gave such an alarming account of them that the Count Tchérnysheff was frightened at having so dangerous a man in his ministerial department. The result was, that in May, 1848, a posting-tróïka halted in front of Saltykóff's lodgings, and the accompanying gendarme was under orders to escort the offender off to Vyátka on the instant. In Saltykóff's case, as in the case of many another Russian writer, exile not only removed him from the distracting pleasures of life at the capital, but also laid the foundation for his future greatness. In Vyátka, Saltykóff first served as one of the officials in the government office, but by the autumn he was appointed the official for special commissions immediately attached to the governor's service. He was a valued friend in the family of the vice-governor, for whose young daughters he wrote a "Short History of Russia," and after winning further laurels in the service, he was allowed to return to St. Petersburg in 1856, when he married one of the young girls, and published his "Governmental Sketches," with the materials for which his exile had furnished him. Two years later he was appointed vice-governor of Ryazán, then transferred to Tver, where he acted as governor on several occasions. In 1862 he retired from the service and devoted himself to literature, but he returned to it a couple of years later, and only retired definitively in 1868. These items are of interest as showing the status of political exiles in a different light from that usually accepted as the unvarying rule. As we have said, Saltykóff's exile was of incalculable service to him, in that it made him acquainted with the inward life of Russia and of the people. This knowledge he put to unsparing use in his famous satires. In order fully to understand his works, one must be thoroughly familiar with the general spirit and the special ideas of the different periods to which they refer, as well as with Russia and its life and literature in general. Saltykóff (who wrote under the name of "Shtchedrín") was very keen to catch the spirit of the moment, and very caustic in portraying it, with the result that very often the names he invented for his characters clove to whole classes of society, and have become by-words, the mere mention of which reproduces the whole type. For example, after the Emancipation, when the majority of landed proprietors were compelled to give up their parasitic life on the serfs, there arose a class of educated people who were seeking fresh fields for their easy, parasitic existence. One of the commonest expedients, in the '70's, for restoring shattered finances was to go to Tashként, where the cultured classes imagined that regular gold mines awaited them. Saltykóff instantly detected this movement, and not only branded the pioneers in the colonization of Central Asia with the name of "Tashkéntzians" (in "Gospodá Tashkéntzy" Messrs. Tashkéntzians), but according to his wont, he rendered this nickname general by applying it to all cultured classes who had nothing in their souls but an insatiable appetite. In other works he branded other movements and classes with equal ineffaceableness. His masterpiece (in his third and most developed period), the work which foreigners can comprehend almost equally well with Russians, is "Gospodá Golovlévy" ("The Messrs. Golovléff"[39]). It contains that element of the universal in humanity which his national satires lack, and it alone would suffice to render him immortal. The type of Iúdiushka (little Judas) has no superior in all European literature, for its cold, calculating, cynical hypocrisy, its miserly ferocity. The book is a presentment of old ante-reform manners among the landed gentry at their worst. The following favorite little story furnishes an excellent example of Saltykóff's (Shtchedrín's) caustic wit and satire: THE STORY OF HOW ONE PEASANT MAINTAINED TWO GENERALS. Once upon a time there lived and flourished two Generals; and as both were giddy-pated, by jesting command, at my desire, they were speedily transported to an uninhabited island. The Generals had served all their lives in some registry office or other; they had been born there, reared there, had grown old there, and consequently they understood nothing whatever. They did not even know any words except, "accept the assurance of my complete respect and devotion." The registry was abolished as superfluous, and the Generals were set at liberty. Being thus on the retired list, they settled in Petersburg, in Podyátchesky (Pettifoggers) Street, in separate quarters; each had his own cook, and received a pension. But all of a sudden, they found themselves on an uninhabited island, and when they awoke, they saw that they were lying under one coverlet. Of course, at first they could not understand it at all, and they began to talk as though nothing whatever had happened to them. "'Tis strange, your Excellency, I had a dream to-day," said one General; "I seemed to be living on a desert island." No sooner had he said this than he sprang to his feet. The other General did the same. "Heavens! What's the meaning of this? Where are we?" cried both, with one voice. Then they began to feel each other, to discover whether this extraordinary thing had happened to them not in a dream, but in their waking hours. But try as they might to convince themselves that all this was nothing but a vision of their sleep, they were forced to the conviction of its sad reality. On one side of them stretched the sea, on the other side lay a small plot of land, and beyond it again stretched the same boundless sea. The Generals began to weep, for the first time since the registry office had been closed. They began to gaze at each other, and they then perceived that they were clad only in their night-shirts, and on the neck of each hung an order. "How good a little coffee would taste now!" ejaculated one General, but then he remembered what unprecedented adventure had happened to him, and he began to cry again. "But what are we to do?" he continued, through his tears; "if we were to write a report, of what use would it be?" "This is what we must do," replied the other General. "Do you go to the east, your Excellency, and I will go to the west, and in the evening we will meet again at this place; perhaps we shall find something." So they began their search to find which was the east and which the west. They recalled to mind that their superior official had once said, "If you wish to find the east, stand with your eyes towards the north, and you will find what you want on your right hand." They began to seek the north, and placed themselves first in one position, then in another, and tried all quarters of the compass in turn, but as they had spent their whole lives in the registry office, they could decide on nothing. "This is what we must do, your Excellency; do you go to the right, and I will go to the left; that will be better," said the General, who besides serving in the registry office had also served as instructor of calligraphy in the school for soldiers' sons, and consequently had more sense. So said, so done. One General went to the right, and saw trees growing, and on the trees all sorts of fruits. The General tried to get an apple, but all the apples grew so high that it was necessary to climb for them. He tried to climb, but with no result, except that he tore his shirt to rags. The General came to a stream, the fish were swimming there in swarms, as though in a fish-shop on the Fontánka canal. "If we only had such fish in Pettifoggers Street!" said the General to himself, and he even changed countenance with hunger. The General entered the forest, and there hazel-hens were whistling, blackcocks were holding their bragging matches, and hares were running. "Heavens! What victuals! What victuals!" said the General, and he felt that he was becoming fairly sick at his stomach with hunger. There was nothing to be done; he was obliged to return to the appointed place with empty hands. He reached it but the other General was already waiting for him. "Well, your Excellency, have you accomplished anything?" "Yes, I have found an old copy of the 'Moscow News'; that is all." The Generals lay down to sleep again, but gnawing hunger kept them awake. They were disturbed by speculations as to who would receive their pension for them; then they recalled the fruits, fish, hazel-hens, blackcock, and hares which they had seen that day. "Who would have thought, your Excellency, that human food, in its original shape, flies, swims, and grows on trees?" said one General. "Yes," replied the other General; "I must confess that until this day I thought that wheaten rolls came into existence in just the form in which they are served to us in the morning with our coffee." "It must be that, for instance, if one desires to eat a partridge, he must first catch it, kill it, pluck it, roast it.... But how is all that done?" "How is all that done?" repeated the other General, like an echo. They fell into silence, and tried to get to sleep; but hunger effectually banished sleep. Hazel-hens, turkeys, sucking-pigs flitted before their eyes, rosy, veiled in a slight blush of roasting, surrounded with cucumbers, pickles, and other salads. "It seems to me that I could eat my own boots now!" said one General. "Gloves are good also, when they have been worn a long time!" sighed the other General. All at once the Generals glanced at each other; an ominous fire glowed in their eyes, their teeth gnashed, a dull roar forced its way from their breasts. They began slowly to crawl toward each other, and in the twinkling of an eye they were exasperated to fury. Tufts of hair flew about, whines and groans resounded; the General who had been a teacher of calligraphy bit off his adversary's Order, and immediately swallowed it. But the sight of flowing blood seemed to restore them to their senses. "The power of the cross defend us!" they exclaimed simultaneously; "if we go on like this we shall eat each other!" "And how did we get here? What malefactor has played us this trick?" "We must divert our minds with some sort of conversation, your Excellency, or there will be murder!" said the other General. "Begin!" replied the other General. "Well, for instance, what do you think about this, Why does the sun rise first and then set, instead of acting the other way about?" "You are a queer man, your Excellency; don't you rise first, then go to the office, write there, and afterward go to bed?" "But why not admit this reversal of the order; first I go to bed, have divers dreams, and then rise?" "Hm, yes.... But I must confess that when I served in the department I always reasoned in this fashion: now it is morning, then it will be day, then supper will be served, and it will be time to go to bed." But the mention of supper plunged them both into grief, and broke the conversation off short at the very beginning. "I have heard a doctor say that a man can live for a long time on his own juices," began one of the Generals. "Is that so?" "Yes, sir, it is; it appears that, the juices proper produce other juices; these in their turn, engender still other juices, and so on, until at last the juices cease altogether...." "What then?" "Then it is necessary to take some sort of nourishment." "Tfu!" In short, no matter what topic of conversation the Generals started, it led inevitably to a mention of food, and this excited their appetites still more. They decided to cease their conversation, and calling to mind the copy of the "Moscow News" which they had found, they began to read it with avidity. "Yesterday," read one General, with a quivering voice, "the respected governor of our ancient capital gave a grand dinner. The table was set for one hundred persons, with wonderful luxury. The gifts of all lands seemed to have appointed a rendezvous at this magical feast. There was the golden sterlet of the Sheksna, the pheasant, nursling of the Caucasian forests, and strawberries, that great rarity in our north in the month of February...." "Tfu, heavens! Cannot your Excellency find some other subject?" cried the other General in desperation, and taking the newspaper from his companion's hand, he read the following: "A correspondent writes to us from Túla: 'There was a festival here yesterday at the club, on the occasion of a sturgeon being caught in the river Upá (an occurrence which not even old residents can recall, the more so as private Warden B. was recognized in the sturgeon). The author of the festival was brought in on a huge wooden platter, surrounded with cucumbers, and holding a bit of green in his mouth. Doctor P., who was on duty that day as presiding officer, saw to it carefully that each of the guests received a piece. The sauce was extremely varied, and even capricious.' ..." "Permit me, your Excellency, you also seem to be not sufficiently cautious in your choice of reading matter!" interrupted the first General, and taking the paper in his turn, he read: "A correspondent writes to us from Vyátka: 'One of the old residents here has invented the following original method of preparing fish soup: Take a live turbot, and whip him as a preliminary; when his liver has become swollen with rage.' ..." The Generals dropped their heads. Everything on which they turned their eyes--everything bore witness to food. Their own thoughts conspired against them, for try as they would to banish the vision of beefsteak, this vision forced itself upon them. And all at once an idea struck the General who had been a teacher of calligraphy.... "How would it do, your Excellency," he said joyfully, "if we were to find a peasant?" "That is to say ... a muzhík?" "Yes, exactly, a common muzhík ... such as muzhíks generally are. He would immediately give us rolls, and he would catch hazel-hens and fish!" "Hm ... a peasant ... but where shall we find him, when he is not here?" "What do you mean by saying that he is not to be found? There are peasants everywhere, and all we have to do is to look him up! He is certainly hiding somewhere about because he is too lazy to work!" This idea cheered the Generals to such a degree that they sprang to their feet like men who had received a shock, and set out to find a peasant. They roamed for a long time about the island without any success whatever, but at last the penetrating smell of bread-crust and sour sheepskin put them on the track. Under a tree, flat on his back, with his fists under his head, lay a huge peasant fast asleep, and shirking work in the most impudent manner. There were no bounds to the wrath of the Generals. "Asleep, lazybones!" and they flung themselves upon him; "and you don't move so much as an ear, when here are two Generals who have been dying of hunger these two days! March off, this moment, to work!" The man rose; he saw that the Generals were stern. He would have liked to give them the slip, but they had become fairly rigid when they grasped him. And he began to work under their supervision. First of all he climbed a tree and picked half a score of the ripest apples for the Generals, and took one, a sour one, for himself. Then he dug in the earth and got some potatoes; then he took two pieces of wood, rubbed them together, and produced fire. Then he made a snare from his own hair and caught a hazel-hen. Last of all, he arranged the fire, and cooked such a quantity of different provisions that the idea even occurred to the Generals, "would it not be well to give the lazy fellow a little morsel?" The Generals watched the peasant's efforts, and their hearts played merrily. They had already forgotten that they had nearly died of hunger on the preceding day, and they thought, "What a good thing it is to be a general--then you never go to destruction anywhere." "Are you satisfied, Generals?" asked the big, lazy peasant. "We are satisfied, my dear friend, we perceive your zeal," replied the Generals. "Will you not permit me to rest now?" "Rest, my good friend, only first make us a rope." The peasant immediately collected wild hemp, soaked it in water, beat it, worked it--and by evening the rope was done. With this rope the Generals bound the peasant to a tree so that he should not run away, and then they lay down to sleep. One day passed, then another; the big, coarse peasant became so skilful that he even began to cook soup in the hollow of his hand. Our Generals became jovial, light-hearted, fat, and white. They began to say to each other that, here they were living with everything ready to hand while their pensions were accumulating and accumulating in Petersburg. "What do you think, your Excellency, was there really a tower of Babel, or is that merely a fable?" one General would say to the other, as they ate their breakfast. "I think, your Excellency, that it really was built; because, otherwise, how can we explain the fact that many different languages exist in the world?" "Then the flood must have occurred also?" "The flood did happen, otherwise, how could the existence of antediluvian animals be explained? The more so as it is announced in the 'Moscow News'...." "Shall we not read the 'Moscow News'?" Then they would hunt up that copy, seat themselves in the shade, and read it through from end to end; what people had been eating in Moscow, eating in Túla, eating in Pénza, eating in Ryazán--and it had no effect on them; it did not turn their stomachs. In the long run, the Generals got bored. They began to refer more and more frequently to the cooks whom they had left behind them in Petersburg, and they even wept, on the sly. "What is going on now in Pettifoggers Street, your Excellency?" one General asked the other. "Don't allude to it, your Excellency! My whole heart is sore!" replied the other General. "It is pleasant here, very pleasant--there are no words to describe it; but still, it is awkward for us to be all alone, isn't it? And I regret my uniform also." "Of course you do! Especially as it is of the fourth class,[40] so that it makes you dizzy to gaze at the embroidery alone!" Then they began to urge the peasant: Take them, take them to Pettifoggers Street! And behold! The peasant, it appeared, even knew all about Pettifoggers Street; had been there; his mouth had watered at it, but he had not had a taste of it! "And we are Generals from Pettifoggers Street, you know!" cried the Generals joyfully. "And I, also, if you had only observed; a man hangs outside a house, in a box, from a rope, and washes the wall with color, or walks on the roof like a fly. I am that man," replied the peasant. And the peasant began to cut capers, as though to amuse his Generals, because they had been kind to him, an idle sluggard, and had not scorned his peasant toil. And he built a ship--not a ship exactly, but a boat--so that they could sail across the ocean-sea, up to Pettifoggers Street. "But look to it, you rascal, that you don't drown us!" said the Generals, when they saw the craft pitching on the waves. "Be easy, Generals, this is not my first experience," replied the peasant, and began to make preparations for departure. The peasant collected soft swansdown, and lined the bottom of the boat with it; having done this, he placed the Generals on the bottom, made the sign of the cross over them, and set sail. The pen cannot describe, neither can the tongue relate, what terror the Generals suffered during their journey, from storms and divers winds. But the peasant kept on rowing and rowing, and fed the Generals on herrings. At last, behold Mother Nevá, and the splendid Katherine Canal, and great Pettifoggers Street! The cook-maids clasped their hands in amazement at the sight of their Generals, so fat, white, and merry! The Generals drank their coffee, ate rolls made with milk, eggs, and butter, and put on their uniforms. Then they went to the treasury, and the pen cannot describe, neither can the tongue relate, how much money they received there. But they did not forget the peasant; they sent him a wineglass of vódka and a silver five-kopék piece.[41] "Make merry, big, coarse peasant!" While Turgéneff represented the "western" and liberal element (with a tinge of the "red") in the school of the '40's, and Gontcharóff stood for the bourgeois and opportunist ideals of the St. Petersburg bureaucrats, Count Lyéff Nikoláevitch Tolstóy penetrated more profoundly into the depths of the spirit of the times than any other writer of the period in the matter of analysis and skepticism which characterized that school, and carried them to the extremes of pitiless logic and radicalness, approaching more closely than any other to democratic and national ideals. But notwithstanding all his genius, Count Tolstóy was not able to free himself to any great extent from his epoch, his environment, his contemporaries. His special talents merely caused him to find it impossible to reconcile himself to the state of affairs existing around him; and so, instead of progressing, he turned back and sought peace of mind and a firm doctrine in the distant past of primitive Christianity. Sincere as he undoubtedly is in his propaganda of self-simplification and self-perfection--one might almost call it "self-annihilation"--his new attitude has wrought great and most regrettable havoc with his later literary work, with some few exceptions. And yet, in pursuing this course, he did not strike out an entirely new path for himself; his youth was passed in an epoch when the ideal of personal perfection and self-surrender stood in the foreground, and constituted the very essence of Russian progress. Count L. N. Tolstóy was born on August 28, O. S., 1828 (September 9th, N. S.), in the village of Yásnaya Polyána, in the government of Túla. His mother, born Princess Volkónsky (Márya Nikoláevna), died before he was two years old, and his father's sister, Countess A. T. Osten-Saken, and a distant relative, Madame T. A. Ergólsky, took charge of him. When he was nine years old the family removed to Moscow, and his father died soon afterwards. Lyéff Nikoláevitch, his brother Dmítry, and his sister Márya then returned to the country estate, while his elder brother Nikolái remained in Moscow with Countess Osten-Saken and studied at the University of Moscow. Three years later, the Countess Osten-Saken died, and another aunt on the father's side, Madame P. I. Yúshkoff, who resided in Kazán, became their guardian. Lyéff Nikoláevitch went there to live, and in 1843 he entered the University of Kazán in the philological course, but remained in it only one year, because the professor of history (who had quarreled with Tolstóy's relatives) gave him impossibly bad marks, in addition to which he received bad marks from the professor of German, although he was better acquainted with that language than any other member of his course. He was compelled to change to the law course, where he remained for two years. In 1848 he took the examination for "candidate" in the University of St. Petersburg. "I knew literally nothing," he says of himself, "and I literally began to prepare myself for the examination only one week in advance." He obtained his degree of candidate, or bachelor of arts, and returned to Yásnaya Polyána, where he lived until 1851, when he entered the Forty-fourth Battery of the Twentieth Brigade of Artillery as "yúnker" or supernumerary officer, with no official rank, but eligible to receive a commission as ensign, and thence advance in the service. This battery was stationed on the Térek River, in the Caucasus, and there Tolstóy remained with it until the Crimean War broke out. Thus during the first twenty-six years of his life he spent less than five years in towns, the rest in the country; and this no doubt laid the foundation for his deep love for country life, which has had so profound an effect upon his writings and his views of existence in general. The dawning of his talent came during the four years he spent in the Caucasus, and he wrote "Childhood," "The Incursion," "Boyhood," "The Morning of a Landed Proprietor," and "The Cossacks." During the Turkish campaign he was ordered to the staff of Prince M. D. Gortchakóff, on the Danube, and in 1855 received the command of a mountain battery, and took part in the fight at Tchérnaya, and the siege of Sevastópol. The literary fruits of this experience were "Sevastópol," in December, May, and August, three sketches. It is convenient to finish his statistical history at this point with the statement that in 1862 he married, having firmly resolved, two years previously, that he never would do so, and clinched the bargain with himself by selling the big manor-house at Yásnaya Polyána for transportation and re-erection elsewhere. Between that date and 1888 he had a family of fifteen[42] children, of whom seven are still alive. In his very first efforts in literature we detect certain characteristics which continue to distinguish him throughout his career, and some of which, on attaining their legitimate and logical development seem, to the ordinary reader, to be of extremely recent origin. In "Childhood" and "Boyhood" ("Youth," the third section, was written late in the '50's) we meet the same keen analysis which is a leading feature in his later works, and in them is applied with such effect to women and to the tender passion, neither of which elements enters into his early works in any appreciable degree. He displays the most astounding genius in detecting and understanding the most secret and trivial movements of the human soul. In this respect his methods are those of a miniature painter. Another point must be borne in mind in studying Tolstóy's characters, that, unlike Turgéneff, who is almost exclusively objective, Tolstóy is in the highest degree subjective, and has presented a study of his own life and soul in almost every one of his works, in varying degrees, and combined with widely varying elements. In the same way he has made use of the spiritual and mental state of his relatives. For example, who can fail to recognize a self-portrait from the life in Levín ("Anna Karénin"), and in Prince Andréi Bolkónsky ("War and Peace")? And the feminine characters in these great novels are either simple or composite portraits of his nearest relations, while many of the incidents in both novels are taken straight from their experience or his own, or the two combined. It is useless to catalogue his many works with their dates in this place. Unquestionably the finest of them (despite the author's present erroneous view, that they constitute a sin and a reproach to him) are his magnificent "War and Peace" and "Anna Karénin." Curiously enough, neither met with prompt or enthusiastic welcome in Russia when they first made their appearance.[43] The public had grown used to the very different methods of the other celebrated romance-writers of the '40's, with whom we have already dealt. Gontcharóff had accustomed them to the delineation of character by broad, sweeping strokes; Dostoévsky to lancet-like thrusts, penetrating the very soul; Turgéneff to tender touches, which produced soft, melting outlines. It was long before they could reconcile themselves to Tolstóy's original mode of painting a vast series of miniature portraits on an immense canvas. But the effect of this procedure was at last recognized to be the very acme of throbbing, breathing life itself. Moreover, it became apparent that Tolstóy's theory of life was, that great generals, statesmen, and as a whole, all active persons who seem or try to control events, do nothing of the kind. Somewhere above, in the unknown, there is a power which guides affairs at its own will, and (here is the special point) deliberately thwarts all the efforts of the active people. According to his philosophy, the self-contained, thoroughly egotistical natures, who are wedded solely to the cult of success, generally pass through this earthly life without any notable disasters; they attend strictly to their own selfish ends, and do not attempt to sway the destinies of others from motives of humanity, patriotism, or anything else in the lofty, self-sacrificing line. On the contrary, the fate of the people who are endowed with tender instincts, who have not allowed self-love to smother their humanity, who are guilty only of striving to attain some lofty, unselfish object in life, are thwarted and repressed, balked and confounded at every turn. This is particularly interesting in view of his latter-day exhortations to men, on the duty of toiling for others, sacrificing everything for others. Nevertheless, it must stand as a monument to the fidelity of his powers of analysis of life in general, and of the individual characters in whose lot he demonstrates his theory. This contrast between the two conflicting principles, a haughty individualism and peaceable submission to a higher power, of which the concrete representative is the mass of the population, is set forth with especial clearness in "War and Peace," where the two principal heroes, Prince Andréi Bolkónsky and Pierre Bezúkoff, represent individualism. In "Anna Karénin," in the person of his favorite hero, Konstantín Levín, Tolstóy first enunciates the doctrine of moral regeneration acquired by means of physical labor, and his later philosophical doctrines are the direct development of the views there set forth. He had represented a hero of much earlier days, Prince Nekhliúdoff, in "The Morning of a Landed Proprietor," as convinced that he should make himself of use to his peasants; and he had set forth the result of those efforts in terms which tally wonderfully well with his direct personal comments in "My Confession," of a date long posterior to "Anna Karénin." "Have my peasants become any the richer?" he writes; "have they been educated or developed morally? Not in the slightest degree. They are no better off, and my heart grows more heavy with every passing day. If I could but perceive any success in my undertaking; if I could descry any gratitude--but no; I see false routine, vice, distrust, helplessness! I am wasting the best years of my life in vain." But Nekhliúdoff--Tolstóy was not alone in devoting himself to his peasants; before he withdrew to the country he had led a gay life in St. Petersburg, after resigning from the army, and in writing his fine peasant story, "Polikúshka," setting up peasant-schools on his estate, and the like, he was merely paying his tribute to the spirit of the time (which reached him even in his seclusion), and imitating the innumerable village schools and Sunday schools in the capitals (for secular instruction of the laboring classes who were too busy for education during the week) in which the aristocratic and educated classes in general took a lively interest.[44] But the leisure afforded by country life enabled him to compose his masterpieces. "War and Peace," which was begun in 1864, was published serially in "The Russian Messenger," beginning in 1865, and in book form in 1869, and "Anna Karénin," which was published serially in the same journal, in 1875-1876. His style is not to be compared to that of Turgéneff, with its exquisite harmony, art, and sense of proportion. Tolstóy writes carelessly, frequently repeats himself, not infrequently expresses himself ambiguously or obscurely. But the supreme effect is produced, nevertheless. At last came the diametrical change of views, apparently, which led to this supreme artist's discarding his art, and devoting himself to religious and philosophical writings for which neither nature nor his training had fitted him. He himself dates this change from the middle of the '70's, and it must be noted that precisely at this period that strong movement called "going to the people," i. e., devoting one's self to the welfare of the peasants, became epidemic in Russian society. Again, as fifteen or twenty years previously, Count Tolstóy was merely swept onward by the popular current. But his first pamphlet on his new propaganda is ten years later than the date he assigns to the change. Thereafter for many years he devoted his chief efforts to this new class of work, "Life," "What Is to Be Done?" "My Confession," and so forth, being the more bulky outcome. Some of the stories, written for the people during this interval, are delightful, both in tone and artistic qualities. Others are surcharged with "morals," which in many cases either directly conflict with the moral of other stories in the same volume, or even with the secondary moral of the same story. Even his last work--"in my former style," as he described it--"Resurrection," has special doctrines and aims too emphatically insisted upon to permit of the reader deriving from it the pure literary pleasure afforded by his masterpieces. In short, with all due respect to the entire sincerity of this magnificent writer, it must be said that those who would enjoy and appreciate him rightly, should ignore his philosophico-religious treatises, which are contradictory and confusing to the last degree. As an illustration, let me cite the case of the famine in Russia of 1891-92. Great sums of money[45] were sent to Count Tolstóy, chiefly from America, and were expended by him in the most practicable and irreproachable manner--so any one would have supposed--for the relief of the starving peasants. Count Tolstóy and his assistants lived the life of the peasants, and underwent severe hardships; the Count even fell ill, and his wife was obliged to go to him and nurse him. It would seem that his conscience had no cause for reproach, and that the situation was an ideal one for him. But before that famine was well over, or the funds expended, he wrote a letter to a London newspaper, in which he declared that helping people by means of money was all wrong--positively a sin. He felt that collecting and distributing money was not the best thing of which he was capable, and called it "making a pipe of one's self," personal service with brains, heart, and muscles being the only right service for God or man. This service he certainly rendered, and without the money he could not have rendered it. Nothing could more perfectly illustrate this point of view than the following little story, written in 1881, called "The Two Brothers and the Gold." In ancient times there lived not far from Jerusalem two brothers, the elder Afanásy, the younger Ioánn. They dwelt on a hill not far from the town, and subsisted on what people gave them. Every day the brothers spent in work. They did not toil at their own work, but at the work of the poor. Wherever there were men overwhelmed with work, wherever there were sick people, orphans and widows, thither went the brothers, and there they toiled and nursed the people, accepting no remuneration. In this wise did the brothers pass the whole week apart, and met only on Saturday evening in their abode. Only on Sunday did they remain at home, praying and chatting together. And the angel of the Lord descended to them and blessed them. On Monday they parted and each went his way. Thus the two brothers lived for many years, and every week the angel of the Lord came down and blessed them. One Monday as the brothers were starting out to work, and had already separated, going in different directions, Afanásy felt sorry to part with his beloved brother, and halted and glanced back. Ioánn was walking, with head bowed, in his own direction, and did not look back. But all of a sudden, Ioánn also halted, and as though catching sight of something, began to gaze intently in that direction, shading his eyes with his hand. Then he approached what he had espied there, suddenly leaped to one side, and without looking behind him fled down the hill and up the hill, away from the spot, as though a fierce wild beast were pursuing him. Afanásy was amazed and went back to the place in order to find out what had so frightened his brother. As he came near he beheld something gleaming in the sunlight. He approached closer. On the grass, as though poured out of a measure, lay a heap of gold.... And Afanásy was the more amazed, both at the gold, and at his brother's leap. "What was he frightened at, and what did he flee from?" said Afanásy to himself. "There is no sin in gold, the sin is in man. One can do evil with gold, but one can also do good with it. How many orphans and widows can be fed, how many naked men clothed, how many poor and sick healed with this gold. We now serve people, but our service is small, according to the smallness of our strength, but with this gold we can serve people more." Afanásy reasoned thus with himself, and wished to tell it all to his brother, but Ioánn had gone off out of earshot, and was now visible on the opposite mountain, no bigger than a beetle. And Afanásy took of his garment, raked into it as much gold as he was able to carry, flung it on his shoulders and carried it to the city. He came to the inn, gave the gold over to the innkeeper, and went back after the remainder. And when he had brought all the gold he went to the merchants, bought land in the town, bought stone and timber, hired workmen, and began to build three houses. And Afanásy dwelt three months in the town and built three houses in the town, one house, an asylum for widows and orphans, another house, a hospital for the sick and the needy, a third house for pilgrims and paupers. And Afanásy sought out three pious old men, and he placed one over the asylum, another over the hospital, and the third over the hostelry for pilgrims. And Afanásy had three thousand gold pieces left. And he gave a thousand to each old man to distribute to the poor. And people began to fill all three houses, and men began to laud Afanásy for what he had done. And Afanásy rejoiced thereat so that he did not wish to leave the city. But Afanásy loved his brother, and bidding the people farewell, and keeping not a single gold piece for himself, he went back to his abode in the same old garment in which he had quitted it. Afanásy came to his mountain and said to himself, "My brother judged wrongly when he sprang away from the gold and fled from it. Have not I done better?" And no sooner had Afanásy thought this, than suddenly he beheld, standing in his path and gazing sternly at him, that angel who had been wont to bless them. And Afanásy was stupefied with amazement and could utter only, "Why is this, Lord?" And the angel opened his mouth and said, "Get thee hence! Thou art not worthy to dwell with thy brother. Thy brother's one leap is more precious than all the deeds which thou hast done with thy gold." And Afanásy began to tell of how many paupers and wanderers he had fed, how many orphans he had cared for, and the angel said to him, "That devil who placed the gold there to seduce thee hath also taught thee these words." And then did Afanásy's conscience convict him, and he understood that he had not done his deeds for the sake of God, and he fell to weeping, and began to repent. Then the angel stepped aside, and left open to him the way, on which Ioánn was already standing awaiting his brother, and from that time forth Afanásy yielded no more to the temptation of the devil who had poured out the gold, and knew that not by gold, but only by labor, can one serve God and men. And the brothers began to live as before.[46] Unfortunately, the best of Tolstóy's peasant stories, such as "Polikúshka," "Two Old Men" (the latter belonging to the recent hortatory period), and the like, are too long for reproduction here. But the moral of the following, "Little Girls Wiser than Old Men," is irreproachable, and the style is the same as in the more important of those written expressly for the people. Easter fell early that year. People had only just ceased to use sledges. The snow still lay in the cottage yards, but rivulets were flowing through the village; a big puddle had formed between the cottages, from the dung-heaps, and two little girls, from different cottages, met by this puddle--one younger, the other older. Both little girls had been dressed in new frocks by their mothers. The little one's frock was blue, the big one's yellow, with a flowered pattern. Both had red kerchiefs bound about their heads. The little girls came out to the puddle, after the morning service in church, displayed their clothes to each other, and began to play. And the fancy seized them to paddle in the water. The younger girl was on the point of wading into the pool with her shoes on, but the elder girl says, "Don't go Malásha, thy mother will scold. Come, I'll take off my shoes, and do thou take off thine." The little lasses took off their shoes, tucked up their frocks and waded into the puddle, to meet each other. Malásha went in up to her knees, and says, "It's deep, Akuliushka--I'm afraid" "Never mind," says she; "it won't get any deeper. Come straight towards me." They began to approach each other, and Akúlka says, "Look out, Malásha, don't splash, but walk quietly." No sooner had she spoken, than Malásha set her foot down with a bang in the water, and a splash fell straight on Akúlka's frock. The sarafán was splashed, and some of it fell on her nose and in her eyes as well. Akúlka saw the spot on her frock, got angry at Malásha, stormed, ran after her, and wanted to beat her. Malásha was frightened when she saw the mischief she had done, leaped out of the puddle, and ran home. Akúlka's mother came along, espied the splashed frock and spattered chemise on her daughter. "Where didst thou soil thyself, thou hussy?" "Malásha splashed me on purpose." Akálka's mother seized Malásha, and struck her on the nape of the neck. Malásha shrieked so that the whole street heard her. Malásha's mother came out. "What art thou beating my child for?" The neighbor began to rail. One word led to another, the women scolded each other. The peasant men ran forth, a big crowd assembled in the street. Everybody shouted, nobody listened to anybody else. They scolded and scolded. One gave another a punch, and a regular fight was imminent, when an old woman, Akúlka's grandmother, interposed. She advanced into the midst of the peasants, and began to argue with them. "What are you about, my good men? Is this the season for such things? We ought to be joyful, but you have brought about a great sin." They paid no heed to the old woman, and almost knocked one another down, and the old woman would not have been able to dissuade them had it not been for Akúlka and Malásha. While the women were wrangling, Akúlka wiped off her frock, and went out again to the puddle in the space between the cottages. She picked up a small stone and began to dig the earth out at the edge of the puddle, so as to let the water out into the street. While she was digging away, Malásha came up also, and began to help her by drawing the water down the ditch with a chip. The peasant men had just come to blows, when the little girls had got the water along the ditch to the street, directly at the spot where the old woman was parting the men. The little girls came running up, one on one side, the other on the other side of the rivulet. "Hold on, Malásha, hold on!" cried Akúlka. Malásha also tried to say something, but could not speak for laughing. The little girls ran thus, laughing at the chip, as it floated down the stream. And they ran straight into the midst of the peasant men. The old woman perceived them, and said to the men, "Fear God! Here you have begun to fight over these same little girls, and they have forgotten all about it long ago, and are playing together again in love--the dear little things. They are wiser than you!" The men looked at the little girls, and felt ashamed of themselves; and then the peasants began to laugh at themselves, and went off to their houses. "Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." It is a pity that Count Tolstóy, the greatest literary genius of his time, should put his immense talent to such a use as to provoke, on his contradictions of himself, comment like the following, which is quoted from a work by V. S. Soloviéff, an essayist and argumentative writer, who quotes some one on this subject, to this effect: "Sometimes we hear that the most important truth is in the Sermon on the Mount; then again, we are told that we must till the soil in the sweat of our brows, though there is nothing about that in the Gospels, but in Genesis--in the same place where giving birth in pain is mentioned, but that is no commandment at all, only a sad fate; sometimes we are told that we ought to give everything away to the poor; and then again, that we never ought to give anything to anybody, as money is an evil, and one ought not to harm other people, but only one's self and one's family, but that we ought to work for others; sometimes we are told that the vocation of women is to bear as many healthy children as possible, and then, the celibate ideal is held up for men and women; then again, eating no meat is the first step towards self-perfection, though why no one knows; then something is said against liquor and tobacco, then against pancakes, then against military service as if it were the worst thing on earth, and as if the primary duty of a Christian were to refuse to be a soldier, which would prove that he who is not taken into service, for any reason, is already holy enough." This may be a trifle exaggerated, but it indicates clearly enough the utter confusion which the teachings of Count Tolstóy produce on ordinary, rational, well-meaning persons.[47] In short, he should be judged in his proper sphere as one of the most gifted authors of any age or country, and judged by his legitimate works in his legitimate province, the novel, as exemplified by "War and Peace" and "Anna Karénin." The reform movement of the '60's of the nineteenth century ended in a reaction which took possession of society as a whole during the '70's. Apathy, dejection, disenchantment superseded the previous exultation and enthusiastic impulse to push forward in all directions. Dull discontent and irritation reigned in all classes of society and in all parties. Some were discontented with the reforms, regarding them as premature, and even ruinous; others, on the contrary, deemed them insufficient, curtailed, only half-satisfactory to the needs of the country, and merely exasperating to the public demands. These conditions created a special sort of literary school, which made its appearance in the middle of the '70's, and attained its complete development in the middle of the '80's. We have seen that the same sort of thing had taken place with every previous change in the public sentiment. The first thing which impresses one in this school is the resurrection of artistic feeling, a passion for beauty of imagery and forms, a careful and extremely elegant polish imparted to literary productions in technique. None of the authoritative and influential critics preached the cult of pure art. Yet Gárshin, the most promising of the young authors of the day, who was the very last person to be suspected of that cult, finished his works with the utmost care, so that in elegance of form and language they offer an example of faultless perfection. There can be no doubt that this renaissance of the artistic element of poetry, of beauty, was closely connected with the subsidence of the flood-tide of public excitement and agitation, which up to that time had carried writers along with it into its whirlpools, and granted them neither the time nor the desire to polish and adorn their works, and revel in beauty of forms. Vsévolod Mikháilovitch Gárshin, the son of a petty landed proprietor in the south of Russia, was born in 1855. Despite his repeated attacks of profound melancholia, which sometimes passed into actual insanity, and despite the brevity of his career (he flung himself down stairs in a fit of this sort and died, in 1889), he made a distinct and brilliant mark in Russian literature. Gárshin's view of people in general was thus expressed: "All the people whom I have known," he says, "are divided (along with other divisions of which, of course, there are many: the clever men and the fools, the Hamlets and the Don Quixotes, the lazy and the active, and so forth) into two categories, or to speak more accurately, they are distributed between two extremes: some are endowed, so to speak, with a good self-consciousness, while the others have a bad self-consciousness. One man lives and enjoys all his sensations; if he eats he rejoices, if he looks at the sky he rejoices. In short, for such a man, the mere process of living is happiness. But it is quite the reverse with the other sort of man; you may plate him with gold, and he will continue to grumble; nothing satisfies him; success in life affords him no pleasure, even if it be perfectly self-evident. The man simply is incapable of experiencing satisfaction; he is incapable, and that is the end of the matter." And in view of his personal disabilities, it is not remarkable that all his heroes should have belonged to the latter category, in a greater or less degree, some of the incidents narrated being drawn directly from his own experiences. Such are "The Red Flower," his best story, which presents the hallucinations of a madman, "The Coward," "Night," "Attalea Princeps," and "That Which Never Happened." On the other hand, the following have no personal element: "The Meeting," "The Orderly and the Officer," "The Diary of Soldier Ivánoff," "The Bears," "Nadézhda Nikoláevna," and "Proud Aggei." Another writer who has won some fame, especially by his charming sketches of Siberian life, written during his exile in Siberia, is Grigóry Alexándrovitch Matchtet, born in 1852. These sketches, such as "The Second Truth," "We Have Conquered," "A Worldly Affair," are both true to nature and artistic, and produce a deep impression. Much more talented and famous is Vladímir Galaktiónovitch Korolénko (1853), also the author of fascinating Siberian sketches, and of a more ambitious work, "The Blind Musician." One point to be noted about Korolénko is that he never joined the pessimists, or the party which professed pseudo-peasant tendencies, and followed Count L. N. Tolstóy's ideas, but has always preserved his independence. His first work, a delightful fantasy, entitled "Makár's Dream," appeared in 1885. Korolénko has been sent to Siberia several times, but now lives in Russia proper,[48] and publishes a high-class monthly journal. Until quite recently opinion was divided as to whether Korolénko or Tchékoff was the more talented, and the coming "great author." As we shall see presently, that question seems to have been settled, and in part by Korolénko's friendly aid, in favor of quite another person. Antón Pávlovitch Tchékoff (pseudonym "Tchekhonte," 1860) is the descendant of a serf father and grandfather. His volumes of short stories, "Humorous Tales," "In the Gloaming," "Surly People," are full of humor and of brilliant wit. His more ambitious efforts, as to length and artistic qualities, the productions of his matured talent, are "The Steppe," "Fires," "A Tiresome History," "Notes of an Unknown," "The Peasant," and so forth. Still another extremely talented writer, who, unfortunately, has begun to produce too rapidly for his own interest, is Ignáty Nikoláevitch Potápenko (1856), the son of an officer in a Uhlan regiment, and of a Little Russian peasant mother. His father afterwards became a priest--a very unusual change of vocation and class--and the future writer acquired intimate knowledge of views and customs in ecclesiastical circles, which he put to brilliant use later on. A delicate humor is the characteristic feature of his work, as can be seen in his best writings, such as "On Active Service"[49] and "The Secretary of His Grace (the Bishop)." The former is the story of a talented and devoted young priest, who might have obtained an easy position in the town, among the bishop's officials, with certain prospect of swift promotion. He resolutely declines this position, and requests that he may be assigned to a village parish, where he can be "on active service." Every one regards the request as a sign of an unsettled mind. After much argument he prevails on his betrothed bride's parents to permit the marriage (he cannot be ordained until he is married), and hopes to find a helpmeet in her. The rest of the story deals with his experiences in the unenviable position of a village priest, where he has to contend not only with the displeasure of his young wife, but with the avarice of his church staff, the defects of the peasants, the excess of attention of the local gentlewoman, and financial problems of the most trying description. It ends in his wife abandoning him, and returning with her child to her father's house, while he insists on remaining at his post, where, as events have abundantly proved, the ministrations of a truly disinterested, devout priest are most sadly needed. It is impossible to convey by description the charm and gentle humor of this book. But acclaimed on all sides, by all classes of society, as the most talented writer of the present day, is the young man who writes under the name of Maxím Górky (Bitter). The majority of the critics confidently predict that he is the long-expected successor of Count L. N. Tolstóy. This gifted man, who at one stroke, conquered for himself all Russia which reads, whose books sell with unprecedented rapidity, whose name passes from mouth to mouth of millions, wherever intellectual life glows, and has won an unnumbered host of enthusiastic admirers all over the world, came up from the depths of the populace. "Górky" Alexéi Maxímovitch Pyeshkóff was born in Nízhni Nóvgorod in 1868 or 1869. Socially, he belongs to the petty burgher class, but his grandfather, on the paternal side, was reduced from an officer to the ranks, by the Emperor Nicholas I., for harsh treatment of the soldiers under his command. He was such a rough character that his son (the author's father) ran away from home five times in the course of seven years, and definitively parted from his uncongenial family at the age of seventeen, when he went afoot from Tobólsk to Nízhni Nóvgorod, where he apprenticed himself to a paper-hanger. Later on he became the office-manager of a steamer company in Ástrakhan. His mother was the daughter of a man who began his career as a bargee on the Volga, one of the lowest class of men who, before the advent of steam, hauled the merchandise-laden barks from Ástrakhan to Nízhni Nóvgorod, against the current. Afterwards he became a dyer of yarns, and eventually established a thriving dyeing establishment in Nízhni. Górky's father died of cholera at Ástrakhan when the lad was four years old. His mother soon married again, and gave the boy to his grandfather, who had him taught to read and write, and then sent him to school, where he remained only five months. At the end of that time he caught smallpox, and his studies were never renewed. Meanwhile his mother died, and his grandfather was ruined financially, so Górky, at nine years of age, became the "boy" in a shoeshop, where he spent two months, scalded his hands with cabbage soup, and was sent back to his grandfather. His relations treated him with hostility or indifference, and on his recovery, apprenticed him to a draftsman, from whose harshness he promptly fled, and entered the shop of a painter of holy pictures. Next he became scullion on a river steamer, and the cook was the first to inculcate in him a love of reading and of good literature. Next he became gardener's boy; then tried to get an education at Kazán University, under the mistaken impression that education was free. To keep from starving he became assistant in a bakery at three rubles a month; "the hardest work I ever tried," he says; sawed wood, carried heavy burdens, peddled apples on the wharf, and tried to commit suicide out of sheer want and misery.[50] "Konováloff" and "Men with Pasts"[51] would seem to represent some of the experiences of this period, "Konováloff" being regarded as one of his best stories. Then he went to Tzarítzyn, where he obtained employment as watchman on a railway, was called back to Nízhni Nóvgorod for the conscription, but was not accepted as a soldier, such "holy" men not being wanted. He became a peddler of beer, then secretary to a lawyer, who exercised great influence on his education. But he felt out of place, and in 1890 went back to Tzarítzyn, then to the Don Province (of the Kazáks), to the Ukraína and Bessarábia, back along the southern shore of the Crimea to the Kubán, and thence to the Caucasus. The reader of his inimitable short stories can trace these peregrinations and the adventures incident to them. In Tiflís he worked in the railway shops, and in 1892 printed his first literary effort, "Makár Tchúdra," in a local newspaper, the "Kavkáz." In the following year, in Nízhni Nóvgorod, he made acquaintance with Korolénko, to whom he is indebted for getting into "great literature," and for sympathy and advice. When he published "Tchelkásh," in 1893, his fate was settled. It is regarded as one of the purest gems of Russian literature. He immediately rose to honor, and all his writings since that time have appeared in the leading publications. Moreover, he is the most "fashionable" writer in the country. But he enjoys something more than mere popularity; he is deeply loved. This is the result of the young artist's remarkable talent for painting absolutely living pictures of both persons and things. The many-sidedness of his genius--for he has more than talent--is shown, among other things, by the fact that he depicts with equal success landscapes, _genre_ scenes, portraits of women. His episode of the singers in "Fomá Gordyéeff" (pp. 217-227) is regarded by Russian critics as fully worthy of being compared with the scenes for which Turgéneff is renowned. His landscape pictures are so beautiful that they cause a throb of pain. But, as is almost inevitable under the circumstances, most of his stories have an element of coarseness, which sometimes repels. In general, his subject is "the uneasy man," who is striving after absolute freedom, after light and a lofty ideal, of which he can perceive the existence somewhere, though with all his efforts he cannot grasp it. We may assume that in this they represent Górky himself. But although all his heroes are seeking the meaning of life, no two of them are alike. His characters, like his landscapes, grip the heart, and once known, leave an ineffaceable imprint. Although he propounds problems of life among various classes, he differs from the majority of people, in not regarding a full stomach as the panacea for the poor man. On the contrary (as in "Fomá Gordyéeff," his most ambitious effort), he seems to regard precisely this as the cause of more ruin than the life of "the barefoot brigade," the tramps and stepchildren of Dame Fortune, with whom he principally deals. His motto seems to be "Man shall not live by bread alone." And because Górky bears this thought ever with him, in brain and heart, in nerves and his very marrow, his work possesses a strength which is almost terrifying, combined with a beauty as terrifying in its way. If he will but develop his immense genius instead of meddling with social and political questions, and getting into prison on that score with disheartening regularity, something incalculably great may be the outcome. It is said that he is now banished in polite exile to the Crimea. If he can be kept there or elsewhere out of mischief, the Russian government will again render the literature of its own country and of the world as great a service as it has already more than once rendered in the past, by similar means. In the '70's and '80's Russian society was seized with a mania for writing poetry, and a countless throng of young poets made their appearance. No book sold so rapidly as a volume of verses. But very few of these aspirants to fame possessed any originality or serious worth. Poetry had advanced not a single step since the days of Nekrásoff and Shevtchénko, so far as national independence was concerned. The most talented of the young poets of this period was Semén Yákovlevitch Nádson (1862-1887). His grandfather, a Jew who had joined the Russian Church, lived in Kíeff. His father, a gifted man and a fine musician, died young. His mother, a Russian gentlewoman, died at the age of thirty-one, of consumption. At the age of sixteen, Nádson fell in love with a young girl, and began to write poetry. She died of quick consumption shortly afterwards. This grief affected the young man's whole career, and many of his poems were inspired by it. He began to publish his poems while still in school, being already threatened with pulmonary trouble, on account of which he had been sent to the Caucasus at the expense of the government, where he spent a year. In 1882 he graduated from the military school, and was appointed an officer in a regiment stationed at Kronstádt. There he lived for two years, and some of his best poems belong to this epoch: "No, Easier 'Tis for Me to Think that Thou Art Dead," "Herostrat," "Dreams," "The Brilliant Hall Has Silent Grown," "All Hath Come to Pass," and so forth. He retired from the military service in 1883, being already in the grasp of consumption. His poems ran through ten editions during the five years which followed his death, and still continue to sell with equal rapidity, so remarkable is their popularity. He was an ideally poetical figure; moreover, he charms by his flowing, musical verse, by the enthralling elegance and grace of his poetical imagery, and genuine lyric inspiration. All his poetry is filled with quiet, meditative sadness. It is by the music of his verse and the tender tears of his feminine lyrism that Nádson penetrates the hearts of his readers. His masterpiece is "My Friend, My Brother," and this reflects the sentiment of all his work.[52] Here is the first verse: My friend, my brother, weary, suffering brother, Whoever thou may'st be, let not thy spirit fail; Let evil and injustice reign with sway supreme O'er all the tear-washed earth. Let the sacred ideal be shattered and dishonored; Let innocent blood flow in stream-- Believe me, there cometh a time when Baal shall perish And love shall return to earth. Another very sincere, sympathetic, and genuine, though not great poet, also of Jewish race, is Semén Grigórievitch Frug (1860-1916), the son of a member of the Jewish agricultural colony in the government of Khersón. He, like Nádson, believes that good will triumph in the end, and is not in the least a pessimist. Quite the reverse are Nikolái Maxímovitch Vilénkin (who is better known by his pseudonym of "Mínsky" from his native government), and Dmítry Sergyéevitch Merezhkóvsky (1865) who, as a poet, is generally bombastic. His novels are better. There are many other good, though not great, contemporary writers in Russia, including several women. But they hardly come within the scope of this work (which does not aim at being encyclopedic), as neither their work nor their fame is likely to make its way to foreign readers who are unacquainted with the Russian language. For those who do read Russian there are several good handbooks of contemporary literature which will furnish all necessary information. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. How was Russia influenced by the romantic movement in western Europe? 2. Describe the character of the romances of the first period of the fifties. 3. What important historical works appeared at this time? 4. What popular novels were written by Danilévsky? 5. What were the chief works of Mélnikoff, and why are they not likely to be translated into English? 6. Describe the career and influence of Lyeskóff. 7. Why was the fame of Markóvitch's work short-lived? 8. What difficulties did Uspénsky encounter in his early attempts at writing? 9. Describe the effect produced by his "Hard Labor" and "An Eccentric Master." 10. What views of society did Zlatovrátsky express in his writings? 11. Why did Ryeshétnikoff's "The Inhabitants of Podlípovo" become widely popular? 12. Give an account of the experiences of Saltykóff. 13. How did he make use of the material gathered during his exile? 14. How did his writings contribute some new words to the Russian language? 15. What qualities does he show in "The Story of How One Peasant Maintained Two Generals"? 16. Give the chief events in the life of Tolstóy. 17. What characteristics of style did he show in his earliest writings? 18. How is he "subjective" in delineating his characters? 19. Why was his genius not at first appreciated? 20. What was his theory of life? 21. What change came into his life in the seventies? 22. How did this affect his writings? 23. How did his experience with famine sufferers affect his views? 24. What were Gárshin's views of people in general? 25. How do his books bear out his theories? 26. What facts in Korolénko's life have influenced his literary development? 27. What characteristics does Tchékoff show in his short stories? 28. What is the story of Potápenko's "On Active Service"? 29. Give the leading events of Górky's career. 30. How is his many-sided genius shown? 31. What ideals are expressed in his work? 32. Why has Nádson's poetry such a firm hold on the popular mind? BIBLIOGRAPHY Danilévsky: _Miróvitch._ _The Princess Tarakanova._ Potápenko: _A Russian Priest._ _A Father of Six._ _An Occasional Holiday._ Maxím Górky: _Orlóff and His Wife._ _Fomá Gordyéeff._ (Translated by I. F. Hapgood.) L. N. Tolstóy: All of his works are available in English translations. There are several collections of his short stories. _The Humor of Russia._ (Selections.) E. L. Voynich. D. S. Merezhkóvsky: _The Death of the Gods._ This is the first part of a trilogy, and is an historical novel of the time of Julian the Apostate. The other parts (announced for publication) are: _Resurrection_ (time of Leonardo da Vinci) and _The Anti-Christ_ (time of Peter the Great.) FOOTNOTES: [33] The "Old Ritualists" or _raskólniki_, are those who do not accept the corrections to the Church books, and so forth, made in seventeenth century, by the Patriarch Níkon. [34] Count L. N. Tolstóy presented me with a copy of one of these legends--a most distressing and improbable affair--with the remark, "Lyeskóff has spoiled himself by imitating me." He meant that Lyeskóff was imitating his little moral tales and legends, to which he had been devoting himself for some time past. I agreed with Tolstóy, as to the effect. [35] Although she was very ill and weak, she was good enough to ask me to visit her, a few months before she died, in 1889. [36] Count L. N. Tolstóy told me that Uspénsky had never been sufficiently appreciated. He also praised Zlatovrátsky highly. [37] Former crown serfs repeatedly told me how free they had been--how much better off than those of private persons. [38] Naturally, it is this feature of his writings which made Count Tolstóy laud him so highly to me. [39] Or, "The Golovléffs," the above being the more formal translation. Saltykóff was too ill to receive strangers when I was in Russia. But I attended a requiem service over his body, at his home; another at the Kazán Cathedral, where all the literary lights assembled; and went to his funeral in the outlying cemetery, thereby having the good fortune to behold one of the famous "demonstrations" in which the Russian public indulges on such occasions. [40] This refers to the Table of Ranks, established by Peter the Great. The fourth class of officials from the top of the ladder, have attained a very respectable amount of embroidery, dignity, and social position. [41] About two cents and a half. [42] I have seen the number variously stated at from eleven to thirteen; but Countess Sophía Andréevna, his wife, told me there had been fifteen, and I regard her as the final authority on this point, a very interesting one, in view of some of his latter-day theories and exhortations. Countess Tolstóy was the daughter of Dr. Behrs, of Moscow. [43] Turgéneff, who afterwards called Tolstóy "The Great Writer of the Russian Land," pronounced emphatically against him at this time; and so did many others, who became his enthusiastic admirers. [44] At this period, also, the peasant costume became the fashion in the higher circles. Count Tolstóy is generally (out of Russia) assumed to be the first and only wearer of such garments. [45] This is a particularly interesting example to the people of America and to me. I sent to Count Tolstóy over seven thousand dollars which people throughout the length and breadth of the land had forwarded to me for that purpose, and I turned thousands more in his direction. His conscience is as uneasy and as fitful and illogical in pretty nearly all other matters, which is a pity, because it is both lively and sincere, though mistaken. [46] It was to this sort of story that Count Tolstóy referred, when he told me that Lyeskóff had spoiled his talent of recent years by imitating him, Tolstóy. [47] I have stated my own theory as to Count Tolstóy's incessant changes of view, and his puzzling inconsistencies, in my "Russian Rambles." It is not necessary or fitting that I should repeat it here. [48] I tried to see him in Nízhni Nóvgorod, but although he was still under police surveillance, the police could not tell me where to find him, and I obtained the information from a photographer friend of his. Unfortunately, he was then in the Crimea, gathering "material." [49] Translated into English under the title "A Russian Priest." Another volume contains two charming stories from the same circle, "A Father of Six" and "An Occasional Holiday." [50] He must have been at Kazán about the time I was there; and I have often wondered if I saw him on the wharf, where I passed weary hours waiting for the steamer. [51] See "Orlóff and His Wife," in my translation, 1891. [52] I do not attempt a metrical translation. Lines 1-3, 2-4, 5-7, 6-8, rhyme in pairs. INDEX Adásheff, 54, 56. Aksákoff, 141, 164. Alexander I., 91, 101, 102, 105. Archángel, 72. Ástrakhan, 70, 227, 269. Baratýnsky, 123. Bárynya Sudárynya, 34. Bátiushkoff, 106, 108. Bogdanóvitch, 96, 97. Book of Degrees, 61. Book of Hours, 53, 59. Briulóff, 206. Búnin, 107. Byelínsky, 139, 141, 143, 161, 165, 204, 213, 215. Caucasus, 251, 252, 270, 272. Danilévsky, 230. Dáshkoff, 82. Decembrists, 201, 215. Délvig, 123. Derzhávin, 82, 90, 96, 100, 114. Dmítrieff, 92, 98, 105, 142. Dmítry, St. of Rostóff, 63, 64. Dmítry Donskóy (dmee-tree), 48. Dniépr (Neepr), 2, 41, 147, 159. Dolgorúky, 57. Domostróy, 51. Dostoévsky, 140, 161, 209, 212, 225, 254. Drevlyáns, 41. Dúroff, 214, 215. Elizabeth, 68, 75, 76, 114, 230. Féodor (fáy-o-dor), 47, 59. Feódorovna, 108, 110, 206. Feodósiy, 40. Frug, 274. Galítzyn, 69. Gárshin, 265. Glazátly, 56. Gógol, 140, 141, 146-159, 161, 165, 167, 181, 189, 213, 215. Gontcharóff, 140, 161-63, 220, 223, 250. Górky, 268-272. Gregory, 63. Griboyédoff, 124, 128, 181. Grigoróvitch, 140, 161, 163-64, 213. House Regulator, 51. Ígor (egor), 41. Ígor's Raid, 44. Ilarión, 39. Ioánnovña, Anna, 69, 72, 75, 114. Irkútsk, 199. Iván (e-vahñ) the Terrible, 51. Kamarýnskaya, 34. Kantemír, 68, 69, 84. Kápnist, 96. Karamzín (ka-ram-zeen), 92, 98, 102, 106, 109, 111, 115, 124, 229. Katherine II., 70, 77, 80, 82, 84, 85, 90, 91, 96, 100, 102, 114. Kazán, 33, 52, 56, 97, 141, 251, 269. Khémnitzer, 96-100. Kheraskóff, 96, 97, 164. Khersón, 158, 274. Khomyakóff, 164. Khvóshtchinsky, 234. Kíeff (keef), 1, 2, 7, 29, 36, 39, 41, 47, 56, 61, 63, 67, 204, 207. Koltzóff, 142-145, 194, 204. Korolénko, 266. Kostomároff, 230. Kotoshíkin, 57. Kozmá, Epistle to, 54. Krizhánitz, 58. Kronstádt, 273. Krylóff (kree-lof), 98, 109, 112, 124, 189. Kúrbsky, 53, 55. Kúrotchkin, 210. Kyríll, 3. Kyríll of Nóvgorod, 40. Lérmontoff, 116, 128, 138, 140, 150, 192. Lomonósoff, 57, 69, 72-5, 97, 113, 128, 139, 140. Lyeskóff, 231. Máikoff, 140, 193. Makáry, 48. Markóvitch, 233. Márlinsky, 146. Matchtet, 266. Maxím, the Greek, 50. Mélnikoff, 230. Merezhkóvsky, 274. Methódy, 3. Mikháilovitch, 57, 59, 61, 62. Mináeff, 210. Mínsky, 274. Moghíla (mo-ghe-la), 56, 61, 63. Moscow, 47, 48, 53, 55, 57, 61, 62, 63, 67, 69, 72, 76, 84, 102, 139, 143, 164, 167, 182, 186, 193, 210, 212, 215, 251. Most Holy Governing Synod, 59, 68. Mystery Plays, 63. Nádson, 272-73. Nekrásoff, 140, 161, 195-204, 209, 202. Nertchínsk, 200, 201. Nestor, 8, 40, 41. Nicholas I., 108, 206. Nikifór, 40. Nikítin, 209. Níkon, 58, 61. Nízhni Nóvgorod, 269. Nóvgorod, 2, 6, 7, 29, 62, 67. Októikh, 52. Olga, 41. Olónetz, 31, 36, 91. Orél (aryól), 164. Orenburg, 207, 209. Osten-Saken, 251. Ostromír, 6. Ostróvsky, 12, 161, 182-191. Ostrózhsky, 53. Ózeroff, 105. Panáeff, 140, 196. Patriarch, 58, 59, 62. Paul I., 91, 101. Peter the Great, 57, 58, 59, 66, 67, 70, 75, 113. Petrashévsky, 209, 214, 215, 239. Písemsky, 191. Pleshtchéeff, 209, 210, 215. Polónsky, 194. Polótzky, 57, 59, 61, 63. Poltáva, 147. Posóshkoff, 67. Potápenko, 267. Preobrazhénsky, 91. Prokópovitch, 68, 69, 75, 85. Púshkin, 44, 92, 106, 109, 113-124, 126, 128, 139, 142, 143, 146, 165, 188, 189, 214, 229, 238. Rázin Sténka, 33. Róstislaff, 3. Rúrik, 2, 61. Russian News, 66. Rýbnikoff, 31. Ryeshétnikoff, 237. Sadkó, 31. St. Petersburg, 67, 73, 76, 80, 84, 126, 129, 140, 143, 164, 167, 186, 195, 205, 207, 210, 212, 255. Saltykóff, 238. Schelling, 138-39. Shénshin, 193. Shevtchénko, 204-9, 233. Simbírsk, 161. Slavyanophils, 139. Smotrítzky, 57. Soloviéff, 230, 263. Sorótchinsky, 147. Sóshenko, 205. Spyéshneff, 215. Stépennaya Kníga, 61. Stogláva, 50. Sumarókoff, 75-8, 97, 181. Sylvester, 51, 54. Tambóff, 91. Tarakánoff, Princess, 230. Tashkéntzians, 241. Tatár, 10, 33, 36, 47, 48. Tatíshtcheff, 68, 70. Taúris, 158. Tchasoslóff, 53. Tchékoff, 266. Tchernígoff, 67. Tchernyshévsky, 226. Tchetyá Mináya, 49. Theatres, 63. Tiflís, 126. Tiútcheff, 194. Tobólsk, 215. Tolstóy, A. K., 191-3. Tolstóy, L. N., 140, 141, 150, 161, 188, 218, 233, 250-65. Trediakóvsky, 68, 71. Tzárskoe Seló, 92, 114, 238. Turgéneff, 140, 161, 164-80, 190, 220, 223, 250, 254. Tver, 217. Ufá, 141. Ukraína, 156, 208, 270. Uspénsky, 234, 236. Vasílievitch, 51. Vasíly, 47, 51. Vilna, 205. Vladímir, 1, 7, 29, 30, 39, 97. Vladímir, Monomáchus, 43. Voevóda, 56, 57. Volhýnia, 53. Vólkhoff, 76. Von Vízin, 82, 90, 150, 181. Vorónezh, 142, 143. Vyátka, 239. Yároslaff, 39. Yaroslávl, 76. Yavórsky, 68. Yázykoff, 123, 124. Yásnaya Polyána, 250-52. Zagóskin, 146, 229. Zaporózhian, 147. Zhemtchúzhnikoff, 210. Zhidyáta, Luká, 39. Zhukóvsky, 106, 108, 115, 124, 143, 150, 192, 206, 208. Zizánie-Tustanóvsky, 57. Zlatovrátsky, 234, 236. * * * * * Transcriber's List of Corrections: Page 45, "Pólovtzi" changed to "Pólovtzy." (... while the Pólovtzy are called "accursed," in contrast with the orthodox Russians.) Page 53, "Ostrózhky" changed to "Ostrózhsky." (... the famous Ostrózhsky Bible ...) Page 65, "Góre-Zlostchástye" changed to "Góre-Zloshtchástye." (... "The Tale of Góre-Zloshtchástye; How Góre-Zloshtchástye Brought the Young Man to the Monastic State," ...) Page 77, "Hóreff" changed to "Khóreff." (... in addition to "Khóreff" and "Hamlet," "Dmítry the Pretender," and "Mstíslaff.") Page 95, "fiy" changed to "fly." (Naught! But I live, and on hope's pinions fly) Page 107, "seige" changed to "siege." (The peasants took him at his word, and brought two young Turkish girls, who had been captured at the siege of Bender.) Page 137, "Lifeguardsmen" changed to "Lifeguardsman." (Then the redoubtable Lifeguardsman Kiribyéevitch steps forth.) Page 140, "constitute" changed to "constitutes." (His volume of articles on Púshkin constitutes a complete critical history of Russian literature ...) Page 164, "Sergyévitch" changed to "Sergyéevitch." (Among the writers who followed Grigoróvitch in his studies of peasant life, was Iván Sergyéevitch Turgéneff ...) Page 177, "benind" changed to "behind." (... he held the thief beneath him, and was engaged in tying the man's hands behind his back with his girdle.) Page 221, "psycopathologist" changed to "psychopathologist." (This doctor demonstrates that Dostoévsky was a great psychopathologist ...) Page 230, "Serébryani" changed to "Serébryany." (... "War and Peace" and "Prince Serébryany," stand quite apart, and far above all others.) Page 233, "Alexándrevna" changed to "Alexándrovna." (Among these was a well-known woman writer, Márya Alexándrovna Markóvitch ...) Page 234, "Nilkolái" changed to "Nikolái." (... two men headed the movement, Glyeb Ivánovitch Uspénsky and Nikolái Nikoláevitch Zlatovrátsky.) Page 246, "Viátka" changed to "Vyátka." (A correspondent writes to us from Vyátka ...) Page 274, "1866" changed to "1916." (... Semén Grigórievitch Frug (1860-1916) ...) Page 274, "Sergiéevitch" changed to "Sergyéevitch." (... Dmítry Sergyéevitch Merezhkóvsky ...) Page 278, "Pleshtchéef" changed to "Pleshtchéeff." 
38025	----	available by Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 38025-h.htm or 38025-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38025/38025-h/38025-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38025/38025-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://www.archive.org/details/completeworksofc12tols Tanscriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). A letter with a breve is indicated by [)<letter>]. The Complete Works of Count Tolstóy Volume XII. [Illustration: "The clerk beat Sidor's face until the blood came" _Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko_] FABLES FOR CHILDREN STORIES FOR CHILDREN NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES POPULAR EDUCATION DECEMBRISTS MORAL TALES by COUNT LEV N. TOLSTÓY Translated from the Original Russian and Edited by LEO WIENER Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University [Illustration] Boston Dana Estes & Company Publishers Edition De Luxe Limited to One Thousand Copies, of which this is No. 411 _Copyright, 1904_ By Dana Estes & Company _Entered at Stationers' Hall_ Colonial Press: Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, Mass., U. S. A. CONTENTS PAGE FABLES FOR CHILDREN Æsop's Fables 3 Adaptations and Imitations of Hindoo Fables 19 STORIES FOR CHILDREN The Foundling 39 The Peasant and the Cucumbers 40 The Fire 41 The Old Horse 43 How I Learned to Ride 46 The Willow 49 Búlka 51 Búlka and the Wild Boar 53 Pheasants 56 Milton and Búlka 58 The Turtle 60 Búlka and the Wolf 62 What Happened to Búlka in Pyatigórsk 65 Búlka's and Milton's End 68 The Gray Hare 70 God Sees the Truth, but Does Not Tell at Once 72 Hunting Worse than Slavery 82 A Prisoner of the Caucasus 92 Ermák 124 NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES Stories From Physics: The Magnet 137 Moisture 140 The Different Connection of Particles 142 Crystals 143 Injurious Air 146 How Balloons Are Made 150 Galvanism 152 The Sun's Heat 156 Stories From Zoology: The Owl and the Hare 159 How the Wolves Teach Their Whelps 160 Hares and Wolves 161 The Scent 162 Touch and Sight 164 The Silkworm 165 Stories From Botany: The Apple-Tree 170 The Old Poplar 172 The Bird-Cherry 174 How Trees Walk 176 The Decembrists 181 On Popular Education 251 What Men Live By 327 The Three Hermits 363 Neglect the Fire 375 The Candle 395 The Two Old Men 409 Where Love Is, There God Is Also 445 TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK ILLUSTRATIONS The Fiend Persists, but God Resists 463 Little Girls Wiser than Old People 466 The Two Brothers and the Gold 469 Ilyás 472 A Fairy-Tale about Iván the Fool 481 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "The clerk beat Sídor's face until the blood came" (_The Candle, see page 397_) _Frontispiece_ "'Whose knife is this?'" 73 "'God will forgive you'" 81 "They rode off to the mountains" 96 "'Whither are you bound?'" 332 "But the candle was still burning" 403 FABLES FOR CHILDREN 1869-1872 FABLES FOR CHILDREN I. ÆSOP'S FABLES THE ANT AND THE DOVE An Ant came down to the brook: he wanted to drink. A wave washed him down and almost drowned him. A Dove was carrying a branch; she saw the Ant was drowning, so she cast the branch down to him in the brook. The Ant got up on the branch and was saved. Then a hunter placed a snare for the Dove, and was on the point of drawing it in. The Ant crawled up to the hunter and bit him on the leg; the hunter groaned and dropped the snare. The Dove fluttered upwards and flew away. THE TURTLE AND THE EAGLE A Turtle asked an Eagle to teach her how to fly. The Eagle advised her not to try, as she was not fit for it; but she insisted. The Eagle took her in his claws, raised her up, and dropped her: she fell on stones and broke to pieces. THE POLECAT A Polecat entered a smithy and began to lick the filings. Blood began to flow from the Polecat's mouth, but he was glad and continued to lick; he thought that the blood was coming from the iron, and lost his whole tongue. THE LION AND THE MOUSE A Lion was sleeping. A Mouse ran over his body. He awoke and caught her. The Mouse besought him; she said: "Let me go, and I will do you a favour!" The Lion laughed at the Mouse for promising him a favour, and let her go. Then the hunters caught the Lion and tied him with a rope to a tree. The Mouse heard the Lion's roar, ran up, gnawed the rope through, and said: "Do you remember? You laughed, not thinking that I could repay, but now you see that a favour may come also from a Mouse." THE LIAR A Boy was watching the sheep and, pretending that he saw a wolf, he began to cry: "Help! A wolf! A wolf!" The peasants came running up and saw that it was not so. After doing this for a second and a third time, it happened that a wolf came indeed. The Boy began to cry: "Come, come, quickly, a wolf!" The peasants thought that he was deceiving them as usual, and paid no attention to him. The wolf saw there was no reason to be afraid: he leisurely killed the whole flock. THE ASS AND THE HORSE A man had an Ass and a Horse. They were walking on the road; the Ass said to the Horse: "It is heavy for me.--I shall not be able to carry it all; take at least a part of my load." The Horse paid no attention to him. The Ass fell down from overstraining himself, and died. When the master transferred the Ass's load on the Horse, and added the Ass's hide, the Horse began to complain: "Oh, woe to me, poor one, woe to me, unfortunate Horse! I did not want to help him even a little, and now I have to carry everything, and his hide, too." THE JACKDAW AND THE DOVES A Jackdaw saw that the Doves were well fed,--so she painted herself white and flew into the dove-cot. The Doves thought at first that she was a dove like them, and let her in. But the Jackdaw forgot herself and croaked in jackdaw fashion. Then the Doves began to pick at her and drove her away. The Jackdaw flew back to her friends, but the jackdaws were frightened at her, seeing her white, and themselves drove her away. THE WOMAN AND THE HEN A Hen laid an egg each day. The Mistress thought that if she gave her more to eat, she would lay twice as much. So she did. The Hen grew fat and stopped laying. THE LION, THE BEAR, AND THE FOX A Lion and a Bear procured some meat and began to fight for it. The Bear did not want to give in, nor did the Lion yield. They fought for so long a time that they both grew feeble and lay down. A Fox saw the meat between them; she grabbed it and ran away with it. THE DOG, THE COCK, AND THE FOX A Dog and a Cock went to travel together. At night the Cock fell asleep in a tree, and the Dog fixed a place for himself between the roots of that tree. When the time came, the Cock began to crow. A Fox heard the Cock, ran up to the tree, and began to beg the Cock to come down, as she wanted to give him her respects for such a fine voice. The Cock said: "You must first wake up the janitor,--he is sleeping between the roots. Let him open up, and I will come down." The Fox began to look for the janitor, and started yelping. The Dog sprang out at once and killed the Fox. THE HORSE AND THE GROOM A Groom stole the Horse's oats, and sold them, but he cleaned the Horse each day. Said the Horse: "If you really wish me to be in good condition, do not sell my oats." THE FROG AND THE LION A Lion heard a Frog croaking, and thought it was a large beast that was calling so loud. He walked up, and saw a Frog coming out of the swamp. The Lion crushed her with his paw and said: "There is nothing to look at, and yet I was frightened." THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE ANTS In the fall the wheat of the Ants got wet; they were drying it. A hungry Grasshopper asked them for something to eat. The Ants said: "Why did you not gather food during the summer?" She said: "I had no time: I sang songs." They laughed, and said: "If you sang in the summer, dance in the winter!" THE HEN AND THE GOLDEN EGGS A master had a Hen which laid golden eggs. He wanted more gold at once, and so killed the Hen (he thought that inside of her there was a large lump of gold), but she was just like any other hen. THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN An Ass put on a lion's skin, and all thought it was a lion. Men and animals ran away from him. A wind sprang up, and the skin was blown aside, and the Ass could be seen. People ran up and beat the Ass. THE HEN AND THE SWALLOW A Hen found some snake's eggs and began to sit on them. A Swallow saw it and said: "Stupid one! You will hatch them out, and, when they grow up, you will be the first one to suffer from them." THE STAG AND THE FAWN A Fawn once said to a Stag: "Father, you are larger and fleeter than the dogs, and, besides, you have huge antlers for defence; why, then, are you so afraid of the dogs?" The Stag laughed, and said: "You speak the truth, my child. The trouble is,--the moment I hear the dogs bark, I run before I have time to think." THE FOX AND THE GRAPES A Fox saw some ripe bunches of grapes hanging high, and tried to get at them, in order to eat them. She tried hard, but could not get them. To drown her annoyance she said: "They are still sour." THE MAIDS AND THE COCK A mistress used to wake the Maids at night and, as soon as the cocks crowed, put them to work. The Maids found that hard, and decided to kill the Cock, so that the mistress should not be wakened. They killed him, but now they suffered more than ever: the mistress was afraid that she would sleep past the time and so began to wake the Maids earlier. THE FISHERMAN AND THE FISH A Fisherman caught a Fish. Said the Fish: "Fisherman, let me go into the water; you see I am small: you will have little profit of me. If you let me go, I shall grow up, and then you will catch me when it will be worth while." But the Fisherman said: "A fool would be he who should wait for greater profit, and let the lesser slip out of his hands." THE FOX AND THE GOAT A Goat wanted to drink. He went down the incline to the well, drank his fill, and gained in weight. He started to get out, but could not do so. He began to bleat. A Fox saw him and said: "That's it, stupid one! If you had as much sense in your head as there are hairs in your beard, you would have thought of how to get out before you climbed down." THE DOG AND HER SHADOW A Dog was crossing the river over a plank, carrying a piece of meat in her teeth. She saw herself in the water and thought that another dog was carrying a piece of meat. She dropped her piece and dashed forward to take away what the other dog had: the other meat was gone, and her own was carried away by the stream. And thus the Dog was left without anything. THE CRANE AND THE STORK A peasant put out his nets to catch the Cranes for tramping down his field. In the nets were caught the Cranes, and with them one Stork. The Stork said to the peasant: "Let me go! I am not a Crane, but a Stork; we are most honoured birds; I live on your father's house. You can see by my feathers that I am not a Crane." The peasant said: "With the Cranes I have caught you, and with them will I kill you." THE GARDENER AND HIS SONS A Gardener wanted his Sons to get used to gardening. As he was dying, he called them up and said to them: "Children, when I am dead, look for what is hidden in the vineyard." The Sons thought that it was a treasure, and when their father died, they began to dig there, and dug up the whole ground. They did not find the treasure, but they ploughed the vineyard up so well that it brought forth more fruit than ever. THE WOLF AND THE CRANE A Wolf had a bone stuck in his throat, and could not cough it up. He called the Crane, and said to him: "Crane, you have a long neck. Thrust your head into my throat and draw out the bone! I will reward you." The Crane stuck his head in, pulled out the bone, and said: "Give me my reward!" The Wolf gnashed his teeth and said: "Is it not enough reward for you that I did not bite off your head when it was between my teeth?" THE HARES AND THE FROGS The Hares once got together, and began to complain about their life: "We perish from men, and from dogs, and from eagles, and from all the other beasts. It would be better to die at once than to live in fright and suffer. Come, let us drown ourselves!" And the Hares raced away to drown themselves in a lake. The Frogs heard the Hares and plumped into the water. So one of the Hares said: "Wait, boys! Let us put off the drowning! Evidently the Frogs are having a harder life than we: they are afraid even of us." THE FATHER AND HIS SONS A Father told his Sons to live in peace: they paid no attention to him. So he told them to bring the bath broom, and said: "Break it!" No matter how much they tried, they could not break it. Then the Father unclosed the broom, and told them to break the rods singly. They broke it. The Father said: "So it is with you: if you live in peace, no one will overcome you; but if you quarrel, and are divided, any one will easily ruin you." THE FOX A Fox got caught in a trap. She tore off her tail, and got away. She began to contrive how to cover up her shame. She called together the Foxes, and begged them to cut off their tails. "A tail," she said, "is a useless thing. In vain do we drag along a dead weight." One of the Foxes said: "You would not be speaking thus, if you were not tailless!" The tailless Fox grew silent and went away. THE WILD ASS AND THE TAME ASS A Wild Ass saw a Tame Ass. The Wild Ass went up to him and began to praise his life, saying how smooth his body was, and what sweet feed he received. Later, when the Tame Ass was loaded down, and a driver began to goad him with a stick, the Wild Ass said: "No, brother, I do not envy you: I see that your life is going hard with you." THE STAG A Stag went to the brook to quench his thirst. He saw himself in the water, and began to admire his horns, seeing how large and branching they were; and he looked at his feet, and said: "But my feet are unseemly and thin." Suddenly a Lion sprang out and made for the Stag. The Stag started to run over the open plain. He was getting away, but there came a forest, and his horns caught in the branches, and the lion caught him. As the Stag was dying, he said: "How foolish I am! That which I thought to be unseemly and thin was saving me, and what I gloried in has been my ruin." THE DOG AND THE WOLF A Dog fell asleep back of the yard. A Wolf ran up and wanted to eat him. Said the Dog: "Wolf, don't eat me yet: now I am lean and bony. Wait a little,--my master is going to celebrate a wedding; then I shall have plenty to eat; I shall grow fat. It will be better to eat me then." The Wolf believed her, and went away. Then he came a second time, and saw the Dog lying on the roof. The Wolf said to her: "Well, have they had the wedding?" The Dog replied: "Listen, Wolf! If you catch me again asleep in front of the yard, do not wait for the wedding." THE GNAT AND THE LION A Gnat came to a Lion, and said: "Do you think that you have more strength than I? You are mistaken! What does your strength consist in? Is it that you scratch with your claws, and gnaw with your teeth? That is the way the women quarrel with their husbands. I am stronger than you: if you wish let us fight!" And the Gnat sounded his horn, and began to bite the Lion on his bare cheeks and his nose. The Lion struck his face with his paws and scratched it with his claws. He tore his face until the blood came, and gave up. The Gnat trumpeted for joy, and flew away. Then he became entangled in a spider's web, and the spider began to suck him up. The Gnat said: "I have vanquished the strong beast, the Lion, and now I perish from this nasty spider." THE HORSE AND HIS MASTERS A gardener had a Horse. She had much to do, but little to eat; so she began to pray to God to get another master. And so it happened. The gardener sold the Horse to a potter. The Horse was glad, but the potter had even more work for her to do. And again the Horse complained of her lot, and began to pray that she might get a better master. And this prayer, too, was fulfilled. The potter sold the Horse to a tanner. When the Horse saw the skins of horses in the tanner's yard, she began to cry: "Woe to me, wretched one! It would be better if I could stay with my old masters. It is evident they have sold me now not for work, but for my skin's sake." THE OLD MAN AND DEATH An Old Man cut some wood, which he carried away. He had to carry it far. He grew tired, so he put down his bundle, and said: "Oh, if Death would only come!" Death came, and said: "Here I am, what do you want?" The Old Man was frightened, and said: "Lift up my bundle!" THE LION AND THE FOX A Lion, growing old, was unable to catch the animals, and so intended to live by cunning. He went into a den, lay down there, and pretended that he was sick. The animals came to see him, and he ate up those that went into his den. The Fox guessed the trick. She stood at the entrance of the den, and said: "Well, Lion, how are you feeling?" The Lion answered: "Poorly. Why don't you come in?" The Fox replied: "I do not come in because I see by the tracks that many have entered, but none have come out." THE STAG AND THE VINEYARD A Stag hid himself from the hunters in a vineyard. When the hunters missed him, the Stag began to nibble at the grape-vine leaves. The hunters noticed that the leaves were moving, and so they thought, "There must be an animal under those leaves," and fired their guns, and wounded the Stag. The Stag said, dying: "It serves me right for wanting to eat the leaves that saved me." THE CAT AND THE MICE A house was overrun with Mice. A Cat found his way into the house, and began to catch them. The Mice saw that matters were bad, and said: "Mice, let us not come down from the ceiling! The Cat cannot get up there." When the Mice stopped coming down, the Cat decided that he must catch them by a trick. He grasped the ceiling with one leg, hung down from it, and made believe that he was dead. A Mouse looked out at him, but said: "No, my friend! Even if you should turn into a bag, I would not go up to you." THE WOLF AND THE GOAT A Wolf saw a Goat browsing on a rocky mountain, and he could not get at her; so he said to her: "Come down lower! The place is more even, and the grass is much sweeter to feed on." But the Goat answered: "You are not calling me down for that, Wolf: you are troubling yourself not about my food, but about yours." THE REEDS AND THE OLIVE-TREE The Olive-tree and the Reeds quarrelled about who was stronger and sounder. The Olive-tree laughed at the Reeds because they bent in every wind. The Reeds kept silence. A storm came: the Reeds swayed, tossed, bowed to the ground,--and remained unharmed. The Olive-tree strained her branches against the wind,--and broke. THE TWO COMPANIONS Two Companions were walking through the forest when a Bear jumped out on them. One started to run, climbed a tree, and hid himself, but the other remained in the road. He had nothing to do, so he fell down on the ground and pretended that he was dead. The Bear went up to him, and sniffed at him; but he had stopped breathing. The Bear sniffed at his face; he thought that he was dead, and so went away. When the Bear was gone, the Companion climbed down from the tree and laughing, said: "What did the Bear whisper in your ear?" "He told me that those who in danger run away from their companions are bad people." THE WOLF AND THE LAMB A Wolf saw a Lamb drinking at a river. The Wolf wanted to eat the Lamb, and so he began to annoy him. He said: "You are muddling my water and do not let me drink." The Lamb said: "How can I muddle your water? I am standing downstream from you; besides, I drink with the tips of my lips." And the Wolf said: "Well, why did you call my father names last summer?" The Lamb said: "But, Wolf, I was not yet born last summer." The Wolf got angry, and said: "It is hard to get the best of you. Besides, my stomach is empty, so I will devour you." THE LION, THE WOLF, AND THE FOX An old, sick Lion was lying in his den. All the animals came to see the king, but the Fox kept away. So the Wolf was glad of the chance, and began to slander the Fox before the Lion. "She does not esteem you in the least," he said, "she has not come once to see the king." The Fox happened to run by as he was saying these words. She heard what the Wolf had said, and thought: "Wait, Wolf, I will get my revenge on you." So the Lion began to roar at the Fox, but she said: "Do not have me killed, but let me say a word! I did not come to see you because I had no time. And I had no time because I ran over the whole world to ask the doctors for a remedy for you. I have just got it, and so I have come to see you." The Lion said: "What is the remedy?" "It is this: if you flay a live Wolf, and put his warm hide on you--" When the Lion stretched out the Wolf, the Fox laughed, and said: "That's it, my friend: masters ought to be led to do good, not evil." THE LION, THE ASS, AND THE FOX The Lion, the Ass, and the Fox went out to hunt. They caught a large number of animals, and the Lion told the Ass to divide them up. The Ass divided them into three equal parts and said: "Now, take them!" The Lion grew angry, ate up the Ass, and told the Fox to divide them up anew. The Fox collected them all into one heap, and left a small bit for herself. The Lion looked at it and said: "Clever Fox! Who taught you to divide so well?" She said: "What about that Ass?" THE PEASANT AND THE WATER-SPRITE A Peasant lost his axe in the river; he sat down on the bank in grief, and began to weep. The Water-sprite heard the Peasant and took pity on him. He brought a gold axe out of the river, and said: "Is this your axe?" The Peasant said: "No, it is not mine." The Water-sprite brought another, a silver axe. Again the Peasant said: "It is not my axe." Then the Water-sprite brought out the real axe. The Peasant said: "Now this is my axe." The Water-sprite made the Peasant a present of all three axes, for having told the truth. At home the Peasant showed his axes to his friends, and told them what had happened to him. One of the peasants made up his mind to do the same: he went to the river, purposely threw his axe into the water, sat down on the bank, and began to weep. The Water-sprite brought out a gold axe, and asked: "Is this your axe?" The Peasant was glad, and called out: "It is mine, mine!" The Water-sprite did not give him the gold axe, and did not bring him back his own either, because he had told an untruth. THE RAVEN AND THE FOX A Raven got himself a piece of meat, and sat down on a tree. The Fox wanted to get it from him. She went up to him, and said: "Oh, Raven, as I look at you,--from your size and beauty,--you ought to be a king! And you would certainly be a king, if you had a good voice." The Raven opened his mouth wide, and began to croak with all his might and main. The meat fell down. The Fox caught it and said: "Oh, Raven! If you had also sense, you would certainly be a king." II. ADAPTATIONS AND IMITATIONS OF HINDOO FABLES THE SNAKE'S HEAD AND TAIL The Snake's Tail had a quarrel with the Snake's Head about who was to walk in front. The Head said: "You cannot walk in front, because you have no eyes and no ears." The Tail said: "Yes, but I have strength, I move you; if I want to, I can wind myself around a tree, and you cannot get off the spot." The Head said: "Let us separate!" And the Tail tore himself loose from the Head, and crept on; but the moment he got away from the Head, he fell into a hole and was lost. FINE THREAD A Man ordered some fine thread from a Spinner. The Spinner spun it for him, but the Man said that the thread was not good, and that he wanted the finest thread he could get. The Spinner said: "If this is not fine enough, take this!" and she pointed to an empty space. He said that he did not see any. The Spinner said: "You do not see it, because it is so fine. I do not see it myself." The Fool was glad, and ordered some more thread of this kind, and paid her for what he got. THE PARTITION OF THE INHERITANCE A Father had two Sons. He said to them: "When I die, divide everything into two equal parts." When the Father died, the Sons could not divide without quarrelling. They went to a Neighbour to have him settle the matter. The Neighbour asked them how their Father had told them to divide. They said: "He ordered us to divide everything into two equal parts." The Neighbour said: "If so, tear all your garments into two halves, break your dishes into two halves, and cut all your cattle into two halves!" The Brothers obeyed their Neighbour, and lost everything. THE MONKEY A Man went into the woods, cut down a tree, and began to saw it. He raised the end of the tree on a stump, sat astride over it, and began to saw. Then he drove a wedge into the split that he had sawed, and went on sawing; then he took out the wedge and drove it in farther down. A Monkey was sitting on a tree and watching him. When the Man lay down to sleep, the Monkey seated herself astride the tree, and wanted to do the same; but when she took out the wedge, the tree sprang back and caught her tail. She began to tug and to cry. The Man woke up, beat the Monkey, and tied a rope to her. THE MONKEY AND THE PEASE A Monkey was carrying both her hands full of pease. A pea dropped on the ground; the Monkey wanted to pick it up, and dropped twenty peas. She rushed to pick them up and lost all the rest. Then she flew into a rage, swept away all the pease and ran off. THE MILCH COW A Man had a Cow; she gave each day a pot full of milk. The Man invited a number of guests. To have as much milk as possible, he did not milk the Cow for ten days. He thought that on the tenth day the Cow would give him ten pitchers of milk. But the Cow's milk went back, and she gave less milk than before. THE DUCK AND THE MOON A Duck was swimming in the pond, trying to find some fish, but she did not find one in a whole day. When night came, she saw the Moon in the water; she thought that it was a fish, and plunged in to catch the Moon. The other ducks saw her do it and laughed at her. That made the Duck feel so ashamed and bashful that when she saw a fish under the Water, she did not try to catch it, and so died of hunger. THE WOLF IN THE DUST A Wolf wanted to pick a sheep out of a flock, and stepped into the wind, so that the dust of the flock might blow on him. The Sheep Dog saw him, and said: "There is no sense, Wolf, in your walking in the dust: it will make your eyes ache." But the Wolf said: "The trouble is, Doggy, that my eyes have been aching for quite awhile, and I have been told that the dust from a flock of sheep will cure the eyes." THE MOUSE UNDER THE GRANARY A Mouse was living under the granary. In the floor of the granary there was a little hole, and the grain fell down through it. The Mouse had an easy life of it, but she wanted to brag of her ease: she gnawed a larger hole in the floor, and invited other mice. "Come to a feast with me," said she; "there will be plenty to eat for everybody." When she brought the mice, she saw there was no hole. The peasant had noticed the big hole in the floor, and had stopped it up. THE BEST PEARS A master sent his Servant to buy the best-tasting pears. The Servant came to the shop and asked for pears. The dealer gave him some; but the Servant said: "No, give me the best!" The dealer said: "Try one; you will see that they taste good." "How shall I know," said the Servant, "that they all taste good, if I try one only?" He bit off a piece from each pear, and brought them to his master. Then his master sent him away. THE FALCON AND THE COCK The Falcon was used to the master, and came to his hand when he was called; the Cock ran away from his master and cried when people went up to him. So the Falcon said to the Cock: "In you Cocks there is no gratitude; one can see that you are of a common breed. You go to your masters only when you are hungry. It is different with us wild birds. We have much strength, and we can fly faster than anybody; still we do not fly away from people, but of our own accord go to their hands when we are called. We remember that they feed us." Then the Cock said: "You do not run away from people because you have never seen a roast Falcon, but we, you know, see roast Cocks." THE JACKALS AND THE ELEPHANT The Jackals had eaten up all the carrion in the woods, and had nothing to eat. So an old Jackal was thinking how to find something to feed on. He went to an Elephant, and said: "We had a king, but he became overweening: he told us to do things that nobody could do; we want to choose another king, and my people have sent me to ask you to be our king. You will have an easy life with us. Whatever you will order us to do, we will do, and we will honour you in everything. Come to our kingdom!" The Elephant consented, and followed the Jackal. The Jackal brought him to a swamp. When the Elephant stuck fast in it, the Jackal said: "Now command! Whatever you command, we will do." The Elephant said: "I command you to pull me out from here." The Jackal began to laugh, and said: "Take hold of my tail with your trunk, and I will pull you out at once." The Elephant said: "Can I be pulled out by a tail?" But the Jackal said to him: "Why, then, do you command us to do what is impossible? Did we not drive away our first king for telling us to do what could not be done?" When the Elephant died in the swamp the Jackals came and ate him up. THE HERON, THE FISHES, AND THE CRAB A Heron was living near a pond. She grew old, and had no strength left with which to catch the fish. She began to contrive how to live by cunning. So she said to the Fishes: "You Fishes do not know that a calamity is in store for you: I have heard the people say that they are going to let off the pond, and catch every one of you. I know of a nice little pond back of the mountain. I should like to help you, but I am old, and it is hard for me to fly." The Fishes begged the Heron to help them. So the Heron said: "All right, I will do what I can for you, and will carry you over: only I cannot do it at once,--I will take you there one after another." And the Fishes were happy; they kept begging her: "Carry me over! Carry me over!" And the Heron started carrying them. She would take one up, would carry her into the field, and would eat her up. And thus she ate a large number of Fishes. In the pond there lived an old Crab. When the Heron began to take out the Fishes, he saw what was up, and said: "Now, Heron, take me to the new abode!" The Heron took the Crab and carried him off. When she flew out on the field, she wanted to throw the Crab down. But the Crab saw the fish-bones on the ground, and so squeezed the Heron's neck with his claws, and choked her to death. Then he crawled back to the pond, and told the Fishes. THE WATER-SPRITE AND THE PEARL A Man was rowing in a boat, and dropped a costly pearl into the sea. The Man returned to the shore, took a pail, and began to draw up the water and to pour it out on the land. He drew the water and poured it out for three days without stopping. On the fourth day the Water-sprite came out of the sea, and asked: "Why are you drawing the water?" The Man said: "I am drawing it because I have dropped a pearl into it." The Water-sprite asked him: "Will you stop soon?" The Man said: "I will stop when I dry up the sea." Then the Water-sprite returned to the sea, brought back that pearl, and gave it to the Man. THE BLIND MAN AND THE MILK A Man born blind asked a Seeing Man: "Of what colour is milk?" The Seeing Man said: "The colour of milk is the same as that of white paper." The Blind Man asked: "Well, does that colour rustle in your hands like paper?" The Seeing Man said: "No, it is as white as white flour." The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as soft and as powdery as flour?" The Seeing Man said: "No, it is simply as white as a white hare." The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as fluffy and soft as a hare?" The Seeing Man said: "No, it is as white as snow." The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as cold as snow?" And no matter how many examples the Seeing Man gave, the Blind Man was unable to understand what the white colour of milk was like. THE WOLF AND THE BOW A hunter went out to hunt with bow and arrows. He killed a goat. He threw her on his shoulders and carried her along. On his way he saw a boar. He threw down the goat, and shot at the boar and wounded him. The boar rushed against the hunter and butted him to death, and himself died on the spot. A Wolf scented the blood, and came to the place where lay the goat, the boar, the man, and his bow. The Wolf was glad, and said: "Now I shall have enough to eat for a long time; only I will not eat everything at once, but little by little, so that nothing may be lost: first I will eat the tougher things, and then I will lunch on what is soft and sweet." The Wolf sniffed at the goat, the boar, and the man, and said: "This is all soft food, so I will eat it later; let me first start on these sinews of the bow." And he began to gnaw the sinews of the bow. When he bit through the string, the bow sprang back and hit him on his belly. He died on the spot, and other wolves ate up the man, the goat, the boar, and the Wolf. THE BIRDS IN THE NET A Hunter set out a net near a lake and caught a number of birds. The birds were large, and they raised the net and flew away with it. The Hunter ran after them. A Peasant saw the Hunter running, and said: "Where are you running? How can you catch up with the birds, while you are on foot?" The Hunter said: "If it were one bird, I should not catch it, but now I shall." And so it happened. When evening came, the birds began to pull for the night each in a different direction: one to the woods, another to the swamp, a third to the field; and all fell with the net to the ground, and the Hunter caught them. THE KING AND THE FALCON A certain King let his favourite Falcon loose on a hare, and galloped after him. The Falcon caught the hare. The King took him away, and began to look for some water to drink. The King found it on a knoll, but it came only drop by drop. The King fetched his cup from the saddle, and placed it under the water. The Water flowed in drops, and when the cup was filled, the King raised it to his mouth and wanted to drink it. Suddenly the Falcon fluttered on the King's arm and spilled the water. The King placed the cup once more under the drops. He waited for a long time for the cup to be filled even with the brim, and again, as he carried it to his mouth, the Falcon flapped his wings and spilled the water. When the King filled his cup for the third time and began to carry it to his mouth, the Falcon again spilled it. The King flew into a rage and killed him by flinging him against a stone with all his force. Just then the King's servants rode up, and one of them ran up-hill to the spring, to find as much water as possible, and to fill the cup. But the servant did not bring the water; he returned with the empty cup, and said: "You cannot drink that water; there is a snake in the spring, and she has let her venom into the water. It is fortunate that the Falcon has spilled the water. If you had drunk it, you would have died." The King said: "How badly I have repaid the Falcon! He has saved my life, and I killed him." THE KING AND THE ELEPHANTS An Indian King ordered all the Blind People to be assembled, and when they came, he ordered that all the Elephants be shown to them. The Blind Men went to the stable and began to feel the Elephants. One felt a leg, another a tail, a third the stump of a tail, a fourth a belly, a fifth a back, a sixth the ears, a seventh the tusks, and an eighth a trunk. Then the King called the Blind Men, and asked them: "What are my Elephants like?" One Blind Man said: "Your Elephants are like posts." He had felt the legs. Another Blind Man said: "They are like bath brooms." He had felt the end of the tail. A third said: "They are like branches." He had felt the tail stump. The one who had touched a belly said: "The Elephants are like a clod of earth." The one who had touched the sides said: "They are like a wall." The one who had touched a back said: "They are like a mound." The one who had touched the ears said: "They are like a mortar." The one who had touched the tusks said: "They are like horns." The one who had touched the trunk said that they were like a stout rope. And all the Blind Men began to dispute and to quarrel. WHY THERE IS EVIL IN THE WORLD A Hermit was living in the forest, and the animals were not afraid of him. He and the animals talked together and understood each other. Once the Hermit lay down under a tree, and a Raven a Dove, a Stag, and a Snake gathered in the same place, to pass the night. The animals began to discuss why there was evil in the world. The Raven said: "All the evil in the world comes from hunger. When I eat my fill, I sit down on a branch and croak a little, and it is all jolly and good, and everything gives me pleasure; but let me just go without eating a day or two, and everything palls on me so that I do not feel like looking at God's world. And something draws me on, and I fly from place to place, and have no rest. When I catch a glimpse of some meat, it makes me only feel sicker than ever, and I make for it without much thinking. At times they throw sticks and stones at me, and the wolves and dogs grab me, but I do not give in. Oh, how many of my brothers are perishing through hunger! All evil comes from hunger." The Dove said: "According to my opinion, the evil does not come from hunger, but from love. If we lived singly, the trouble would not be so bad. One head is not poor, and if it is, it is only one. But here we live in pairs. And you come to like your mate so much that you have no rest: you keep thinking of her all the time, wondering whether she has had enough to eat, and whether she is warm. And when your mate flies away from you, you feel entirely lost, and you keep thinking that a hawk may have carried her off, or men may have caught her; and you start out to find her, and fly to your ruin,--either into the hawk's claws, or into a snare. And when your mate is lost, nothing gives you any joy. You do not eat or drink, and all the time search and weep. Oh, so many of us perish in this way! All the evil is not from hunger, but from love." The Snake said: "No, the evil is not from hunger, nor from love, but from rage. If we lived peacefully, without getting into a rage, everything would be nice for us. But, as it is, whenever a thing does not go exactly right, we get angry, and then nothing pleases us. All we think about is how to revenge ourselves on some one. Then we forget ourselves, and only hiss, and creep, and try to find some one to bite. And we do not spare a soul,--we even bite our own father and mother. We feel as though we could eat ourselves up. And we rage until we perish. All the evil in the World comes from rage." The Stag said: "No, not from rage, or from love, or from hunger does all the evil in the world come, but from terror. If it were possible not to be afraid, everything would be well. We have swift feet and much strength: against a small animal we defend ourselves with our horns, and from a large one we flee. But how can I help becoming frightened? Let a branch crackle in the forest, or a leaf rustle, and I am all atremble with fear, and my heart flutters as though it wanted to jump out, and I fly as fast as I can. Again, let a hare run by, or a bird flap its wings, or a dry twig break off, and you think that it is a beast, and you run straight up against him. Or you run away from a dog and run into the hands of a man. Frequently you get frightened and run, not knowing whither, and at full speed rush down a steep hill, and get killed. We have no rest. All the evil comes from terror." Then the Hermit said: "Not from hunger, not from love, not from rage, not from terror are all our sufferings, but from our bodies comes all the evil in the world. From them come hunger, and love, and rage, and terror." THE WOLF AND THE HUNTERS A Wolf devoured a sheep. The Hunters caught the Wolf and began to beat him. The Wolf said: "In vain do you beat me: it is not my fault that I am gray,--God has made me so." But the Hunters said: "We do not beat the Wolf for being gray, but for eating the sheep." THE TWO PEASANTS Once upon a time two Peasants drove toward each other and caught in each other's sleighs. One cried: "Get out of my way,--I am hurrying to town." But the other said: "Get out of my way, I am hurrying home." They quarrelled for some time. A third Peasant saw them and said: "If you are in a hurry, back up!" THE PEASANT AND THE HORSE A Peasant went to town to fetch some oats for his Horse. He had barely left the village, when the Horse began to turn around, toward the house. The Peasant struck the Horse with his whip. She went on, and kept thinking about the Peasant: "Whither is that fool driving me? He had better go home." Before reaching town, the Peasant saw that the Horse trudged along through the mud with difficulty, so he turned her on the pavement; but the Horse began to turn back from the street. The Peasant gave the Horse the whip, and jerked at the reins; she went on the pavement, and thought: "Why has he turned me on the pavement? It will only break my hoofs. It is rough underfoot." The Peasant went to the shop, bought the oats, and drove home. When he came home, he gave the Horse some oats. The Horse ate them and thought: "How stupid men are! They are fond of exercising their wits on us, but they have less sense than we. What did he trouble himself about? He drove me somewhere. No matter how far we went, we came home in the end. So it would have been better if we had remained at home from the start: he could have been sitting on the oven, and I eating oats." THE TWO HORSES Two Horses were drawing their carts. The Front Horse pulled well, but the Hind Horse kept stopping all the time. The load of the Hind Horse was transferred to the front cart; when all was transferred, the Hind Horse went along with ease, and said to the Front Horse: "Work hard and sweat! The more you try, the harder they will make you work." When they arrived at the tavern, their master said: "Why should I feed two Horses, and haul with one only? I shall do better to give one plenty to eat, and to kill the other: I shall at least have her hide." So he did. THE AXE AND THE SAW Two Peasants went to the forest to cut wood. One of them had an axe, and the other a saw. They picked out a tree, and began to dispute. One said that the tree had to be chopped, while the other said that it had to be sawed down. A third Peasant said: "I will easily make peace between you: if the axe is sharp, you had better chop it; but if the saw is sharp you had better saw it." He took the axe, and began to chop it; but the axe was so dull that it was not possible to cut with it. Then he took the saw; the saw was worthless, and did not saw. So he said: "Stop quarrelling awhile; the axe does not chop, and the saw does not saw. First grind your axe and file your saw, and then quarrel." But the Peasants grew angrier still at one another, because one had a dull axe, and the other a dull saw. And they came to blows. THE DOGS AND THE COOK A Cook was preparing a dinner. The Dogs were lying at the kitchen door. The Cook killed a calf and threw the guts out into the yard. The Dogs picked them up and ate them, and said: "He is a good Cook: he cooks well." After awhile the Cook began to clean pease, turnips, and onions, and threw out the refuse. The Dogs made for it; but they turned their noses up, and said: "Our Cook has grown worse: he used to cook well, but now he is no longer any good." But the Cook paid no attention to the Dogs, and continued to fix the dinner in his own way. The family, and not the Dogs, ate the dinner, and praised it. THE HARE AND THE HARRIER A Hare once said to a Harrier: "Why do you bark when you run after us? You would catch us easier, if you ran after us in silence. With your bark you only drive us against the hunter: he hears where we are running; and he rushes out with his gun and kills us, and does not give you anything." The Harrier said: "That is not the reason why I bark. I bark because, when I scent your odour, I am angry, and happy because I am about to catch you; I do not know why, but I cannot keep from barking." THE OAK AND THE HAZELBUSH An old Oak dropped an acorn under a Hazelbush. The Hazelbush said to the Oak: "Have you not enough space under your own branches? Drop your acorns in an open space. Here I am myself crowded by my shoots, and I do not drop my nuts to the ground, but give them to men." "I have lived for two hundred years," said the Oak, "and the Oakling which will sprout from that acorn will live just as long." Then the Hazelbush flew into a rage, and said: "If so, I will choke your Oakling, and he will not live for three days." The Oak made no reply, but told his son to sprout out of that acorn. The acorn got wet and burst, and clung to the ground with his crooked rootlet, and sent up a sprout. The Hazelbush tried to choke him, and gave him no sun. But the Oakling spread upwards and grew stronger in the shade of the Hazelbush. A hundred years passed. The Hazelbush had long ago dried up, but the Oak from that acorn towered to the sky and spread his tent in all directions. THE HEN AND THE CHICKS A Hen hatched some Chicks, but did not know how to take care of them. So she said to them: "Creep back into your shells! When you are inside your shells, I will sit on you as before, and will take care of you." The Chicks did as they were ordered and tried to creep into their shells, but were unable to do so, and only crushed their wings. Then one of the Chicks said to his mother: "If we are to stay all the time in our shells, you ought never to have hatched us." THE CORN-CRAKE AND HIS MATE A Corn-crake had made a nest in the meadow late in the year, and at mowing time his Mate was still sitting on her eggs. Early in the morning the peasants came to the meadow, took off the coats, whetted their scythes, and started one after another to mow down the grass and to put it down in rows. The Corn-crake flew up to see what the mowers were doing. When he saw a peasant swing his scythe and cut a snake in two, he rejoiced and flew back to his Mate and said: "Don't fear the peasants! They have come to cut the snakes to pieces; they have given us no rest for quite awhile." But his Mate said: "The peasants are cutting the grass, and with the grass they are cutting everything which is in their way,--the snakes, and the Corn-crake's nest, and the Corn-crake's head. My heart forebodes nothing good: but I cannot carry away the eggs, nor fly from the nest, for fear of chilling them." When the mowers came to the nest of the Corn-crake, one of the peasants swung his scythe and cut off the head of the Corn-crake's Mate, and put the eggs in his bosom and gave them to his children to play with. THE COW AND THE BILLY GOAT An old woman had a Cow and a Billy Goat. The two pastured together. At milking the Cow was restless. The old woman brought out some bread and salt, and gave it to the Cow, and said: "Stand still, motherkin; take it, take it! I will bring you some more, only stand still." On the next evening the Goat came home from the field before the Cow, and spread his legs, and stood in front of the old woman. The old woman wanted to strike him with the towel, but he stood still, and did not stir. He remembered that the woman had promised the Cow some bread if she would stand still. When the woman saw that he would not budge, she picked up a stick, and beat him with it. When the Goat went away, the woman began once more to feed the Cow with bread, and to talk to her. "There is no honesty in men," thought the Goat. "I stood still better than the Cow, and was beaten for it." He stepped aside, took a run, hit against the milk-pail, spilled the milk, and hurt the old woman. THE FOX'S TAIL A Man caught a Fox, and asked her: "Who has taught you Foxes to cheat the dogs with your tails?" The Fox asked: "How do you mean, to cheat? We do not cheat the dogs, but simply run from them as fast as we can." The Man said: "Yes, you do cheat them with your tails. When the dogs catch up with you and are about to clutch you, you turn your tails to one side; the dogs turn sharply after the tail, and then you run in the opposite direction." The Fox laughed, and said: "We do not do so in order to cheat the dogs, but in order to turn around; when a dog is after us, and we see that we cannot get away straight ahead, we turn to one side, and in order to do that suddenly, we have to swing the tail to the other side, just as you do with your arms, when you have to turn around. That is not our invention; God himself invented it when He created us, so that the dogs might not be able to catch all the Foxes." STORIES FOR CHILDREN 1869-1872 STORIES FOR CHILDREN THE FOUNDLING A poor woman had a daughter by the name of Másha. Másha went in the morning to fetch water, and saw at the door something wrapped in rags. When she touched the rags, there came from it the sound of "Ooah, ooah, ooah!" Másha bent down and saw that it was a tiny, red-skinned baby. It was crying aloud: "Ooah, ooah!" Másha took it into her arms and carried it into the house, and gave it milk with a spoon. Her mother said: "What have you brought?" "A baby. I found it at our door." The mother said: "We are poor as it is; we have nothing to feed the baby with; I will go to the chief and tell him to take the baby." Másha began to cry, and said: "Mother, the child will not eat much; leave it here! See what red, wrinkled little hands and fingers it has!" Her mother looked at them, and she felt pity for the child. She did not take the baby away. Másha fed and swathed the child, and sang songs to it, when it went to sleep. THE PEASANT AND THE CUCUMBERS A peasant once went to the gardener's, to steal cucumbers. He crept up to the cucumbers, and thought: "I will carry off a bag of cucumbers, which I will sell; with the money I will buy a hen. The hen will lay eggs, hatch them, and raise a lot of chicks. I will feed the chicks and sell them; then I will buy me a young sow, and she will bear a lot of pigs. I will sell the pigs, and buy me a mare; the mare will foal me some colts. I will raise the colts, and sell them. I will buy me a house, and start a garden. In the garden I will sow cucumbers, and will not let them be stolen, but will keep a sharp watch on them. I will hire watchmen, and put them in the cucumber patch, while I myself will come on them, unawares, and shout: 'Oh, there, keep a sharp lookout!'" And this he shouted as loud as he could. The watchmen heard it, and they rushed out and beat the peasant. THE FIRE During harvest-time the men and women went out to work. In the village were left only the old and the very young. In one hut there remained a grandmother with her three grandchildren. The grandmother made a fire in the oven, and lay down to rest herself. Flies kept alighting on her and biting her. She covered her head with a towel and fell asleep. One of the grandchildren, Másha (she was three years old), opened the oven, scraped some coals into a potsherd, and went into the vestibule. In the vestibule lay sheaves: the women were getting them bound. Másha brought the coals, put them under the sheaves, and began to blow. When the straw caught fire, she was glad; she went into the hut and took her brother Kiryúsha by the arm (he was a year and a half old, and had just learned to walk), and brought him out, and said to him: "See, Kiryúsha, what a fire I have kindled." The sheaves were already burning and crackling. When the vestibule was filled with smoke, Másha became frightened and ran back into the house. Kiryúsha fell over the threshold, hurt his nose, and began to cry; Másha pulled him into the house, and both hid under a bench. The grandmother heard nothing, and did not wake. The elder boy, Ványa (he was eight years old), was in the street. When he saw the smoke rolling out of the vestibule, he ran to the door, made his way through the smoke into the house, and began to waken his grandmother; but she was dazed from her sleep, and, forgetting the children, rushed out and ran to the farmyards to call the people. In the meantime Másha was sitting under the bench and keeping quiet; but the little boy cried, because he had hurt his nose badly. Ványa heard his cry, looked under the bench, and called out to Másha: "Run, you will burn!" Másha ran to the vestibule, but could not pass for the smoke and fire. She turned back. Then Ványa raised a window and told her to climb through it. When she got through, Ványa picked up his brother and dragged him along. But the child was heavy and did not let his brother take him. He cried and pushed Ványa. Ványa fell down twice, and when he dragged him up to the window, the door of the hut was already burning. Ványa thrust the child's head through the window and wanted to push him through; but the child took hold of him with both his hands (he was very much frightened) and would not let them take him out. Then Ványa cried to Másha: "Pull him by the head!" while he himself pushed him behind. And thus they pulled him through the window and into the street. THE OLD HORSE In our village there was an old, old man, Pímen Timoféich. He was ninety years old. He was living at the house of his grandson, doing no work. His back was bent: he walked with a cane and moved his feet slowly. He had no teeth at all, and his face was wrinkled. His nether lip trembled; when he walked and when he talked, his lips smacked, and one could not understand what he was saying. We were four brothers, and we were fond of riding. But we had no gentle riding-horses. We were allowed to ride only on one horse,--the name of that horse was Raven. One day mamma allowed us to ride, and all of us went with the valet to the stable. The coachman saddled Raven for us, and my eldest brother was the first to take a ride. He rode for a long time; he rode to the threshing-floor and around the garden, and when he came back, we shouted: "Now gallop past us!" My elder brother began to strike Raven with his feet and with the whip, and Raven galloped past us. After him, my second brother mounted the horse. He, too, rode for quite awhile, and he, too, urged Raven on with the whip and galloped up the hill. He wanted to ride longer, but my third brother begged him to let him ride at once. My third brother rode to the threshing-floor, and around the garden, and down the village, and raced up-hill to the stable. When he rode up to us Raven was panting, and his neck and shoulders were dark from sweat. When my turn came, I wanted to surprise my brothers and to show them how well I could ride, so I began to drive Raven with all my might, but he did not want to get away from the stable. And no matter how much I beat him, he would not run, but only shied and turned back. I grew angry at the horse, and struck him as hard as I could with my feet and with the whip. I tried to strike him in places where it would hurt most; I broke the whip and began to strike his head with what was left of the whip. But Raven would not run. Then I turned back, rode up to the valet, and asked him for a stout switch. But the valet said to me: "Don't ride any more, sir! Get down! What use is there in torturing the horse?" I felt offended, and said: "But I have not had a ride yet. Just watch me gallop! Please, give me a good-sized switch! I will heat him up." Then the valet shook his head, and said: "Oh, sir, you have no pity; why should you heat him up? He is twenty years old. The horse is worn out; he can barely breathe, and is old. He is so very old! Just like Pímen Timoféich. You might just as well sit down on Timoféich's back and urge him on with a switch. Well, would you not pity him?" I thought of Pímen, and listened to the valet's words. I climbed down from the horse and, when I saw how his sweaty sides hung down, how he breathed heavily through his nostrils, and how he switched his bald tail, I understood that it was hard for the horse. Before that I used to think that it was as much fun for him as for me. I felt so sorry for Raven that I began to kiss his sweaty neck and to beg his forgiveness for having beaten him. Since then I have grown to be a big man, and I always am careful with the horses, and always think of Raven and of Pímen Timoféitch whenever I see anybody torture a horse. HOW I LEARNED TO RIDE When I was a little fellow, we used to study every day, and only on Sundays and holidays went out and played with our brothers. Once my father said: "The children must learn to ride. Send them to the riding-school!" I was the youngest of the brothers, and I asked: "May I, too, learn to ride?" My father said: "You will fall down." I began to beg him to let me learn, and almost cried. My father said: "All right, you may go, too. Only look out! Don't cry when you fall off. He who does not once fall down from a horse will not learn to ride." When Wednesday came, all three of us were taken to the riding-school. We entered by a large porch, and from the large porch went to a smaller one. Beyond the porch was a very large room: instead of a floor it had sand. And in this room were gentlemen and ladies and just such boys as we. That was the riding-school. The riding-school was not very light, and there was a smell of horses, and you could hear them snap whips and call to the horses, and the horses strike their hoofs against the wooden walls. At first I was frightened and could not see things well. Then our valet called the riding-master, and said: "Give these boys some horses: they are going to learn how to ride." The master said: "All right!" Then he looked at me, and said: "He is very small, yet." But the valet said: "He promised not to cry when he falls down." The master laughed and went away. Then they brought three saddled horses, and we took off our cloaks and walked down a staircase to the riding-school. The master was holding a horse by a cord, and my brothers rode around him. At first they rode at a slow pace, and later at a trot. Then they brought a pony. It was a red horse, and his tail was cut off. He was called Ruddy. The master laughed, and said to me: "Well, young gentleman, get on your horse!" I was both happy and afraid, and tried to act in such a manner as not to be noticed by anybody. For a long time I tried to get my foot into the stirrup, but could not do it because I was too small. Then the master raised me up in his hands and put me on the saddle. He said: "The young master is not heavy,--about two pounds in weight, that is all." At first he held me by my hand, but I saw that my brothers were not held, and so I begged him to let go of me. He said: "Are you not afraid?" I was very much afraid, but I said that I was not. I was so much afraid because Ruddy kept dropping his ears. I thought he was angry at me. The master said: "Look out, don't fall down!" and let go of me. At first Ruddy went at a slow pace, and I sat up straight. But the saddle was sleek, and I was afraid I would slip off. The master asked me: "Well, are you fast in the saddle?" I said: "Yes, I am." "If so, go at a slow trot!" and the master clicked his tongue. Ruddy started at a slow trot, and began to jog me. But I kept silent, and tried not to slip to one side. The master praised me: "Oh, a fine young gentleman, indeed!" I was very glad to hear it. Just then the master's friend went up to him and began to talk with him, and the master stopped looking at me. Suddenly I felt that I had slipped a little to one side on my saddle. I wanted to straighten myself up, but was unable to do so. I wanted to call out to the master to stop the horse, but I thought it would be a disgrace if I did it, and so kept silence. The master was not looking at me and Ruddy ran at a trot, and I slipped still more to one side. I looked at the master and thought that he would help me, but he was still talking with his friend, and without looking at me kept repeating: "Well done, young gentleman!" I was now altogether to one side, and was very much frightened. I thought that I was lost; but I felt ashamed to cry. Ruddy shook me up once more, and I slipped off entirely and fell to the ground. Then Ruddy stopped, and the master looked at the horse and saw that I was not on him. He said: "I declare, my young gentleman has dropped off!" and walked over to me. When I told him that I was not hurt, he laughed and said: "A child's body is soft." I felt like crying. I asked him to put me again on the horse, and I was lifted on the horse. After that I did not fall down again. Thus we rode twice a week in the riding-school, and I soon learned to ride well, and was not afraid of anything. THE WILLOW During Easter week a peasant went out to see whether the ground was all thawed out. He went into the garden and touched the soil with a stick. The earth was soft. The peasant went into the woods; here the catkins were already swelling on the willows. The peasant thought: "I will fence my garden with willows; they will grow up and will make a good hedge!" He took his axe, cut down a dozen willows, sharpened them at the end, and stuck them in the ground. All the willows sent up sprouts with leaves, and underground let out just such sprouts for roots; and some of them took hold of the ground and grew, and others did not hold well to the ground with their roots, and died and fell down. In the fall the peasant was glad at the sight of his willows: six of them had taken root. The following spring the sheep killed two willows by gnawing at them, and only two were left. Next spring the sheep nibbled at these also. One of them was completely ruined, and the other came to, took root, and grew to be a tree. In the spring the bees just buzzed in the willow. In swarming time the swarms were often put out on the willow, and the peasants brushed them in. The men and women frequently ate and slept under the willow, and the children climbed on it and broke off rods from it. The peasant that had set out the willow was long dead, and still it grew. His eldest son twice cut down its branches and used them for fire-wood. The willow kept growing. They trimmed it all around, and cut it down to a stump, but in the spring it again sent out twigs, thinner ones than before, but twice as many as ever, as is the case with a colt's forelock. And the eldest son quit farming, and the village was given up, but the willow grew in the open field. Other peasants came there, and chopped the willow, but still it grew. The lightning struck it; but it sent forth side branches, and it grew and blossomed. A peasant wanted to cut it down for a block, but he gave it up, it was too rotten. It leaned sidewise, and held on with one side only; and still it grew, and every year the bees came there to gather the pollen. One day, early in the spring, the boys gathered under the willow, to watch the horses. They felt cold, so they started a fire. They gathered stubbles, wormwood, and sticks. One of them climbed on the willow and broke off a lot of twigs. They put it all in the hollow of the willow and set fire to it. The tree began to hiss and its sap to boil, and the smoke rose and the tree burned; its whole inside was smudged. The young shoots dried up, the blossoms withered. The children drove the horses home. The scorched willow was left all alone in the field. A black raven flew by, and he sat down on it, and cried: "So you are dead, old smudge! You ought to have died long ago!" BÚLKA I had a small bulldog. He was called Búlka. He was black; only the tips of his front feet were white. All bulldogs have their lower jaws longer than the upper, and the upper teeth come down behind the nether teeth, but Búlka's lower jaw protruded so much that I could put my finger between the two rows of teeth. His face was broad, his eyes large, black, and sparkling; and his teeth and incisors stood out prominently. He was as black as a negro. He was gentle and did not bite, but he was strong and stubborn. If he took hold of a thing, he clenched his teeth and clung to it like a rag, and it was not possible to tear him off, any more than as though he were a lobster. Once he was let loose on a bear, and he got hold of the bear's ear and stuck to him like a leech. The bear struck him with his paws and squeezed him, and shook him from side to side, but could not tear himself loose from him, and so he fell down on his head, in order to crush Búlka; but Búlka held on to him until they poured cold water over him. I got him as a puppy, and raised him myself. When I went to the Caucasus, I did not want to take him along, and so went away from him quietly, ordering him to be shut up. At the first station I was about to change the relay, when suddenly I saw something black and shining coming down the road. It was Búlka in his brass collar. He was flying at full speed toward the station. He rushed up to me, licked my hand, and stretched himself out in the shade under the cart. His tongue stuck out a whole hand's length. He now drew it in to swallow the spittle, and now stuck it out again a whole hand's length. He tried to breathe fast, but could not do so, and his sides just shook. He turned from one side to the other, and struck his tail against the ground. I learned later that after I had left he had broken a pane, jumped out of the window, and followed my track along the road, and thus raced twenty versts through the greatest heat. BÚLKA AND THE WILD BOAR Once we went into the Caucasus to hunt the wild boar, and Búlka went with me. The moment the hounds started, Búlka rushed after them, following their sound, and disappeared in the forest. That was in the month of November; the boars and sows are then very fat. In the Caucasus there are many edible fruits in the forests where the boars live: wild grapes, cones, apples, pears, blackberries, acorns, wild plums. And when all these fruits get ripe and are touched by the frost, the boars eat them and grow fat. At that time a boar gets so fat that he cannot run from the dogs. When they chase him for about two hours, he makes for the thicket and there stops. Then the hunters run up to the place where he stands, and shoot him. They can tell by the bark of the hounds whether the boar has stopped, or is running. If he is running, the hounds yelp, as though they were beaten; but when he stops, they bark as though at a man, with a howling sound. During that chase I ran for a long time through the forest, but not once did I cross a boar track. Finally I heard the long-drawn bark and howl of the hounds, and ran up to that place. I was already near the boar. I could hear the crashing in the thicket. The boar was turning around on the dogs, but I could not tell by the bark that they were not catching him, but only circling around him. Suddenly I heard something rustle behind me, and I saw that it was Búlka. He had evidently strayed from the hounds in the forest and had lost his way, and now was hearing their barking and making for them, like me, as fast as he could. He ran across a clearing through the high grass, and all I could see of him was his black head and his tongue clinched between his white teeth. I called him back, but he did not look around, and ran past me and disappeared in the thicket. I ran after him, but the farther I went, the more and more dense did the forest grow. The branches kept knocking off my cap and struck me in the face, and the thorns caught in my garments. I was near to the barking, but could not see anything. Suddenly I heard the dogs bark louder, and something crashed loudly, and the boar began to puff and snort. I immediately made up my mind that Búlka had got up to him and was busy with him. I ran with all my might through the thicket to that place. In the densest part of the thicket I saw a dappled hound. She was barking and howling in one spot, and within three steps from her something black could be seen moving around. When I came nearer, I could make out the boar, and I heard Búlka whining shrilly. The boar grunted and made for the hound; the hound took her tail between her legs and leaped away. I could see the boar's side and head. I aimed at his side and fired. I saw that I had hit him. The boar grunted and crashed through the thicket away from me. The dogs whimpered and barked in his track; I tried to follow them through the undergrowth. Suddenly I saw and heard something almost under my feet. It was Búlka. He was lying on his side and whining. Under him there was a puddle of blood. I thought the dog was lost; but I had no time to look after him, I continued to make my way through the thicket. Soon I saw the boar. The dogs were trying to catch him from behind, and he kept turning, now to one side, and now to another. When the boar saw me, he moved toward me. I fired a second time, almost resting the barrel against him, so that his bristles caught fire, and the boar groaned and tottered, and with his whole cadaver dropped heavily on the ground. When I came up, the boar was dead, and only here and there did his body jerk and twitch. Some of the dogs, with bristling hair, were tearing his belly and legs, while the others were lapping the blood from his wound. Then I thought of Búlka, and went back to find him. He was crawling toward me and groaning. I went up to him and looked at his wound. His belly was ripped open, and a whole piece of his guts was sticking out of his body and dragging on the dry leaves. When my companions came up to me, we put the guts back and sewed up his belly. While we were sewing him up and sticking the needle through his skin, he kept licking my hand. The boar was tied up to the horse's tail, to pull him out of the forest, and Búlka was put on the horse, and thus taken home. Búlka was sick for about six weeks, and got well again. PHEASANTS Wild fowls are called pheasants in the Caucasus. There are so many of them that they are cheaper there than tame chickens. Pheasants are hunted with the "hobby," by scaring up, and from under dogs. This is the way they are hunted with the "hobby." They take a piece of canvas and stretch it over a frame, and in the middle of the frame they make a cross piece. They cut a hole in the canvas. This frame with the canvas is called a hobby. With this hobby and with the gun they start out at dawn to the forest. The hobby is carried in front, and through the hole they look out for the pheasants. The pheasants feed at daybreak in the clearings. At times it is a whole brood,--a hen with all her chicks, and at others a cock with his hen, or several cocks together. The pheasants do not see the man, and they are not afraid of the canvas and let the hunter come close to them. Then the hunter puts down the hobby, sticks his gun through the rent, and shoots at whichever bird he pleases. This is the way they hunt by scaring up. They let a watch-dog into the forest and follow him. When the dog finds a pheasant, he rushes for it. The pheasant flies on a tree, and then the dog begins to bark at it. The hunter follows up the barking and shoots the pheasant in the tree. This chase would be easy, if the pheasant alighted on a tree in an open place, or if it sat still, so that it might be seen. But they always alight on dense trees, in the thicket, and when they see the hunter they hide themselves in the branches. And it is hard to make one's way through the thicket to the tree on which a pheasant is sitting, and hard to see it. So long as the dog alone barks at it, it is not afraid: it sits on a branch and preens and flaps its wings at the dog. But the moment it sees a man, it immediately stretches itself out along a bough, so that only an experienced hunter can tell it, while an inexperienced one will stand near by and see nothing. When the Cossacks steal up to the pheasants, they pull their caps over their faces and do not look up, because a pheasant is afraid of a man with his gun, but more still of his eyes. This is the way they hunt from under dogs. They take a setter and follow him to the forest. The dog scents the place where the pheasants have been feeding at daybreak, and begins to make out their tracks. No matter how the pheasants may have mixed them up, a good dog will always find the last track, that takes them out from the spot where they have been feeding. The farther the dog follows the track, the stronger will the scent be, and thus he will reach the place where the pheasant sits or walks about in the grass in the daytime. When he comes near to where the bird is, he thinks that it is right before him, and starts walking more cautiously so as not to frighten it, and will stop now and then, ready to jump and catch it. When the dog comes up very near to the pheasant, it flies up, and the hunter shoots it. MILTON AND BÚLKA I bought me a setter to hunt pheasants with. The name of the dog was Milton. He was a big, thin, gray, spotted dog, with long lips and ears, and he was very strong and intelligent. He did not fight with Búlka. No dog ever tried to get into a fight with Búlka. He needed only to show his teeth, and the dogs would take their tails between their legs and slink away. Once I went with Milton to hunt pheasants. Suddenly Búlka ran after me to the forest. I wanted to drive him back, but could not do so; and it was too far for me to take him home. I thought he would not be in my way, and so walked on; but the moment Milton scented a pheasant in the grass and began to search for it, Búlka rushed forward and tossed from side to side. He tried to scare up the pheasant before Milton. He heard something in the grass, and jumped and whirled around; but he had a poor scent and could not find the track himself, but watched Milton, to see where he was running. The moment Milton started on the trail, Búlka ran ahead of him. I called Búlka back and beat him, but could not do a thing with him. The moment Milton began to search, he darted forward and interfered with him. I was already on the point of going home, because I thought that the chase was spoiled; but Milton found a better way of cheating Búlka. This is what he did: the moment Búlka rushed ahead of him, he gave up the trail and turned in another direction, pretending that he was searching there. Búlka rushed there where Milton was, and Milton looked at me and wagged his tail and went back to the right trail. Búlka again ran up to Milton and rushed past him, and again Milton took some ten steps to one side and cheated Búlka, and again led me straight; and so he cheated Búlka all the way and did not let him spoil the chase. THE TURTLE Once I went with Milton to the chase. Near the forest he began to search. He straightened out his tail, pricked his ears, and began to sniff. I fixed the gun and followed him. I thought that he was looking for a partridge, hare, or pheasant. But Milton did not make for the forest, but for the field. I followed him and looked ahead of me. Suddenly I saw what he was searching for. In front of him was running a small turtle, of the size of a cap. Its bare, dark gray head on a long neck was stretched out like a pestle; the turtle in walking stretched its bare legs far out, and its back was all covered with bark. When it saw the dog, it hid its legs and head and let itself down on the grass so that only its shell could be seen. Milton grabbed it and began to bite at it, but could not bite through it, because the turtle has just such a shell on its belly as it has on its back, and has only openings in front, at the back, and at the sides, where it puts forth its head, its legs, and its tail. I took the turtle away from Milton, and tried to see how its back was painted, and what kind of a shell it had, and how it hid itself. When you hold it in your hands and look between the shell, you can see something black and alive inside, as though in a cellar. I threw away the turtle, and walked on, but Milton would not leave it, and carried it in his teeth behind me. Suddenly Milton whimpered and dropped it. The turtle had put forth its foot inside of his mouth, and had scratched it. That made him so angry that he began to bark; he grasped it once more and carried it behind me. I ordered Milton to throw it away, but he paid no attention to me. Then I took the turtle from him and threw it away. But he did not leave it. He hurriedly dug a hole near it; when the hole was dug, he threw the turtle into it and covered it up with dirt. The turtles live on land and in the water, like snakes and frogs. They breed their young from eggs. These eggs they lay on the ground, and they do not hatch them, but the eggs burst themselves, like fish spawn, and the turtles crawl out of them. There are small turtles, not larger than a saucer, and large ones, seven feet in length and weighing seven hundredweights. The large turtles live in the sea. One turtle lays in the spring hundreds of eggs. The turtle's shells are its ribs. Men and other animals have each rib separate, while the turtle's ribs are all grown together into a shell. But the main thing is that with all the animals the ribs are inside the flesh, while the turtle has the ribs on the outside, and the flesh beneath them. BÚLKA AND THE WOLF When I left the Caucasus, they were still fighting there, and in the night it was dangerous to travel without a guard. I wanted to leave as early as possible, and so did not lie down to sleep. My friend came to see me off, and we sat the whole evening and night in the village street, in front of my cabin. It was a moonlit night with a mist, and so bright that one could read, though the moon was not to be seen. In the middle of the night we suddenly heard a pig squealing in the yard across the street. One of us cried: "A wolf is choking the pig!" I ran into the house, grasped a loaded gun, and ran into the street. They were all standing at the gate of the yard where the pig was squealing, and cried to me: "Here!" Milton rushed after me,--no doubt he thought that I was going out to hunt with the gun; but Búlka pricked his short ears, and tossed from side to side, as though to ask me whom he was to clutch. When I ran up to the wicker fence, I saw a beast running straight toward me from the other side of the yard. That was the wolf. He ran up to the fence and jumped on it. I stepped aside and fixed my gun. The moment the wolf jumped down from the fence to my side, I aimed, almost touching him with the gun, and pulled the trigger; but my gun made "Click" and did not go off. The Wolf did not stop, but ran across the street. Milton and Búlka made for him. Milton was near to the wolf, but was afraid to take hold of him; and no matter how fast Búlka ran on his short legs, he could not keep up with him. We ran as fast as we could after the wolf, but both the wolf and the dogs disappeared from sight. Only at the ditch, at the end of the village, did we hear a low barking and whimpering, and saw the dust rise in the mist of the moon and the dogs busy with the wolf. When we ran up to the ditch, the wolf was no longer there, and both dogs returned to us with raised tails and angry faces. Búlka snarled and pushed me with his head: evidently he wanted to tell me something, but did not know how. We examined the dogs, and found a small wound on Búlka's head. He had evidently caught up with the wolf before he got to the ditch, but had not had a chance to get hold of him, while the wolf snapped at him and ran away. It was a small wound, so there was no danger. We returned to the cabin, and sat down and talked about what had happened. I was angry because the gun had missed fire, and thought of how the wolf would have remained on the spot, if the gun had shot. My friend wondered how the wolf could have crept into the yard. An old Cossack said that there was nothing remarkable about it, because that was not a wolf, but a witch who had charmed my gun. Thus we sat and kept talking. Suddenly the dogs darted off, and we saw the same wolf in the middle of the street; but this time he ran so fast when he heard our shout that the dogs could not catch up with him. After that the old Cossack was fully convinced that it was not a wolf, but a witch; but I thought that it was a mad wolf, because I had never seen or heard of such a thing as a wolf's coming back toward the people, after it had been driven away. In any case I poured some powder on Búlka's wound, and set it on fire. The powder flashed up and burned out the sore spot. I burned out the sore with powder, in order to burn away the poisonous saliva, if it had not yet entered the blood. But if the saliva had already entered the blood, I knew that the blood would carry it through the whole body, and then it would not be possible to cure him. WHAT HAPPENED TO BÚLKA IN PYATIGÓRSK From the Cossack village I did not travel directly to Russia, but first to Pyatigórsk, where I stayed two months. Milton I gave away to a Cossack hunter, and Búlka I took along with me to Pyatigórsk. Pyatigórsk [in English, Five-Mountains] is called so because it is situated on Mount Besh-tau. And besh means in Tartar "five," and tau "mountain." From this mountain flows a hot sulphur stream. It is as hot as boiling water, and over the spot where the water flows from the mountain there is always a steam as from a samovár. The whole place, on which the city stands, is very cheerful. From the mountain flow the hot springs, and at the foot of the mountain is the river Podkúmok. On the slopes of the mountain are forests; all around the city are fields, and in the distance are seen the mountains of the Caucasus. On these the snow never melts, and they are always as white as sugar. One large mountain, Elbrus, is like a white loaf of sugar; it can be seen from everywhere when the weather is clear. People come to the hot springs to be cured, and over them there are arbours and awnings, and all around them are gardens with walks. In the morning the music plays, and people drink the water, or bathe, or stroll about. The city itself is on the mountain, but at the foot of it there is a suburb. I lived in that suburb in a small house. The house stood in a yard, and before the windows was a small garden, and in the garden stood the landlord's beehives, not in hollow stems, as in Russia, but in round, plaited baskets. The bees are there so gentle that in the morning I used to sit with Búlka in that garden, amongst the beehives. Búlka walked about between the hives, and sniffed, and listened to the bees' buzzing; he walked so softly among them that he did not interfere with them, and they did not bother him. One morning I returned home from the waters, and sat down in the garden to drink coffee. Búlka began to scratch himself behind his ears, and made a grating noise with his collar. The noise worried the bees, and so I took the collar off. A little while later I heard a strange and terrible noise coming from the city. The dogs barked, howled, and whimpered, people shouted, and the noise descended lower from the mountain and came nearer and nearer to our suburb. Búlka stopped scratching himself, put his broad head with its white teeth between his fore legs, stuck out his tongue as he wished, and lay quietly by my side. When he heard the noise he seemed to understand what it was. He pricked his ears, showed his teeth, jumped up, and began to snarl. The noise came nearer. It sounded as though all the dogs of the city were howling, whimpering, and barking. I went to the gate to see what it was, and my landlady came out, too. I asked her: "What is this?" She said: "The prisoners of the jail are coming down to kill the dogs. The dogs have been breeding so much that the city authorities have ordered all the dogs in the city to be killed." "So they would kill Búlka, too, if they caught him?" "No, they are not allowed to kill dogs with collars." Just as I was speaking, the prisoners were coming up to our house. In front walked the soldiers, and behind them four prisoners in chains. Two of the prisoners had in their hands long iron hooks, and two had clubs. In front of our house, one of the prisoners caught a watch-dog with his hook and pulled it up to the middle of the street, and another began to strike it with the club. The little dog whined dreadfully, but the prisoners shouted and laughed. The prisoner with the hook turned over the dog, and when he saw that it was dead, he pulled out the hook and looked around for other dogs. Just then Búlka rushed headlong at that prisoner, as though he were a bear. I happened to think that he was without his collar, so I shouted: "Búlka, back!" and told the prisoners not to strike the dog. But the prisoner laughed when he saw Búlka, and with his hook nimbly struck him and caught him by his thigh. Búlka tried to get away; but the prisoner pulled him up toward him and told the other prisoner to strike him. The other raised his club, and Búlka would have been killed, but he jerked, and broke the skin at the thigh and, taking his tail between his legs, flew, with the red sore on his body, through the gate and into the house, and hid himself under my bed. He was saved because the skin had broken in the spot where the hook was. BÚLKA'S AND MILTON'S END Búlka and Milton died at the same time. The old Cossack did not know how to get along with Milton. Instead of taking him out only for birds, he went with him to hunt wild boars. And that same fall a tusky boar ripped him open. Nobody knew how to sew him up, and so he died. Búlka, too, did not live long after the prisoners had caught him. Soon after his salvation from the prisoners he began to feel unhappy, and started to lick everything that he saw. He licked my hands, but not as formerly when he fawned. He licked for a long time, and pressed his tongue against me, and then began to snap. Evidently he felt like biting my hand, but did not want to do so. I did not give him my hand. Then he licked my boot and the foot of a table, and then he began to snap at these things. That lasted about two days, and on the third he disappeared, and no one saw him or heard of him. He could not have been stolen or run away from me. This happened six weeks after the wolf had bitten him. Evidently the wolf had been mad. Búlka had gone mad, and so went away. He had what hunters call the rabies. They say that this madness consists in this, that the mad animal gets cramps in its throat. It wants to drink and cannot, because the water makes the cramps worse. And so it gets beside itself from pain and thirst, and begins to bite. Evidently Búlka was beginning to have these cramps when he started to lick and then to bite my hand and the foot of the table. I went everywhere in the neighbourhood and asked about Búlka, but could not find out what had become of him, or how he had died. If he had been running about and biting, as mad dogs do, I should have heard of him. No doubt he ran somewhere into a thicket and there died by himself. The hunters say that when an intelligent dog gets the rabies, he runs to the fields and forests, and there tries to find the herb which he needs, and rolls in the dew, and gets cured. Evidently Búlka never got cured. He never came back. THE GRAY HARE A gray hare was living in the winter near the village. When night came, he pricked one ear and listened; then he pricked his second ear, moved his whiskers, sniffed, and sat down on his hind legs. Then he took a leap or two over the deep snow, and again sat down on his hind legs, and looked around him. Nothing could be seen but snow. The snow lay in waves and glistened like sugar. Over the hare's head hovered a frost vapour, and through this vapour could be seen the large, bright stars. The hare had to cross the highway, in order to come to a threshing-floor he knew of. On the highway the runners could be heard squeaking, and the horses snorting, and seats creaking in the sleighs. The hare again stopped near the road. Peasants were walking beside the sleighs, and the collars of their caftans were raised. Their faces were scarcely visible. Their beards, moustaches, and eyelashes were white. Steam rose from their mouths and noses. Their horses were sweaty, and the hoarfrost clung to the sweat. The horses jostled under their arches, and dived in and out of snow-drifts. The peasants ran behind the horses and in front of them, and beat them with their whips. Two peasants walked beside each other, and one of them told the other how a horse of his had once been stolen. When the carts passed by, the hare leaped across the road and softly made for the threshing-floor. A dog saw the hare from a cart. He began to bark and darted after the hare. The hare leaped toward the threshing-floor over the snow-drifts, which held him back; but the dog stuck fast in the snow after the tenth leap, and stopped. Then the hare, too, stopped and sat up on his hind legs, and then softly went on to the threshing-floor. On his way he met two other hares on the sowed winter field. They were feeding and playing. The hare played awhile with his companions, dug away the frosty snow with them, ate the wintergreen, and went on. In the village everything was quiet; the fires were out. All one could hear was a baby's cry in a hut and the crackling of the frost in the logs of the cabins. The hare went to the threshing-floor, and there found some companions. He played awhile with them on the cleared floor, ate some oats from the open granary, climbed on the kiln over the snow-covered roof, and across the wicker fence started back to his ravine. The dawn was glimmering in the east; the stars grew less, and the frost vapours rose more densely from the earth. In the near-by village the women got up, and went to fetch water; the peasants brought the feed from the barn; the children shouted and cried. There were still more carts going down the road, and the peasants talked aloud to each other. The hare leaped across the road, went up to his old lair, picked out a high place, dug away the snow, lay with his back in his new lair, dropped his ears on his back, and fell asleep with open eyes. GOD SEES THE TRUTH, BUT DOES NOT TELL AT ONCE In the city of Vladímir there lived a young merchant, Aksénov by name. He had two shops and a house. Aksénov was a light-complexioned, curly-headed, fine-looking man and a very jolly fellow and good singer. In his youth Aksénov had drunk much, and when he was drunk he used to become riotous, but when he married he gave up drinking, and that now happened very rarely with him. One day in the summer Aksénov went to the Nízhni-Nóvgorod fair. As he bade his family good-bye, his wife said to him: "Iván Dmítrievich, do not start to-day! I have had a bad dream about you." Aksénov laughed, and said: "Are you afraid that I might go on a spree at the fair?" His wife said: "I do not know what I am afraid of, but I had a bad dream: I dreamed that you came to town, and when you took off your cap I saw that your head was all gray." Aksénov laughed. "That means that I shall make some profit. If I strike a good bargain, you will see me bring you some costly presents." And he bade his family farewell, and started. In the middle of his journey he met a merchant whom he knew, and they stopped together in a hostelry for the night. They drank their tea together, and lay down to sleep in two adjoining rooms. Aksénov did not like to sleep long; he awoke in the middle of the night and, as it was easier to travel when it was cool, wakened his driver and told him to hitch the horses. Then he went to the "black" hut, paid his bill, and went away. [Illustration: "'Whose knife is this?'" _Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko_] When he had gone about forty versts, he again stopped to feed the horses and to rest in the vestibule of a hostelry. At dinner-time he came out on the porch, and ordered the samovár to be prepared for him. He took out his guitar and began to play. Suddenly a tróyka with bells drove up to the hostelry, and from the cart leaped an officer with two soldiers, and he went up to Aksénov, and asked him who he was and where he came from. Aksénov told him everything as it was, and said: "Would you not like to drink tea with me?" But the officer kept asking him questions: "Where did you stay last night? Were you alone, or with a merchant? Did you see the merchant in the morning? Why did you leave so early in the morning?" Aksénov wondered why they asked him about all that; he told them everything as it was, and said: "Why do you ask me this? I am not a thief, nor a robber. I am travelling on business of my own, and you have nothing to ask me about." Then the officer called the soldiers, and said: "I am the chief of the rural police, and I ask you this, because the merchant with whom you passed last night has been found with his throat cut. Show me your things, and you look through them!" They entered the house, took his valise and bag, and opened them and began to look through them. Suddenly the chief took a knife out of the bag, and cried out: "Whose knife is this?" Aksénov looked, and saw that they had taken out a blood-stained knife from his bag, and he was frightened "How did the blood get on the knife?" Aksénov wanted to answer, but could not pronounce a word. "I--I do not know--I--the knife--is not mine!" Then the chief said: "In the morning the merchant was found in his bed with his throat cut. No one but you could have done it. The house was locked from within, and there was no one in the house but you. Here is the bloody knife in your bag, and your face shows your guilt. Tell me, how did you kill him, and how much money did you rob him of?" Aksénov swore that he had not done it; that he had not seen the merchant after drinking tea with him; that he had with him his own eight thousand; that the knife was not his. But his voice faltered, his face was pale, and he trembled from fear, as though he were guilty. The chief called in the soldiers, told them to bind him and to take him to the cart. When he was rolled into the cart with his legs tied, he made the sign of the cross and began to cry. They took away his money and things, and sent him to jail to the nearest town. They sent to Vladímir to find out what kind of a man Aksénov was, and all the merchants and inhabitants of Vladímir testified to the fact that Aksénov had drunk and caroused when he was young, but that he was a good man. Then they began to try him. He was tried for having killed the Ryazán merchant and having robbed him of twenty thousand roubles. The wife was grieving for her husband and did not know what to think. Her children were still young, and one was still at the breast. She took them all and went with them to the town where her husband was kept in prison. At first she was not admitted, but later she implored the authorities, and she was taken to her husband. When she saw him in prison garb and in chains, together with murderers, she fell to the ground and could not come to for a long time. Then she placed her children about her, sat down beside him, and began to tell him about house matters, and to ask him about everything which had happened. He told her everything. She said: "What shall I do?" He said: "We must petition the Tsar. An innocent man cannot be allowed to perish." His wife said that she had already petitioned the Tsar, but that the petition had not reached him. Aksénov said nothing, and only lowered his head. Then his wife said: "You remember the dream I had about your getting gray. Indeed, you have grown gray from sorrow. If you had only not started then!" And she looked over his hair, and said: "Iván, my darling, tell your wife the truth: did you not do it?" Aksénov said, "And you, too, suspect me!" and covered his face with his hands, and began to weep. Then a soldier came, and told his wife that she must leave with her children. And Aksénov for the last time bade his family farewell. When his wife had left, Aksénov thought about what they had been talking of. When he recalled that his wife had also suspected him and had asked him whether he had killed the merchant, he said to himself: "Evidently none but God can know the truth, and He alone must be asked, and from Him alone can I expect mercy." And from that time on Aksénov no longer handed in petitions and stopped hoping, but only prayed to God. Aksénov was sentenced to be beaten with the knout, and to be sent to hard labour. And it was done. He was beaten with the knout, and later, when the knout sores healed over, he was driven with other convicts to Siberia. In Siberia, Aksénov passed twenty-six years at hard labour. His hair turned white like snow, and his beard grew long, narrow, and gray. All his mirth went away. He stooped, began to walk softly, spoke little, never laughed, and frequently prayed to God. In the prison Aksénov learned to make boots, and with the money which he earned he bought himself the "Legends of the Holy Martyrs," and read them while it was light in the prison; on holidays he went to the prison church and read the Epistles, and sang in the choir,--his voice was still good. The authorities were fond of Aksénov for his gentleness, and his prison comrades respected him and called him "grandfather" and "God's man." When there were any requests to be made of the authorities, his comrades always sent him to speak for them, and when the convicts had any disputes between themselves, they came to Aksénov to settle them. No one wrote Aksénov letters from his home, and he did not know whether his wife and children were alive, or not. Once they brought some new prisoners to the prison. In the evening the old prisoners gathered around the new men, and asked them from what town they came, or from what village, and for what acts they had been sent up. Aksénov, too, sat down on the bed-boards near the new prisoners and, lowering his head, listened to what they were saying. One of the new prisoners was a tall, sound-looking old man of about sixty years of age, with a gray, clipped beard. He was telling them what he had been sent up for: "Yes, brothers, I have come here for no crime at all. I had unhitched a driver's horse from the sleigh. I was caught. They said, 'You stole it.' And I said, 'I only wanted to get home quickly, for I let the horse go. Besides, the driver is a friend of mine. I am telling you the truth.'--'No,' they said, 'you have stolen it.' But they did not know what I had been stealing, or where I had been stealing. There were crimes for which I ought to have been sent up long ago, but they could not convict me, and now I am here contrary to the law. 'You are lying,--you have been in Siberia, but you did not make a long visit there--'" "Where do you come from?" asked one of the prisoners. "I am from the city of Vladímir, a burgher of that place. My name is Makár, and by my father Seménovich." Aksénov raised his head, and asked: "Seménovich, have you not heard in Vladímir about the family of Merchant Aksénov? Are they alive?" "Yes, I have heard about them! They are rich merchants, even though their father is in Siberia. He is as much a sinner as I, I think. And you, grandfather, what are you here for?" Aksénov did not like to talk of his misfortune. He sighed, and said: "For my sins have I passed twenty-six years at hard labour." Makár Seménovich said: "For what sins?" Aksénov said, "No doubt, I deserved it," and did not wish to tell him any more; but the other prison people told the new man how Aksénov had come to be in Siberia. They told him how on the road some one had killed a merchant and had put the knife into his bag, and he thus was sentenced though he was innocent. When Makár Seménovich heard that, he looked at Aksénov, clapped his knees with his hands, and said: "What a marvel! What a marvel! But you have grown old, grandfather!" He was asked what he was marvelling at, and where he had seen Aksénov, but Makár Seménovich made no reply, and only said: "It is wonderful, boys, where we were fated to meet!" And these words made Aksénov think that this man might know something about who had killed the merchant. He said: "Seménovich, have you heard before this about that matter, or have we met before?" "Of course I have heard. The earth is full of rumours. That happened a long time ago: I have forgotten what I heard," said Makár Seménovich. "Maybe you have heard who killed the merchant?" asked Aksénov. Makár Seménovich laughed and said: "I suppose he was killed by the man in whose bag the knife was found. Even if somebody stuck that knife into that bag, he was not caught, so he is no thief. And how could the knife have been put in? Was not the bag under your head? You would have heard him." The moment Aksénov heard these words, he thought that that was the man who had killed the merchant. He got up and walked away. All that night Aksénov could not fall asleep. He felt sad, and had visions: now he saw his wife such as she had been when she bade him farewell for the last time, as he went to the fair. He saw her, as though she was alive, and he saw her face and eyes, and heard her speak to him and laugh. Then he saw his children such as they had been then,--just as little,--one of them in a fur coat, the other at the breast. And he thought of himself, such as he had been then,--gay and young; he recalled how he had been sitting on the porch of the hostelry, where he was arrested, and had been playing the guitar, and how light his heart had been then. And he recalled the pillory, where he had been whipped, and the executioner, and the people all around, and the chains, and the prisoners, and his prison life of the last twenty-six years, and his old age. And such gloom came over him that he felt like laying hands on himself. "And all that on account of that evil-doer!" thought Aksénov. And such a rage fell upon him against Makár Seménovich, that he wanted to have his revenge upon him, even if he himself were to be ruined by it. He said his prayers all night long, but could not calm himself. In the daytime he did not walk over to Makár Seménovich, and did not look at him. Thus two weeks passed. At night Aksénov could not sleep, and he felt so sad that he did not know what to do with himself. Once, in the night, he walked all over the prison, and saw dirt falling from underneath one bedplace. He stopped to see what it was. Suddenly Makár Seménovich jumped up from under the bed and looked at Aksénov with a frightened face. Aksénov wanted to pass on, so as not to see him; but Makár took him by his arm, and told him that he had dug a passage way under the wall, and that he each day carried the dirt away in his boot-legs and poured it out in the open, whenever they took the convicts out to work. He said: "Keep quiet, old man,--I will take you out, too. And if you tell, they will whip me, and I will not forgive you,--I will kill you." When Aksénov saw the one who had done him evil, he trembled in his rage, and pulled away his arm, and said: "I have no reason to get away from here, and there is no sense in killing me,--you killed me long ago. And whether I will tell on you or not depends on what God will put into my soul." On the following day, when the convicts were taken out to work, the soldiers noticed that Makár Seménovich was pouring out the dirt, and so they began to search in the prison, and found the hole. The chief came to the prison and began to ask all who had dug the hole. Everybody denied it. Those who knew had not seen Makár Seménovich, because they knew that for this act he would be whipped half-dead. Then the chief turned to Aksénov. He knew that Aksénov was a just man, and said: "Old man, you are a truthful man, tell me before God who has done that." Makár Seménovich stood as though nothing had happened and looked at the chief, and did not glance at Aksénov. Aksénov's arms and lips trembled, and he could not utter a word for long time. He thought: "If I protect him, why should I forgive him, since he has ruined me? Let him suffer for my torments! And if I tell on him, they will indeed whip him to death. And suppose that I have a wrong suspicion against him. Will that make it easier for me?" The chief said once more: "Well, old man, speak, tell the truth! Who has been digging it?" Aksénov looked at Makár Seménovich, and said: "I cannot tell, your Honour. God orders me not to tell. And I will not tell. Do with me as you please,--you have the power." No matter how much the chief tried, Aksénov would not say anything more. And so they did not find out who had done the digging. On the following night, as Aksénov lay down on the bed-boards and was just falling asleep, he heard somebody come up to him and sit down at his feet. He looked in the darkness and recognized Makár. Aksénov said: "What more do you want of me? What are you doing here?" Makár Seménovich was silent. Aksénov raised himself, and said: "What do you want? Go away, or I will call the soldier." Makár bent down close to Aksénov, and said to him in a whisper: [Illustration: "'God will forgive you'" _Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko_] "Iván Dmítrievich, forgive me!" Aksénov said: "For what shall I forgive you?" "It was I who killed the merchant and put the knife into your bag. I wanted to kill you, too, but they made a noise in the yard, so I put the knife into your bag and climbed through the window." Aksénov was silent and did not know what to say. Makár Seménovich slipped down from the bed, made a low obeisance, and said: "Iván Dmítrievich, forgive me, forgive me for God's sake! I will declare that it was I who killed the merchant,--you will be forgiven. You will return home." Aksénov said: "It is easy for you to speak so, but see how I have suffered! Where shall I go now? My wife has died, my children have forgotten me. I have no place to go to--" Makár Seménovich did not get up from the floor. He struck his head against the earth, and said: "Iván Dmítrievich, forgive me! When they whipped me with the knout I felt better than now that I am looking at you. You pitied me, and did not tell on me. Forgive me, for Christ's sake! Forgive me, the accursed evil-doer!" And he burst out into tears. When Aksénov heard Makár Seménovich crying, he began to weep himself, and said: "God will forgive you. Maybe I am a hundred times worse than you!" And suddenly a load fell off from his soul. And he no longer pined for his home, and did not wish to leave the prison, but only thought of his last hour. Makár Seménovich did not listen to Aksénov, but declared his guilt. When the decision came for Aksénov to leave,--he was dead. HUNTING WORSE THAN SLAVERY We were hunting bears. My companion had a chance to shoot at a bear: he wounded him, but only in a soft spot. A little blood was left on the snow, but the bear got away. We met in the forest and began to discuss what to do: whether to go and find that bear, or to wait two or three days until the bear should lie down again. We asked the peasant bear drivers whether we could now surround the bear. An old bear driver said: "No, we must give the bear a chance to calm himself. In about five days it will be possible to surround him, but if we go after him now he will only be frightened and will not lie down." But a young bear driver disputed with the old man, and said that he could surround him now. "Over this snow," he said, "the bear cannot get away far,--he is fat. He will lie down to-day again. And if he does not, I will overtake him on snow-shoes." My companion, too, did not want to surround the bear now, and advised waiting. But I said: "What is the use of discussing the matter? Do as you please, but I will go with Demyán along the track. If we overtake him, so much is gained; if not,--I have nothing else to do to-day anyway, and it is not yet late." And so we did. My companions went to the sleigh, and back to the village, but Demyán and I took bread with us, and remained in the woods. When all had left us, Demyán and I examined our guns, tucked our fur coats over our belts, and followed the track. It was fine weather, chilly and calm. But walking on snow-shoes was a hard matter: the snow was deep and powdery. The snow had not settled in the forest, and, besides, fresh snow had fallen on the day before, so that the snow-shoes sunk half a foot in the snow, and in places even deeper. The bear track could be seen a distance away. We could see the way the bear had walked, for in spots he had fallen in the snow to his belly and had swept the snow aside. At first we walked in plain sight of the track, through a forest of large trees; then, when the track went into a small pine wood, Demyán stopped. "We must now give up the track," he said. "He will, no doubt, lie down here. He has been sitting on his haunches,--you can see it by the snow. Let us go away from the track, and make a circle around him. But we must walk softly and make no noise, not even cough, or we shall scare him." We went away from the track, to the left. We walked about five hundred steps and there we again saw the track before us. We again followed the track, and this took us to the road. We stopped on the road and began to look around, to see in what direction the bear had gone. Here and there on the road we could see the bear's paws with all the toes printed on the snow, while in others we could see the tracks of a peasant's bast shoes. He had, evidently, gone to the village. We walked along the road. Demyán said to me: "We need not watch the road; somewhere he will turn off the road, to the right or to the left,--we shall see in the snow. Somewhere he will turn off,--he will not go to the village." We walked thus about a mile along the road; suddenly we saw the track turn off from the road. We looked at it, and see the wonder! It was a bear's track, but leading not from the road to the woods, but from the woods to the road: the toes were turned to the road. I said: "That is another bear." Demyán looked at it, and thought awhile. "No," he said, "that is the same bear, only he has begun to cheat. He left the road backwards." We followed the track, and so it was. The bear had evidently walked about ten steps backwards from the road, until he got beyond a fir-tree, and then he had turned and gone on straight ahead. Demyán stopped, and said: "Now we shall certainly fall in with him. He has no place but this swamp to lie down in. Let us surround him." We started to surround him, going through the dense pine forest. I was getting tired, and it was now much harder to travel. Now I would strike against a juniper-bush, and get caught in it; or a small pine-tree would get under my feet; or the snow-shoes would twist, as I was not used to them; or I would strike a stump or a block under the snow. I was beginning to be worn out. I took off my fur coat, and the sweat was just pouring down from me. But Demyán sailed along as in a boat. It looked as though the snow-shoes walked under him of their own accord. He neither caught in anything, nor did his shoes turn on him. And he even threw my fur coat over his shoulders, and kept urging me on. We made about three versts in a circle, and walked past the swamp. Demyán suddenly stopped in front of me, and waved his hand. I walked over to him. Demyán bent down, and pointed with his hand, and whispered to me: "Do you see, a magpie is chattering on a windfall: the bird is scenting the bear from a distance. It is he." We walked to one side, made another verst, and again hit the old trail. Thus we had made a circle around the bear, and he was inside of it. We stopped. I took off my hat and loosened my wraps: I felt as hot as in a bath, and was as wet as a mouse. Demyán, too, was all red, and he wiped his face with his sleeve. "Well," he said, "we have done our work, sir, so we may take a rest." The evening glow could be seen through the forest. We sat down on the snow-shoes to rest ourselves. We took the bread and salt out of the bags; first I ate a little snow, and then the bread. The bread tasted to me better than any I had eaten in all my life. We sat awhile; it began to grow dark. I asked Demyán how far it was to the village. "About twelve versts. We shall reach it in the night; but now we must rest. Put on your fur coat, sir, or you will catch a cold." Demyán broke off some pine branches, knocked down the snow, made a bed, and we lay down beside each other, with our arms under our heads. I do not remember how I fell asleep. I awoke about two hours later. Something crashed. I had been sleeping so soundly that I forgot where I was. I looked around me: what marvel was that? Where was I? Above me were some white chambers, and white posts, and on everything glistened white tinsel. I looked up: there was a white, checkered cloth, and between the checks was a black vault in which burned fires of all colours. I looked around, and I recalled that we were in the forest, and that the snow-covered trees had appeared to me as chambers, and that the fires were nothing but the stars that flickered between the branches. In the night a hoarfrost had fallen, and there was hoarfrost on the branches, and on my fur coat, and Demyán was all covered with hoarfrost, and hoarfrost fell from above. I awoke Demyán. We got up on our snow-shoes and started. The forest was quiet. All that could be heard was the sound we made as we slid on our snow-shoes over the soft snow, or when a tree would crackle from the frost, and a hollow sound would pass through the whole woods. Only once did something living stir close to us and run away again. I thought it was the bear. We walked over to the place from where the noise had come, and we saw hare tracks. The young aspens were nibbled down. The hares had been feeding on them. We came out to the road, tied the snow-shoes behind us, and walked down the road. It was easy to walk. The snow-shoes rattled and rumbled over the beaten road; the snow creaked under our boots; the cold hoarfrost stuck to our faces like down. And the stars seemed to run toward us along the branches: they would flash, and go out again,--just as though the sky were walking round and round. My companion was asleep,--I awoke him. We told him how we had made a circle around the bear, and told the landlord to collect the drivers for the morning. We ate our supper and lay down to sleep. I was so tired that I could have slept until dinner, but my companion woke me. I jumped up and saw that my companion was all dressed and busy with his gun. "Where is Demyán?" "He has been in the forest for quite awhile. He has investigated the circle, and has been back to take the drivers out." I washed myself, put on my clothes, and loaded my guns. We seated ourselves in the sleigh, and started. There was a severe frost, the air was calm, and the sun could not be seen: there was a mist above, and the hoarfrost was settling. We travelled about three versts by the road, and reached the forest. We saw a blue smoke in a hollow, and peasants, men and women, were there with clubs. We climbed out of the sleigh and went up to the people. The peasants were sitting and baking potatoes, and joking with the women. Demyán was with them. The people got up, and Demyán took them away to place them in our last night's circuit. The men and women stretched themselves out in single file,--there were thirty of them and they could be seen only from the belt up,--and went into the woods; then my companion and I followed their tracks. Though they had made a path, it was hard to walk; still, we could not fall, for it was like walking between two walls. Thus we walked for half a verst. I looked up, and there was Demyán running to us from the other side on snow-shoes, and waving his hand for us to come to him. We went up to him, and he showed us where to stand. I took up my position and looked around. To the left of me was a tall pine forest. I could see far through it, and beyond the trees I saw the black spot of a peasant driver. Opposite me was a young pine growth, as tall as a man's stature. In this pine growth the branches were hanging down and stuck together from the snow. The path through the middle of the pine grove was covered with snow. This path was leading toward me. To the right of me was a dense pine forest, and beyond the pine grove there was a clearing. And on this clearing I saw Demyán place my companion. I examined my two guns and cocked them, and began to think where to take up a stand. Behind me, about three steps from me, there was a pine-tree. "I will stand by that pine, and will lean the other gun against it." I made my way to that pine, walking knee-deep in snow. I tramped down a space of about four feet each way, and there took my stand. One gun I took into my hands, and the other, with hammers raised, I placed against the tree. I unsheathed my dagger and put it back in the scabbard, to be sure that in case of need it would come out easily. I had hardly fixed myself, when Demyán shouted from the woods: "Start it now, start it!" And as Demyán shouted this, the peasants in the circuit cried, each with a different tone of voice: "Come now! OO-oo-oo!" and the women cried, in their thin voices: "Ai! Eekh!" The bear was in the circle. Demyán was driving him. In the circuit the people shouted, and only my companion and I stood still, did not speak or move, and waited for the bear. I stood, and looked, and listened, and my heart went pitapat. I was clutching my gun and trembling. Now, now he will jump out, I thought, and I will aim and shoot, and he will fall-- Suddenly I heard to the left something tumbling through the snow, only it was far away. I looked into the tall pine forest: about fifty steps from me, behind the trees, stood something large and black. I aimed and waited. I thought it might come nearer. I saw it move its ears and turn around. Now I could see the whole of him from the side. It was a huge beast. I aimed hastily. Bang! I heard the bullet strike the tree. Through the smoke I saw the bear make back for the cover and disappear in the forest. "Well," I thought, "my business is spoiled: he will not run up to me again; either my companion will have a chance to shoot at him, or he will go through between the peasants, but never again toward me." I reloaded the gun, and stood and listened. The peasants were shouting on all sides, but on the right, not far from my companion, I heard a woman yell, "Here he is! Here he is! Here he is! This way! This way! Oi, oi, oi! Ai, ai, ai!" There was the bear, in full sight. I was no longer expecting the bear to come toward me, and so looked to the right toward my companion. I saw Demyán running without the snow-shoes along the path, with a stick in his hand, and going up to my companion, sitting down near him, and pointing with the stick at something, as though he were aiming. I saw my companion raise his gun and aim at where Demyán was pointing. Bang! he fired it off. "Well," I thought, "he has killed him." But I saw that my companion was not running toward the bear. "Evidently he missed him, or did not strike him right. He will get away," I thought, "but he will not come toward me." What was that? Suddenly I heard something in front of me: somebody was flying like a whirlwind, and scattering the snow near by, and panting. I looked ahead of me, but he was making headlong toward me along the path through the dense pine growth. I could see that he was beside himself with fear. When he was within five steps of me I could see the whole of him: his chest was black and his head was enormous, and of a reddish colour. He was flying straight toward me, and scattering the snow in all directions. I could see by the bear's eyes that he did not see me and in his fright was rushing headlong. He was making straight for the pine where I was standing. I raised my gun, and shot, but he came still nearer. I saw that I had not hit him: the bullet was carried past him. He heard nothing, plunged onward, and did not see me. I bent down the gun, almost rested it against his head. Bang! This time I hit him, but did not kill him. He raised his head, dropped his ears, showed his teeth,--and straight toward me. I grasped the other gun; but before I had it in my hand, he was already on me, knocked me down, and flew over me. "Well," I thought, "that is good, he will not touch me." I was just getting up, when I felt something pressing against me and holding me down. In his onrush he ran past me, but he turned around and rushed against me with his whole breast. I felt something heavy upon me, something warm over my face, and I felt him taking my face into his jaws. My nose was already in his mouth, and I felt hot, and smelled his blood. He pressed my shoulders with his paws, and I could not stir. All I could do was to pull my head out of his jaws and press it against my breast, and I turned my nose and eyes away. But he was trying to get at my eyes and nose. I felt him strike the teeth of his upper jaw into my forehead, right below the hair, and the lower jaw into the cheek-bones below the eyes, and he began to crush me. It was as though my head were cut with knives. I jerked and pulled out my head, but he chawed and chawed and snapped at me like a dog. I would turn my head away, and he would catch it again. "Well," I thought, "my end has come." Suddenly I felt lighter. I looked up, and he was gone: he had jumped away from me, and was running now. When my companion and Demyán saw that the bear had knocked me into the snow, they dashed for me. My companion wanted to get there as fast as possible, but lost his way; instead of running on the trodden path, he ran straight ahead, and fell down. While he was trying to get out of the snow, the bear was gnawing at me. Demyán ran up to me along the path, without a gun, just with the stick which he had in his hands, and he shouted, "He is eating up the gentleman! He is eating up the gentleman!" And he kept running and shouting, "Oh, you wretched beast! What are you doing? Stop! Stop!" The bear listened to him, stopped, and ran away. When I got up, there was much blood on the snow, just as though a sheep had been killed, and over my eyes the flesh hung in rags. While the wound was fresh I felt no pain. My companion ran up to me, and the peasants gathered around me. They looked at my wounds, and washed them with snow. I had entirely forgotten about the wounds, and only asked, "Where is the bear? Where has he gone?" Suddenly we heard, "Here he is! Here he is!" We saw the bear running once more against us. We grasped our guns, but before we fired he ran past us. The bear was mad: he wanted to bite me again, but when he saw so many people he became frightened. We saw by the track that the bear was bleeding from the head. We wanted to follow him up, but my head hurt me, and so we drove to town to see a doctor. The doctor sewed up my wounds with silk, and they began to heal. A month later we went out again to hunt that bear; but I did not get the chance to kill him. The bear would not leave the cover, and kept walking around and around and roaring terribly. Demyán killed him. My shot had crushed his lower jaw and knocked out a tooth. This bear was very large, and he had beautiful black fur. I had the skin stuffed, and it is lying now in my room. The wounds on my head have healed, so that one can scarcely see where they were. A PRISONER OF THE CAUCASUS I. A certain gentleman was serving as an officer in the Caucasus. His name was Zhilín. One day he received a letter from home. His old mother wrote to him: "I have grown old, and I should like to see my darling son before my death. Come to bid me farewell and bury me, and then, with God's aid, return to the service. I have also found a bride for you: she is bright and pretty and has property. If you take a liking to her, you can marry her, and stay here for good." Zhilín reflected: "Indeed, my old mother has grown feeble; perhaps I shall never see her again. I must go; and if the bride is a good girl, I may marry her." He went to the colonel, got a furlough, bade his companions good-bye, treated his soldiers to four buckets of vódka, and got himself ready to go. At that time there was a war in the Caucasus. Neither in the daytime, nor at night, was it safe to travel on the roads. The moment a Russian walked or drove away from a fortress, the Tartars either killed him or took him as a prisoner to the mountains. It was a rule that a guard of soldiers should go twice a week from fortress to fortress. In front and in the rear walked soldiers, and between them were other people. It was in the summer. The carts gathered at daybreak outside the fortress, and the soldiers of the convoy came out, and all started. Zhilín rode on horseback, and his cart with his things went with the caravan. They had to travel twenty-five versts. The caravan proceeded slowly; now the soldiers stopped, and now a wheel came off a cart, or a horse stopped, and all had to stand still and wait. The sun had already passed midday, but the caravan had made only half the distance. It was dusty and hot; the sun just roasted them, and there was no shelter: it was a barren plain, with neither tree nor bush along the road. Zhilín rode out ahead. He stopped and waited for the caravan to catch up with him. He heard them blow the signal-horn behind: they had stopped again. Zhilín thought: "Why can't I ride on, without the soldiers? I have a good horse under me, and if I run against Tartars, I will gallop away. Or had I better not go?" He stopped to think it over. There rode up to him another officer, Kostylín, with a gun, and said: "Let us ride by ourselves, Zhilín! I cannot stand it any longer: I am hungry, and it is so hot. My shirt is dripping wet." Kostylín was a heavy, stout man, with a red face, and the perspiration was just rolling down his face. Zhilín thought awhile and said: "Is your gun loaded?" "It is." "Well, then, we will go, but on one condition, that we do not separate." And so they rode ahead on the highway. They rode through the steppe, and talked, and looked about them. They could see a long way off. When the steppe came to an end, the road entered a cleft between two mountains. So Zhilín said: "We ought to ride up the mountain to take a look; for here they may leap out on us from the mountain without our seeing them." But Kostylín said: "What is the use of looking? Let us ride on!" Zhilín paid no attention to him. "No," he said, "you wait here below, and I will take a look up there." And he turned his horse to the left, up-hill. The horse under Zhilín was a thoroughbred (he had paid a hundred roubles for it when it was a colt, and had himself trained it), and it carried him up the slope as though on wings. The moment he reached the summit, he saw before him a number of Tartars on horseback, about eighty fathoms away. There were about thirty of them. When he saw them, he began to turn back; and the Tartars saw him, and galloped toward him, and on the ride took their guns out of the covers. Zhilín urged his horse down-hill as fast as its legs would carry him, and he shouted to Kostylín: "Take out the gun!" and he himself thought about his horse: "Darling, take me away from here! Don't stumble! If you do, I am lost. If I get to the gun, they shall not catch me." But Kostylín, instead of waiting, galloped at full speed toward the fortress, the moment he saw the Tartars. He urged the horse on with the whip, now on one side, and now on the other. One could see through the dust only the horse switching her tail. Zhilín saw that things were bad. The gun had disappeared, and he could do nothing with a sword. He turned his horse back to the soldiers, thinking that he might get away. He saw six men crossing his path. He had a good horse under him, but theirs were better still, and they crossed his path. He began to check his horse: he wanted to turn around; but the horse was running at full speed and could not be stopped, and he flew straight toward them. He saw a red-bearded Tartar on a gray horse, who was coming near to him. He howled and showed his teeth, and his gun was against his shoulder. "Well," thought Zhilín, "I know you devils. When you take one alive, you put him in a hole and beat him with a whip. I will not fall into your hands alive----" Though Zhilín was not tall, he was brave. He drew his sword, turned his horse straight against the Tartar, and thought: "Either I will knock his horse off its feet, or I will strike the Tartar with my sword." Zhilín got within a horse's length from him, when they shot at him from behind and hit the horse. The horse dropped on the ground while going at full speed, and fell on Zhilín's leg. He wanted to get up, but two stinking Tartars were already astride of him. He tugged and knocked down the two Tartars, but three more jumped down from their horses and began to strike him with the butts of their guns. Things grew dim before his eyes, and he tottered. The Tartars took hold of him, took from their saddles some reserve straps, twisted his arms behind his back, tied them with a Tartar knot, and fastened him to the saddle. They knocked down his hat, pulled off his boots, rummaged all over him, and took away his money and his watch, and tore all his clothes. Zhilín looked back at his horse. The dear animal was lying just as it had fallen down, and only twitched its legs and did not reach the ground with them; in its head there was a hole, and from it the black blood gushed and wet the dust for an ell around. A Tartar went up to the horse, to pull off the saddle. The horse was struggling still, and so he took out his dagger and cut its throat. A whistling sound came from the throat, and the horse twitched, and was dead. The Tartars took off the saddle and the trappings. The red-bearded Tartar mounted his horse, and the others seated Zhilín behind him. To prevent his falling off, they attached him by a strap to the Tartar's belt, and they rode off to the mountains. Zhilín was sitting back of the Tartar, and shaking and striking with his face against the stinking Tartar's back. All he saw before him was the mighty back, and the muscular neck, and the livid, shaved nape of his head underneath his cap. Zhilín's head was bruised, and the blood was clotted under his eyes. And he could not straighten himself on the saddle, nor wipe off his blood. His arms were twisted so badly that his shoulder bones pained him. They rode for a long time from one mountain to another, and forded a river, and came out on a path, where they rode through a ravine. Zhilín wanted to take note of the road on which they were travelling, but his eyes were smeared with blood, and he could not turn around. It was getting dark. They crossed another stream and rode up a rocky mountain. There was an odour of smoke, and the dogs began to bark. They had come to a native village. The Tartars got down from their horses; the Tartar children gathered around Zhilín, and screamed, and rejoiced, and aimed stones at him. The Tartar drove the boys away, took Zhilín down from his horse, and called a labourer. There came a Nogay, with large cheek-bones; he wore nothing but a shirt. The shirt was torn and left his breast bare. The Tartar gave him a command. The labourer brought the stocks,--two oak planks drawn through iron rings, and one of these rings with a clasp and lock. They untied Zhilín's hands, put the stocks on him, and led him into a shed: they pushed him in and locked the door. Zhilín fell on the manure pile. He felt around in the darkness for a soft spot, and lay down there. [Illustration: "They rode off to the mountains" _Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko_] II. Zhilín lay awake nearly the whole night. The nights were short. He saw through a chink that it was getting light. He got up, made the chink larger, and looked out. Through the chink Zhilín saw the road: it went down-hill; on the right was a Tartar cabin, and near it two trees. A black dog lay on the threshold, and a goat strutted about with her kids, which were jerking their little tails. He saw a young Tartar woman coming up the hill; she wore a loose coloured shirt and pantaloons and boots, and her head was covered with a caftan, and on her head there was a large tin pitcher with water. She walked along, jerking her back, and bending over, and by the hand she led a young shaven Tartar boy in nothing but his shirt. The Tartar woman went into the cabin with the water, and out came the Tartar of the day before, with the red beard, wearing a silk half-coat, a silver dagger on a strap, and shoes on his bare feet. On his head there was a tall, black sheepskin hat, tilted backwards. He came out, and he stretched himself and smoothed his red beard. He stood awhile, gave the labourer an order, and went away. Then two boys rode by, taking the horses to water. The muzzles of the horses were wet. Then there ran out some other shaven boys, in nothing but their shirts, with no trousers; they gathered in a crowd, walked over to the shed, picked up a stick, and began to poke it through the chink. When Zhilín shouted at the children, they screamed and started to run back, so that their bare knees glistened in the sun. Zhilín wanted to drink,--his throat was all dried up. He thought: "If they would only come to see me!" He heard them open the shed. The red Tartar came in, and with him another, black-looking fellow, of smaller stature. His eyes were black and bright, his cheeks ruddy, his small beard clipped; his face looked jolly, and he kept laughing all the time. This swarthy fellow was dressed even better: he had on a silk half-coat, of a blue colour, embroidered with galloons. In his belt there was a large silver dagger; his slippers were of red morocco and also embroidered with silver. Over his thin slippers he wore heavier shoes. His cap was tall, of white astrakhan. The red Tartar came in. He said something, as though scolding, and stopped. He leaned against the door-post, dangled his dagger, and like a wolf looked furtively at Zhilín. But the swarthy fellow--swift, lively, walking around as though on springs--went up straight to Zhilín, squatted down, showed his teeth, slapped him on the shoulder, began to rattle off something in his language, winked with his eyes, clicked his tongue, and kept repeating: "Goot Uruss! Goot Uruss!" Zhilín did not understand a thing and said: "Give me to drink, give me water to drink!" The swarthy fellow laughed. "Goot Uruss!" he kept rattling off. Zhilín showed with his lips and hands that he wanted something to drink. The swarthy fellow understood what he wanted, laughed out, looked through the door, and called some one: "Dina!" In came a thin, slender little girl, of about thirteen years of age, who resembled the swarthy man very much. Evidently she was his daughter. Her eyes, too, were black and bright, and her face was pretty. She wore a long blue shirt, with broad sleeves and without a belt. The skirt, the breast, and the sleeves were trimmed with red. On her legs were pantaloons, and on her feet slippers, with high-heeled shoes over them; on her neck she wore a necklace of Russian half-roubles. Her head was uncovered; her braid was black, with a ribbon through it, and from the ribbon hung small plates and a Russian rouble. Her father gave her a command. She ran away, and came back and brought a small tin pitcher. She gave him the water, and herself squatted down, bending up in such a way that her shoulders were below her knees. She sat there, and opened her eyes, and looked at Zhilín drinking, as though he were some animal. Zhilín handed her back the pitcher. She jumped away like a wild goat. Even her father laughed. He sent her somewhere else. She took the pitcher and ran away; she brought some fresh bread on a round board, and again sat down, bent over, riveted her eyes on him, and kept looking. The Tartars went away and locked the door. After awhile the Nogay came to Zhilín, and said: "Ai-da, master, ai-da!" He did not know any Russian, either. All Zhilín could make out was that he should follow him. Zhilín started with the stocks, and he limped and could not walk, so much did the stocks pull his legs aside. Zhilín went out with the Nogay. He saw a Tartar village of about ten houses, and a church of theirs, with a small tower. Near one house stood three horses, all saddled. Boys were holding the reins. From the house sprang the swarthy Tartar, and he waved his hand for Zhilín to come up. He laughed all the while, and talked in his language, and disappeared through the door. Zhilín entered the house. It was a good living-room,--the walls were plastered smooth with clay. Along the front wall lay coloured cushions, and at the sides hung costly rugs; on the rugs were guns, pistols, swords,--all in silver. By one wall there was a small stove, on a level with the floor. The floor was of dirt and as clean as a threshing-floor, and the whole front corner was carpeted with felt; and over the felt lay rugs, and on the rugs cushions. On these rugs sat the Tartars, in their slippers without their outer shoes: there were the swarthy fellow, the red Tartar, and three guests. At their backs were feather cushions, and before them, on a round board, were millet cakes and melted butter in a bowl, and Tartar beer, "buza," in a small pitcher. They were eating with their hands, and their hands were all greasy from the butter. The swarthy man jumped up and ordered Zhilín to be placed to one side, not on a rug, but on the bare floor; he went back to his rug, and treated his guests to millet cakes and buza. The labourer placed Zhilín where he had been ordered, himself took off his outer shoes, put them at the door, where stood the other shoes, and sat down on the felt next to the masters. He looked at them as they ate, and wiped off his spittle. The Tartars ate the cakes. Then there came a Tartar woman, in a shirt like the one the girl had on, and in pantaloons, and with a kerchief over her head. She carried away the butter and the cakes, and brought a small wash-basin of a pretty shape, and a pitcher with a narrow neck. The Tartars washed their hands, then folded them, knelt down, blew in every direction, and said their prayers. Then one of the Tartar guests turned to Zhilín, and began to speak in Russian: "You," he said, "were taken by Kazi-Muhammed," and he pointed to the red Tartar, "and he gave you to Abdul-Murat." He pointed to the swarthy man. "Abdul-Murat is now your master." Zhilín kept silence. Then Abdul-Murat began to speak. He pointed to Zhilín, and laughed, and kept repeating: "Soldier Uruss! Goot Uruss!" The interpreter said: "He wants you to write a letter home that they may send a ransom for you. When they send it, you will be set free." Zhilín thought awhile and said: "How much ransom does he want?" The Tartars talked together; then the interpreter said: "Three thousand in silver." "No," said Zhilín, "I cannot pay that." Abdul jumped up, began to wave his hands and to talk to Zhilín, thinking that he would understand him. The interpreter translated. He said: "How much will you give?" Zhilín thought awhile, and said: "Five hundred roubles." Then the Tartars began to talk a great deal, all at the same time. Abdul shouted at the red Tartar. He was so excited that the spittle just spirted from his mouth. But the red Tartar only scowled and clicked his tongue. They grew silent, and the interpreter said: "The master is not satisfied with five hundred roubles. He has himself paid two hundred for you. Kazi-Muhammed owed him a debt. He took you for that debt. Three thousand roubles, nothing less will do. And if you do not write, you will be put in a hole and beaten with a whip." "Oh," thought Zhilín, "it will not do to show that I am frightened; that will only be worse." He leaped to his feet, and said: "Tell that dog that if he is going to frighten me, I will not give him a penny, and I will refuse to write. I have never been afraid of you dogs, and I never will be." The interpreter translated, and all began to speak at the same time. They babbled for a long time; then the swarthy Tartar jumped up and walked over to Zhilín: "Uruss," he said, "dzhigit, dzhigit Uruss!" Dzhigit in their language means a "brave." And he laughed; he said something to the interpreter, and the interpreter said: "Give one thousand roubles!" Zhilín stuck to what he had said: "I will not give more than five hundred. And if you kill me, you will get nothing." The Tartars talked awhile and sent the labourer somewhere, and themselves kept looking now at Zhilín and now at the door. The labourer came, and behind him walked a fat man; he was barefoot and tattered; he, too, had on the stocks. Zhilín just shouted, for he recognized Kostylín. He, too, had been caught. They were placed beside each other. They began to talk to each other, and the Tartars kept silence and looked at them. Zhilín told what had happened to him; and Kostylín told him that his horse had stopped and his gun had missed fire, and that the same Abdul had overtaken and captured him. Abdul jumped up, and pointed to Kostylín, and said something. The interpreter translated it, and said that both of them belonged to the same master, and that the one who would first furnish the money would be the first to be released. "Now you," he said, "are a cross fellow, but your friend is meek; he has written a letter home, and they will send five thousand roubles. He will be fed well, and will not be insulted." So Zhilín said: "My friend may do as he pleases; maybe he is rich, but I am not. As I have said, so will it be. If you want to, kill me,--you will not gain by it,--but more than five hundred will I not give." They were silent for awhile. Suddenly Abdul jumped up, fetched a small box, took out a pen, a piece of paper, and some ink, put it all before Zhilín, slapped him on the shoulder, and motioned for him to write. He agreed to the five hundred. "Wait awhile," Zhilín said to the interpreter. "Tell him that he has to feed us well, and give us the proper clothes and shoes, and keep us together,--it will be jollier for us,--and take off the stocks." He looked at the master and laughed. The master himself laughed. He listened to the interpreter, and said: "I will give you the best of clothes,--a Circassian mantle and boots,--you will be fit to marry. We will feed you like princes. And if you want to stay together, you may live in the shed. But the stocks cannot be taken off, for you will run away. For the night we will take them off." He ran up to Zhilín, and tapped him on the shoulder: "You goot, me goot!" Zhilín wrote the letter, but he did not address it right. He thought he would run away. Zhilín and Kostylín were taken back to the shed. They brought for them maize straw, water in a pitcher, bread, two old mantles, and worn soldier boots. They had evidently been pulled off dead soldiers. For the night the stocks were taken off, and they were locked in the barn. III. Zhilín and his companion lived thus for a whole month. Their master kept laughing. "You, Iván, goot, me, Abdul, goot!" But he did not feed them well. All he gave them to eat was unsalted millet bread, baked like pones, or entirely unbaked dough. Kostylín wrote home a second letter. He was waiting for the money to come, and felt lonesome. He sat for days at a time in the shed counting the days before the letter would come, or he slept. But Zhilín knew that his letter would not reach any one, and so he did not write another. "Where," he thought, "is my mother to get so much money? As it is, she lived mainly by what I sent her. If she should collect five hundred roubles, she would be ruined in the end. If God grants it, I will manage to get away from here." And he watched and thought of how to get away. He walked through the village and whistled, or he sat down somewhere to work with his hands, either making a doll from clay, or weaving a fence from twigs. Zhilín was a great hand at all kinds of such work. One day he made a doll, with a nose, and hands, and legs, in a Tartar shirt, and put the doll on the roof. The Tartar maidens were going for water. His master's daughter, Dina, saw the doll, and she called up the Tartar girls. They put down their pitchers, and looked, and laughed. Zhilín took down the doll and gave it to them. They laughed, and did not dare take it. He left the doll, and went back to the shed to see what they would do. Dina ran up, looked around, grasped the doll, and ran away with it. In the morning, at daybreak, he saw Dina coming out with the doll in front of the house. The doll was all dressed up in red rags, and she was rocking the doll and singing to it in her fashion. The old woman came out. She scolded her, took the doll away from her and broke it, and sent Dina to work. Zhilín made another doll, a better one than before, and he gave it to Dina. One day Dina brought him a small pitcher. She put it down, herself sat down and looked at him, and laughed, as she pointed to the pitcher. "What is she so happy about?" thought Zhilín. He took the pitcher and began to drink. He thought it was water, but, behold, it was milk. He drank the milk, and said: "It is good!" Dina was very happy. "Good, Iván, good!" and she jumped up, clapped her hands, took away the pitcher, and ran off. From that time she brought him milk every day on the sly. The Tartars make cheese-cakes from goat milk, and dry them on the roofs,--and so she brought him those cakes also. One day the master killed a sheep, so she brought him a piece of mutton in her sleeve. She would throw it down and run away. One day there was a severe storm, and for an hour the rain fell as though from a pail. All the streams became turbid. Where there was a ford, the water was now eight feet deep, and stones were borne down. Torrents were running everywhere, and there was a roar in the mountains. When the storm was over, streams were coming down the village in every direction. Zhilín asked his master to let him have a penknife, and with it he cut out a small axle and little boards, and made a wheel, and to each end of the wheel he attached a doll. The girls brought him pieces of material, and he dressed the dolls: one a man, the other a woman. He fixed them firmly, and placed the wheel over a brook. The wheel began to turn, and the dolls to jump. The whole village gathered around it; boys, girls, women, and men came, and they clicked with their tongues: "Ai, Uruss! Ai, Iván!" Abdul had a Russian watch, but it was broken. He called Zhilín, showed it to him, and clicked his tongue. Zhilín said: "Let me have it! I will fix it!" He took it to pieces with a penknife; then he put it together, and gave it back to him. The watch was running now. The master was delighted. He brought his old half-coat,--it was all in rags,--and made him a present of it. What could he do but take it? He thought it would be good enough to cover himself with in the night. After that the rumour went abroad that Zhilín was a great master. They began to come to him from distant villages: one, to have him fix a gun-lock or a pistol, another, to set a clock a-going. His master brought him tools,--pinchers, gimlets, and files. One day a Tartar became sick: they sent to Zhilín, and said, "Go and cure him!" Zhilín did not know anything about medicine. He went, took a look at him, and thought, "Maybe he will get well by himself." He went to the barn, took some water and sand, and mixed it. In the presence of the Tartars he said a charm over the water, and gave it to him to drink. Luckily for him, the Tartar got well. Zhilín began to understand their language. Some of the Tartars got used to him. When they needed him, they called, "Iván, Iván!" but others looked at him awry, as at an animal. The red Tartar did not like Zhilín. Whenever he saw him, he frowned and turned away, or called him names. There was also an old man; he did not live in the village, but came from farther down the mountain. Zhilín saw him only when he came to the mosque, to pray to God. He was a small man; his cap was wrapped with a white towel. His beard and moustache were clipped, and they were as white as down; his face was wrinkled and as red as a brick. His nose was hooked, like a hawk's beak, and his eyes were gray and mean-looking; of teeth he had only two tusks. He used to walk in his turban, leaning on a crutch, and looking around him like a wolf. Whenever he saw Zhilín, he grunted and turned away. One day Zhilín went down-hill, to see where the old man was living. He walked down the road, and saw a little garden, with a stone fence, and inside the fence were cherry and apricot trees, and stood a hut with a flat roof. He came closer to it, and he saw beehives woven from straw, and bees were swarming around and buzzing. The old man was kneeling, and doing something to a hive. Zhilín got up higher, to get a good look, and made a noise with his stocks. The old man looked around and shrieked; he pulled the pistol out from his belt and fired at Zhilín. He had just time to hide behind a rock. The old man went to the master to complain about Zhilín. The master called up Zhilín, and laughed, and asked: "Why did you go to the old man?" "I have not done him any harm," he said. "I just wanted to see how he lives." The master told the old man that. But the old man was angry, and hissed, and rattled something off; he showed his teeth and waved his hand threateningly at Zhilín. Zhilín did not understand it all; but he understood that the old man was telling his master to kill all the Russians, and not to keep them in the village. The old man went away. Zhilín asked his master what kind of a man that old Tartar was. The master said: "He is a big man! He used to be the first dzhigit: he killed a lot of Russians, and he was rich. He had three wives and eight sons. All of them lived in the same village. The Russians came, destroyed the village, and killed seven of his sons. One son was left alive, and he surrendered himself to the Russians. The old man went and surrendered himself, too, to the Russians. He stayed with them three months, found his son there, and killed him, and then he ran away. Since then he has stopped fighting. He has been to Mecca, to pray to God, and that is why he wears the turban. He who has been to Mecca is called a Hadji and puts on a turban. He has no use for you fellows. He tells me to kill you; but I cannot kill you,--I have paid for you; and then, Iván, I like you. I not only have no intention of killing you, but I would not let you go back, if I had not given my word to you." He laughed as he said that, and added in Russian: "You, Iván, good, me, Abdul, good!" IV. Zhilín lived thus for a month. In the daytime he walked around the village and made things with his hands, and when night came, and all was quiet in the village, he began to dig in the shed. It was difficult to dig on account of the rocks, but he sawed the stones with the file, and made a hole through which he meant to crawl later. "First I must find out what direction to go in," he thought; "but the Tartars will not tell me anything." So he chose a time when his master was away; he went after dinner back of the village, up-hill, where he could see the place. But when his master went away, he told his little boy to keep an eye on Zhilín and to follow him everywhere. So the boy ran after Zhilín, and said: "Don't go! Father said that you should not go there. I will call the people!" Zhilín began to persuade him. "I do not want to go far," he said; "I just want to walk up the mountain: I want to find an herb with which to cure you people. Come with me; I cannot run away with the stocks. To-morrow I will make you a bow and arrows." He persuaded the boy, and they went together. As he looked up the mountain, it looked near, but with the stocks it was hard to walk; he walked and walked, and climbed the mountain with difficulty. Zhilín sat down and began to look at the place. To the south of the shed there was a ravine, and there a herd of horses was grazing, and in a hollow could be seen another village. At that village began a steeper mountain, and beyond that mountain there was another mountain. Between the mountains could be seen a forest, and beyond it again the mountains, rising higher and higher. Highest of all, there were white mountains, capped with snow, just like sugar loaves. And one snow mountain stood with its cap above all the rest. To the east and the west there were just such mountains; here and there smoke rose from villages in the clefts. "Well," he thought, "that is all their side." He began to look to the Russian side. At his feet was a brook and his village, and all around were little gardens. At the brook women were sitting,--they looked as small as dolls,--and washing the linen. Beyond the village and below it there was a mountain, and beyond that, two other mountains, covered with forests; between the two mountains could be seen an even spot, and on that plain, far, far away, it looked as though smoke were settling. Zhilín recalled where the sun used to rise and set when he was at home in the fortress. He looked down there,--sure enough, that was the valley where the Russian fortress ought to be. There, then, between those two mountains, he had to run. The sun was beginning to go down. The snow-capped mountains changed from white to violet; it grew dark in the black mountains; vapour arose from the clefts, and the valley, where our fortress no doubt was, gleamed in the sunset as though on fire. Zhilín began to look sharply,--something was quivering in the valley, like smoke rising from chimneys. He was sure now that it must be the Russian fortress. It grew late; he could hear the mullah call; the flock was being driven, and the cows lowed. The boy said to him, "Come!" but Zhilín did not feel like leaving. They returned home. "Well," thought Zhilín, "now I know the place, and I must run." He wanted to run that same night. The nights were dark,--the moon was on the wane. Unfortunately the Tartars returned toward evening. At other times they returned driving cattle before them, and then they were jolly. But this time they did not drive home anything, but brought back a dead Tartar, a red-haired companion of theirs. They came back angry, and all gathered to bury him. Zhilín, too, went out to see. They wrapped the dead man in linen, without putting him in a coffin, and carried him under the plane-trees beyond the village, and placed him on the grass. The mullah came, and the old men gathered around him, their caps wrapped with towels, and took off their shoes and seated themselves in a row on their heels, in front of the dead man. At their head was the mullah, and then three old men in turbans, sitting in a row, and behind them other Tartars. They sat, and bent their heads, and kept silence. They were silent for quite awhile. Then the mullah raised his head, and said: "Allah!" (That means "God.") He said that one word, and again they lowered their heads and kept silence for a long time; they sat without stirring. Again the mullah raised his head: "Allah!" and all repeated, "Allah!" and again they were silent. The dead man lay on the grass, and did not stir, and they sat about him like the dead. Not one of them stirred. One could hear only the leaves on the plane-tree rustling in the breeze. Then the mullah said a prayer, and all got up, lifted the dead body, and carried it away. They took it to a grave,--not a simple grave, but dug under like a cave. They took the dead man under his arms and by his legs, bent him over, let him down softly, pushed him under in a sitting posture, and fixed his arms on his body. A Nogay dragged up a lot of green reeds; they bedded the grave with it, then quickly filled it with dirt, levelled it up, and put a stone up straight at the head of it. They tramped down the earth, and again sat down in a row near the grave. They were silent for a long time. "Allah, Allah, Allah!" They sighed and got up. A red-haired Tartar distributed money to the old men; then he got up, took a whip, struck himself three times on his forehead, and went home. Next morning Zhilín saw the red Tartar take a mare out of the village, and three Tartars followed him. They went outside the village; then the red-haired Tartar took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves,--he had immense arms,--and took out his dagger and whetted it on a steel. The Tartars jerked up the mare's head, and the red-haired man walked over to her, cut her throat, threw her down, and began to flay her,--to rip the skin open with his fists. Then came women and girls, and they began to wash the inside and the entrails. Then they chopped up the mare and dragged the flesh to the house. And the whole village gathered at the house of the red-haired Tartar to celebrate the dead man's wake. For three days did they eat the horse-flesh, drink buza, and remember the dead man. On the fourth day Zhilín saw them get ready to go somewhere for a dinner. They brought horses, dressed themselves up, and went away,--about ten men, and the red Tartar with them; Abdul was the only one who was left at home. The moon was just beginning to increase, and the nights were still dark. "Well," thought Zhilín, "to-night I must run," and he told Kostylín so. But Kostylín was timid. "How can we run? We do not know the road." "I know it." "But we cannot reach it in the night." "If we do not, we shall stay for the night in the woods. I have a lot of cakes with me. You certainly do not mean to stay. It would be all right if they sent the money; but suppose they cannot get together so much. The Tartars are mean now, because the Russians have killed one of theirs. I understand they want to kill us now." Kostylín thought awhile: "Well, let us go!" V. Zhilín crept into the hole and dug it wider, so that Kostylín could get through; and then they sat still and waited for everything to quiet down in the village. When all grew quiet, Zhilín crawled through the hole and got out. He whispered to Kostylín to crawl out. Kostylín started to come out, but he caught a stone with his foot, and it made a noise. Now their master had a dappled watch-dog, and he was dreadfully mean; his name was Ulyashin. Zhilín had been feeding him before. When Ulyashin heard the voice, he began to bark and rushed forward, and with him other dogs. Zhilín gave a low whistle and threw a piece of cake to the dog, and the dog recognized him and wagged his tail and stopped barking. The master heard it, and he called out from the hut, "Hait, hait, Ulyashin!" But Zhilín was scratching Ulyashin behind his ears; so the dog was silent and rubbed against his legs and wagged his tail. They sat awhile around the corner. All was silent; nothing could be heard but the sheep coughing in the hut corner, and the water rippling down the pebbles. It was dark; the stars stood high in the heaven; the young moon shone red above the mountain, and its horns were turned upward. In the clefts the mist looked as white as milk. Zhilín got up and said to his companion: "Now, my friend, let us start!" They started. They had made but a few steps, when they heard the mullah sing out on the roof: "Allah besmillah! Ilrakhman!" That meant that the people were going to the mosque. They sat down again, hiding behind a wall. They sat for a long time, waiting for the people to pass by. Again everything was quiet. "Well, with God's aid!" They made the sign of the cross, and started. They crossed the yard and went down-hill to the brook; they crossed the brook and walked down the ravine. The mist was dense and low on the ground, and overhead the stars were, oh, so visible. Zhilín saw by the stars in what direction they had to go. In the mist it felt fresh, and it was easy to walk, only the boots were awkward, they had worn down so much. Zhilín took off his boots and threw them away, and marched on barefoot. He leaped from stone to stone, and kept watching the stars. Kostylín began to fall behind. "Walk slower," he said. "The accursed boots,--they have chafed my feet." "Take them off! You will find it easier without them." Kostylín walked barefoot after that; but it was only worse: he cut his feet on the rocks, and kept falling behind. Zhilín said to him: "If you bruise your feet, they will heal up; but if they catch you; they will kill you,--so it will be worse." Kostylín said nothing, but he groaned as he walked. They walked for a long time through a ravine. Suddenly they heard dogs barking. Zhilín stopped and looked around; he groped with his hands and climbed a hill. "Oh," he said, "we have made a mistake,--we have borne too much to the right. Here is a village,--I saw it from the mountain; we must go back and to the left, and up the mountain. There must be a forest here." But Kostylín said: "Wait at least awhile! Let me rest: my feet are all blood-stained." "Never mind, friend, they will heal up! Jump more lightly,--like this!" And Zhilín ran back, and to the left, up the mountain into the forest. Kostylín kept falling behind and groaning. Zhilín hushed him, and walked on. They got up the mountain, and there, indeed, was a forest. They went into the forest, and tore all the clothes they had against the thorns. They struck a path in the forest, and followed it. "Stop!" Hoofs were heard tramping on the path. They stopped to listen. It was the sound of a horse's hoofs. They started, and again it began to thud. They stopped, and it, too, stopped. Zhilín crawled up to it, and saw something standing in the light on the road. It was not exactly a horse, and again it was like a horse with something strange above it, and certainly not a man. He heard it snort. "What in the world is it?" Zhilín gave a light whistle, and it bolted away from the path, so that he could hear it crash through the woods: the branches broke off, as though a storm went through them. Kostylín fell down in fright. But Zhilín laughed and said: "That is a stag. Do you hear him break the branches with his horns? We are afraid of him, and he is afraid of us." They walked on. The Pleiades were beginning to settle,--it was not far from morning. They did not know whether they were going right, or not. Zhilín thought that that was the path over which they had taken him, and that he was about ten versts from his own people; still there were no certain signs, and, besides, in the night nothing could be made out. They came out on a clearing. Kostylín sat down, and said: "Do as you please, but I will not go any farther! My feet refuse to move." Zhilín begged him to go on. "No," he said, "I cannot walk on." Zhilín got angry, spit out in disgust, and scolded him. "Then I will go by myself,--good-bye!" Kostylín got up and walked on. They walked about four versts. The mist grew denser in the forest, and nothing could be seen in front of them, and the stars were quite dim. Suddenly they heard a horse tramping in front of them. They could hear the horse catch with its hoofs in the stones. Zhilín lay down on his belly, and put his ear to the ground to listen. "So it is, a rider is coming this way!" They ran off the road, sat down in the bushes, and waited. Zhilín crept up to the road, and saw a Tartar on horseback, driving a cow before him, and mumbling something to himself. The Tartar passed by them. Zhilín went back to Kostylín. "Well, with God's help, he is gone. Get up, and let us go!" Kostylín tried to get up, but fell down. "I cannot, upon my word, I cannot. I have no strength." The heavy, puffed-up man was in a perspiration, and as the cold mist in the forest went through him and his feet were all torn, he went all to pieces. Zhilín tried to get him up, but Kostylín cried: "Oh, it hurts!" Zhilín was frightened. "Don't shout so! You know that the Tartar is not far off,--he will hear you." But he thought: "He is, indeed, weak, so what shall I do with him? It will not do to abandon my companion." "Well," he said, "get up, get on my back, and I will carry you, if you cannot walk." He took Kostylín on his back, put his hands on Kostylín's legs, walked out on the road, and walked on. "Only be sure," he said, "and do not choke me with your hands, for Christ's sake. Hold on to my shoulders!" It was hard for Zhilín: his feet, too, were blood-stained, and he was worn out. He kept bending down, straightening up Kostylín, and throwing him up, so that he might sit higher, and dragged him along the road. Evidently the Tartar had heard Kostylín's shout. Zhilín heard some one riding from behind and calling in his language. Zhilín made for the brush. The Tartar pulled out his gun and fired; he screeched in his fashion, and rode back along the road. "Well," said Zhilín, "we are lost, my friend! That dog will collect the Tartars and they will start after us. If we cannot make another three versts, we are lost." But he thought about Kostylín: "The devil has tempted me to take this log along. If I had been alone, I should have escaped long ago." Kostylín said: "Go yourself! Why should you perish for my sake?" "No, I will not go,--it will not do to leave a comrade." He took him once more on his shoulders, and held on to him. Thus they walked another verst. The woods extended everywhere, and no end was to be seen. The mist was beginning to lift, and rose in the air like little clouds, and the stars could not be seen. Zhilín was worn out. They came to a little spring by the road; it was lined with stones. Zhilín stopped and put down Kostylín. "Let me rest," he said, "and get a drink! We will eat our cakes. It cannot be far now." He had just got down to drink, when he heard the tramping of horses behind them. Again they rushed to the right, into the bushes, down an incline, and lay down. They could hear Tartar voices. The Tartars stopped at the very spot where they had left the road. They talked awhile, then they made a sound, as though sicking dogs. Something crashed through the bushes, and a strange dog made straight for them. It stopped and began to bark. Then the Tartars came down,--they, too, were strangers. They took them, bound them, put them on their horses, and carried them off. They travelled about three versts, when they were met by Abdul, the prisoners' master, and two more Tartars. They talked with each other, and the prisoners were put on the other horses and taken back to the village. Abdul no longer laughed, and did not speak one word with them. They were brought to the village at daybreak, and were placed in the street. The children ran up and beat them with stones and sticks, and screamed. The Tartars gathered in a circle, and the old man from down-hill came, too. They talked together. Zhilín saw that they were sitting in judgment on them, discussing what to do with them. Some said that they ought to be sent farther into the mountains, but the old man said that they should be killed. Abdul disputed with them and said: "I have paid money for them, and I will get a ransom for them." But the old man said: "They will not pay us anything; they will only give us trouble. It is a sin to feed Russians. Kill them, and that will be the end of it." They all went their way. The master walked over to Zhilín and said: "If the ransom does not come in two weeks, I will beat you to death. And if you try to run again I will kill you like a dog. Write a letter, and write it well!" Paper was brought to them, and they wrote the letters. The stocks were put on them, and they were taken back of the mosque. There was a ditch there, about twelve feet in depth,--and into this ditch they were let down. VI. They now led a very hard life. The stocks were not taken off, and they were not let out into the wide world. Unbaked dough was thrown down to them, as to dogs, and water was let down to them in a pitcher. There was a stench in the ditch, and it was close and damp. Kostylín grew very ill, and swelled, and had a breaking out on his whole body; and he kept groaning all the time, or he slept. Zhilín was discouraged: he saw that the situation was desperate. He did not know how to get out of it. He began to dig, but there was no place to throw the dirt in; the master saw it, and threatened to kill him. One day he was squatting in the ditch, and thinking of the free world, and he felt pretty bad. Suddenly a cake fell down on his knees, and a second, and some cherries. He looked up,--it was Dina. She looked at him, laughed, and ran away. Zhilín thought: "Maybe Dina will help me." He cleaned up a place in the ditch, scraped up some clay, and began to make dolls. He made men, horses, and dogs. He thought: "When Dina comes I will throw them to her." But on the next day Dina did not come. Zhilín heard the tramping of horses; somebody rode by, and the Tartars gathered at the mosque; they quarrelled and shouted, and talked about the Russians. And he heard the old man's voice. He could not make out exactly what it was, but he guessed that the Russians had come close to the village, and that the Tartars were afraid that they might come to the village, and they did not know what to do with the prisoners. They talked awhile and went away. Suddenly he heard something rustle above him. He looked up; Dina was squatting down, and her knees towered above her head; she leaned over, and her necklace hung down and dangled over the ditch. Her little eyes glistened like stars. She took two cheese-cakes out of her sleeve and threw them down to him. Zhilín said to her: "Why have you not been here for so long? I have made you some toys. Here they are!" He began to throw one after the other to her, but she shook her head, and did not look at them. "I do not want them," she said. She sat awhile in silence, and said; "Iván, they want to kill you!" She pointed with her hand to her neck. "Who wants to kill me?" "My father,--the old men tell him to. I am sorry for you." So Zhilín said: "If you pity me, bring me a long stick!" She shook her head, to say that she could not. He folded his hands, and began to beg her: "Dina, if you please! Dear Dina, bring it to me!" "I cannot," she said. "The people are at home, and they would see me." And she went away. Zhilín was sitting there in the evening, and thinking what would happen. He kept looking up. The stars could be seen, and the moon was not yet up. The mullah called, and all grew quiet. Zhilín was beginning to fall asleep; he thought the girl would be afraid. Suddenly some clay fell on his head. He looked up and saw a long pole coming down at the end of the ditch. It tumbled, and descended, and came down into the ditch. Zhilín was happy; he took hold of it and let it down,--it was a stout pole. He had seen it before on his master's roof. He looked up: the stars were shining high in the heavens, and over the very ditch Dina's eyes glistened in the darkness. She bent her face over the edge of the ditch, and whispered: "Iván, Iván!" and waved her hands in front of her face, as much as to say: "Speak softly!" "What is it?" asked Zhilín. "They are all gone. There are two only at the house." So Zhilín said: "Kostylín, come, let us try for the last time; I will give you a lift." Kostylín would not even listen. "No," he said, "I shall never get away from here. Where should I go, since I have no strength to turn around?" "If so, good-bye! Do not think ill of me!" He kissed Kostylín. He took hold of the pole, told Dina to hold on to it, and climbed up. Two or three times he slipped down: the stocks were in his way. Kostylín held him up, and he managed to get on. Dina pulled him by the shirt with all her might, and laughed. Zhilín took the pole, and said: "Take it to where you found it, for if they see it, they will beat you." She dragged the pole away, and Zhilín went down-hill. He crawled down an incline, took a sharp stone, and tried to break the lock of the stocks. But the lock was a strong one, and he could not break it. He heard some one running down the hill, leaping lightly. He thought it was Dina. Dina ran up, took a stone, and said: "Let me do it!" She knelt down and tried to break it; but her arms were as thin as rods,--there was no strength in them. She threw away the stone, and began to weep. Zhilín again worked on the lock, and Dina squatted near him, and held on to his shoulder. Zhilín looked around; on the left, beyond the mountain, he saw a red glow,--the moon was rising. "Well," he thought, "before the moon is up I must cross the ravine and get to the forest." He got up, threw away the stone, and, though in the stocks, started to go. "Good-bye, Dina dear! I will remember you all my life." Dina took hold of him; she groped all over him, trying to find a place to put the cakes. He took them from her. "Thank you," he said, "you are a clever girl. Who will make dolls for you without me?" And he patted her on the head. Dina began to cry. She covered her eyes with her hands, and ran up-hill like a kid. In the darkness he could hear the ornaments in the braid striking against her shoulders. Zhilín made the sign of the cross, took the lock of his fetters in his hand, that it might not clank, and started down the road, dragging his feet along, and looking at the glow, where the moon was rising. He recognized the road. By the straight road it would be about eight versts. If he only could get to the woods before the moon was entirely out! He crossed a brook,--and it was getting light beyond the mountain. He walked through the ravine; he walked and looked, but the moon was not yet to be seen. It was getting brighter, and on one side of the ravine everything could be seen more and more clearly. The shadow was creeping down the mountain, up toward him. Zhilín walked and kept in the shade. He hurried on, but the moon was coming out faster still; the tops of the trees on the right side were now in the light. As he came up to the woods, the moon came out entirely from behind the mountains, and it grew bright and white as in the daytime. All the leaves could be seen on the trees. The mountains were calm and bright; it was as though everything were dead. All that could be heard was the rippling of a brook below. He reached the forest,--he came across no men. Zhilín found a dark spot in the woods and sat down to rest himself. He rested, and ate a cake. He found a stone, and began once more to break down the lock. He bruised his hands, but did not break the lock. He got up, and walked on. He marched about a verst, but his strength gave out,--his feet hurt him so. He would make ten steps and then stop. "What is to be done?" he thought. "I will drag myself along until my strength gives out entirely. If I sit down, I shall not be able to get up. I cannot reach the fortress, so, when day breaks, I will lie down in the forest for the day, and at night I will move on." He walked the whole night. He came across two Tartars only, but he heard them from afar, and so hid behind a tree. The moon was beginning to pale, and Zhilín had not yet reached the edge of the forest. "Well," he thought, "I will take another thirty steps, after which I will turn into the forest, where I will sit down." He took the thirty steps, and there he saw that the forest came to an end. He went to the edge of it, and there it was quite light. Before him lay the steppe and the fortress, as in the palm of the hand, and to the left, close by at the foot of the mountain, fires were burning and going out, and the smoke was spreading, and men were near the camp-fires. He took a sharp look at them: the guns were glistening,--those were Cossacks and soldiers. Zhilín was happy. He collected his last strength and walked down-hill. And he thought: "God forfend that a Tartar rider should see me in the open! Though it is not far off, I should not get away." No sooner had he thought so, when, behold, on a mound stood three Tartars, not more than 150 fathoms away. They saw him, and darted toward him. His heart just sank in him. He waved his arms and shouted as loud as he could: "Brothers! Help, brothers!" Our men heard him, and away flew the mounted Cossacks. They started toward him, to cut off the Tartars. The Cossacks had far to go, but the Tartars were near. And Zhilín collected his last strength, took the stocks in his hand, and ran toward the Cossacks. He was beside himself, and he made the sign of the cross, and shouted: "Brothers! Brothers! Brothers!" There were about fifteen Cossacks. The Tartars were frightened, and they stopped before they reached him. And Zhilín ran up to the Cossacks. The Cossacks surrounded him, and asked: "Who are you? Where do you come from?" But Zhilín was beside himself, and he wept, and muttered: "Brothers! Brothers!" The soldiers ran out, and surrounded Zhilín: one gave him bread, another gruel, a third vódka; one covered him with a cloak, another broke off the lock. The officers heard of it, and took him to the fortress. The soldiers were happy, and his companions came to see him. Zhilín told them what had happened, and said: "So I have been home, and got married! No, evidently that is not my fate." And he remained in the service in the Caucasus. Not till a month later was Kostylín ransomed for five thousand. He was brought back more dead than alive. ERMÁK In the reign of Iván Vasílevich the Terrible there were the rich merchants, the Stroganóvs, and they lived in Perm, on the river Káma. They heard that along the river Káma, in a circle of 140 versts, there was good land: the soil had not been ploughed for centuries, the forests had not been cut down for centuries. In the forests were many wild animals, and along the river fish lakes, and no one was living on that land, but only Tartars passed through it. The Stroganóvs wrote a letter to the Tsar: "Give us this land, and we will ourselves build towns there and gather people and settle them there, and will not allow the Tartars to pass through it." The Tsar agreed to it, and gave them the land. The Stroganóvs sent out clerks to gather people. And there came to them a large number of roving people. Whoever came received from the Stroganóvs land, forest, and cattle, and no tenant pay was collected. All they had to do was to live and, in case of need, to go out in mass to fight the Tartars. Thus the land was settled by the Russian people. About twenty years passed. The Stroganóvs grew richer yet, and that land, 140 versts around, was not enough for them. They wanted to have more land still. About one hundred versts from them were high mountains, the Ural Mountains, and beyond them, they had heard, there was good land, and to that land there was no end. This land was ruled by a small Siberian prince, Kuchum by name. In former days Kuchum had sworn allegiance to the Russian Tsar, but later he began to rebel, and he threatened to destroy Stroganóv's towns. So the Stroganóvs wrote to the Tsar: "You have given us land, and we have conquered it and turned it over to you; now the thievish Tsarling Kuchum is rebelling against you, and wants to take that land away and ruin us. Command us to take possession of the land beyond the Ural Mountains; we will conquer Kuchum, and will bring all his land under your rule." The Tsar assented, and wrote back: "If you have sufficient force, take the land away from Kuchum. Only do not entice many people away from Russia." When the Stroganóvs got that letter from the Tsar, they sent out clerks to collect more people. And they ordered them to persuade mostly the Cossacks from the Vólga and the Don to come. At that time many Cossacks were roving along the Vólga and the Don. They used to gather in bands of two, three, or six hundred men, and to select an atamán, and to row down in barges, to capture ships and rob them, and for the winter they stayed in little towns on the shore. The clerks arrived at the Vólga, and there they asked who the famous Cossacks of that region were. They were told: "There are many Cossacks. It is impossible to live for them. There is Míshka Cherkáshenin, and Sarý-Azmán; but there is no fiercer one than Ermák Timoféich, the atamán. He has a thousand men, and not only the merchants and the people are afraid of him, but even the Tsarian army does not dare to cope with him." And the clerks went to Ermák the atamán, and began to persuade him to go to the Stroganóvs. Ermák received the clerks, listened to their speeches, and promised to come with his people about the time of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Near the holiday of the Assumption there came to the Stroganóvs six hundred Cossacks, with their atamán, Ermák Timoféich. At first Stroganóv sent them against the neighbouring Tartars. The Cossacks annihilated them. Then, when nothing was doing, the Cossacks roved in the neighbourhood and robbed. So Stroganóv sent for Ermák, and said: "I will not keep you any longer, if you are going to be so wanton." But Ermák said: "I do not like it myself, but I cannot control my people, they are spoiled. Give us work to do!" So Stroganóv said: "Go beyond the Ural and fight Kuchum, and take possession of his land. The Tsar will reward you for it." And he showed the Tsar's letter to Ermák. Ermák rejoiced, and collected his men, and said: "You are shaming me before my master,--you are robbing without reason. If you do not stop, he will drive you away, and where will you go then? At the Vólga there is a large Tsarian army; we shall be caught, and then we shall suffer for our old misdeeds. But if you feel lonesome, here is work for you." And he showed them the Tsar's letter, in which it said that Stroganóv had been permitted to conquer land beyond the Ural. The Cossacks had a consultation, and agreed to go. Ermák went to Stroganóv, and they began to deliberate how they had best go. They discussed how many barges they needed, how much grain, cattle, guns, powder, lead, how many captive Tartar interpreters, and how many foreigners as masters of gunnery. Stroganóv thought: "Though it may cost me much, I must give them everything or else they will stay here and will ruin me." Stroganóv agreed to everything, gathered what was needed, and fitted out Ermák and the Cossacks. On the 1st of September the Cossacks rowed with Ermák up the river Chúsovaya on thirty-two barges, with twelve men in each. For four days they rowed up the river, and then they turned into Serébryanaya River. Beyond that point it was impossible to navigate. They asked the guides, and learned that from there they had to cross the mountains and walk overland about two hundred versts, and then the rivers would begin again. The Cossacks stopped, built a town, and unloaded all their equipment; they abandoned the boats, made carts, put everything upon them, and started overland, across the mountains. All those places were covered with forest, and nobody was living there. They marched for about ten days, and struck the river Zharóvnya. Here they stopped again, and made themselves boats. They loaded them, and rowed down the river. They rowed five days, and then came more cheerful places,--meadows, forests, lakes. There was a plenty of fish and of animals, and animals that had not been scared by hunters. They rowed another day, and sailed into the river Túra. Along the Túra they came on Tartar people and towns. Ermák sent some Cossacks to take a look at a town, to see what it was like, and whether there was any considerable force in it. Twenty Cossacks went there, and they frightened all the Tartars, and seized the whole town, and captured all the cattle. Some of the Tartars they killed, and others they brought back alive. Ermák asked the Tartars through his interpreters what kind of people they were, and under whose rule they were living. The Tartars said that they were in the Siberian kingdom, and that their king was Kuchum. Ermák let the Tartars go, but three of the more intelligent he took with him, to show him the road. They rowed on. The farther they rowed, the larger did the river grow; and the farther they went, the better did the places become. They met more and more people; only they were not strong men. And all the towns that were near the river the Cossacks conquered. In one town they captured a large number of Tartars and one old man who was held in respect. They asked him what kind of a man he was. He said: "I am Tauzik, a servant of my king, Kuchum, who has made me a commander in this town." Ermák asked Tauzik about his king; how far his city of Sibír was; whether Kuchum had a large force; whether he had much wealth. Tauzik told him everything. He said: "Kuchum is the first king in the world. His city of Sibír is the largest city in the world. In that city," he said, "there are as many people and as many cattle as there are stars in the heaven. There is no counting his force, and not all the kings of the world can conquer him." But Ermák said: "We Russians have come here to conquer your king and to take his city, and to put it into the hands of the Russian Tsar. We have a large force. Those who have come with me are only the advance-guard; those that are rowing down behind us in barges are numberless, and all of them have guns. Our guns pierce trees, not like your bows and arrows. Just look!" And Ermák fired at a tree, and pierced it, and the Cossacks began to shoot on all sides. Tauzik in fright fell on his knees. Ermák said to him: "Go to your King Kuchum and tell him what you have seen! Let him surrender, and if he does not, we will destroy him." And he dismissed Tauzik. The Cossacks rowed on. They sailed into the river Toból, and were getting nearer to the city of Sibír. They sailed up to the small river Babasán, and there they saw a small town on its bank, and around the town a large number of Tartars. They sent an interpreter to the Tartars, to find out what kind of people they were. The interpreter returned, and said: "That is Kuchum's army that has gathered there. The leader of that army is Kuchum's own son-in-law, Mametkul. He has commanded me to tell you that you must return, or else he will destroy you." Ermák gathered his Cossacks, landed on the bank, and began to shoot at the Tartars. The moment the Tartars heard the shooting, they began to run. The Cossacks ran after them, and killed some, and captured others. Mametkul barely escaped. The Cossacks sailed on. They sailed into a broad, rapid river, the Irtýsh. Down Irtýsh River they sailed for a day, and came to a fair town, and there they stopped. The Cossacks went to the town. As they were coming near, the Tartars began to shoot their arrows, and they wounded three Cossacks. Then Ermák sent an interpreter to tell the Tartars that they must surrender the town, or else they would all be killed. The interpreter went, and he returned, and said: "Here lives Kuchum's servant, Atik Murza Kachara. He has a large force, and he says that he will not surrender the town." Ermák gathered the Cossacks, and said: "Boys, if we do not take this town, the Tartars will rejoice, and will not let us pass on. The more we strike them with terror, the easier will it be. Land all, and attack them all at once!" So they did. There were many Tartars there, and they were brave. When the Cossacks rushed at them, the Tartars began to shoot their arrows. They covered the Cossacks with them. Some were killed, and some wounded. The Cossacks became enraged, and when they got to the Tartars, they killed all they could lay their hands on. In this town the Cossacks found much property,--cattle, rugs, furs, and honey. They buried the dead, rested themselves, took away much property, and sailed on. They did not sail far, when they saw on the shore, like a city, an endless number of troops, and the whole army surrounded by a ditch and the ditch protected by timber. The Cossacks stopped. They deliberated. Ermák gathered a circle about him. "Well, boys, what shall we do?" The Cossacks were frightened. Some said that they ought to sail past, while others said that they ought to go back. And they looked gloomy and began to scold Ermák. They said: "Why did you bring us here? Already a few of ours have been killed, and many have been wounded; and all of us will perish here." They began to weep. But Ermák said to his sub-atamán, Iván Koltsó: "Well, Ványa, what do you think?" And Koltsó said: "What do I think? If they do not kill us to-day, they will to-morrow; and if not to-morrow, we shall die anyway on the oven. In my opinion, we ought to go out on the shore and rush in a body against the Tartars. Maybe God will give us victory." Ermák said: "You are a brave man, Ványa! That is what must be done. Oh, you boys! You are not Cossacks, but old women. All you are good for is to catch sturgeon and frighten Tartar women. Can't you see for yourselves? If we turn back we shall be destroyed; and if we stay here, they will destroy us. How can we go back? After a little work, it will come easier. Listen, boys! My father had a strong mare. Down-hill she would pull and on an even place she would pull. But when it came to going up-hill, she became stubborn and turned back, thinking that it would be easier. But my father took a club and belaboured her with it. She twisted and tugged and broke the whole cart. My father unhitched her from the cart and gave her a terrible whacking. If she had pulled the cart, she would have suffered no torment. So it is with us, boys. There is only one thing left for us to do, and that is to make straight for the Tartars." The Cossacks laughed, and said: "Timoféich, you are evidently more clever than we are. You have no business to ask us fools. Take us where you please. A man does not die twice, and one death cannot be escaped." And Ermák said: "Listen, boys! This is what we shall do. They have not yet seen us all. Let us divide into three parts. Those in the middle will march straight against them, and the other two divisions will surround them on the right and on the left. When the middle detachment begins to walk toward them, they will think that we are all there, and so they will leap forward. Then we will strike them from the sides. That's the way, boys! If we beat these, we shall not have to be afraid of anybody. We shall ourselves be kings." And so they did. When the middle detachment with Ermák advanced, the Tartars screamed and leaped forward; then they were attacked by Iván Koltsó on the right, and by Meshcheryákov the atamán on the left. The Tartars were frightened, and ran. The Cossacks killed a great many of them. After that nobody dared to oppose Ermák. And thus he entered the very city of Sibír. And there Ermák settled down as though he were a king. Then kinglets came to see Ermák, to bow to him. Tartars began to settle down in Sibír, and Kuchum and his son-in-law Mametkul were afraid to go straight at him, but kept going around in a circle, wondering how they might destroy him. In the spring, during high water, the Tartars came running to Ermák, and said: "Mametkul is again going against you: he has gathered a large army, and is making a stand near the river Vagáy." Ermák made his way over rivers, swamps, brooks, and forests, stole up with his Cossacks, rushed against Mametkul, killed a large number of Tartars, and took Mametkul alive and brought him to Sibír. After that there were only a few unruly Tartars left, and Ermák went that summer against those that had not yet surrendered; and along the Irtýsh and the Ob Ermák conquered so much land that one could not march around it in two months. When Ermák had conquered all that land, he sent a messenger to the Stroganóvs, and a letter: "I have taken Kuchum's city," he said, "and have captured Mametkul, and have brought all the people here under my rule. Only I have lost many Cossacks. Send people to us that we may feel more cheerful. There is no end to the wealth in this country." He sent to them many costly furs,--fox, marten, and sable furs. Two years passed after that. Ermák was still holding Sibír, but no aid came from Russia, and few Russians were left with Ermák. One day the Tartar Karacha sent a messenger to Ermák, saying: "We have surrendered to you, but now the Nogays are oppressing us. Send your brave men to aid us! We shall together conquer the Nogays. And we swear to you that we shall not insult your brave men." Ermák believed their oath, and sent forty men under Iván Koltsó. When these forty men came there, the Tartars rushed against them and killed them, so there were still fewer Cossacks left. Another time some Bukhara merchants sent word to Ermák that they were on their way to the city of Sibír with goods, but that Kuchum had taken his stand with an army and would not let them pass through. Ermák took with him fifty men and went out to clear the road for the Bukhara merchants. He came to the Irtýsh River, but did not find the Bukharans. He remained there over night. It was a dark night, and it rained. The Cossacks had just lain down to sleep, when suddenly the Tartars rushed out and threw themselves on the sleepy men and began to strike them down. Ermák jumped up and began to fight. He was wounded in the hand. He ran toward the river. The Tartars after him. He threw himself into the river. That was the last time he was seen. His body was not recovered, and no one found out how he died. The following year came the Tsar's army, and the Tartars were pacified. NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES 1869-1872 NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES STORIES FROM PHYSICS THE MAGNET I. In olden days there was a shepherd whose name was Magnes. Magnes lost a sheep. He went to the mountains to find it. He came to a place where there were barren rocks. He walked over these rocks, and felt that his boots were sticking to them. He touched them with his hand, but they were dry and did not stick to his hand. He started to walk again, and again his boots stuck to the rocks. He sat down, took off one of his boots, took it into his hand, and touched the rocks with it. Whenever he touched them with his skin, or with the sole of his boot, they did not stick; but when he touched them with the nails, they did stick. Magnes had a cane with an iron point. He touched a rock with the wood; it did not stick; he touched it with the iron end, and it stuck so that he could not pull it off. Magnes looked at the stone, and he saw that it looked like iron, and he took pieces of that stone home with him. Since then that rock has been known, and has been called Magnet. II. Magnet is found in the earth with iron ore. Where there is magnet in the ore, the iron is of the best quality. The magnet resembles iron. If you put a piece of iron on a magnet, the iron itself begins to attract other iron. And if you put a steel needle on a magnet, and hold it thus for awhile, the needle will become a magnet, and will attract iron. If two magnets are brought together at their ends, one side will turn away from the other, while the other sides will be attracted. If a magnetic rod is broken in two, each half will attract at one end, and will turn away at the other end. Cut it again, and the same will happen; cut it again, as often as you please, and still the same will happen: equal ends will turn away from each other, while opposite ends will be attracted, as though the magnet were pushing away at one end, and pulling in at the other. No matter how you may break it, it will be as though there were a bump at one end, and a saucer at the other. Whichever way you put them together,--a bump and a saucer will meet, but a bump and a bump, or a saucer and a saucer will not. III. If you magnetize a needle (holding it for awhile over a magnet), and attach it in the middle to a pivot in such a way that it can move freely around, and let it loose, it will turn with one end toward midday (south), and with the other toward midnight (north). When the magnet was not known, people did not sail far out to sea. When they went out far into the sea, so that land was not to be seen, they could tell only by the stars and the sun where they had to sail. But when it was dark, and the sun or stars could not be seen, they did not know which way to sail. And a ship was borne by the winds and carried on rocks and wrecked. So long as the magnet was not known, they did not sail far from the shore; but when the magnet was discovered, they made a magnetic needle on a pivot, so that it should move around freely. By this needle they could tell in which direction to sail. With the magnetic needle they began to sail farther away from the shores, and since then they have discovered many new seas. On ships there is always a magnetic needle (compass), and there is a measuring-rope with knots at the stern of a ship. This rope is fixed in such a way that when it unrolls, they can tell how far the ship has travelled. And thus, in sailing in a boat, they always know in what spot it is, whether far from the shore, and in what direction it is sailing. MOISTURE I. Why does a spider sometimes make a close cobweb, and sit in the very middle of its nest, and at other times leave its nest and start a new spider-web? The spider makes its cobweb according to the weather, both the present and the future weather. Looking at a spider, you can tell what kind of weather it is going to be: if it sits tightly in the middle of the cobweb and does not come out, it means that it is going to rain. If it leaves the nest and makes new cobwebs, it is going to clear off. How can the spider know in advance what weather it is going to be? The spider's senses are so fine that as soon as the moisture begins to gather in the air,--though we do not yet feel it, and for us the weather is clear,--for the spider it is already raining. Just as a naked man will feel the moisture, when a man in his clothes does not, so it is already raining for a spider, while for us it is only getting ready to rain. II. Why do the doors swell in the winter and close badly, while in the summer they shrink and close well? Because in the fall and winter the wood is saturated with water, like a sponge, and spreads out, while in the summer the water comes out as a vapour, and the wood shrinks. Why does soft wood, like aspen, swell more, and oak less? Because in the hard wood, in the oak, the empty places are smaller, and the water cannot gather there, while in the soft wood in the aspen, there are larger empty places, and the water can gather there. In rotten wood these empty places are still larger, and so rotten wood swells most and shrinks most. Beehives are made out of the softest and rottenest wood; the very best are made from rotten willow wood. Why? Because the air passes through the rotten wood, and in such a hive the bees feel better. Why do boards warp? Because they dry unevenly. If you place a damp board with one side toward the stove, the water will leave it, and the board will contract on that side and will pull the other side along; but the damp side cannot contract, because it is full of water, and so the whole board will be bent. To keep the floors from warping, the dry boards are cut into small pieces, and these pieces are boiled in water. When all the water is boiled out of them, they are glued together, and then they never warp (parquetry). THE DIFFERENT CONNECTION OF PARTICLES Why are cart bolsters cut and wheel naves turned not from oak, but from birch? Bolsters and naves have to be strong, and oak is not more expensive than birch. Because oak splits lengthwise, and birch does not split, but ravels out. Because, though oak is more firmly connected than birch, it is connected in such a way that it splits lengthwise, while birch does not. Why are wheels and runners bent from oak and elm, and not from birch and linden? Because, when oak and elm are steamed in a bath, they bend and do not break, while birch and linden ravel in every direction. This is again for the same reason, that is, that the particles of the wood in the oak and in the birch are differently connected. CRYSTALS If you pour salt into water and stir it, the salt will begin to melt and will entirely disappear; but if you pour more and still more salt into it, the salt will in the end not dissolve, and no matter how much you may stir after that, the salt will remain as a white powder. The water is saturated with the salt and cannot receive any more. But heat the water and it will receive more; and the salt which did not dissolve in the cold water, will melt in hot water. But pour in more salt, even the hot water will not receive it. And if you heat the water still more, the water will pass away in steam, and more of the salt will be left. Thus, for everything which dissolves in the water there is a measure after which the water will not dissolve any more. Of anything, more will be dissolved in hot than in cold water, and in each case, when it is saturated, it will not receive any more. The thing will be left, but the water will go away in steam. If the water is saturated with saltpetre powder, and then more saltpetre is added, and all is heated and is allowed to cool off without being stirred, the superfluous saltpetre will not settle as a powder at the bottom of the water, but will all gather in little six-edged columns, and will settle at the bottom and at the sides, one column near another. If the water is saturated with saltpetre powder and is put in a warm place, the water will go away in vapours, and the superfluous saltpetre will again gather in six-edged columns. If water is saturated with simple salt and heated, and is allowed to pass away in vapour, the superfluous salt will not settle as powder, but as little cubes. If the water is saturated both with salt and saltpetre, the superfluous salt and saltpetre will not mix, but will settle each in its own way: the saltpetre in columns, and the salt in cubes. If water is saturated with lime, or with some other salt, and anything else, each thing will settle in its own way, when the water passes away in vapour: one in three-edged columns, another in eight-edged columns, a third in bricks, a fourth in little stars,--each in its own way. These figures are different in each solid thing. At times these forms are as large as a hand,--such stones are found in the ground. At times these forms are so small that they cannot be made out with the naked eye; but in each thing there is its own form. If, when the water is saturated with saltpetre, and little figures are forming in it, a corner be broken off one of these little figures with a needle, new pieces of saltpetre will come up and will fix the broken end as it ought to be,--into a six-edged column. The same will happen to salt and to any other thing. All the tiny particles turn around and attach themselves with the right side to each other. When ice freezes, the same takes place. A snowflake flies, and no figure is seen in it; but the moment it settles on anything dark and cold, on cloth, on fur,--you can make out its figure; you will see a little star, or a six-cornered little board. On the windows the steam does not freeze in any form whatever, but always as a star. What is ice? It is cold, solid water. When liquid water becomes solid, it forms itself into figures and the heat leaves it. The same takes place with saltpetre: when it changes from a liquid into solid figures, the heat leaves it. The same is true of salt, of melted cast-iron, when it changes from a liquid into a solid. Whenever a thing changes from a liquid into a solid, heat leaves it, and it forms figures. And when it changes from a solid to a liquid it takes up heat, and the cold leaves it, and its figures are dissolved. Bring in melted iron and let it cool off; bring in hot dough and let it cool off; bring in slacked lime and let it cool off,--and it will be warm. Bring in ice and let it melt,--and it will grow cold. Bring in saltpetre, salt, or any other thing that dissolves in the water, and melt it in the water, and it will grow cold. In order to freeze ice-cream, they put salt in the water. INJURIOUS AIR In the village of Nikólskoe, the people went on a holiday to mass. In the manor yard were left the cow-tender, the elder, and the groom. The cow-tender went to the well for water. The well was in the yard itself. She pulled out the bucket, but could not hold it. The bucket pulled away from her, struck the side of the well, and tore the rope. The cow-tender returned to the hut and said to the elder: "Aleksándr! Climb down into the well,--I have dropped the bucket into it." Aleksándr said: "You have dropped it, so climb down yourself." The cow-tender said that she did not mind fetching it herself, if he would let her down. The elder laughed at her, and said: "Well, let us go! You have an empty stomach now, so I shall be able to hold you up, for after dinner I could not do it." The elder tied a stick to a rope, and the woman sat astride it, took hold of the rope, and began to climb down into the well, while the elder turned the well-wheel. The well was about twenty feet deep, and there was less than three feet of water in it. The elder let her down slowly, and kept asking: "A little more?" And the cow-tender cried from below: "Just a little more!" Suddenly the elder felt the rope give way: he called the cow-tender, but she did not answer. The elder looked into the well, and saw the cow-tender lying with her head in the water, and with her feet in the air. The elder called for help, but there was nobody near by; only the groom came. The elder told him to hold the wheel, and he himself pulled out the rope, sat down on the stick, and went down into the well. The moment the groom let the elder down to the water, the same thing happened to the elder. He let go of the rope and fell head foremost upon the woman. The groom began to cry, and ran to church to call the people. Mass was over, and people were walking home. All the men and women rushed to the well. They gathered around it, and everybody holloaed, but nobody knew what to do. The young carpenter Iván made his way through the crowd, took hold of the rope, sat down on the stick, and told them to let him down. Iván tied himself to the rope with his belt. Two men let him down, and the rest looked into the well, to see what would become of Iván. Just as he was getting near the water, he dropped his hands from the rope, and would have fallen down head foremost, if the belt had not held him. All shouted, "Pull him out!" and Iván was pulled out. He hung like dead down from the belt, and his head was drooping and beating against the sides of the well. His face was livid. They took him off the rope and put him down on the ground. They thought that he was dead; but he suddenly drew a deep breath, began to rattle, and soon revived. Others wanted to climb down, but an old peasant said that they could not go down because there was bad air in the well, and that that bad air killed people. Then the peasants ran for hooks and began to pull out the elder and the woman. The elder's mother and wife cried at the well, and others tried to quiet them; in the meantime the peasants put down the hooks and tried to get out the dead people. Twice they got the elder half-way up by his clothes; but he was heavy, and his clothes tore and he fell down. Finally they stuck two hooks into him and pulled him out. Then they pulled out the cow-tender. Both were dead and did not revive. Then, when they examined the well, they found that indeed there was bad air down in the well. This air is so heavy that neither man nor any animal can live in it. They let down a cat into the well, and the moment she reached the place where the bad air was, she died. Not only can no animal live there, even no candle will burn in it. They let down a candle, and the moment it reached that spot, it went out. There are places underground where that air gathers, and when a person gets into one of those places, he dies at once. For this purpose they have lamps in the mines, and before a man goes down to such a place, they let down the lamp. If it goes out, no man can go there; then they let down fresh air until the lamp will burn. Near the city of Naples there is one such cave. There is always about three feet of bad air in it on the ground, but above it the air is good. A man can walk through the cave, and nothing will happen to him, but a dog will die the moment it enters. Where does this bad air come from? It is made of the same good air that we breathe. If you gather a lot of people in one place, and close all the doors and windows, so that no fresh air can get in, you will get the same kind of an air as in the well, and people will die. One hundred years ago, during a war, the Hindoos captured 146 Englishmen and shut them up in a cave underground, where the air could not get in. After the captured Englishmen had been there a few hours they began to die, and toward the end of the night 123 had died, and the rest came out more dead than alive, and ailing. At first the air had been good in the cave; but when the captives had inhaled all the good air, and no fresh air came in, it became bad, just like what was in the well, and they died. Why does the good air become bad when many people come together? Because, when people breathe, they take in good air and breathe out bad air. HOW BALLOONS ARE MADE If you take a blown-up bladder under water and let go of it, it will fly up to the surface of the water and will swim on it. Just so, when water is boiled in a pot, it becomes light at the bottom, over the fire,--it is turned into a gas; and when a little of that water-gas is collected it goes up as a bubble. First comes up one bubble, then another, and when the whole water is heated, the bubbles come up without stopping. Then the water boils. Just as the bubbles leap to the surface, full of vapoury water, because they are lighter than water, just so will a bladder which is filled with hydrogen, or with hot air, rise, because hot air is lighter than cold air, and hydrogen is lighter than any other gases. Balloons are made with hydrogen or with hot air. With hydrogen they are made as follows: They make a large bladder, attach it by ropes to posts, and fill it with hydrogen. The moment the ropes are untied, the balloon flies up in the air, and keeps flying up until it gets beyond the air which is heavier than hydrogen. When it gets up into the light air, it begins to swim in it like a bladder on the surface of the water. With hot air balloons are made like this: They make a large empty ball, with a neck below, like an upturned pitcher, and to the mouth of it they attach a bunch of cotton, and that cotton is soaked with spirits, and lighted. The fire heats the air in the balloon, and makes it lighter than the cold air, and the balloon is drawn upward, like the bladder in the water. And the balloon will fly up until it comes to the air which is lighter than the hot air in the balloon. Nearly one hundred years ago two Frenchmen, the brothers Montgolfier, invented the air balloons. They made a balloon of canvas and paper and filled it with hot air,--the balloon flew. Then they made another, a larger balloon, and tied under the balloon a sheep, a cock, and a duck, and let it off. The balloon rose and came down safely. Then they attached a little basket under the balloon, and a man seated himself in it. The balloon flew so high that it disappeared from view; it flew away, and came down safely. Then they thought of filling a balloon with hydrogen, and began to fly higher and faster. In order to fly with a balloon, they attach a basket under the balloon, and in this basket two, three, and even eight persons are seated, and they take with them food and drink. In order to rise and come down as one pleases, there is a valve in the balloon, and the man who is flying with it can pull a rope and open or close the valve. If the balloon rises too high, and the man who is flying wants to come down, he opens the valve,--the gas escapes, the balloon is compressed, and begins to come down. Then there are always bags with sand in the balloon. When a bag with sand is thrown out, the balloon gets lighter, and it flies up. If the one who is flying wants to get down, but sees that it is not what he wants below him,--either a river or a forest,--he throws out the sand from the bags, and the balloon grows lighter and rises again. GALVANISM There was once a learned Italian, Galvani. He had an electric machine, and he showed his students what electricity was. He rubbed the glass hard with silk with something smeared over it, and then he approached to the glass a brass knob which was attached to the glass, and a spark flew across from the glass to the brass knob. He explained to them that the same kind of a spark came from sealing-wax and amber. He showed them that feathers and bits of paper were now attracted, and now repelled, by electricity, and explained to them the reason of it. He did all kinds of experiments with electricity, and showed them all to his students. Once his wife grew ill. He called a doctor and asked him how to cure her. The doctor told him to prepare a frog soup for her. Galvani gave order to have edible frogs caught. They caught them for him, killed them, and left them on his table. Before the cook came after the frogs, Galvani kept on showing the electric machine to his students, and sending sparks through it. Suddenly he saw the dead frogs jerk their legs on the table. He watched them, and saw that every time when he sent a spark through the machine, the frogs jerked their legs. Galvani collected more frogs, and began to experiment with them. And every time he sent a spark through the machine, the dead frogs moved their legs as though they were alive. It occurred to Galvani that live frogs moved their legs because electricity passed through them. Galvani knew that there was electricity in the air; that it was more noticeable in the amber and glass, but that it was also in the air, and that thunder and lightning came from the electricity in the air. So he tried to discover whether the dead frogs would not move their legs from the electricity in the air. For this purpose he took the frogs, skinned them, chopped off their heads, and hung them on brass hooks on the roof, beneath an iron gutter. He thought that as soon as there should be a storm, and the air should be filled with electricity, it would pass by the brass rod to the frogs, and they would begin to move. But the storm passed several times, and the frogs did not move. Galvani was just taking them down, and as he did so a frog's leg touched the iron gutter, and it jerked. Galvani took down the frogs and made the following experiment: he tied to the brass hook an iron wire, and touched the leg with the wire, and it jerked. So Galvani decided that the animals lived because there was electricity in them, and that the electricity jumped from the brain to the flesh, and that made the animals move. Nobody had at that time tried this matter and they did not know any better, and so they all believed Galvani. But at that time another learned man, Volta, experimented in his own way, and proved to everybody that Galvani was mistaken. He tried touching the frog differently from what Galvani had done, not with a copper hook with an iron wire, but either with a copper hook and a copper wire, or an iron hook and an iron wire,--and the frogs did not move. The frogs moved only when Volta touched them with an iron wire that was connected with a copper wire. Volta thought that the electricity was not in the dead frog but in the iron and copper. He experimented and found it to be so: whenever he brought together the iron and the copper, there was electricity; and this electricity made the dead frogs jerk their legs. Volta tried to produce electricity differently from what it had been produced before. Before that they used to get electricity by rubbing glass or sealing-wax. But Volta got electricity by uniting iron and copper. He tried to connect iron and copper and other metals, and by the mere combination of metals, silver, platinum, zinc, lead, iron, he produced electric sparks. After Volta they tried to increase electricity by pouring all kinds of liquids--water and acids--between the metals. These liquids made the electricity more powerful, so that it was no longer necessary, as before, to rub in order to produce it; it is enough to put pieces of several metals in a bowl and fill it with a liquid, and there will be electricity in that bowl, and the sparks will come from the wires. When this kind of electricity was discovered, people began to apply it: they invented a way of gold and silver plating by means of electricity, and electric light, and a way to transmit signs from place to place over a long distance by means of electricity. For this purpose pieces of different metals are placed in jars, and liquids are poured into them. Electricity is collected in these jars, and is transferred by means of wires to the place where it is wanted, and from that place the wire is put into the ground. The electricity runs through the ground back to the jars, and rises from the earth by means of the other wire; thus the electricity keeps going around and around, as in a ring,--from the wire into the ground, and along the ground, and up the wire, and again through the earth. Electricity can travel in either direction, just as one wants to send it: it can first go along the wire and return through the earth, or first go through the earth, and then return through the wire. Above the wire, in the place where the signs are given, there is attached a magnetic hand, and that hand turns in one direction, when the electricity is allowed to pass through the wire and back through the earth, and in another direction, when the electricity is sent through the earth and back through the wire. Along this hand there are certain signs, and by means of these signs they write from one place to another on the telegraph. THE SUN'S HEAT Go out in the winter on a calm, frosty day into the field, or into the woods, and look about you and listen: all around you is snow, the rivers are frozen, dry grass blades stick out of the grass, the trees are bare,--nothing is moving. Look in the summer: the rivers are running and rippling, in every puddle the frogs croak and plunge in; the birds fly from place to place, and whistle, and sing; the flies and the gnats whirl around and buzz; the trees and the grass grow and wave to and fro. Freeze a pot with water, and it will become as hard as a rock. Put the frozen pot on the fire: the ice will begin to break, and melt, and move; the water will begin to stir, and bubbles will rise; then, when it begins to boil, it whirls about and makes a noise. The same happens in the world from the heat. Without heat everything is dead; with the heat everything moves and lives. If there is little heat, there is little motion; with more heat, there is more motion; with much heat, there is much motion; with very much heat, there is also very much motion. Where does the heat in the world come from? The heat comes from the sun. In winter the sun travels low, to one side, and its beams do not fall straight upon the earth, and nothing moves. The sun begins to travel higher above our heads, and begins to shine straight down upon the earth, and everything is warmed up in the world, and begins to stir. The snow settles down; the ice begins to melt on the rivers; the water comes down from the mountains; the vapours rise from the water to the clouds, and rain begins to fall. Who does it all?--The sun. The seeds swell, and let out rootlets; the rootlets take hold of the ground; old roots send up new shoots, and the trees and the grass begin to grow. Who has done that?--The sun. The bears and moles get up; the flies and bees awaken; the gnats are hatched, and the fish come out from their eggs, when it is warm. Who has done it all?--The sun. The air gets warmed up in one place, and rises, and in its place comes colder air,--and there is a wind. Who has done that?--The sun. The clouds rise and begin to gather and to scatter,--and the lightning flashes. Who has made that fire?--The sun. The grass, the grain, the fruits, the trees grow up; animals find their food, men eat their fill, and gather food and fuel for the winter; they build themselves houses, railways, cities. Who has prepared it all?--The sun. A man has built himself a house. What has he made it of? Of timbers. The timbers were cut out of trees, but the trees are made to grow by the sun. The stove is heated with wood. Who has made the wood to grow?--The sun. Man eats bread, or potatoes. Who has made them grow?--The sun. Man eats meat. Who has made the animals, the birds to grow?--The grass. But the grass is made to grow by the sun. A man builds himself a house from brick and lime. The bricks and the lime are burnt by wood. The wood has been prepared by the sun. Everything that men need, that is for their use,--all that is prepared by the sun, and on all that goes much sun's heat. The reason that men need bread is because the sun has produced it, and because there is much sun's heat in it. Bread warms him who eats it. The reason that wood and logs are needed is because there is much heat in them. He who buys wood for the winter, buys sun's heat; and in the winter he burns the wood whenever he wants it, and lets the sun's heat into his room. When there is heat, there is motion. No matter what motion it may be,--it all comes from heat, either directly from the sun's heat, or from the heat which the sun has prepared in the coal, the wood, the bread, and the grass. Horses and oxen pull, men work,--who moves them?--Heat. Where does the heat come from?--From the food. And the food has been prepared by the sun. Watermills and windmills turn around and grind. Who moves them?--Wind and water. And who drives the wind?--Heat. And who drives the water?--Again heat. Heat raises the water in the shape of vapour, and without this the water would not be falling down. A machine works,--it is moved by steam. And who makes steam?--Wood. And in the wood is the sun's heat. Heat makes motion, and motion makes heat. And both heat and motion are from the sun. STORIES FROM ZOOLOGY THE OWL AND THE HARE It was dusk. The owls began to fly through the forest to find some prey. A large hare leaped out on a clearing and began to smooth out his fur. An old owl looked at the hare, and seated himself on a branch; but a young owl said to him: "Why do you not catch the hare?" The old owl said: "He is too much for me: if I get caught in him, he will drag me into the woods." But the young owl said: "I will stick one claw into his body, and with the other I will clutch a tree." The young owl made for the hare, and stuck one claw into his back so that all his talons entered the flesh, and the other claw it got ready to push into the tree. The hare yanked the owl, while the owl held on to the tree, and thought, "He will not get away." The hare darted forward and tore the owl. One claw was left in the tree, and the other in the hare's back. The next year a hunter killed that hare, and wondered how the owl's talons had grown into the hare's back. HOW THE WOLVES TEACH THEIR WHELPS I was walking along the road, and heard a shout behind me. It was the shepherd boy who was shouting. He was running through the field, and pointing to something. I looked, and saw two wolves running through the field: one was full-grown, and the other a whelp. The whelp was carrying a dead lamb on his shoulders, and holding on to one of its legs with its teeth. The old wolf was running behind. When I saw the wolves, I ran after them with the shepherd, and we began to shout. In response to our cries came peasants with dogs. The moment the old wolf saw the dogs and the people, he ran up to the whelp, took the lamb away from him, threw it over his back, and both wolves ran as fast as they could, and disappeared from view. Then the boy told what had happened: the large wolf had leaped out from the ravine, had seized the lamb, killed it, and carried it off. The whelp ran up to him and grasped the lamb. The old wolf let the whelp carry the lamb, while he himself ran slowly beside him. Only when there was danger, did the old wolf stop his teaching and himself take the lamb. HARES AND WOLVES The hares feed at night on tree bark; the field hares eat the winter rye and the grass, and the threshing-floor hares eat the grain in the granary. Through the night the hares make a deep, visible track through the snow. The hares are hunted by men, and dogs, and wolves, and foxes, and ravens, and eagles. If a hare walked straight ahead, he would be easily caught in the morning by his tracks; but God has made a hare timid, and his timidity saves him. A hare goes at night fearlessly through the forests and fields, making straight tracks; but as soon as morning comes and his enemies wake up, and he hears the bark of dogs, or the squeak of sleighs, or the voice of peasants, or the crashing of a wolf through the forest, he begins to toss from side to side in his fear. He jumps forward, gets frightened at something, and runs back on his track. He hears something again, and he leaps at full speed to one side and runs away from his old track. Again something makes a noise, and the hare turns back, and again leaps to one side. When it is daylight, he lies down. In the morning the hunters try to follow the hare tracks, and they get mixed up on the double tracks and long leaps, and marvel at the hare's cunning. But the hare did not mean to be cunning. He is merely afraid of everything. THE SCENT Man sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, smells with his nose, tastes with his mouth, and feels with his fingers. One man's eyes see better, another man's see worse. One hears from a distance, and another is deaf. One has keen senses and smells a thing from a distance, while another smells at a rotten egg and does not perceive it. One can tell a thing by the touch, and another cannot tell by touch what is wood and what paper. One will take a substance in his mouth and will find it sweet, while another will swallow it without making out whether it is bitter or sweet. Just so the different senses differ in strength in the animals. But with all the animals the sense of smell is stronger than in man. When a man wants to recognize a thing, he looks at it, listens to the noise that it makes, now and then smells at it, or tastes it; but, above all, a man has to feel a thing, to recognize it. But nearly all animals more than anything else need to smell a thing. A horse, a wolf, a dog, a cow, a bear do not know a thing until they smell it. When a horse is afraid of anything, it snorts,--it clears its nose so as to scent better, and does not stop being afraid until it has smelled the object well. A dog frequently follows its master's track, but when it sees him, it does not recognize him and begins to bark, until it smells him and finds out that that which has looked so terrible is its master. Oxen see other oxen stricken down, and hear them roar in the slaughter-house, but still do not understand what is going on. But an ox or a cow need only find a spot where there is ox blood, and smell it, and it will understand and will roar and strike with its feet, and cannot be driven off the spot. An old man's wife had fallen ill; he went himself to milk the cow. The cow snorted,--she discovered that it was not her mistress, and would not give him any milk. The mistress told her husband to put on her fur coat and kerchief,--and the cow gave milk; but the old man threw open the coat, and the cow scented him, and stopped giving milk. When hounds follow an animal's trail, they never run on the track itself, but to one side, about twenty paces from it. When an inexperienced hunter wants to show the dog the scent, and sticks its nose on the track, it will always jump to one side. The track itself smells so strong to the dog that it cannot make out on the track whether the animal has run ahead or backward. It runs to one side, and then only discovers in what direction the scent grows stronger, and so follows the animal. The dog does precisely what we do when somebody speaks very loud in our ears; we step a distance away, and only then do we make out what is being said. Or, if anything we are looking at is too close, we step back and only then make it out. Dogs recognize each other and make signs to each other by means of their scent. The scent is more delicate still in insects. A bee flies directly to the flower that it wants to reach; a worm crawls to its leaf; a bedbug, a flea, a mosquito scents a man a hundred thousand of its steps away. If the particles which separate from a substance and enter our noses are small, how small must be those particles that reach the organ of smell of the insects! TOUCH AND SIGHT Twist the forefinger over the middle finger and touch a small ball with them, so that it may roll between the two fingers, and shut your eyes. You will think that there are two balls. Open your eyes,--and you will see that it is one ball. The fingers have deceived you, but the eyes correct you. Look (best of all sidewise) at a good, clean mirror,--you will think that it is a window or a door, and that there is something behind it. Touch it with a finger,--and you will see that it is a mirror. The eyes have deceived you, but the fingers correct you. THE SILKWORM I had some old mulberry-trees in my garden. My grandfather had planted them. In the fall I was given a dram of silkworm eggs, and was advised to hatch them and raise silkworms. These eggs are dark gray and so small that in that dram I counted 5,835 of them. They are smaller than the tiniest pin-head. They are quite dead; only when you crush them do they crack. The eggs had been lying around on my table, and I had almost forgotten about them. One day, in the spring, I went into the orchard and noticed the buds swelling on the mulberry-trees, and where the sun beat down, the leaves were out. I thought of the silkworm eggs, and took them apart at home and gave them more room. The majority of the eggs were no longer dark gray, as before, but some were light gray, while others were lighter still, with a milky shade. The next morning, I looked at the eggs, and saw that some of the worms had hatched out, while other eggs were quite swollen. Evidently they felt in their shells that their food was ripening. The worms were black and shaggy, and so small that it was hard to see them. I looked at them through a magnifying-glass, and saw that in the eggs they lay curled up in rings, and when they came out they straightened themselves out. I went to the garden for some mulberry leaves; I got about three handfuls of leaves, which I put on my table, and began to fix a place for the worms, as I had been taught to do. While I was fixing the paper, the worms smelled their food and started to crawl toward it. I pushed it away, and began to entice the worms to a leaf, and they made for it, as dogs make for a piece of meat, crawling after the leaf over the cloth of the table and across pencils, scissors, and papers. Then I cut off a piece of paper, stuck holes through it with a penknife, placed the leaf on top of it, and with the leaf put it down on the worms. The worms crawled through the holes, climbed on the leaf, and started to eat. When the other worms hatched out, I again put a piece of paper with a leaf on them, and all crawled through the holes and began to eat. The worms gathered on each leaf and nibbled at it from its edges. Then, when they had eaten everything, they crawled on the paper and looked for more food. Then I put on them new sheets of perforated paper with mulberry leaves upon them, and they crawled over to the new food. They were lying on my shelf, and when there was no leaf, they climbed about the shelf, and came to its very edge, but they never fell down, though they are blind. The moment a worm comes to an edge, it lets out a web from its mouth before descending, and then it attaches itself to it and lets itself down; it hangs awhile in the air, and watches, and if it wants to get down farther, it does so, and if not, it pulls itself up by its web. For days at a time the worms did nothing but eat. I had to give them more and more leaves. When a new leaf was brought, and they transferred themselves to it, they made a noise as though a rain were falling on leaves,--that was when they began to eat the new leaf. Thus the older worms lived for five days. They had grown very large and began to eat ten times as much as ever. On the fifth day, I knew, they would fall asleep, and waited for that to happen. Toward evening, on the fifth day, one of the older worms stuck to the paper and stopped eating and stirring. The whole next day I watched it for a long time. I knew that worms moulted several times, because they grew up and found it close in their old hide, and so put on a new one. My friend and I watched it by turns. In the evening my friend called out: "It has begun to undress itself,--come!" I went up to him, and saw that the worm had stuck with its old hide to the paper, had torn a hole at the mouth, thrust forth its head, and was writhing and working to get out, but the old shirt held it fast. I watched it for a long time as it writhed and could not get out, and I wanted to help it. I barely touched it with my nail, but soon saw that I had done something foolish. Under my nail there was something liquid, and the worm died. At first I thought that it was blood, but later I learned that the worm has a liquid mass under its skin, so that the shirt may come off easier. With my nail I no doubt disturbed the new shirt, for, though the worm crawled out, it soon died. The other worms I did not touch. All of them came out of their shirts in the same manner; only a few died, and nearly all came out safely, though they struggled hard for a long time. After shedding their skins, the worms began to eat more voraciously, and more leaves were devoured. Four days later they again fell asleep, and again crawled out of their skins. A still larger quantity of leaves was now consumed by them, and they were now a quarter of an inch in length. Six days later they fell asleep once more, and once more came out in new skins, and now were very large and fat, and we had barely time to get leaves ready for them. On the ninth day the oldest worms quit eating entirely and climbed up the shelves and rods. I gathered them in and gave them fresh leaves, but they turned their heads away from them, and continued climbing. Then I remembered that when the worms get ready to roll up into larvæ, they stop eating and climb upward. I left them alone, and began to watch what they would do. The eldest worms climbed to the ceiling, scattered about, crawled in all directions, and began to draw out single threads in various directions. I watched one of them. It went into a corner, put forth about six threads each two inches long, hung down from them, bent over in a horseshoe, and began to turn its head and let out a silk web which began to cover it all over. Toward evening it was covered by it as though in a mist; the worm could scarcely be seen. On the following morning the worm could no longer be seen; it was all wrapped in silk, and still it spun out more. Three days later it finished spinning, and quieted down. Later I learned how much web it had spun in those three days. If the whole web were to be unravelled, it would be more than half a mile in length, seldom less. And if we figure out how many times the worm has to toss its head in these three days in order to let out all the web, it will appear that in these three days the worm tosses its head 300,000 times. Consequently, it makes one turn a second, without stopping. But after the work, when we took down a few cocoons and broke them open, we found inside the worms all dried up and white, looking like pieces of wax. I knew that from these larvæ with their white, waxen bodies would come butterflies; but as I looked at them, I could not believe it. None the less I went to look at them on the twentieth day, to see what had become of them. On the twentieth day, I knew, there was to be a change. Nothing was to be seen, and I was beginning to think that something was wrong, when suddenly I noticed that the end of one of the cocoons grew dark and moist. I thought that it had probably spoiled, and wanted to throw it away. But then I thought that perhaps it began that way, and so I watched to see what would happen. And, indeed, something began to move at the wet end. For a long time I could not make out what it was. Later there appeared something like a head with whiskers. The whiskers moved. Then I noticed a leg sticking out through the hole, then another, and the legs scrambled to get out of the cocoon. It came out more and more, and I saw a wet butterfly. When all six legs scrambled out, the back jumped out, too, and the butterfly crawled out and stopped. When it dried it was white; it straightened its wings, flew away, circled around, and alighted on the window. Two days later the butterfly on the window-sill laid eggs in a row, and stuck them fast. The eggs were yellow. Twenty-five butterflies laid eggs. I collected five thousand eggs. The following year I raised more worms, and had more silk spun. STORIES FROM BOTANY THE APPLE-TREE I set out two hundred young apple-trees, and for three years I dug around them in the spring and the fall, and in winter wrapped them with straw against the hares. On the fourth year, when the snow melted, I went to take a look at my apple-trees. They had grown stouter during the winter: the bark was glossy and filled with sap; all the branches were sound, and at all the tips and axils there were pea-shaped flower-buds. Here and there the buds were bursting, and the purple edges of the flower-leaves could be seen. I knew that all the buds would be blossoms and fruit, and I was delighted as I looked at the apple-trees. But when I took off the wrapping from the first tree, I saw that down at the ground the bark was nibbled away, like a white ring, to the very wood. The mice had done that. I unwrapped a second tree, and the same had happened there. Of the two hundred trees not one was unharmed. I smeared pitch and wax on the nibbled spots; but when the trees were all in bloom, the blossoms at once fell off; there came out small leaves, and they, too, dropped off. The bark became wrinkled and black. Out of the two hundred apple-trees only nine were left. On these nine trees the bark had not been gnawed through all around, but strips of bark were left on the white ring. On the strips, where the bark held together, there grew out knots, and, although the trees suffered, they lived. All the rest were ruined; below the rings there came out shoots, but they were all wild. The bark of the tree is like the arteries in man: through the arteries the blood goes to the whole body, and through the bark the sap goes along the tree and reaches the branches, leaves, and flowers. The whole inside of a tree may be taken out, as is often the case with old willows, and yet the tree will live so long as the bark is alive; but when the bark is ruined, the tree is gone. If a man's arteries are cut through, he will die, in the first place, because the blood will flow out, and in the second, because the blood will not be distributed through the body. Even thus a birch dries up when the children bore a hole into it, in order to drink its sap, and all the sap flows out of it. Just so the apple-trees were ruined because the mice gnawed the bark all around, and the sap could not rise from the roots to the branches, leaves, and flowers. THE OLD POPLAR For five years our garden was neglected. I hired labourers with axes and shovels, and myself began to work with them in the garden. We cut out and chopped out all the dry branches and wild shoots, and the superfluous trees and bushes. The poplars and bird-cherries grew ranker than the rest and choked the other trees. A poplar grows out from the roots, and it cannot be dug out, but the roots have to be chopped out underground. Beyond the pond there stood an enormous poplar, two men's embraces in circumference. About it there was a clearing, and this was all overgrown with poplar shoots. I ordered them to be cut out: I wanted the spot to look more cheerful, but, above all, I wanted to make it easier for the old poplar, because I thought that all those young trees came from its roots, and were draining it of its sap. When we cut out these young poplars, I felt sorry as I saw them chop out the sap-filled roots underground, and as all four of us pulled at the poplar that had been cut down, and could not pull it out. It held on with all its might, and did not wish to die. I thought that, no doubt, they had to live, since they clung so much to life. But it was necessary to cut them down, and so I did it. Only later, when nothing could be done, I learned that they ought not to have been cut down. I thought that the shoots were taking the sap away from the old poplar, but it turned out quite differently. When I was cutting them down, the old poplar was already dying. When the leaves came out, I saw (it grew from two boughs) that one bough was bare; and that same summer it dried up completely. The tree had been dying for quite awhile, and the tree knew it, so it tried to give its life to the shoots. That was the reason why they grew so fast. I wanted to make it easier for the tree, and only killed all its children. THE BIRD-CHERRY A bird-cherry grew out on a hazel bush path and choked the bushes. I deliberated for a long time whether I had better cut down the bird-cherry, or not. This bird-cherry grew not as a bush, but as a tree, about six inches in diameter and thirty feet high, full of branches and bushy, and all besprinkled with bright, white, fragrant blossoms. You could smell it from a distance. I should not have cut it down, but one of the labourers (to whom I had before given the order to cut down the bird-cherry) had begun to chop it without me. When I came, he had already cut in about three inches, and the sap splashed under the axe whenever it struck the same cut. "It cannot be helped,--apparently such is its fate," I thought, and I picked up an axe myself and began to chop it with the peasant. It is a pleasure to do any work, and it is a pleasure to chop. It is a pleasure to let the axe enter deeply in a slanting line, and then to chop out the chip by a straight stroke, and to chop farther and farther into the tree. I had entirely forgotten the bird-cherry, and was thinking only of felling it as quickly as possible. When I got tired, I put down my axe and with the peasant pressed against the tree and tried to make it fall. We bent it: the tree trembled with its leaves, and the dew showered down upon us, and the white, fragrant petals of the blossoms fell down. At the same time something seemed to cry,--the middle of the tree creaked; we pressed against it, and it was as though something wept, there was a crash in the middle, and the tree tottered. It broke at the notch and, swaying, fell with its branches and blossoms into the grass. The twigs and blossoms trembled for awhile after the fall, and stopped. "It was a fine tree!" said the peasant. "I am mightily sorry for it!" I myself felt so sorry for it that I hurried away to the other labourers. HOW TREES WALK One day we were cleaning an overgrown path on a hillock near the pond. We cut down a lot of brier bushes, willows, and poplars,--then came the turn of a bird-cherry. It was growing on the path, and it was so old and stout that it could not be less than ten years old. And yet I knew that five years ago the garden had been cleaned. I could not understand how such an old bird-cherry could have grown out there. We cut it down and went farther. Farther away, in another thicket, there grew a similar bird-cherry, even stouter than the first. I looked at its root, and saw that it grew under an old linden. The linden with its branches choked it, and it had stretched out about twelve feet in a straight line, and only then came out to the light, raised its head, and began to blossom. I cut it down at the root, and was surprised to find it so fresh, while the root was rotten. After we had cut it down, the peasants and I tried to pull it off; but no matter how much we jerked at it, we were unable to drag it away: it seemed to have stuck fast. I said: "Look whether it has not caught somewhere." A workman crawled under it, and called out: "It has another root; it is out on the path!" I walked over to him, and saw that it was so. Not to be choked by the linden, the bird-cherry had gone away from underneath the linden out on the path, about eight feet from its former root. The root which I had cut down was rotten and dry, but the new one was fresh. The bird-cherry had evidently felt that it could not exist under the linden, so it had stretched out, dropped a branch to the ground, made a root of that branch, and left the other root. Only then did I understand how the first bird-cherry had grown out on the road. It had evidently done the same,--only it had had time to give up the old root, and so I had not found it. THE DECEMBRISTS Fragments of a Novel 1863-1878 THE DECEMBRISTS A Novel FIRST FRAGMENT I. This happened not long ago, in the reign of Alexander II., in our days of civilization, progress, questions, regeneration of Russia, and so forth, and so forth; at a time when the victorious Russian army was returning from Sevastopol, surrendered to the enemy; when all of Russia celebrated the annihilation of the Black Sea fleet, and white-stoned Moscow received and congratulated with this happy event the remainders of the crews of that fleet, offering them a good Russian cup of vódka, and bread and salt, according to the good Russian custom, and bowing down to their feet. It was that time when Russia, in the person of far-sighted virgin politicians, lamented the shattered dream of a Te Deum in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and the loss of two great men, so painful for the country, who had perished during the war (one, who had been carried away by the desire to celebrate the Te Deum in the above-mentioned cathedral at the earliest time possible, and who fell in the fields of Wallachia, but who, at least, left two squadrons of hussars in the same fields, and the other, an unappreciated man, who had distributed tea, other people's money, and bed-sheets to the wounded, without stealing any of these things); that time, when on all sides, in all branches of human activities, great men--generals, administrators, economists, writers, orators, and simply great men, without any especial calling or purpose--sprang up in Russia like mushrooms; that time, when, at the jubilee of a Moscow actor, there appeared the public opinion, confirmed by a toast, which began to rebuke all the criminals,--when menacing commissions galloped south from St. Petersburg, to convict and punish the evil-doers of the commissariat,--when in all the cities dinners with speeches were given to the heroes of Sevastopol, and when to them, with arms and legs torn off, toasts were drunk, on meeting them on the bridges and on the highways; that time, when oratorical talents developed so rapidly in the nation that a certain dram-shopkeeper everywhere and upon all occasions wrote and printed and recited by rote at dinners such strong speeches, that the guardians of the peace had to take repressive measures against the dram-shopkeeper's eloquence,--when in the very English club a special room was set aside for the discussion of public matters,--when periodicals sprang up under the most diversified standards,--periodicals that evolved European principles on a European basis, but with a Russian world conception, and periodicals on an exclusively Russian basis, but with a European world conception,--when suddenly there appeared so many periodicals that all names seemed to be exhausted,--"The Messenger," and "The Word," and "The Speaker," and "The Observer," and "The Star," and "The Eagle," and many more, and, in spite of it, there appeared ever new names; that time, when the constellation of philosophic writers made its appearance to prove that science was national, and not national, and non-national, and so forth, and the constellation of artistic writers, who described a grove, and the sunrise, and a storm, and the love of a Russian maiden, and the indolence of a certain official, and the bad conduct of many officials; that time, when on all sides appeared questions (as in the year '56 they called every concourse of circumstances, of which no one could make any sense), questions of cadet corps, universities, censorship, oral judicature, finance, banking, police, emancipation, and many more:--everybody tried to discover ever new questions, everybody tried to solve them, wrote, read, spoke, made projects, wanted to mend everything, destroy, change, and all Russians, like one man, were in indescribable ecstasy. That is a state of affairs which has been twice repeated in the Russia of the nineteenth century,--the first time, when in the year '12 we repulsed Napoleon I., and the second time, when in the year '56 we were repulsed by Napoleon III. Great, unforgettable time of the regeneration of the Russian people! Like the Frenchman who said that he has not lived who has not lived through the great French Revolution, I venture to say that he who has not lived through the year '56 in Russia does not know what life is. The writer of these lines not only lived through that time, but was one of the actors of that period. Not only did he pass several weeks in one of the blindages of Sevastopol, but he also wrote a work on the Crimean War, which brought him great fame, and in which he described clearly and minutely how the soldiers fired their guns from the bastions, how the wounds were dressed at the ambulance, and how they buried people in the cemetery. Having achieved these deeds, the writer of these lines arrived in the centre of the empire,--a rocket establishment,--where he cut the laurels for his deeds. He saw the transports of the two capitals and of the whole nation, and experienced in his person to what extent Russia knew how to reward real deserts. The mighty of this world sought his friendship, pressed his hands, gave him dinners, urged him to come to their houses, and, in order to learn the details of the war from him, informed him of their own sentimentalities. Consequently the writer of these lines can appreciate that great and memorable time. But that is another matter. At that very time, two vehicles on wheels and a sleigh were standing at the entrance of the best Moscow hotel. A young man ran through the door, to find out about quarters. In one of the vehicles sat an old man with two ladies. He was talking about the condition of Blacksmith Bridge in the days of the French. It was the continuation of a conversation started as they entered Moscow, and now the old man with the white beard, in his unbuttoned fur coat, calmly continued his conversation in the vehicle, as though he intended to stay in it overnight. His wife and daughter listened to him, but kept looking at the door with some impatience. The young man emerged from the door with the porter and room servant. "Well, Sergyéy," asked the mother, thrusting her emaciated face out into the glare of the lamplight. Either because it was his habit, or because he did not wish the porter to take him for a lackey on account of the short fur coat which he wore, Sergyéy replied in French that there were rooms to be had, and opened the carriage door. The old man looked for a moment at his son, and again turned to the dark corner of the vehicle, as though nothing else concerned him: "There was no theatre then." "Pierre!" said his wife, lifting her cloak; but he continued: "Madame Chalmé was in Tverskáya Street--" Deep in the vehicle could be heard a youthful, sonorous laugh. "Papa, step out! You are forgetting where we are." The old man only then seemed to recall that they had arrived, and looked around him. "Do step out!" He pulled his cap down, and submissively passed through the door. The porter took him under his arm, but, seeing that the old man was walking well, he at once offered his services to the lady. Judging from the sable cloak, and from the time it took for her to emerge, and from the way she pressed down on his arm, and from the way she, leaning on her son's arm, walked straight toward the porch, without looking to either side, Natálya Nikoláevna, his wife, seemed to the porter to be an important personage. He did not even separate the young lady from the maids, who climbed out from the other vehicle; like them, she carried a bundle and a pipe, and walked behind. He recognized her only by her laughing and by her calling the old man father. "Not that way, father,--to the right!" she said, taking hold of the sleeve of his sheepskin coat. "To the right." On the staircase there resounded, through the noise of the steps, the doors, and the heavy breathing of the elderly lady, the same laughter which had been heard in the vehicle, and about which any one who heard it thought: "How excellently she laughs,--I just envy her." Their son, Sergyéy, had attended to all the material conditions on the road, and, though he lacked knowledge of the matter, he had attended to it with the energy and self-satisfying activity which are characteristic of twenty-five years of age. Some twenty times, and apparently for no important reason, he ran down to the sleigh in his greatcoat, and ran up-stairs again, shivering in the cold and taking two or three steps at a time with his long, youthful legs. Natálya Nikoláevna asked him not to catch a cold, but he said that it was all right, and continued to give orders, slamming doors, and walking, and, when it seemed that only the servants and peasants had to be attended to, he several times walked through all the rooms, leaving the drawing-room by one door, and coming in through another, as though he were looking for something else to do. "Well, papa, will you be driven to the bath-house? Shall I find out?" he asked. His papa was deep in thought and, it seemed, was not at all conscious of where he was. He did not answer at once. He heard the words, but did not comprehend them. Suddenly he comprehended. "Yes, yes, yes. Find out, if you please, at Stone Bridge." The head of the family walked through the rooms with hasty, agitated steps, and seated himself in a chair. "Now we must decide what to do, how to arrange matters," he said. "Help along, children, lively! Like good fellows, drag things around, put them up, and to-morrow we shall send Serézha with a note to sister Márya Ivánovna, to the Nikítins, or we shall go there ourselves. Am I right, Natásha? But now, fix things!" "To-morrow is Sunday. I hope, Pierre, that first of all you will go to mass," said his wife, kneeling in front of a trunk and opening it. "That is so, it is Sunday! We shall by all means all of us go to the Cathedral of the Assumption. Thus will our return begin. O Lord! When I think of the day when I was for the last time in the Cathedral of the Assumption! Do you remember, Natásha? But that is another matter." And the head of the family rose quickly from the chair, on which he had just seated himself. "Now we must settle down!" And without doing anything, he kept walking from one room to another. "Well, shall we drink tea? Or are you tired, and do you want to rest?" "Yes, yes," replied his wife, taking something out from the trunk. "You wanted to go to the bath-house, did you not?" "Yes--in my day it was near Stone Bridge. Serézha, go and find out whether there is still a bath-house near Stone Bridge. This room here Serézha and I shall occupy. Serézha! Will you be comfortable here?" But Serézha had gone to find out about the bath-house. "No, that will not do," he continued. "You will not have a straight passage to the drawing-room. What do you think, Natásha?" "Calm yourself, Pierre, everything will come out all right," Natásha said, from another room, where peasants were bringing in things. But Pierre was still under the influence of that ecstatic mood which the arrival had evoked in him. "Look there,--don't mix up Serézha's things! You have thrown his snow-shoes down in the drawing-room." And he himself picked them up and with great care, as though the whole future order of the quarters depended upon it, leaned them against the door-post and tried to make them stand there. But the snow-shoes did not stick to it, and, the moment Pierre walked away from them, fell with a racket across the door. Natálya Nikoláevna frowned and shuddered, but, seeing the cause of the fall, she said: "Sónya, darling, pick them up!" "Pick them up, darling," repeated the husband, "and I will go to the landlord, or else you will never get done. I must talk things over with him." "You had better send for him, Pierre. Why should you trouble yourself?" Pierre assented. "Sónya, bring him here, what do you call him? M. Cavalier, if you please. Tell him that we want to speak about everything." "Chevalier, papa," said Sónya, ready to go out. Natálya Nikoláevna, who was giving her commands in a soft voice, and was softly stepping from room to room, now with a box, now with a pipe, now with a pillow, imperceptibly finding places for a mountain of baggage, in passing Sónya, had time to whisper to her: "Do not go yourself, but send a man!" While a man went to call the landlord, Pierre used his leisure, under the pretext of aiding his consort, in crushing a garment of hers and in stumbling against an empty box. Steadying himself with his hand against the wall, the Decembrist looked around with a smile; but Sónya was looking at him with such smiling eyes that she seemed to be waiting for permission to laugh. He readily granted her that permission, and himself burst out into such a good-natured laugh that all those who were in the room, his wife, the maids, and the peasants, laughed with him. This laughter animated the old man still more. He discovered that the divan in the room for his wife and daughter was not standing very conveniently for them, although they affirmed the opposite, and asked him to calm himself. Just as he was trying with his own hands to help a peasant to change the position of that piece of furniture, the landlord, a Frenchman, entered the room. "You sent for me," the landlord asked sternly and, in proof of his indifference, if not contempt, slowly drew out his handkerchief, slowly unfolded it, and slowly cleared his nose. "Yes, my dear sir," said Peter Ivánovich, stepping up toward him, "you see, we do not know ourselves how long we are going to stay here, I and my wife--" and Peter Ivánovich, who had the weakness of seeing a neighbour in every man, began to expound his plans and affairs to him. M. Chevalier did not share that view of people and was not interested in the information communicated to him by Peter Ivánovich, but the good French which Peter Ivánovich spoke (the French language, as is known, is something like rank in Russia) and his lordly manner somewhat raised the landlord's opinion about the newcomers. "What can I do for you?" he asked. This question did not embarrass Peter Ivánovich. He expressed his desire to have rooms, tea, a samovár, supper, dinner, food for the servants, in short, all those things for which hotels exist, and when M. Chevalier, marvelling at the innocence of the old man, who apparently imagined that he was in the Trukhmén steppe, or supposed that all these things would be given him without pay, informed him that he could have all those things, Peter Ivánovich was in ecstasy. "Now that is nice! Very nice! And so we shall get things all fixed. Well, then please--" but he felt embarrassed to be speaking all the time about himself, and he began to ask M. Chevalier about his family and his business. When Sergyéy Petróvich returned to the room, he did not seem to approve of his father's address; he observed the landlord's dissatisfaction, and reminded his father of the bath. But Peter Ivánovich was interested in the question of how a French hotel could be run in Moscow in the year '56, and of how Madame Chevalier passed her time. Finally the landlord himself bowed and asked him whether he was not pleased to order anything. "We will have tea, Natásha. Yes? Tea, then, if you please! We will have some other talks, my dear monsieur! What a charming man!" "And the bath, papa?" "Oh, yes, then we shall have no tea." Thus the only result from the conversation with the newly arrived guests was taken from the landlord. But Peter Ivánovich was now proud and happy of his arrangements. The drivers, who came to ask a _pourboire_, vexed him, because Serézha had no change, and Peter Ivánovich was on the point of sending once more for the landlord, but the happy thought that others, too, ought to be happy on that evening helped him out of that predicament. He took two three-rouble bills, and, sticking one bill into the hand of one of the drivers, he said, "This is for you" (Peter Ivánovich was in the habit of saying "you" to all without exception, unless to a member of his family); "and this is for you," he said, transferring the other bill from the palm of his hand to that of the driver, in some such manner as people do when paying a doctor for a visit. After attending to all these things, he was taken to the bath-house. Sónya, who was sitting on the divan, put her hand under her head and burst out laughing. "Oh, how nice it is, mamma! Oh, how nice!" Then she placed her feet on the divan, stretched herself, adjusted herself, and fell into the sound, calm sleep of a healthy girl of eighteen years of age, after six weeks on the road. Natálya Nikoláevna, who was still busy taking out things in her sleeping-room, heard, no doubt with her maternal ear, that Sónya was not stirring, and went out to take a look at her. She took a pillow and, raising the girl's reddened, dishevelled head with her large white hand, placed her on the pillow. Sónya drew a deep, deep sigh, shrugged her shoulders, and put her head on the pillow, without saying "_Merci_," as though that had all been done of its own accord. "Not on that bed, not on that, Gavrílovna, Kátya," Natálya Nikoláevna immediately turned to the maids who were making a bed, and with one hand, as though in passing, she adjusted the straying hair of her daughter. Without stopping and without hurrying, Natálya Nikoláevna dressed herself, and upon the arrival of her husband and her son everything was ready: the trunks were no longer in the rooms; in Pierre's sleeping-room everything was arranged as it had been for several decades in Irkútsk: the morning-gown, the pipe, the tobacco-pouch, the sugared water, the Gospel, which he read at night, and even the image stuck to the rich wall-paper in the rooms of Chevalier, who never used such adornments, but on that evening they appeared in all the rooms of the third division of the hotel. Having dressed herself, Natálya Nikoláevna adjusted her collar and cuffs, which, in spite of the journey, were still clean, combed herself, and seated herself opposite the table. Her beautiful black eyes gazed somewhere into the distance: she looked and rested herself. She seemed to be resting, not from the unpacking alone, nor from the road, nor from the oppressive years,--she seemed to be resting from her whole life, and the distance into which she was gazing, and in which she saw living and beloved faces, was that rest which she was wishing for. Whether it was an act of love, which she had done for her husband, or the love which she had experienced for her children when they were young, or whether it was a heavy loss, or a peculiarity of her character,--everyone who looked at that woman could not help seeing that nothing could be expected from her, that she had long ago given all of herself to life, and that nothing was left of her. All that there was left was something worthy of respect, something beautiful and sad, as a reminiscence, as the moonlight. She could not be imagined otherwise than surrounded by all the comforts of life. It was impossible for her ever to be hungry, or to eat eagerly, or to have on soiled clothes, or to stumble, or to forget to clear her nose. It was a physical impossibility. Why it was so, I do not know, but every motion of hers was dignity, grace, gentleness toward all those who could enjoy her sight. "Sie pflegen und weben Himmlische Rosen ins irdische Leben." She knew those verses and loved them, but was not guided by them. All her nature was an expression of that thought; all her life was this one unconscious weaving of invisible roses in the lives of those with whom she came in contact. She had followed her husband to Siberia only because she loved him; she had not thought what she could do for him, and instinctively had done everything. She had made his bed, had put away his things, had prepared his dinner and his tea, and, above all, had always been where he was, and no woman could have given more happiness to her husband. In the drawing-room the samovár was boiling on the round table. Natálya Nikoláevna sat near it. Sónya wrinkled her face and smiled under her mother's hand, which was tickling her, when father and son, with wrinkled finger-tips and glossy cheeks and foreheads (the father's bald spot was particularly glistening), with fluffy white and black hair, and with beaming countenances, entered the room. "It has grown brighter since you have come in," said Natálya Nikoláevna. "O Lord, how white you are!" She had been saying that each Saturday, for several decades, and each Saturday Pierre experienced bashfulness and delight, whenever he heard that. They seated themselves at the table; there was an odour of tea and of the pipe, and there were heard the voices of the parents, the children, and the servants, who received their cups in the same room. They recalled everything funny that had happened on the road, admired Sónya's hair-dressing, and laughed. Geographically they were all transferred a distance of five thousand versts, into an entirely different, strange milieu, but morally they were that evening still at home, just such as the peculiar, long, solitary family life had made them to be. It will not be so to-morrow. Peter Ivánovich seated himself near the samovár, and lighted his pipe. He was not in a cheerful mood. "So here we are," he said, "and I am glad that we shall not see any one to-night; this is the last evening we shall pass with the family," and he washed these words down with a large mouthful of tea. "Why the last, Pierre?" "Why? Because the eaglets have learned to fly, and they have to make their own nests, and from here they will fly each in a different direction--" "What nonsense!" said Sónya, taking his glass from him, and smiling at him, as she smiled at everything. "The old nest is good enough!" "The old nest is a sad nest; the old man did not know how to make it,--he was caught in a cage, and in the cage he reared his young ones, and was let out only when his wings no longer would hold him up. No, the eaglets must make their nests higher up, more auspiciously, nearer to the sun; that is what they are his children for, that his example might serve them; but the old one will look on, so long as he is not blind, and will listen, when he becomes blind-- Pour in some rum, more, more--enough!" "We shall see who is going to leave," replied Sónya, casting a cursory glance at her mother, as though she felt uneasy speaking in her presence. "We shall see who is going to leave," she continued. "I am not afraid for myself, neither am I for Serézha." (Serézha was walking up and down in the room, thinking of how clothes would be ordered for him to-morrow, and wondering whether he had better go to the tailor, or send for him; he was not interested in Sónya's conversation with his father.) Sónya began to laugh. "What is the matter? What?" asked her father. "You are younger than we, papa. Much younger, indeed," she said, again bursting out into a laugh. "Indeed!" said the old man, and his austere wrinkles formed themselves into a gentle, and yet contemptuous, smile. Natálya Nikoláevna bent away from the samovár which prevented her seeing her husband. "Sónya is right. You are still sixteen years old, Pierre. Serézha is younger in feelings, but you are younger in soul. I can foresee what he will do, but you will astound me yet." Whether he recognized the justice of this remark, or was flattered by it, he did not know what reply to make, and only smoked in silence, drank his tea, and beamed with his eyes. But Serézha, with characteristic egoism of youth, interested in what was said about him, entered into the conversation and affirmed that he was really old, that his arrival in Moscow and the new life, which was opening before him, did not gladden him in the least, and that he calmly reflected on the future and looked forward toward it. "Still, it is the last evening," repeated Peter Ivánovich. "It will not be again to-morrow." And he poured a little more rum into his glass. He sat for a long time at the tea-table, with an expression as though he wished to say many things, but had no hearers. He moved up the rum toward him, but his daughter softly carried away the bottle. II. When M. Chevalier, who had been up-stairs to look after his guests, returned to his room and gave the benefit of his observations on the newcomers to his life companion, in laces and a silk garment, who in Parisian fashion was sitting back of the counter, several habitual visitors of the establishment were sitting in the room. Serézha, who had been down-stairs, had taken notice of that room and of its visitors. If you have been in Moscow, you have, no doubt, noticed that room yourself. If you, a modest man who do not know Moscow, have missed a dinner to which you are invited, or have made a mistake in your calculations, imagining that the hospitable Muscovites would invite you to dinner, or simply wish to dine in the best restaurant, you enter the lackeys' room. Three or four lackeys jump up: one of them takes off your fur coat and congratulates you on the occasion of the New Year, or of the Butter-week, or of your arrival, or simply remarks that you have not called for a long while, though you have never been in that establishment before. You enter, and the first thing that strikes your eyes is a table set, as you in the first moment imagine, with an endless quantity of palatable dishes. But that is only an optical illusion, for the greater part of that table is occupied by pheasants in feather, raw lobsters, boxes with perfume and pomatum, and bottles with cosmetics and candy. Only at the very edge, if you look well, will you find the vódka and a piece of bread with butter and sardines, under a wire globe, which is quite useless in Moscow in the month of December, even though it is precisely such as those which are used in Paris. Then, beyond the table, you see the room, where behind a counter sits a Frenchwoman, of extremely repulsive exterior, but wearing the cleanest of gloves and a most exquisite, fashionable gown. Near the Frenchwoman you will see an officer in unbuttoned uniform, taking a dram of vódka, a civilian reading a newspaper, and somebody's military or civilian legs lying on a velvet chair, and you will hear French conversation, and more or less sincere, loud laughter. If you wish to know what is going on in that room, I should advise you not to enter within, but only to look in, as though merely passing by to take a sandwich. Otherwise you will feel ill at ease from the interrogative silence and glances, and you will certainly take your tail between your legs and skulk away to one of the tables in the large hall, or to the winter garden. Nobody will keep you from doing so. These tables are for everybody, and there, in your solitude, you may call Dey a garçon and order as many truffles as you please. The room with the Frenchwoman, however, exists for the select, golden Moscow youth, and it is not so easy to find your way among the select as you imagine. On returning to this room, M. Chevalier told his wife that the gentleman from Siberia was dull, but that his son and daughter were fine people, such as could be raised only in Siberia. "You ought just to see the daughter! She is a little rose-bush!" "Oh, this old man is fond of fresh-looking women," said one of the guests, who was smoking a cigar. (The conversation, of course, was carried on in French, but I render it in Russian, as I shall continue to do in this story.) "Oh, I am very fond of them!" replied M. Chevalier. "Women are my passion. Do you not believe me?" "Do you hear, Madame Chevalier?" shouted a stout officer of Cossacks, who owed a big bill in the institution and was fond of chatting with the landlord. "He shares my taste," said M. Chevalier, patting the stout man on his epaulet. "And is this Siberian young lady really pretty?" M. Chevalier folded his fingers and kissed them. After that the conversation between the guests became confidential and very jolly. They were talking about the stout officer; he smiled as he listened to what they were saying about him. "How can one have such perverted taste!" cried one, through the laughter. "Mlle. Clarisse! You know, Strúgov prefers such of the women as have chicken calves." Though Mlle. Clarisse did not understand the salt of that remark, she behind her counter burst out into a laughter as silvery as her bad teeth and advanced years permitted. "Has the Siberian lady turned him to such thoughts?" and she laughed more heartily still. M. Chevalier himself roared with laughter, as he said: "_Ce vieux coquin_," patting the officer of Cossacks on his head and shoulders. "But who are they, those Siberians? Mining proprietors or merchants?" one of the gentlemen asked, during a pause in the laughter. "Nikíta, ask ze passport from ze chentleman zat as come," said M. Chevalier. "We, Alexander, ze Autocrat--" M. Chevalier began to read the passport, which had been brought in the meantime, but the officer of Cossacks tore it out of his hands, and his face expressed surprise. "Guess who it is," he said, "for you all know him by reputation." "How can we guess? Show it to us! Well, Abdel Kader, ha, ha, ha! Well, Cagliostro-- Well, Peter III.--ha, ha, ha, ha!" "Well, read it!" The officer of Cossacks unfolded the paper and read the name of him who once had been Prince Peter Ivánovich, and the family name which everybody knows and pronounces with a certain respect and pleasure, when speaking of a person bearing that name, as of a near and familiar person. We shall call him Labázov. The officer of Cossacks had a dim recollection that this Peter Labázov had been something important in the year '25, and that he had been sent to hard labour,--but what he had been famous for, he did not exactly know. But of the others not one knew anything about him, and they replied: "Oh, yes, the famous prince," just as they would have said, "Of course, he is famous!" about Shakespeare, who had written the "Æneid." But they recognized him from the explanations of the stout officer, who told them that he was a brother of Prince Iván, an uncle of the Chíkins, of Countess Prut, in short, the well-known-- "He must be very rich, if he is a brother of Prince Iván," remarked one of the young men, "if the fortune has been returned to him. It has been returned to some." "What a lot of exiles are returning nowadays!" remarked another. "Really, fewer seem to have been sent away, than are returning now. Zhikínski, tell us that story of the 18th!" he turned to an officer of sharp-shooters, who had the reputation of being a good story-teller. "Do tell it!" "In the first place, it is a true story, and happened here, at Chevalier's, in the large hall. Three Decembrists came to have their dinner. They were sitting at one table, eating, drinking, talking. Opposite them sat down a gentleman of respectable mien, of about the same age, and he listened to their talking about Siberia. He asked them something, they exchanged a few words, began to converse, and it turned out that he, too, was from Siberia. "'And do you know Nerchínsk?' "'Indeed I do, I lived there.' "'And do you know Tatyána Ivánovna?' "'Of course I do!' "'Permit me to ask you,--were you, too, exiled?' "'Yes, I had the misfortune to suffer, and you?' "'We are all exiles of the 14th of December. It is strange that we should not know you, if you, too, were exiled for the 14th. Permit me to know your name!' "'Fédorov.' "'Also for the 14th?' "'No, for the 18th.' "'For the 18th?' "'For the 18th of September, for a gold watch. I was falsely accused of having stolen it, and I suffered, though innocent.'" All of them rolled in laughter, except the story-teller, who with a most serious face looked at the outstretched hearers and swore that it was a true story. Soon after the story one of the young men got up and went to the club. He passed through the halls which were filled with tables at which old men were playing whist; turned into the "infernal region," where the famous "Puchin" had begun his game against the "company;" stood for awhile near one of the billiard-tables, where, holding on to the cushion, a distinguished old man was fumbling around and with difficulty striking a ball; looked into the library, where a general, holding a newspaper a distance away from him, was reading it slowly above his glasses, and a registered young man turned the leaves of one periodical after another, trying to make no noise; and finally seated himself on a divan in the billiard-room, near some young people who were playing pyramids, and who were as much gilded as he was. It was a day of dinners, and there were there many gentlemen who always frequented the club. Among them was Iván Vavílovich Pákhtin. He was a man of about forty years of age, of medium stature, fair-complexioned, with broad shoulders and hips, with a bare head, and a glossy, happy, clean-shaven face. He was not playing at pyramids, but had just sat down beside Prince D----, with whom he was on "thou" terms, and had accepted a glass of champagne which had been offered to him. He had located himself so comfortably after the dinner, having quietly unbuckled his trousers at the back, that it looked as though he could sit there all his life, smoking a cigar, drinking champagne, and feeling the proximity of princes, counts, and the children of ministers. The news of the arrival of the Labázovs interfered with his calm. "Where are you going, Pákhtin," said a minister's son, having noticed during the game that Pákhtin had got up, pulled his waistcoat down, and emptied his champagne in a large gulp. "Syévernikov has invited me," said Pákhtin, feeling a restlessness in his legs. "Well, will you go there?" "Anastásya, Anastásya, please unlock the door for me." That was a well-known gipsy-song, which was in vogue at that time. "Perhaps. And you?" "Where shall I, an old married man, go?" "Well!" Pákhtin, smiling, went to the glass hall, to join Syévernikov. He was fond of having his last word appear to be a joke. And so it came out at that time, too. "Well, how is the countess's health?" he asked, walking over to Syévernikov, who had not called him at all, but who, according to Pákhtin's surmise, should more than any one else learn of the arrival of the Labázovs. Syévernikov had somehow been mixed up with the affair of the 14th, and was a friend of the Decembrists. The countess's health was much better, and Pákhtin was very glad to hear it. "Do you know, Labázov has arrived; he is staying at Chevaliers." "You don't say so! We are old friends. How glad I am! How glad! The poor old fellow must have grown old. His wife wrote to my wife--" But Syévernikov did not finish saying what it was she had written, because his partners, who were playing without trumps, had made some mistake. While speaking with Iván Pávlovich, he kept an eye on them, and now he leaned forward with his whole body against the table, and, thumping it with his hands, he tried to prove that they ought to have played from the seven. Iván Pávlovich got up and, going up to another table, in the middle of a conversation informed another worthy gentleman of his bit of news, again got up, and repeated the same at a third table. The worthy gentlemen were all glad to hear of the arrival of the Labázovs, so that, upon returning to the billiard-room, Iván Pávlovich, who at first had had his misgivings about whether he had to rejoice in the return of the Labázovs, or not, no longer started with an introduction about the ball, about an article in the _Messenger_, about health, or weather, but approached everybody directly with the enthusiastic announcement of the safe return of the famous Decembrist. The old man, who was still vainly endeavouring to hit the white ball with his cue, would, in Pákhtin's opinion, be very much delighted to hear the news. He went up to him. "Are you playing well, your Excellency?" he said, just as the old man stuck his cue into the marker's red waistcoat, wishing to indicate that it had to be chalked. "Your Excellency" was not said, as you might think, from a desire of being subservient (no, that was not the fashion in '56). Iván Pávlovich was in the habit of calling the old man by his name and patronymic, but this was said partly as a joke on men who spoke that way, partly in order to hint that he knew full well to whom he was talking, and yet was taking liberties, and partly in truth: altogether it was a very delicate jest. "I have just learned that Peter Labázov has returned. Straight from Siberia, with his whole family." These words Pákhtin pronounced just as the old man again missed his ball, for such was his bad luck. "If he has returned as cracked as he went away, there is no cause for rejoicing," gruffly said the old man, who was irritated by his incomprehensible failure. This statement vexed Iván Pávlovich, and again he was at a loss whether there was any cause for rejoicing at Labázov's return, and, in order fully to settle his doubt, he directed his steps to a room, where generally assembled the clever people, who knew the meaning and value of each thing, and, in short, knew everything. Iván Pávlovich was on the same footing of friendship with the frequenters of the intellectual room as with the gilded youths and with the dignitaries. It is true, he had no special place of his own in the intellectual room, but nobody was surprised to see him enter and seat himself on a divan. They were just discussing in what year and upon what occasion there had taken place a quarrel between two Russian journalists. Waiting for a moment of silence, Iván Pávlovich communicated his bit of news, not as something joyous, nor as an unimportant event, but as though part of the conversation. But immediately, from the way the "intellectuals" (I use the word "intellectuals" as a name for the frequenters of the "intellectual" room) received the news and began to discuss it, Iván Pávlovich understood that it belonged there, and that only there would it receive such an elaboration as to enable him to carry it farther and _savoir à quoi s'en tenir_. "Labázov was the only one who was wanting," said one of the intellectuals; "now all the living Decembrists have returned to Russia." "He was one of the herd of the famous--" said Pákhtin, still with an inquisitive glance, prepared to make that quotation both jocular and serious. "Indeed, Labázov was one of the most remarkable men of that time," began an intellectual. "In 1819 he was an ensign of the Seménovski regiment, and was sent abroad with messages to Duke Z----. Then he returned and in the year '24 was received in the First Masonic lodge. The Masons of that time used all to gather at the house of D---- and at his house. He was very rich. Prince Zh----, Fédor D----, Iván P----, those were his nearest friends. Then his uncle, Prince Visarión, to remove the young man from that society, took him to Moscow." "Pardon me, Nikoláy Stepánovich," another intellectual interrupted him, "it seems to me that that happened in the year '23, because Visarión Labázov was appointed a commander of the Third Corps in '24, and was then in Warsaw. He had offered him an adjutantship, and after his refusal, he was removed. However, pardon me for interrupting you." "Not at all. Proceed!" "Pardon me!" "Proceed! You ought to know that better than I, and, besides, your memory and knowledge have been sufficiently attested here." "In Moscow he against his uncle's will left the army," continued the one whose memory and knowledge had been attested, "and there he gathered around him a second society, of which he was the progenitor and the heart, if it be possible so to express it. He was rich, handsome, clever, educated; they say he was exceedingly amiable. My aunt used to tell me that she did not know a more bewitching man. Here he married Miss Krínski, a few months before the revolt broke out." "The daughter of Nikoláy Krínski, the one of Borodinó fame, you know," somebody interrupted him. "Well, yes. Her immense fortune he still possesses, but his own paternal estate passed over to his younger brother, Prince Iván, who is now Ober-Hof-Kaffermeister" (he gave him some such name) "and was a minister." "The best thing is what he did for his brother," continued the narrator. "When he was arrested, there was one thing which he succeeded in destroying, and that was his brother's letters and documents." "Was his brother mixed up in it, too?" The narrator did not say "Yes," but compressed his lips and gave a significant wink. "Then, during all the inquests Peter Labázov kept denying everything which concerned his brother, and so suffered more than the rest. But the best part of it is that Prince Iván got all the property, and never sent a penny to his brother." "They say that Peter Labázov himself declined it," remarked one of the hearers. "Yes; but he declined it only because Prince Iván wrote him before the coronation, excusing himself and saying that if he had not taken it, it would have been confiscated, and that he had children and debts, and that now he was unable to return it to him. Peter Labázov replied to him in two lines: 'Neither I nor my heirs have any right, nor can have any right, to the property legally appropriated by you.' That was all. How was that? And Prince Iván swallowed it, and in delight locked up that document with the notes in a safe, and showed it to no one." One of the peculiarities of the intellectual room was that its visitors knew, whenever they wanted to know, everything that was taking place in the world, no matter how secret the event might have been. "Still it is a question," said a new interlocutor, "whether it was just to deprive the children of Prince Iván of the property, with which they have grown up and have been educated, and to which they thought they had a right." Thus the conversation was transferred to an abstract sphere, which did not interest Pákhtin. He felt the necessity of communicating the news to fresh people, and so he rose and, speaking to the right and to the left, walked from one hall to another. One of his fellow officers stopped him to give him the news of Labázov's arrival. "Who does not know that?" replied Iván Pávlovich, with a calm smile, turning to the exit. The news had had time to complete its circle, and was again returning to him. There was nothing else to do in the club, and he went to an evening party. It was not a special entertainment, but a salon where guests were received any evening. There were there eight ladies, and one old colonel, and all found it terribly dull. Pákhtin's firm gait alone and his smiling face cheered the ladies and maidens. And the news was the more appropriate, since the old Countess Fuks and her daughter were present in the salon. When Pákhtin told nearly word for word what he had heard in the intellectual room, Madame Fuks, shaking her head and marvelling at her old age, began to recall how she used to go out together with Natásha Krínski, the present Princess Labázov. "Her marriage is a very romantic story, and all that happened under my eyes. Natásha was almost engaged to Myátlin, who was later killed in a duel with Debras. Just then Prince Peter arrived in Moscow, fell in love with her, and proposed to her. But her father, who wanted Myátlin very much,--they were, in general, afraid of Labázov because he was a Mason,--refused him. The young man continued to see her at balls, everywhere, and became friendly with Myátlin, whom he begged to decline. Myátlin agreed to do so, and he persuaded her to elope. She, too, agreed, but the last repentance----" (the conversation was taking place in French), "and she went to her father and said that everything was ready for the elopement, and she could leave him, but hoped for his magnanimity. And, indeed, her father forgave her,--everybody begged for her,--and gave his consent. Thus the wedding was celebrated, and it was a jolly wedding! Who of us thought that a year later she would follow him to Siberia! She, an only daughter, the most beautiful, the richest woman of that time. Emperor Alexander always used to notice her at balls, and had danced with her so often. Countess G---- gave a _bal costumé_,--I remember it as though it were to-day,--and she was a Neapolitan maid, oh, so charming! Whenever he came to Moscow, he used to ask, '_que fait la belle Napolitaine_?' And suddenly this woman, in such a condition (she bore a child on the way), did not stop for a moment to think, without preparing anything, without collecting her things, just as she was, when they took him, followed him a distance of five thousand versts." "Oh, what a remarkable woman!" said the hostess. "Both he and she were remarkable people," said another lady. "I have been told,--I don't know whether it is true,--that wherever they worked in the mines in Siberia, or whatever it is called, the convicts, who were with them, improved in their presence." "But she has never worked in the mines," Pákhtin corrected her. How much that year '56 meant! Three years before no one had been thinking of the Labázovs, and if any one recalled them, it was with that unaccountable feeling of dread with which one speaks of one lately dead; but now they vividly recalled all the former relations, all the beautiful qualities, and each lady was making a plan for getting the monopoly of the Labázovs, in order to treat the other guests to them. "Their son and their daughter have come with them," said Pákhtin. "If they are only as handsome as their mother used to be," said Countess Fuks. "Still, their father, too, was very, very handsome." "How could they educate their children there?" asked the hostess. "They say, nicely. They say that the young man is as nice, as amiable, and as cultured as though he had been brought up in Paris." "I predict great success to that young person," said a homely spinster. "All those Siberian ladies have something pleasantly trivial about them, which everybody, however, likes." "Yes, yes," said another spinster. "Here we have another rich prospective bride," said a third spinster. The old colonel, of German origin, who had come to Moscow three years before, in order to marry a rich girl, decided as quickly as possible, before the young people knew anything about it, to present himself and propose. But the spinsters and ladies thought almost the same about the young Siberian. "No doubt that is the one I am destined to marry," thought a spinster who had been going out for eight years. "No doubt it was for the best that that stupid officer of the Chevalier Guards did not propose to me. I should certainly have been unhappy." "Well, they will again grow yellow with envy, if this one, too, falls in love with me," thought a young and pretty lady. We hear much about the provincialism of small towns,--but there is nothing worse than the provincialism of the upper classes. There are no new persons there, and society is prepared to receive all kinds of new persons, if they should make their appearance; but they are rarely, very rarely, recognized as belonging to their circle and accepted, as was the case with the Labázovs, and the sensation produced by them is stronger than in a provincial town. III. "This is Moscow, white-stoned Mother Moscow," said Peter Ivánovich, rubbing his eyes in the morning, and listening to the tolling of the bells which was proceeding from Gazette Lane. Nothing so vividly resurrects the past as sounds, and these sounds of the Moscow bells, combined with the sight of a white wall opposite the window, and with the rumbling of wheels, so vividly reminded him not only of the Moscow which he had known thirty-five years before, but also of the Moscow with the Kremlin, with the palaces, with Iván the bell, and so forth, which he had been carrying in his heart, that he experienced a childish joy at being a Russian, and in Moscow. There appeared the Bukhara morning-gown, wide open over the broad chest with its chintz shirt, the pipe with its amber, the lackey with soft manners, tea, the odour of tobacco; a loud male voice was heard in Chevalier's apartments; there resounded the morning kisses, and the voices of daughter and son, and the Decembrist was as much at home as in Irkútsk, and as he would have been in New York or in Paris. No matter how much I should like to present to my readers the Decembrist hero above all foibles, I must confess, for truth's sake, that Peter Ivánovich took great pains in shaving and combing himself, and in looking at himself in the mirror. He was dissatisfied with the garments, which had been made in Siberia with little elegance, and two or three times he buttoned and unbuttoned his coat. But Natálya Nikoláevna entered the drawing-room, rustling with her black moire gown, with mittens and with ribbons in her cap, which, though not according to the latest fashion, were so arranged that, far from making her appear _ridicule_, they made her look _distinguée_. For this ladies have a special sixth sense and perspicacity, which cannot be compared to anything. Sónya, too, was so dressed that, although she was two years behind in fashion, she could not be reproached in any way. On her mother everything was dark and simple, and on the daughter bright and cheerful. Serézha had just awakened, and so they went by themselves to mass. Father and mother sat in the back seat, and their daughter was opposite them. Vasíli climbed on the box, and the hired carriage took them to the Kremlin. When they got out of the carriage, the ladies adjusted their robes, and Peter Ivánovich took the arm of his Natálya Nikoláevna, and, throwing back his head, walked up to the door of the church. Many people, merchants, officers, and everybody else, could not make out what kind of people they were. Who was that old man with his old sunburnt, and still unblanched face, with the large, straight work wrinkles of a peculiar fold, different from the wrinkles acquired in the English club, with snow-white hair and beard, with a good, proud glance and energetic movements? Who was that tall lady with that determined gait, and those weary, dimmed, large, beautiful eyes? Who was that fresh, stately, strong young lady, neither fashionable, nor timid? Merchants? No, no merchants. Germans? No, no Germans. Gentlefolk? No, they are different,--they are distinguished people. Thus thought those who saw them in church, and for some reason more readily and cheerfully made way for them than for men in thick epaulets. Peter Ivánovich bore himself just as majestically as at the entrance, and prayed quietly, with reserve, and without forgetting himself. Natálya Nikoláevna glided down on her knees, took out a handkerchief, and wept much during the cherubical song. Sónya seemed to be making an effort over herself in order to pray. Devotion did not come to her, but she did not look around, and diligently made the signs of the cross. Serézha stayed at home, partly because he had overslept himself, partly because he did not like to stand through a mass, which made his legs faint,--a matter he was unable to understand, since it was a mere trifle for him to walk forty miles on snow-shoes, whereas standing through twelve pericopes was the greatest physical torture for him,--but chiefly because he felt that more than anything he needed a new suit of clothes. He dressed himself and went to Blacksmith Bridge. He had plenty of money. His father had made it a rule, ever since his son had passed his twenty-first year, to let him have as much money as he wished. It lay with him to leave his parents entirely without money. How sorry I am for the 250 roubles which he threw away in Kuntz's shop of ready-made clothes! Any one of the gentlemen who met Serézha would have been only too happy to show him around, and would have regarded it as a piece of happiness to go with him to get his clothes made. But, as it was, he was a stranger in the crowd, and, making his way in his cap along Blacksmith Bridge, he went to the end, without looking into the shops, opened the door, and came out from it in a cinnamon-coloured half-dress coat, which was tight (though at that time they wore wide coats), and in loose black trousers (though they wore tight trousers), and in a flowery atlas waistcoat, which not one of the gentlemen, who were in Chevalier's special room, would have allowed their lackeys to wear, and bought a number of other a things; on the other hand, Kuntz marvelled at the young man's slender waist, the like of which, as he explained to everybody, he had never seen. Serézha knew that he had a beautiful waist, and he was very much flattered by the praise of a stranger, such as Kuntz was. He came out with 250 roubles less, but was dressed badly, in fact so badly that his apparel two days later passed over into Vasíli's possession and always remained a disagreeable memory for Serézha. At home he went down-stairs, seated himself in the large hall, looking now and then into the sanctum, and ordered a breakfast of such strange dishes that the servant in the kitchen had to laugh. Then he asked for a periodical, and pretended to be reading. When the servant, encouraged by the inexperience of the young man, addressed some questions to him, Serézha said, "Go to your place!" and blushed. But he said this so proudly that the servant obeyed. Mother, father, and daughter, upon returning home, found his clothes excellent. Do you remember that joyous sensation of childhood, when you were dressed up for your name-day and taken to mass, and when, upon returning with a holiday expression in your clothes, upon your countenance, and in your soul, you found toys and guests at home? You knew that on that day there would be no classes, that even the grown-ups celebrated on that day, and that that was a day of exceptions and pleasures for the whole house; you knew that you alone were the cause of that holiday, and that you would be forgiven, no matter what you might do, and you were surprised to see that the people in the streets did not celebrate along with your home folk, and the sounds were more audible, and the colours brighter,--in short, a name-day sensation. It was a sensation of that kind that Peter Ivánovich experienced on his return from church. Pákhtin's solicitude of the evening before did not pass in vain: instead of toys Peter Ivánovich found at home several visiting-cards of distinguished Muscovites, who, in the year '56, regarded it as their peremptory duty to show every attention possible to a famous exile, whom they would under no consideration have wished to see three years before. In the eyes of Chevalier, the porter, and the servants of the hotel, the appearance of carriages asking for Peter Ivánovich, on that one morning increased their respect and subserviency tenfold. All those were name-day toys for Peter Ivánovich. No matter how much tried in life, how clever a man may be, the expression of respect from people respected by a large number of men is always agreeable. Peter Ivánovich felt light of heart when Chevalier, bowing, offered to change his apartments and asked him to order anything he might need, and assured him that he regarded Peter Ivánovich's visit as a piece of luck, and when, examining the visiting-cards and throwing them into a vase, he called out the names of Count S----, Prince D----, and so forth. Natálya Nikoláevna said that she would not receive anybody and that she would go at once to the house of Márya Ivánovna, to which Peter Ivánovich consented, though he wished very much to talk to some of the visitors. Only one visitor managed to get through before the refusal to meet him. That was Pákhtin. If this man had been asked why he went away from the Prechístenka to go to Gazette Lane, he would have been unable to give any excuse, except that he was fond of everything new and remarkable, and so had come to see Peter Ivánovich, as something rare. One would think that, coming to see a stranger for no other reason than that, he would have been embarrassed. But the contrary was true. Peter Ivánovich and his son and Sónya Petróvna became embarrassed. Natálya Nikoláevna was too much of a _grande dame_ to become embarrassed for any reason whatever. The weary glance of her beautiful black eyes was calmly lowered on Pákhtin. But Pákhtin was refreshing, self-contented, and gaily amiable, as always. He was a friend of Márya Ivánovna's. "Ah!" said Natálya Nikoláevna. "Not a friend,--the difference of our years,--but she has always been kind to me." Pákhtin was an old admirer of Peter Ivánovich's,--he knew his companions. He hoped that he could be useful to the newcomers. He would have appeared the previous evening, but could not find the time, and begged to be excused, and sat down and talked for a long time. "Yes, I must tell you, I have found many changes in Russia since then," Peter Ivánovich said, in reply to a question. The moment Peter Ivánovich began to speak, you ought to have seen with what respectful attention Pákhtin received every word that flew out of the mouth of the distinguished old man, and how after each sentence, at times after a word, Pákhtin with a nod, a smile, or a motion of his eyes gave him to understand that he had received and accepted the memorable sentence or word. The weary glance approved of that manoeuvre. Sergyéy Petróvich seemed to be afraid lest his father's conversation should not be weighty enough, corresponding to the attention of the hearer. Sónya Petróvna, on the contrary, smiled that imperceptible self-satisfied smile which people smile who have caught a man's ridiculous side. It seemed to her that nothing was to be got from him, that he was a "shyúshka," as she and her brother nicknamed a certain class of people. Peter Ivánovich declared that during his journey he had seen enormous changes, which gave him pleasure. "There is no comparison, the masses--the peasants--stand so much higher now, have so much greater consciousness of their dignity," he said, as though repeating some old phrases. "I must say that the masses have always interested me most. I am of the opinion that the strength of Russia does not lie in us, but in the masses," and so forth. Peter Ivánovich with characteristic zeal evolved his more or less original ideas in regard to many important subjects. We shall hear more of them in fuller form. Pákhtin was melting for joy, and fully agreed with him in everything. "You must by all means meet the Aksátovs. Will you permit me to introduce them to you, prince? You know they have permitted him to publish his periodical. To-morrow, they say, the first number will appear. I have also read his remarkable article on the consistency of the theory of science in the abstract. Remarkably interesting. Another article, the history of Servia in the eleventh century, of that famous general Karbovánets, is also very interesting. Altogether an enormous step." "Indeed," said Peter Ivánovich. But he was apparently not interested in all these bits of information; he did not even know the names and merits of all those men whom Pákhtin quoted as universally known. But Natálya Nikoláevna, without denying the necessity of knowing all these men and conditions, remarked in justification of her husband that Pierre received his periodicals very late. He read entirely too much. "Papa, shall we not go to aunty?" asked Sónya, upon coming in. "We shall, but we must have our breakfast. Won't you have anything?" Pákhtin naturally declined, but Peter Ivánovich, with the hospitality characteristic of every Russian and of him in particular, insisted that Pákhtin should eat and drink something. He himself emptied a wine-glass of vódka and a tumbler of Bordeaux. Pákhtin noticed that as he was filling his glass, Natálya accidentally turned away from it, and the son cast a peculiar glance on his father's hands. After the wine, Peter Ivánovich, in response to Pákhtin's questions about what his opinion was in respect to the new literature, the new tendency, the war, the peace (Pákhtin had a knack of uniting the most diversified subjects into one senseless but smooth conversation), in response to these questions Peter Ivánovich at once replied with one general _profession de foi_, and either under the influence of the wine, or of the subject of the conversation, he became so excited that tears appeared in his eyes, and Pákhtin, too, was in ecstasy, and himself became tearful, and without embarrassment expressed his conviction that Peter Ivánovich was now in advance of all the foremost men and should become the head of all the parties. Peter Ivánovich's eyes became inflamed,--he believed what Pákhtin was telling him,--and he would have continued talking for a long time, if Sónya Petróvna had not schemed to get Natálya Nikoláevna to put on her mantilla, and had not come herself to raise Peter Ivánovich from his seat. He poured out the rest of the wine into a glass, but Sónya Petróvna drank it. "What is this?" "I have not had any yet, papa, pardon." He smiled. "Well, let us go to Márya Ivánovna's. You will excuse us, Monsieur Pákhtin." And Peter Ivánovich left the room, carrying his head high. In the vestibule he met a general, who had come to call on his old acquaintance. They had not seen each other for thirty-five years. The general was toothless and bald. "How fresh you still are!" he said. "Evidently Siberia is better than St. Petersburg. These are your family,--introduce me to them! What a fine fellow your son is! So to dinner to-morrow?" "Yes, yes, by all means." On the porch they met the famous Chikháev, another old acquaintance. "How did you find out that I had arrived?" "It would be a shame for Moscow if it did not know it. It is a shame that you were not met at the barrier. Where do you dine? No doubt with your sister, Márya Ivánovna. Very well, I shall be there myself." Peter Ivánovich always had the aspect of a proud man for one who could not through that exterior make out the expression of unspeakable goodness and impressionableness; but just then even Márya Nikoláevna was delighted to see his unwonted dignity, and Sónya Petróvna smiled with her eyes, as she looked at him. They arrived at the house of Márya Ivánovna. Márya Ivánovna was Peter Ivánovich's godmother and ten years his senior. She was an old maid. Her history, why she did not get married, and how she had passed her youth, I will tell some time later. She had lived uninterruptedly for forty years in Moscow. She had neither much intelligence, nor great wealth, and she did not think much of connections,--on the contrary; and there was not a man who did not respect her. She was so convinced that everybody ought to respect her that everybody actually respected her. There were some young liberals from the university who did not recognize her power, but these gentlemen made a bold front only in her absence. She needed only to enter the drawing-room with her royal gait, to say something in her calm manner, to smile her kindly smile, and they were vanquished. Her society consisted of everybody. She looked upon all of Moscow as her home folk, and treated them as such. She had friends mostly among the young people and clever men, but women she did not like. She had also dependents, whom our literature has for some reason included with the Hungarian woman and with generals in one common class for contempt; but Márya Ivánovna considered it better for Skópin, who had been ruined in cards, and Madame Byéshev, whom her husband had driven away, to be living with her than in misery, and so she kept them. But the two great passions in Márya Ivánovna's present life were her two brothers. Peter Ivánovich was her idol. Prince Iván was hateful to her. She had not known that Peter Ivánovich had arrived; she had attended mass, and was just finishing her coffee. At the table sat the vicar of Moscow, Madame Byéshev, and Skópin. Márya Ivánovna was telling them about young Count V----, the son of P---- Z----, who had returned from Sevastopol, and with whom she was in love. (She had some passion all the time.) He was to dine with her on that day. The vicar got up and bowed himself out. Márya Ivánovna did not keep him,--she was a freethinker in this respect: she was pious, but had no use for monks and laughed at the ladies that ran after them, and boldly asserted that in her opinion monks were just such men as we sinful people, and that it was better to find salvation in the world than in a monastery. "Give the order not to receive anybody, my dear," she said, "I will write to Pierre. I cannot understand why he is not coming. No doubt, Natálya Nikoláevna is ill." Márya Ivánovna was of the opinion that Natálya Nikoláevna did not like her and was her enemy. She could not forgive her because it was not she, his sister, who had given up her property and had followed him to Siberia, but Natálya Nikoláevna, and because her brother had definitely declined her offer when she got ready to go with him. After thirty-five years she was beginning to believe that Natálya Nikoláevna was the best woman in the world and his guardian angel; but she was envious, and it seemed all the time to her that she was not a good woman. She got up, took a few steps in the parlour, and was on the point of entering the cabinet when the door opened, and Madame Byéshev's wrinkled, grayish face, expressing joyous terror, was thrust through the door. "Márya Ivánovna, prepare yourself," she said. "A letter?" "No, something better--" But before she had a chance to finish, a man's loud voice was heard in the antechamber: "Where is she? Go, Natásha." "He!" muttered Márya Ivánovna, walking with long, firm steps toward her brother. She met them all as though she had last seen them the day before. "When didst thou arrive? Where have you stopped? How have you come,--in a carriage?" Such were the questions which Márya Ivánovna put, walking with them to the drawing-room and not hearing the answers, and looking with large eyes, now upon one, and now upon another. Madame Byéshev was surprised at this calm, even indifference, and did not approve of it. They all smiled; the conversation died down, and Márya Ivánovna looked silently and seriously at her brother. "How are you?" asked Peter Ivánovich, taking her hand, and smiling. Peter Ivánovich said "you" to her, though she had said "thou." Márya Ivánovna once more looked at his gray beard, his bald head, his teeth, his wrinkles, his eyes, his sunburnt face, and recognized all that. "Here is my Sónya." But she did not look around. "What a stup--" her voice faltered, and she took hold of his bald head with her large white hands. "What a stupid you are," she had intended to say, "not to have prepared me," but her shoulders and breast began to tremble, her old face twitched, and she burst out into sobs, pressing to her breast his bald head, and repeating: "What a stupid you are not to have prepared me!" Peter Ivánovich no longer appeared as such a great man to himself, not so important as he had appeared on Chevalier's porch. His back was resting against a chair, but his head was in his sister's arms, his nose was pressed against her corset, his nose was tickled, his hair dishevelled, and there were tears in his eyes. But he felt happy. When this outburst of joyous tears was over, Márya Ivánovna understood what had happened and believed it, and began to examine them all. But several times during the course of the day, whenever she recalled what he had been then, and what she had been, and what they were now, and whenever the past misfortunes, and past joys and loves, vividly rose in her imagination, she was again seized by emotion, and got up and repeated: "What a stupid you are, Pierre, what a stupid not to have prepared me!" "Why did you not come straight to me? I should have found room for you," said Márya Ivánovna. "At least, stay to dinner. You will not feel lonesome, Sergyéy,--a young, brave Sevastopol soldier is dining here to-day. Do you not know Nikoláy Mikháylovich's son? He is a writer,--has written something nice. I have not read it, but they praise it, and he is a dear fellow,--I shall send for him. Chikháev, too, wanted to come. He is a babbler,--I do not like him. Has he already called on you? Have you seen Nikíta? That is all nonsense. What do you intend to do? How are you, how is your health, Natálya? What are you going to do with this young fellow, and with this beauty?" But the conversation somehow did not flow. Before dinner Natálya Nikoláevna went with the children to an old aunt; brother and sister were left alone, and he began to tell her of his plans. "Sónya is a young lady, she has to be taken out; consequently, we are going to live in Moscow," said Márya Ivánovna. "Never." "Serézha has to serve." "Never." "You are still as crazy as ever." But she was just as fond of the crazy man. "First we must stay here, then go to the country, and show everything to the children." "It is my rule not to interfere in family matters," said Márya Ivánovna, after calming down from her agitation, "and not to give advice. A young man has to serve, that I have always thought, and now more than ever. You do not know, Pierre, what these young men nowadays are. I know them all: there, Prince Dmítri's son is all ruined. Their own fault. I am not afraid of anybody, I am an old woman. It is not good." And she began to talk about the government. She was dissatisfied with it for the excessive liberty which was given to everything. "The one good thing they have done was to let you out. That is good." Pierre began to defend it, but Márya Ivánovna was not Pákhtin: they could come to no terms. She grew excited. "What business have you to defend it? You are just as senseless as ever, I see." Peter Ivánovich grew silent, with a smile which showed that he did not surrender, but that he did not wish to quarrel with Márya Ivánovna. "You are smiling. We know that. You do not wish to discuss with me, a woman," she, said, merrily and kindly, and casting a shrewd, intelligent glance at her brother, such as could not be expected from her old, large-featured face. "You could not convince me, my friend. I am ending my three score and ten. I have not been a fool all that time, and have seen a thing or two. I have read none of your books, and I never will. There is only nonsense in them!" "Well, how do you like my children? Serézha?" Peter Ivánovich said, with the same smile. "Wait, wait!" his sister replied, with a threatening gesture. "Don't switch me off on your children! We shall have time to talk about them. Here is what I wanted to tell you. You are a senseless man, as senseless as ever, I see it in your eye. Now they are going to carry you in their arms. Such is the fashion. You are all in vogue now. Yes, yes, I see by your eyes that you are as senseless as ever," she added, in response to his smile. "Keep away, I implore you in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, from those modern liberals. God knows what they are up to. I know it will not end well. Our government is silent just now, but when it comes later to showing up the nails, you will recall my words. I am afraid lest you should get mixed up in things again. Give it up! It is all nonsense. You have children." "Evidently you do not know me, Márya Ivánovna," said her brother. "All right, all right, we shall see. Either I do not know you, or you do not know yourself. I just told you what I had on my heart, and if you will listen to me, well and good. Now we can talk about Serézha. What kind of a lad is he?" She wanted to say, "I do not like him very much," but she only said: "He resembles his mother remarkably: they are like two drops of water. Sónya is you all over,--I like her very much, very much--so sweet and open. She is a dear. Where is she, Sónya? Yes, I forgot." "How shall I tell you? Sónya will make a good wife and a good mother, but my Serézha is clever, very clever,--nobody will take that from him. He studied well,--a little lazy. He is very fond of the natural sciences. We have been fortunate: we had an excellent, excellent teacher. He wants to enter the university,--to attend lectures on the natural sciences, chemistry--" Márya Ivánovna scarcely listened when her brother began to speak of the natural sciences. She seemed to feel sad, especially when he mentioned chemistry. She heaved a deep sigh and replied directly to that train of thoughts which the natural sciences evoked in her. "If you knew how sorry I am for them, Pierre," she said, with sincere, calm, humble sadness. "So sorry, so sorry. A whole life before them. Oh, how much they will suffer yet!" "Well, we must hope that they will be more fortunate than we." "God grant it, God grant it! It is hard to live, Pierre! Take this one advice from me, my dear: don't philosophize! What a stupid you are, Pierre, oh, what a stupid! But I must attend to matters. I have invited a lot of people, but how am I going to feed them?" She flared up, turned away, and rang the bell. "Call Tarás!" "Is the old man still with you?" "Yes; why, he is a boy in comparison with me." Tarás was angry and clean, but he undertook to get everything done. Soon Natálya Nikoláevna and Sónya, agleam with cold and happiness, and rustling in their dresses, entered the room; Serézha was still out, attending to some purchases. "Let me get a good look at her!" Márya Ivánovna took her face. Natálya Nikoláevna began to tell something. THE DECEMBRISTS SECOND FRAGMENT (Variant of the First Chapter) The litigation "about the seizure in the Government of Pénza, County of Krasnoslobódsk, by the landed proprietor and ex-lieutenant of the Guards, Iván Apýkhtin, of four thousand desyatínas of land from the neighbouring Crown peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha," was through the solicitude of the peasants' representative, Iván Mirónov, decided in the court of the first instance--the County Court--in favour of the peasants, and the enormous parcel of land, partly in forest, and partly in ploughings which had been broken by Apýkhtin's serfs, in the year 1815 returned into the possession of the peasants, and they in the year 1816 sowed in this land and harvested. The winning of this irregular case by the peasants surprised all the neighbours and even the peasants themselves. This success of theirs could be explained only on the supposition that Iván Petróvich Apýkhtin, a very meek, peaceful man, who was opposed to litigations and was convinced of the righteousness of this matter, had taken no measures against the action of the peasants. On the other hand, Iván Mirónov, the peasants' representative, a dry, hook-nosed, literate peasant, who had been a township elder and had acted in the capacity of collector of taxes, had collected fifty kopeks from each peasant, which money he cleverly applied in the distribution of presents, and had very shrewdly conducted the whole affair. Immediately after the decision handed down by the County Court, Apýkhtin, seeing the danger, gave a power of attorney to the shrewd manumitted serf, Ilyá Mitrofánov, who appealed to the higher court against the decision of the County Court. Ilyá Mitrofánov managed the affair so shrewdly that, in spite of all the cunning of the peasants' representative, Iván Mirónov, in spite of the considerable presents distributed by him to the members of the higher court, the case was retried in the Government Court in favour of the proprietor, and the land was to go back to him from the peasants, of which fact their representative was duly informed. The representative, Iván Mirónov, told the peasants at the meeting of the Commune that the gentleman in the Government capital had pulled the proprietor's leg and had "mixed up" the whole business, so that they wanted to take the land back again, but that the proprietor would not be successful, because he had a petition all written up to be sent to the Senate, and that then the land would be for ever confirmed to the peasants; all they had to do was to collect a rouble from each soul. The peasants decided to collect the money and again to entrust the whole matter to Iván Mirónov. When Mirónov had all the money in his hands, he went to St. Petersburg. When, in the year 1817, during Passion-week,--it fell late that year,--the time came to plough the ground, the Izlegóshcha peasants began to discuss at a meeting whether they ought to plough the land under litigation during that year, or not; and, although Apýkhtin's clerk had come to see them during Lent with the order that they should not plough the land and should come to some agreement with him in regard to the rye already planted in what had been the doubtful, and now was Apýkhtin's land, the peasants, for the very reason that the winter crop had been sowed on the debatable land, and because Apýkhtin, in his desire to avoid being unfair to them, wished to arbitrate the matter with them, decided to plough the land under litigation and to take possession of it before touching any other fields. On the very day when the peasants went out to plough, which was Maundy Thursday, Iván Petróvich Apýkhtin, who had been preparing himself for communion during the Passion-week, went to communion, and early in the morning drove to the church in the village of Izlegóshcha, of which he was a parishioner, and there he, without knowing anything about the matter, amicably chatted with the church elder. Iván Petróvich had been to confession the night before, and had attended vigils at home; in the morning he had himself read the Rules, and at eight o'clock had left the house. They waited for him with the mass. As he stood at the altar, where he usually stood, Iván Petróvich rather reflected than prayed, which made him dissatisfied with himself. Like many people of that time, and, so far as that goes, of all times, he was not quite clear in matters of religion. He was past fifty years of age; he never omitted carrying out any rite, attended church, and went to communion once a year; in talking to his only daughter, he instructed her in the articles of faith; but, if he had been asked whether he really believed, he would not have known what to reply. On that day more than on any other, he felt meek of spirit, and, standing at the altar, he, instead of praying, thought of how strangely everything was constructed in the world: there he was, almost an old man, taking the communion for perhaps the fortieth time in his life, and he knew that everybody, all his home folk and all the people in the church, looked at him as a model and took him for an example, and he felt himself obliged to act as an example in matters of religion, whereas he himself did not know anything, and soon, very soon, he would die, and even if he were killed he could not tell whether that in which he was showing an example to others was true. And it also seemed strange to him how every one considered--that he saw--old people to be firm and to know what was necessary and what not (thus he always thought about old men), and there he was old and positively failed to know, and was just as frivolous as he had been twenty years before; the only difference was that formerly he did not conceal it, while now he did. Just as in his childhood it had occurred to him during the service that he might crow like a cock, even so now all kinds of foolish things passed through his mind, and he, the old man, reverentially bent his head, touching the flagstones of the church with the old knuckles of his hands, and Father Vasíli was evidently timid in celebrating mass in his presence, and incited to zeal by his zeal. "If they only knew what foolish things are running through my head! But that is a sin, a sin; I must pray," he said to himself, when the service commenced; and, trying to catch the meaning of the responses, he began to pray. Indeed, he soon transferred himself in feeling to the prayer and thought of his sins and of everything which he regretted. A respectable-looking old man, bald-headed, with thick gray hair, dressed in a fur coat with a new white patch on one-half of his back, stepping evenly with his out-toeing bast shoes, went up to the altar, bowed low to him, tossed his hair, and went beyond the altar to place some tapers. This was the church elder, Iván Fedótov, one of the best peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha. Iván Petróvich knew him. The sight of this stern, firm face led Iván Petróvich to a new train of thoughts. He was one of those peasants who wanted to take the land away from him, and one of the best and richest married farmers, who needed the land, who could manage it, and had the means to work it. His stern aspect, ceremonious bow, and measured gait, and the exactness of his wearing-apparel,--the leg-rags fitted his legs like stockings and the laces crossed each other symmetrically on either leg,--all his appearance seemed to express rebuke and enmity on account of the land. "I have asked forgiveness of my wife, of Mánya" (his daughter), "of the nurse, of my valet, Volódya, but it is his forgiveness that I ought to ask for, and I ought to forgive him," thought Iván Petróvich, and he decided that after matins he would ask Iván Fedótov to forgive him. And so he did. * * * * * There were but few people in church. The country people were in the habit of going to communion in the first and in the fourth week. Now there were only forty men and women present, who had not had time to go to communion before, a few old peasant women, the church servants, and the manorial people of the Apýkhtins and his rich neighbours, the Chernýshevs. There was also there an old woman, a relative of the Chernýshevs, who was living with them, and a deacon's widow, whose son the Chernýshevs, in the goodness of their hearts, had educated and made a man of, and who now was serving as an official in the Senate. Between the matins and the mass there were even fewer people left in the church. There were left two beggar women, who were sitting in the corner and conversing with each other and looking at Iván Petróvich with the evident desire to congratulate him and talk with him, and two lackeys,--one his own, in livery, and the other, Chernýshev's, who had come with the old woman. These two were also whispering in an animated manner to each other, just as Iván Petróvich came out from the altar-place; when they saw him, they grew silent. There was also a woman in a tall head-gear with a pearl face-ornament and in a white fur coat, with which she covered up a sick child, who was crying, and whom she was attempting to quiet; and another, a stooping old woman, also in a head-gear, but with a woollen face-ornament and a white kerchief, which was tied in the fashion of old women, and in a gray gathered coat with an iris-design on the back, who, kneeling in the middle of the church, and turning to an old image between two latticed windows, over which hung a new scarf with red edges, was praying so fervently, solemnly, and impassionately that one could not fail directing one's attention to her. Before reaching the elder, who, standing at the little safe, was kneading over the remnants of some tapers into one piece of wax, Iván Petróvich stopped to take a look at the praying woman. The old woman was praying well. She knelt as straight as it was possible to kneel in front of the image; all the members of her body were mathematically symmetrical; her feet behind her pressed with the tips of her bast shoes at the same angle against the stone floor; her body was bent back, to the extent to which her stooping shoulders permitted her to do so; her hands were quite regularly placed below her abdomen; her head was thrown back, and her face, with an expression of bashful commiseration, wrinkled, and with a dim glance, was turned straight toward the image with the scarf. Having remained in an immobile position for a minute or less,--evidently a definite space of time,--she heaved a deep sigh and, taking her right hand away, swung it above her head-gear, touched the crown of her head with folded fingers, and made ample crosses by carrying her hand down again to her abdomen and to her shoulders; then she swayed back and dropped her head on her hands, which were placed evenly on the floor, and again raised herself, and repeated the same. "Now she is praying," Iván Petróvich thought, as he looked at her. "She does it differently from us sinners: this is faith, though I know that she is praying to her own image, or to her scarf, or to her adornment on the image, just like the rest of them. All right. What of it?" he said to himself, "every person has his own faith: she prays to her image, and I consider it necessary to beg the peasant's forgiveness." And he walked over to the elder, instinctively scrutinizing the church in order to see who was going to see his deed, which both pleased and shamed him. It was disagreeable to him, because the old beggar women would see it, and more disagreeable still, because Míshka, his lackey, would see it. In the presence of Míshka,--he knew how wide-awake and shrewd he was,--he felt that he should not have the strength to walk up to Iván Fedótov. He beckoned to Míshka to come up to him. "What is it you wish?" "Go, my dear, and bring me the rug from the carriage, for it is too damp here for my feet." "Yes, sir." When Míshka went away, Iván Petróvich at once went up to Iván Fedótov. Iván Fedótov was disconcerted, like a guilty person, at the approach of the gentleman. Timidity and hasty motions formed a queer contradiction to his austere face and curly steel-gray hair and beard. "Do you wish a dime taper?" he said, raising the desk, and now and then casting his large, beautiful eyes upon the master. "No, I do not want a taper, Iván. I ask you to forgive me for Christ's sake, if I have in any way offended you. Forgive me, for Christ's sake," Iván Petróvich repeated, with a low bow. Iván Fedótov completely lost his composure and began to move restlessly, but when he comprehended it all, he smiled a gentle smile: "God forgives," he said. "It seems to me, I have received no offence from you. God will forgive you,--I have not been offended by you," he hastened to repeat. "Still--" "God will forgive you, Iván Petróvich. So you want two dime tapers?" "Yes, two." "He is an angel, truly, an angel. He begs even a base peasant to forgive him. O Lord, true angels," muttered the deacon's widow, in an old black capote and black kerchief. "Truly, we ought to understand that." "Ah, Paramónovna!" Iván Petróvich turned to her. "Are you getting ready for communion, too? You, too, must forgive me, for Christ's sake." "God will forgive you, sir, angel, merciful benefactor! Let me kiss your hand!" "That will do, that will do, you know I do not like that," said Iván Petróvich, smiling, and going away from the altar. * * * * * The mass, as always, did not take long to celebrate in the parish of Izlegóshcha, the more so since there were few communicants. Just as, after the Lord's Prayer, the regal doors were closed, Iván Petróvich looked through the north door, to call Míshka to take off his fur coat. When the priest saw that motion, he angrily beckoned to the deacon, and the deacon almost ran out to call in the lackey. Iván Petróvich was in a pretty good humour, but this subserviency and expression of respect from the priest who was celebrating mass again soured him entirely; his thin, bent, shaven lips were bent still more and his kindly eyes were lighted up by sarcasm. "He acts as though I were his general," he thought, and immediately he thought of the words of the German tutor, whom he had once taken to the altar to attend a Russian divine service, and who had made him laugh and had angered his wife, when he said, "_Der Pop war ganz böse, dass ich ihm Alles nachgesehen hatte_." He also recalled the answer of the young Turk that there was no God, because he had eaten up the last piece of him. "And here I am going to communion," he thought, and, frowning, he made a low obeisance. He took off his bear-fur coat, and in his blue dress coat with bright buttons and in his tall white neckerchief and waistcoat, and tightly fitting trousers, and heelless, sharp-toed boots, went with his soft, modest, and light gait to make his obeisances to the large images. Here he again met that same obsequiousness from the other communicants, who gave up their places to him. "They act as though they said, '_Après vous, s'il en reste_,'" he thought, awkwardly making side obeisances; this awkwardness was due to the fact that he was trying to find that mean in which there would be neither disrespect, nor hypocrisy. Finally the doors were opened. He said the prayer after the priest, repeating the words, "As a robber;" his neckerchief was covered with the chalice cloth, and he received his communion and the lukewarm water in the ancient dipper, having put new silver twenty-kopek pieces on ancient plates; after hearing the last prayers, he kissed the cross and, putting on his fur coat left the church, receiving congratulations and experiencing the pleasant sensation of having everything over. As he left the church, he again fell in with Iván Fedótov. "Thank you, thank you!" he replied to his congratulations. "Well, are you going to plough soon?" "The boys have gone out, the boys have," replied Iván Fedótov, more timidly even than before. He supposed that Iván Petróvich knew whither the Izlegóshcha peasants had gone out to plough. "It is damp, though. Damp it is. It is early yet, early it is." Iván Petróvich went up to his parents' monument, bowed to it, and went back to be helped into his six-in-hand with an outrider. "Well, thank God," he said to himself, swaying on the soft, round springs and looking at the vernal sky with the scattering clouds, at the bared earth and the white spots of unmelted snow, and at the tightly braided tail of a side horse, and inhaling the fresh spring air, which was particularly pleasant after the air in the church. "Thank God that I have been through the communion, and thank God that I now may take a pinch of snuff." And he took out his snuff-box and for a long time held the pinch between his fingers, smiling and, without letting the pinch out of the hand, raising his cap in response to the low bows of the people on the way, especially of the women, who were washing the tables and chairs in front of their houses, just as the carriage at a fast trot of the large horses of the six-in-hand plashed and clattered through the mud of the street of the village of Izlegóshcha. Iván Petróvich held the pinch of snuff, anticipating the pleasure of snuffing, not only down the whole village, but even until they got out of a bad place at the foot of a hill, toward which the coachman descended not without anxiety: he held up the reins, seated himself more firmly, and shouted to the outrider to go over the ice. When they went around the bridge, over the bed of the river, and scrambled out of the breaking ice and mud, Iván Petróvich, looking at two plovers that rose from the hollow, took the snuff and, feeling chilly, put on his glove, wrapped himself in his fur coat, plunged his chin into the high neckerchief, and said to himself, almost aloud, "Glorious!" which he was in the habit of saying secretly to himself whenever he felt well. In the night snow had fallen, and when Iván Petróvich had driven to church the snow had not yet disappeared, but was soft; now, though there was no sun, it was all melted from the moisture, and on the highway, on which he had to travel for three versts before turning into Chirakóvo, the snow was white only in last year's grass, which grew in parallel lines along the ruts; but on the black road the horses splashed through the viscous mud. The good, well-fed, large horses of his own stud had no difficulty in pulling the carriage, and it just rolled over the grass, where it left black marks, and over the mud, without being at all detained. Iván Petróvich was having pleasant reveries; he was thinking of his home, his wife, and his daughter. "Mánya will meet me at the porch, and with delight. She will see such holiness in me! She is a strange, sweet girl, but she takes everything too much to heart. The rôle of importance and of knowing everything that is going on in this world, which I must play before her, is getting to be too serious and ridiculous. If she knew that I am afraid of her!" he thought. "Well, Káto," (his wife) "will no doubt be in good humour to-day, she will purposely be in good humour, and we shall have a fine day. It will not be as it was last week on account of the Próshkin women. What a remarkable creature! How afraid of her I am! What is to be done? She does not like it herself." And he recalled a famous anecdote about a calf. A proprietor, having quarrelled with his wife, was sitting at a window, when he saw a frisky calf: "I should like to get you married!" he said. And Iván Petróvich smiled again, according to his custom solving every difficulty and every perplexity by a joke, which generally was directed against himself. At the third verst, near a chapel, the outrider bore to the left, into a cross-road, and the coachman shouted to him for having turned in so abruptly that the centre horses were struck by the shaft; and the carriage almost glided all the way down-hill. Before reaching the house, the outrider looked back at the coachman and pointed to something; the coachman looked back at the lackey, and indicated something to him. And all of them looked in the same direction. "What are you looking at?" asked Iván Petróvich. "Geese," said Míshka. "Where?" Though he strained his vision, he could not see them. "There they are. There is the forest, and there is the cloud, so be pleased to look between the two." Iván Petróvich could not see anything. "It is time for them. Why, it is less than a week to Annunciation." "That's so." "Well, go on!" Near a puddle, Míshka jumped down from the footboard and tested the road, again climbed up, and the carriage safely drove on the pond dam in the garden, ascended the avenue, drove past the cellar and the laundry, from which water was falling, and nimbly rolled up and stopped at the porch. The Chernýshev calash had just left the yard. From the house at once ran the servants: gloomy old Danílych with the side whiskers, Nikoláy, Míshka's brother, and the boy Pavlúshka; and after them came a girl with large black eyes and red arms, which were bared above the elbow, and with just such a bared neck. "Márya Ivánovna, Márya Ivánovna! Where are you going? Your mother will be worried. You will have time," was heard the voice of fat Katerína behind her. But the girl paid no attention to her; just as her father had expected her to do, she took hold of his arm and looked at him with a strange glance. "Well, papa, have you been to communion?" she asked, as though in dread. "Yes. You look as though you were afraid that I am such a sinner that I could not receive the communion." The girl was apparently offended by her father's jest at such a solemn moment. She heaved a sigh and, following him, held his hand, which she kissed. "Who is here?" "Young Chernýshev. He is in the drawing-room." "Is mamma up? How is she?" "Mamma feels better to-day. She is sitting down-stairs." In the passage room Iván Petróvich was met by nurse Evprakséya, clerk Andréy Ivánovich, and a surveyor, who was living at the house, in order to lay out some land. All of them congratulated Iván Petróvich. In the drawing-room sat Luíza Kárlovna Trugóni, for ten years a friend of the house, an emigrant governess, and a young man of sixteen years, Chernýshev, with his French tutor. THE DECEMBRISTS THIRD FRAGMENT (Variant of the First Chapter) On the 2d of August, 1817, the sixth department of the Directing Senate handed down a decision in the debatable land case between the economic peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha and Chernýshev, which was in favour of the peasants and against Chernýshev. This decision was an unexpected and important calamitous event for Chernýshev. The case had lasted five years. It had been begun by the attorney of the rich village of Izlegóshcha with its three thousand inhabitants, and was won by the peasants in the County Court; but when, with the advice of lawyer Ilyá Mitrofánov, a manorial servant bought of Prince Saltykóv, Prince Chernýshev carried the case to the Government, he won it and besides, the Izlegóshcha peasants were punished by having six of them, who had insulted the surveyor, put in jail. After that, Prince Chernýshev, with his good-natured and merry carelessness, entirely acquiesced, the more so since he knew full well that he had not "appropriated" any land of the peasants, as was said in the petition of the peasants. If the land was "appropriated," his father had done it, and since then more than forty years had passed. He knew that the peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha were getting along well without that land, had no need of it, and lived on terms of friendship with him, and was unable to understand why they had become so infuriated against him. He knew that he never offended and never wished to offend any one, that he lived in peace with everybody, and that he never wished to do otherwise, and so could not believe that any one should think of offending him. He hated litigations, and so did not defend his case in the Senate, in spite of the advice and earnest solicitations of his lawyer, Ilyá Mitrofánov; by allowing the time for the appeal to lapse, he lost the case in the Senate, and lost it in such a way that he was confronted with complete ruin. By the decree of the Senate he not only was to be deprived of five thousand desyatínas of land, but also, for the illegal tenure of that land, was to be mulcted to the amount of 107,000 roubles in favour of the peasants. Prince Chernýshev had eight thousand souls, but all the estates were mortgaged and he had large debts, so that this decree of the Senate ruined him with his whole large family. He had a son and five daughters. He thought of his case when it was too late to attend to it in the Senate. According to Ilyá Mitrofánov's words there was but one salvation, and that was, to petition the sovereign and to transfer the case to the Imperial Council. To obtain this it was necessary in person to approach one of the ministers or a member of the Council, or, better still, the emperor himself. Taking all that into consideration, Prince Grigóri Ivánovich in the fall of the year 1817 with his whole family left his beloved estate of Studénets, where he had lived so long without leaving it, and went to Moscow. He started for Moscow, and not for St. Petersburg, because in the fall of that year the emperor with his whole court, with all the highest dignitaries, and with part of the Guards, in which the son of Grigóri Ivánovich was serving, was to arrive in Moscow to lay the corner-stone of the Church of the Saviour in commemoration of the liberation of Russia from the French invasion. In August, immediately after receiving the terrible news of the decree of the Senate, Prince Grigóri Ivánovich got ready to go to Moscow. At first the majordomo was sent away to fix the prince's own house on the Arbát; then was sent out a caravan with furniture, servants, horses, carriages, and provisions. In September the prince with his whole family travelled in seven carriages, drawn by his own horses, and, after arriving in Moscow, settled in his house. Relatives, friends, visitors from the province and from St. Petersburg began to assemble in Moscow in the month of September. The Moscow life, with its entertainments, the arrival of his son, the débuts of his daughters, and the success of his eldest daughter, Aleksándra, the only blonde among all the brunettes of the Chernýshevs, so much occupied and diverted the prince's attention that, in spite of the fact that here in Moscow he was spending everything which would be left to him after paying all he owed, he forgot his affair and was annoyed and tired whenever Ilyá Mitrofánov talked of it, and undertook nothing for the success of his case. Iván Mirónovich Baúshkin, the chief attorney of the peasants, who had conducted the case against the prince with so much zeal in the Senate, who knew all the approaches to the secretaries and departmental chiefs, and who had so skilfully distributed the ten thousand roubles, collected from the peasants, in the shape of presents, now himself brought his activity to an end and returned to the village, where, with the money collected for him as a reward and with what was left of the presents, he bought himself a grove from a neighbouring proprietor and built there a hut and an office. The case was finished in the court of the highest instance, and everything would now proceed of its own accord. The only ones of those concerned in the case who could not forget it were the six peasants who were passing their seventh month in jail, and their families that were left without their heads. But nothing could be done in the matter. They were imprisoned in Krasnoslobódsk, and their families tried to get along as well as they could. Nobody could be invoked in the case. Iván Mirónovich himself said that he could not take it up, because it was not a communal, nor a civil, but a criminal case. The peasants were in prison, and nobody paid any attention to them; but one family, that of Mikhaíl Gerásimovich, particularly his wife Tíkhonovna, could not get used to the idea that the precious old man, Gerásimovich, was sitting in prison with a shaven head. Tíkhonovna could not rest quiet. She begged Mirónovich to take the case, but he declined it. Then she decided to go herself to pray to God for the old man. She had made a vow the year before that she would go on a pilgrimage to a saint, and had delayed it for another year only because she had had no time and did not wish to leave the house to the young daughters-in-law. Now that the misfortune had happened and Gerásimovich was put into jail, she recalled her vow; she turned her back on her house and, together with the deacon's wife of the same village, got ready to go on the pilgrimage. First they went to the county seat to see her old man in the prison and to take him some shirts; from there they went through the capital of the Government to Moscow. On her way Tíkhonovna told the deacon's wife of her sorrow, and the latter advised her to petition the emperor who, it was said, was to be in Pénza, telling her of various cases of pardon granted by him. When the pilgrims arrived in Pénza, they heard that there was there, not the emperor, but his brother Grand Duke Nikoláy Pávlovich. When he came out of the cathedral, Tíkhonovna pushed herself forward, dropped down on her knees, and began to beg for her husband. The grand duke was surprised, the governor was angry, and the old woman was taken to the lockup. The next day she was let out and she proceeded to Tróitsa. In Tróitsa she went to communion and confessed to Father Paísi. At the confession she told him of her sorrow, and repented having petitioned the brother of the Tsar. Father Paísi told her that there was no sin in that and that there was no sin in petitioning the Tsar even in a just case, and dismissed her. In Khótkov she called on the blessed abbess, and she ordered her to petition the Tsar himself. On their way back, Tíkhonovna and the deacon's wife stopped in Moscow to see the saints. Here she heard that the Tsar was there, and she thought that it was evidently God's command that she should petition the Tsar. All that had to be done was to write the petition. In Moscow the pilgrims stopped in a hostelry. They begged permission to stay there overnight; they were allowed to do so. After supper the deacon's wife lay down on the oven, and Tíkhonovna, placing her wallet under her head, lay down on a bench and fell asleep. In the morning, before daybreak, Tíkhonovna got up, woke the deacon's wife, and went out. The innkeeper spoke to her just as she walked into the yard. "You are up early, granny," he said. "Before we get there, it will be time for matins," Tíkhonovna replied. "God be with you, granny!" "Christ save you!" said Tíkhonovna, and the pilgrims went to the Kremlin. * * * * * After standing through the matins and the mass, and having kissed the relics, the old women, with difficulty making their way, arrived at the house of the Chernýshevs. The deacon's wife said that the old lady had given her an urgent invitation to stop at her house, and had ordered that all pilgrims should be received. "There we shall find a man who will write the petition," said the deacon's wife, and the pilgrims started to blunder through the streets and ask their way. The deacon's wife had been there before, but had forgotten where it was. Two or three times they were almost crushed, and people shouted at them and scolded them. Once a policeman took the deacon's wife by the shoulder and, giving her a push, forbade her to walk through the street on which they were, and directed them through a forest of lanes. Tíkhonovna did not know that they were driven off the Vozdvízhenka for the very reason that through that street was to drive the Tsar, of whom she was thinking all the time, and to whom she intended to give the petition. The deacon's wife walked, as always, heavily and complainingly, while Tíkhonovna, as usual, walked lightly and briskly, with the gait of a young woman. At the gate the pilgrims stopped. The deacon's wife did not recognize the house: there was there a new hut which she had not seen before; but on scanning the well with the pumps in the corner of the yard, she recognized it all. The dogs began to bark and made for the women with the staffs. "Don't mind them, aunties, they will not touch you. Away there, accursed ones!" the janitor shouted to the dogs, raising the broom on them. "They are themselves from the country, and just see them bark at country people! Come this way! You will stick in the mud,--God has not given any frost yet." But the deacon's wife, frightened by the dogs, and muttering in a whining tone, sat down on a bench near the gate and asked the janitor to take her by. Tíkhonovna made her customary bow to the janitor and, leaning on her crutch and spreading her feet, which were tightly covered with leg-rags, stopped near her, looking as always calmly in front of her and waiting for the janitor to come up to them. "Whom do you want?" the janitor asked. "Do you not recognize us, dear man? Is not your name Egór?" asked the deacon's wife. "We are coming back from the saints, and so are calling on her Serenity." "You are from Izlegóshcha," said the janitor. "You are the wife of the old deacon,--of course. All right, all right. Go to the house! Everybody is received here,--nobody is refused. And who is this one?" He pointed to Tíkhonovna. "From Izlegóshcha, Gerásimovich's wife,--used to be Fadyéev's,--I suppose you know her?" said Tíkhonovna. "I myself am from Izlegóshcha." "Of course! They say your husband has been put into jail." Tíkhonovna made no reply; she only sighed and with a strong motion threw her wallet and fur coat over her shoulder. The deacon's wife asked whether the old lady was at home and, hearing that she was, asked him to announce them to her. Then she asked about her son, who was an official and, thanks to the prince's influence, was serving in St. Petersburg. The janitor could not give her any information about him and directed them over a walk, which crossed the yard, to the servants' house. The old women went into the house, which was full of people,--women, children, both old and young,--all of them manorial servants, and prayed turning to the front corner. The deacon's wife was at once recognized by the laundress and the old lady's maid, and she was at once surrounded and overwhelmed with questions: they took off her wallet, placed her at the table, and offered her something to eat. In the meantime Tíkhonovna, having made the sign of the cross to the images and saluted everybody, was standing at the door, waiting to be invited in. At the very door, in front of the first window, sat an old man, making boots. "Sit down, granny! Don't stand up. Sit down here, and take off your wallet," he said. "There is not enough room to turn around as it is. Take her to the 'black' room," said a woman. "This comes straight from Madame Chalmé," said a young lackey, pointing to the iris design on Tíkhonovna's peasant coat, "and the pretty stockings and shoes." He pointed to her leg-rags and bast shoes, which were new, as she had specially put them on for Moscow. "Parásha, you ought to have such." "If you are to go to the 'black' room, all right; I will take you there." And the old man stuck in his awl and got up; but, on seeing a little girl, he called her to take the old woman to the black room. Tíkhonovna not only paid no attention to what was being said in her presence and of her, but did not even look or listen. From the time that she entered the house, she was permeated with the feeling of the necessity of working for God and with the other feeling, which had entered her soul, she did not know when, of the necessity of handing the petition. Leaving the clean servant room, she walked over to the deacon's wife and, bowing, said to her: "Mother Paramónovna, for Christ's sake do not forget about my affair! See whether you can't find a man." "What does that woman need?" "She has suffered insult, and people have advised her to hand a petition to the Tsar." "Take her straight to the Tsar!" said the jesting lackey. "Oh, you fool, you rough fool," said the old shoemaker. "I will teach you a lesson with this last, then you will know how to grin at old people." The lackey began to scold, but the old man, paying no attention to him, took Tíkhonovna to the black room. Tíkhonovna was glad that she was sent out of the baking-room, and was taken to the black, the coachmen's room. In the baking-room everything looked clean, and the people were all clean, and Tíkhonovna did not feel at ease there. The black coachmen's room was more like the inside of a peasant house, and Tíkhonovna was more at home there. The black hut was a dark pine building, twenty by twenty feet, with a large oven, bed places, and hanging-beds, and a newly paved, dirt-covered floor. When Tíkhonovna entered the room, there were there the cook, a white, ruddy-faced, fat, manorial woman, with the sleeves of her chintz dress rolled up, who with difficulty was moving a pot in the oven with an oven-fork; then a young, small coachman, who was learning to play the balaláyka; an old man with an unshaven, soft white beard, who was sitting on a bed place with his bare feet and, holding a skein of silk between his lips, was sewing on some fine, good material, and a shaggy-haired, swarthy young man, in a shirt and blue trousers, with a coarse face, who, chewing bread, was sitting on a bench at the oven and leaning his head on both his arms, which were steadied against his knees. Barefoot Nástka with sparkling eyes ran into the room with her lithe, bare feet, in front of the old woman, jerking open the door, which stuck fast from the steam within, and squeaking in her thin voice: "Aunty Marína, Simónych sends this old woman, and says that she should be fed. She is from our parts: she has been with Paramónovna to worship the saints. Paramónovna is having tea.--Vlásevna has sent for her--" The garrulous little girl would have gone on talking for quite awhile yet; the words just poured forth from her and, apparently, it gave her pleasure to hear her own voice. But Marína, who was in a perspiration, and who had not yet succeeded in pushing away the pot with the beet soup, which had caught in the hearth, shouted angrily at her: "Stop your babbling! What old woman am I to feed now? I have enough to do to feed our own people. Shoot you!" she shouted to the pot, which came very near falling down, as she removed it from the spot where it was caught. But when she was satisfied in regard to the pot, she looked around and, seeing trim Tíkhonovna with her wallet and correct peasant attire, making the sign of the cross and bowing low toward the front corner, felt ashamed of her words and, as though regaining her consciousness after the cares which had worn her out, she put her hand to her breast, where beneath the collar-bone buttons clasped her dress, and examined it to see whether it was buttoned, and then put her hands to her head to fasten the knot of the kerchief, which covered her greasy hair, and took up an attitude, leaning against the oven-fork and waiting for the salute of the trim old woman. Tíkhonovna made her last low obeisance to God, and turned around and saluted in three directions. "God aid you, good day!" she said. "You are welcome, aunty!" said the tailor. "Thank you, granny, take off your wallet! Sit down here," said the cook, pointing to a bench where sat the shaggy-haired man. "Move a little, can't you? Are you stuck fast?" The shaggy man, scowling more angrily still, rose, moved away, and, continuing to chew, riveted his eyes on the old woman. The young coachman made a bow and, stopping his playing, began to tighten the strings of his balaláyka, looking now at the old woman, and now at the tailor, not knowing how to treat the old woman,--whether respectfully, as he thought she ought to be treated, because the old woman wore the same kind of attire that his grandmother and mother wore at home (he had been taken from the village to be an outrider), or making fun of her, as he wished to do and as seemed to him to accord with his present condition, his blue coat and his boots. The tailor winked with one eye and seemed to smile, drawing the silk to one side of his mouth, and looked on. Marína started to put in another pot, but, even though she was busy working, she kept looking at the old woman, while she briskly and nimbly took off her wallet and, trying not to disturb any one, put it under the bench. Nástka ran up to her and helped her, by taking away the boots, which were lying in her way under the bench. "Uncle Pankrát," she turned to the gloomy man, "I will put the boots here. Is it all right?" "The devil take them! Throw them into the oven, if you wish," said the gloomy man, throwing them into another corner. "Nástka, you are a clever girl," said the tailor. "A pilgrim has to be made comfortable." "Christ save you, girl! That is nice," said Tíkhonovna. "I am afraid I have put you out, dear man," she said, turning to Pankrát. "All right," said Pankrát. Tíkhonovna sat down on the bench, having taken off her coat and carefully folded it, and began to take off her footgear. At first she untied the laces, which she had taken special care in twisting smooth for her pilgrimage; then she carefully unwrapped the white lambskin leg-rags and, carefully rubbing them soft, placed them on her wallet. Just as she was working on her other foot, another of awkward Marína's pots got caught and spilled over, and she again started to scold somebody, catching the pot with the fork. "The hearth is evidently burned out, grandfather. It ought to be plastered," said Tíkhonovna. "When are you going to plaster it? The chimney never cools off: twice a day you have to bake bread; one set is taken out, and the other is started." In response to Marína's complaint about the bread-baking and the burnt-out hearth, the tailor defended the ways of the Chernýshev house and said that they had suddenly arrived in Moscow, that the hut was built and the oven put up in three weeks, and that there were nearly one hundred servants who had to be fed. "Of course, lots of cares. A large establishment," Tíkhonovna confirmed him. "Whence does God bring you?" the tailor turned to her. And Tíkhonovna, continuing to take off her foot-gear, at once told him where she came from, whither she had gone, and how she was going home. She did not say anything about the petition. The conversation never broke off. The tailor found out everything about the old woman, and the old woman heard all about awkward, pretty Marína. She learned that Marína's husband was a soldier, and she was made a cook; that the tailor was making caftans for the driving coachmen; that the stewardess's errand girl was an orphan, and that shaggy-haired, gloomy Pankrát was a servant of the clerk, Iván Vasílevich. Pankrát left the room, slamming the door. The tailor told her that he was a gruff peasant, but that on that day he was particularly rude because the day before he had smashed the clerk's knickknacks on the window, and that he was going to be flogged to-day in the stable. As soon as Iván Vasílevich should come, he would be flogged. The little coachman was a peasant lad, who had been made an outrider, and now that he was grown he had nothing to do but attend to the horses, and strum the balaláyka. But he was not much of a hand at it. ON POPULAR EDUCATION 1875 ON POPULAR EDUCATION I suppose each of us has had more than one occasion to come in contact with monstrous, senseless phenomena, and to find back of these phenomena put forward some important principle, which overshadowed those phenomena, so that in our youthful and even maturer years we began to doubt whether it was true that those phenomena were monstrous, and whether we were not mistaken. And having been unable to convince ourselves that monstrous phenomena might be good, or that the protection of an important principle was illegitimate, or that the principle was only a word, we remained in regard to those phenomena in an ambiguous, undecided condition. In such a state I was, and I assume many of us are, in respect to the principle of "development" which obfuscates pedagogy, in its connection with the rudiments. But popular education is too near to my heart, and I have busied myself too much with it, to remain too long in indecision. The monstrous phenomena of the imaginary development I could not call good, nor could I be persuaded that the development of the pupil was bad, and so I began to inquire what that development was. I do not consider it superfluous to communicate the deductions to which I have been led during the study of this matter. To define what is understood by the word "development," I shall take the manuals of Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski, as being new works, which combine all the latest deductions of German pedagogy, intended as guides for the teachers in the popular schools, and selected by the advocates of the sound method as manuals in their schools. In discussing what is to form the foundation for a choice of this or that method for the teaching of reading, Mr. Bunákov says: "No, an opinion about the method of construction based on such near-sighted and flimsy foundations (that is, on experience) will be too doubtful. Only the theoretical substratum, based on the study of human nature, can make the judgments in this sphere firm and independent of all casualties, and to a considerable degree guard them against gross errors. Consequently for the final choice of the best method of teaching the rudiments, it is necessary first of all to stand on theoretic soil, on the basis of previous considerations, the general conditions of which give to this or that method the actual right to be called satisfactory from the pedagogical standpoint. These conditions are: (1) It has to be a method which is capable of developing the child's mental powers, so that the acquisition of the rudiments may be obtained together with the development and the strengthening of the reasoning powers. (2) It must introduce into the instruction the child's personal interest, so that the matter be furthered by this interest, and not by dulling violence. (3) It must represent in itself the process of self-instruction, inciting, supporting, and directing the child's self-activity. (4) It must be based on the impressions of hearing, as of the sense which serves for the acquisition of language. (5) It has to combine analysis with synthesis, beginning with the dismemberment of the complex whole into simple principles, and passing over to the composition of a complex whole out of the simple principles." So this is what the method of instruction is to be based upon. I will remark, not for contradiction, but for the sake of simplicity and clearness, that the last two statements are quite superfluous, because without the union of analysis and synthesis there can be not only no instruction, but also no other activity of the mind, and every instruction, except that of the deaf and dumb, is based on the sense of hearing. These two conditions are put down only for beauty's sake and for the obscuration of the style, so common in pedagogical treatises, and so have no meaning whatever. The first three at first sight appear quite true as a programme. Everybody, of course, would like to know how the method is secured that will "develop," that will "introduce into the instruction the pupil's personal interest," and that will "represent the process of self-instruction." But to the questions as to why this method combines all those qualities you will find an answer neither in the books of Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski, nor in any other pedagogical work of the founders of this school of pedagogy, unless they be those hazy discussions of this nature, such as that every instruction must be based on the union of analysis and synthesis, and by all means on the sense of hearing, and so forth; or you will find, as in Mr. Evtushévski's book, expositions about how in man are formed impressions, sensations, representations, and concepts, and you will find the rule that "it is necessary to start from the object and lead the pupil up to the idea, and not start with the idea, which has no point of contact in his consciousness," and so forth. After such discussions there always follows the conclusion that therefore the method advocated by the pedagogue gives that exclusive real development which it was necessary to find. After the above-cited definition of what a good method ought to be, Mr. Bunákov explains how children ought to be educated, and, having given an exposition of all the methods, which in my opinion and experience lead to results which are diametrically opposite to development, he says frankly and definitely: "From the standpoint of the above-mentioned fundamental principles for estimating the value of the satisfactoriness of the methods of rudimentary instruction, the method which we have just elucidated in its general features presents the following plastic qualities and peculiarities: (1) As a sound method it wholly preserves the characteristic peculiarities of all sound method,--it starts from the impressions of hearing, at once establishing the regular relation to language, and only later adds to them the impressions of sight, thus clearly distinguishing sound, matter, and the letter, its representation. (2) As a method which unites reading with writing it begins with decomposition and passes over to composition, combining analysis with synthesis. (3) As a method which passes over to the study of words and sounds from the study of objects it proceeds along a natural path, coöperates with the regular formation of concepts and ideas, and acts in a developing way on all the sides of the child's nature: it incites the children to be observant, to group their observations, to render them orally; it develops the external senses, mind, imagination, memory, the gift of speech, concentration, self-activity, the habit of work, the respect for order. (4) As a method which provides ample work to all the mental powers of the child, it introduces into instruction the personal interest, rousing in children willingness and love of work, and transforming it into a process of self-instruction." This is precisely what Mr. Evtushévski does; but why it is all so remains inexplicable to him who is looking for actual reasons and does not become entangled in such words as psychology, didactics, methodics, heuristics. I advise all those who have no inclination for philosophy and therefore have no desire to verify all those deductions of the pedagogues not to be embarrassed by these words and to be assured that a thing which is not clear cannot be the basis of anything, least of all of such an important and simple thing as popular education. All the pedagogues of this school, especially the Germans, the founders of the school, start with the false idea that those philosophical questions which have remained as questions for all the philosophers from Plato to Kant, have been definitely settled by them. They are settled so definitely that the process of the acquisition by man of impressions, sensations, concepts, ratiocinations, has been analyzed by them down to its minutest details, and the component parts of what we call the soul or the essence of man have been dissected and divided into parts by them, and that, too, in such a thorough manner that on this firm basis can go up the faultless structure of the science of pedagogy. This fancy is so strange that I do not regard it as necessary to contradict it, more especially as I have done so in my former pedagogical essays. All I will say is that those philosophical considerations which the pedagogues of this school put at the basis of their theory not only fail to be absolutely correct, not only have nothing in common with real philosophy, but even lack a clear, definite expression with which the majority of the pedagogues might agree. But, perchance, the theory of the pedagogues of the new school, in spite of its unsuccessful references to philosophy, has some value in itself. And so we will examine it, to see what it consists in. Mr. Bunákov says: "To these little savages (that is, the pupils) must be imparted the main order of school instruction, and into their consciousness must be introduced such initial concepts as they will have to come in contact with from the start, during the first lessons of drawing, reading, writing, and every elementary instruction, such as: the right side and the left, to the right--to the left, up--down, near by--around, in front--in back, close by--in the distance, before--behind, above--below, fast--slow, softly--aloud, and so forth. No matter how simple these concepts may be, I know from practice that even city children, from well-to-do families, are frequently, when they come to the elementary schools, unable to distinguish the right side from the left. I assume that there is no need of expatiating on the necessity of explaining such concepts to village children, for any one who has had to deal with village schools knows this as well as I do." And Mr. Evtushévski says: "Without entering into the broad field of the debatable question about the innate ability of man, we only see that the child can have no innate concepts and ideas about real things,--they have to be formed, and on the skill with which they are formed by the educator and teacher depends both their regularity and their permanency. In watching the development of the child's soul one has to be much more cautious than in attending to his body. If the food for the body and the various bodily exercises are carefully chosen both as regards their quantity and their quality, in conformity with the man's growth, so much more cautious have we to be in the choice of food and exercises for the mind. A badly placed foundation will precariously support what is fastened to it." Mr. Bunákov advises that ideas be imparted as follows: "The teacher may begin a conversation such as he deems fit: one will ask every pupil for his name; another about what is going on outside; a third about where each comes from, where he lives, what is going on at home,--and then he may pass over to the main subject. 'Where are you sitting now? Why did you come here? What are we going to do in this room? Yes, we are going to study in this room,--so let us call it a class-room. See what there is under your feet, below you. Look, but do not say anything. The one I will tell to speak shall answer. Tell me, what do you see under your feet? Repeat everything we have found out and have said about this room: in what room are we sitting? What are the parts of the room? What is there on the walls? What is standing on the floor?' "The teacher from the start establishes the order which is necessary for the success of his work: each pupil is to answer only when asked to do so; all the others are to listen and should be able to repeat the words of the teacher and of their companions; the desire to answer, when the teacher directs a question to everybody, is to be expressed by raising the left hand; the words are to be pronounced neither in a hurry, nor by drawing them out, but loudly, distinctly, and correctly. To obtain this latter result the teacher gives them a living example by his loud, correct, distinct enunciation, showing them in practice the difference between soft and loud, distinct and correct, slow and fast. The teacher should see to it that all the children take part in the work, by having somebody's question answered or repeated, now by one, now by another, and now by the whole class at once, but especially by rousing the indifferent, inattentive, and playful children: the first he must enliven by frequent questions, the second he must cause to concentrate themselves on the subject of the common work, and the third he must curb. During the first period the children ought to answer in full, that is, by repeating the question: 'We are sitting in the class-room' (and not in brief, 'In the class-room'); 'Above, over my head, I see the ceiling;' 'On the left I see three windows,' and so forth." Mr. Evtushévski advises that in this way be begun all the lessons on numbers from 1 to 10, of which there are to be 120, and which are to be continued through the year. "One. The teacher shows the pupils a cube, and asks: 'How many cubes have I?' and taking several cubes into the other hand, he asks, 'And how many are there here?'--'Many, a few.' "'Name here in the class-room an object of which there are several.'--'Bench, window, wall, copy-book, pencil, slate-pencil, pupil, and so forth.'--'Name an object of which there is only one in the class-room.'--'The blackboard, stove, door, ceiling, floor, picture, teacher, and so forth.'--'If I put this cube away in my pocket, how many cubes will there be left in my hand?'--'Not one.'--'And how many must I again put into my hand, to have as many as before?'--'One.'--'What is meant by saying that Pétya fell down once? How many times did Pétya fall? Did he fall another time? Why does it say once?'--'Because we are speaking only of one case and not of another case.'--'Take your slates (or copy-books). Make on them a line of this size.' (The teacher draws on the blackboard a line two or four inches in length, or shows on the ruler that length.) 'Rub it off. How many lines are left?'--'Not one.'--'Draw several such lines.' It would be unnatural to invent any other exercises in order to acquaint the children with number one. It suffices to rouse in them that conception of unity which they, no doubt, had previous to their school instruction." Then Mr. Bunákov speaks of exercises on the board, and so on, and Mr. Evtushévski of the number four with its decomposition. Before examining the theory itself of the transmission of ideas, the question involuntarily arises whether that theory is not mistaken in its very problem. Has the condition of the pedagogical material with which it has to do been correctly defined? The first thing that startles us is the strange relation to some imaginary children, to such as I, at least, have never seen in the Russian Empire. The conversations, and the information which they impart, refer to children of less than two years of age, because two-year-old children know all that is contained in them, but as to the questions which have to be asked, they have reference to parrots. Any pupil of six, seven, eight, or nine years will not understand a thing in these questions, because he knows all about that, and cannot make out what it all means. The demands for such conversations evince either complete ignorance, or a desire to ignore that degree of development on which the pupils stand. Maybe the children of Hottentots and negroes, or some German children, do not know what is imparted to them in such conversations, but Russian children, except demented ones, all those who come to a school, not only know what is up and what down, what is a bench and what a table, what is two and what one, and so forth, but, in my experience, the peasant children who are sent to school by their parents can every one of them express their thoughts well and correctly, can understand another person's thought (if it is expressed in Russian), and can count to twenty and more; playing with knuckle-bones they count in pairs and sixes, and they know how many points and pairs there are in a six. Frequently the pupils who came to my school brought with them the problem with the geese, and explained it to me. But even if we admit that children possess no such conceptions as those the pedagogues want to impart to them by means of conversations, I do not find the method chosen by them to be correct. Thus, for example, Mr. Bunákov has written a reader. This book is to be used in conjunction with the conversations to teach the children language. I have run through the book and have found it to be a series of bad language blunders, wherever extracts from other books are not quoted. The same complete ignorance of language I have found in Mr. Evtushévski's problems. Mr. Evtushévski wants to give ideas by means of problems. First of all he ought to have seen to it that the tool for the transmission of ideas, that is, the language, was correct. What has been mentioned here refers to the form in which the development is imparted. Let us look at the contents themselves. Mr. Bunákov proposes the following questions to be put to the children: "Where can you see cats? where a magpie? where sand? where a wasp and a suslik? what are a suslik and a magpie and a cat covered with, and what are the parts of their bodies?" (The suslik is a favourite animal of pedagogy, no doubt because not one peasant child in the centre of Russia knows that word.) "Naturally the teacher does not always put these questions straight to the children, as forming the predetermined programme of the lesson; more frequently the small and undeveloped children have to be led up to the solution of the question of the programme by a series of suggestive questions, by directing their attention to the side of the subject which is more correct at the given moment, or by inciting them to recall something from their previous observations. Thus the teacher need not put the question directly: 'Where can a wasp be seen?' but, turning to this or that pupil, he may ask him whether he has seen a wasp, where he has seen it, and then only, combining the replies of several pupils, compose an answer to the first question of his programme. In answering the teacher's questions, the children will often connect several remarks that have no direct relation to the matter; for example, when the question is about what the parts of a magpie are, one may say irrelevantly that a magpie jumps, another that it chatters funnily, a third that it steals things,--let them add and give utterance to everything that arises in their memory or imagination,--it is the teacher's business to concentrate their attention in accordance with the programme, and these remarks and additions of the children he should take notice of for the purpose of elaborating the other parts of the programme. In viewing a new subject, the children at every convenient opportunity return to the subjects which have already been under consideration. Since they have observed that a magpie is covered with feathers, the teacher asks: 'Is the suslik also covered with feathers? What is it covered with? And what is a chicken covered with? and a horse? and a lizard?' When they have observed that a magpie has two legs, the teacher asks: 'How many legs has a dog? and a fox? and a chicken? and a wasp? What other animals do you know with two legs? with four? with six?'" Involuntarily the question arises: Do the children know, or do they not know, what is so well explained to them in these conversations? If the pupils know it all, then, upon occasion, in the street or at home, where they do not need to raise their left hands, they will certainly be able to tell it in more beautiful and more correct Russian than they are ordered to do. They will certainly not say that a horse is "covered" with wool; if so, why are they compelled to repeat these questions just as the teacher has put them? But if they do not know them (which is not to be admitted except as regards the suslik), the question arises: by what will the teacher be guided in what is with so much unction called the programme of questions,--by the science of zoology, or by logic? or by the science of eloquence? But if by none of the sciences, and merely by the desire to talk about what is visible in the objects, there are so many visible things in objects, and they are so diversified, that a guiding thread is needed to show what to talk upon, whereas in objective instruction there is no such thread, and there can be none. All human knowledge is subdivided for the purpose that it may more conveniently be gathered, united, and transmitted, and these subdivisions are called sciences. But outside their scientific classifications you may talk about objects anything you please, and you may say all the nonsense imaginable, as we actually see. In any case, the result of the conversation will be that the children are either made to learn by heart the teacher's words about the suslik, or to change their own words, place them in a certain order (not always a correct order), and to memorize and repeat them. For this reason all the manuals of this kind, in general all the exercises of development, suffer on the one hand from absolute arbitrariness, and on the other from superfluity. For example, in Mr. Bunákov's book the only story which, it seems, is not copied from another author, is the following: "A peasant complained to a hunter about his trouble: a fox had carried off several of his chickens and one duck; the fox was not in the least afraid of watch-dog Dandy, who was chained up and kept barking all night long; in the morning he had placed a trap with a piece of roast meat in the fresh tracks on the snow,--evidently the red-haired sneak was disporting near the house, but he did not go into the trap. The hunter listened to what the peasant had to say to him, and said: 'Very well; now we will see who will be shrewder!' The hunter walked all day with his gun and with his dog, over the tracks of the fox, to discover how he found his way into the yard. In the daytime the sneak sleeps in his lair, and knows nothing of what is going on, so that had to be considered: on its path the hunter dug a hole and covered it with boards, dirt, and snow; a few steps from it he put down a piece of horseflesh. In the evening he seated himself with a loaded gun in his ambush, fixed things in such a way that he could see everything and shoot comfortably, and there he waited. It grew dark. The moon swam out. Cautiously, looking around and listening, the fox crept out of his lair, raised his nose, and sniffed. He at once smelled the odour of horseflesh, and ran at a slow trot to the place, and suddenly stopped and pricked his ears: the shrewd one saw that there was a mound there which had not been in that spot the previous evening. This mound apparently vexed him, and made him think; he took a large circle around it, and sniffed and listened, and sat down, and for a long time looked at the meat from a distance, so that the hunter could not shoot him,--it was too far. The fox thought and thought, and suddenly ran at full speed between the meat and the mound. Our hunter was careful, and did not shoot. He knew that the sneak was merely trying to find out whether anybody was sitting behind that mound; if he had shot at the running fox, he would certainly have missed him, and then he would not have seen the sneak, any more than he could see his own ears. Now the fox quieted down,--the mound no longer disturbed him: he walked briskly up to the meat, and ate it with great delight. Then the hunter aimed carefully, without haste, so that he might not miss him. Bang! The fox jumped up from pain and fell down dead." Everything is arbitrary here: it is an arbitrary invention to say that a fox could carry off a peasant's duck in winter, that peasants trap foxes, that a fox sleeps in the daytime in his lair (for he sleeps only at night); arbitrary is that hole which is uselessly dug in winter and covered with boards without being made use of; arbitrary is the statement that the fox eats horseflesh, which he never does; arbitrary is the supposed cunning of the fox, who runs past the hunter; arbitrary are the mound and the hunter, who does not shoot for fear of missing, that is, everything, from beginning to end, is bosh, for which any peasant boy might arraign the author of the story, if he could talk without raising his hand. Then a whole series of so-called exercises in Mr. Bunákov's lessons is composed of such questions as: "Who bakes? Who chops? Who shoots?" to which the pupil is supposed to answer: "The baker, the wood-chopper, and the marksmen," whereas he might just as correctly answer that the woman bakes, the axe chops, and the teacher shoots, if he has a gun. Another arbitrary statement in that book is that the throat is a part of the mouth, and so on. All the other exercises, such as "The ducks fly, and the dogs?" or "The linden and birch are trees, and the horse?" are quite superfluous. Besides, it must be observed that if such conversations are really carried on with the pupils (which never happens) that is, if the pupils are permitted to speak and ask questions, the teacher, choosing simple subjects (they are most difficult), is at each step perplexed, partly through ignorance, and partly because _ein Narr kann mehr fragen, als zehn Weise antworten_. Exactly the same takes place in the instruction of arithmetic, which is based on the same pedagogical principle. Either the pupils are informed in the same way of what they already know, or they are quite arbitrarily informed of combinations of a certain character that are not based on anything. The lesson mentioned above and all the other lessons up to ten are merely information about what the children already know. If they frequently do not answer questions of that kind, this is due to the fact that the question is either wrongly expressed in itself, or wrongly expressed as regards the children. The difficulty which the children encounter in answering a question of that character is due to the same cause which makes it impossible for the average boy to answer the question: Three sons were to Noah,[1]--Shem, Ham, and Japheth,--who was their father? The difficulty is not mathematical, but syntactical, which is due to the fact that in the statement of the problem and in the question there is not one and the same subject; but when to the syntactical difficulty there is added the awkwardness of the proposer of the problems in expressing himself in Russian, the matter becomes of greater difficulty still to the pupil; but the trouble is no longer mathematical. [Footnote 1: The Russian way of saying "Noah had three sons."] Let anybody understand at once Mr. Evtushévski's problem: "A certain boy had four nuts, another had five. The second boy gave all his nuts to the first, and this one gave three nuts to a third, and the rest he distributed equally to three other friends. How many nuts did each of the last get?" Express the problem as follows: "A boy had four nuts. He was given five more. He gave away three nuts, and the rest he wants to give to three friends. How many can he give to each?" and a child of five years of age will solve it. There is no problem here at all, but the difficulty may arise only from a wrong statement of the problem, or from a weak memory. And it is this syntactical difficulty, which the children overcome by long and difficult exercises, that gives the teacher cause to think that, teaching the children what they know already, he is teaching them anything at all. Just as arbitrarily are the children taught combinations in arithmetic and the decomposition of numbers according to a certain method and order, which have their foundation only in the fancy of the teacher. Mr. Evtushévski says: "Four. (1) The formation of the number. On the upper border of the board the teacher places three cubes together--I I I. How many cubes are there here? Then a fourth cube is added. And how many are there now? I I I I. How are four cubes formed from three and one? We have to add one cube to the three. "(2) Decomposition into component parts. How can four cubes be formed? or, How can four cubes be broken up? Four cubes may be broken up into two and two: II + II. Four cubes may be formed from one, and one, and one, and one more, or by taking four times one cube: I + I + I + I. Four cubes may be broken up into three and one: III + I. It may be formed from one, and one, and two: I + I + II. Can four cubes be put together in any other way? The pupils convince themselves that there can be no other decomposition, distinct from those already given. If the pupils begin to break the four cubes in this way: one, two, and one, or, two, one and one; or, one and three, the teacher will easily point out to them that these decompositions are only repetitions of what has been got before, only in a different order. "Every time, whenever the pupils indicate a new method of decomposition, the teacher places the cubes on a ledge of the blackboard in the manner here indicated. Thus there will be four cubes on the upper ledge; two and two in a second place; in a third place the four cubes will be separated at some distance from each other; in a fourth place, three and one, and in a fifth one, one, and two. "(3) Decomposition in order. It may easily happen that the children will at once point out the decomposition of the number into component parts in order; even then the third exercise cannot be regarded as superfluous: Here we have formed four cubes of twos, of separate cubes, and of threes,--in what order had we best place the cubes on the board? With what shall the decomposition of the four cubes begin? With the decomposition into separate cubes. How are four cubes to be formed from separate cubes? We must take four times one cube. How are four cubes to be formed from twos, from a pair? We must take two twos,--twice two cubes, two pairs of cubes. How shall we afterward break up the four cubes? They can be formed of threes: for this purpose we take three and one, or one and three. The teacher explains to the pupils that the last decomposition, that is, 1 1 2, does not come under the accepted order, and is a modification of one of the first three." Why does Mr. Evtushévski not admit this last decomposition? Why must there be the order indicated by him? All that is a matter of mere arbitrariness and fancy. In reality, it is apparent to every thinking man that there is only one foundation for any composition and decomposition, and for the whole of mathematics. Here is the foundation: 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 1 = 4, and so forth,--precisely what the children learn at home, and what in common parlance is called counting to ten, to twenty, and so forth. This process is known to every pupil, and no matter what decomposition Mr. Evtushévski may make, it is to be explained from this one. A boy that can count to four, considers four as a whole, and so also three, and two, and one. Consequently, he knows that four was produced from the consecutive addition of one. Similarly he knows that four is produced by adding twice one to two, just as he knows twice one is two. What, then, are the children taught here? That which they know, or that process of counting which they must learn according to the teacher's fancy. The other day I happened to witness a lesson in mathematics according to Grube's method. The pupil was asked: "How much is 8 and 7?" He hastened to answer and said 16. His neighbour, too, was in a hurry and, without raising his left hand, said: "8 and 8 is 16, and one less is 15." The teacher sternly stopped him, and compelled the first boy to add one after one to 8, until he came to 15, though the boy knew long ago that he had made a blunder. In that school they had reached the number 15, but 16 was supposed to be unknown yet. I am afraid that many people, reading all these long refutals of the methods of object instruction and counting according to Grube, which I am making, will say: "What is there here to talk about? Is it not evident that it is all mere nonsense which it is not worth while to criticize? Why pick out the errors and blunders of a Bunákov and Evtushévski, and criticize what is beneath all criticism?" That was the way I myself thought before I was led to see what was going on in the pedagogical world, when I convinced myself that Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski were not mere individuals, but authorities in our pedagogics, and that what they prescribe is actually carried out in our schools. In the backwoods we may find teachers, especially women, who spread Evtushévski's and Bunákov's manuals out before them and ask according to their prescription how much one feather and one feather is, and what a hen is covered with. All that would be funny if it were only an invention of the theorist, and not a guide in practical work, a guide that some follow already, and if it did not concern one of the most important affairs of life,--the education of the children. I was amused at it when I read it as theoretical fancies; but when I learned and saw that that was being practised on children, I felt pity for them and ashamed. From a theoretical standpoint, not to mention the fact that they faultily define the aim of education, the pedagogues of this school make this essential error, that they depart from the conditions of all instruction, whether this instruction be on the highest or lowest stage of the science, in a university or in a popular school. The essential conditions of all instruction consist in selecting the homogeneous phenomena from an endless number of heterogeneous phenomena, and in imparting the laws of these phenomena to the students. Thus, in the study of language, the pupils are taught the laws of the word, and in mathematics, the laws of the numbers. The study of language consists in imparting the laws of the decomposition and of the reverse composition of sentences, words, syllables, sounds,--and these laws form the subject of instruction. The instruction of mathematics consists in imparting the laws of the composition and decomposition of the numbers (but I beg to observe,--not in the process of the composition and the decomposition of the numbers, but in imparting the laws of that composition and decomposition). Thus, the first law consists in the ability of regarding a collection of units as a unit of a higher order, precisely what a child does when he says: "2 and 1 = 3." He regards 2 as a kind of unit. On this law are based the consequent laws of numeration, then of addition, and of the whole of mathematics. But arbitrary conversations about the wasp, and so forth, or problems within the limit of 10,--its decomposition in every manner possible,--cannot form a subject of instruction, because, in the first place, they transcend the subject and, in the second place, because they do not treat of its laws. That is the way the matter presents itself to me from its theoretical side; but theoretical criticism may frequently err, and so I will try to verify my deductions by means of practical data. G---- P---- has given us a sample of the practical results of both object instruction and of mathematics according to Grube's method. One of the older boys was told: "Put your hand under your book!" in order to prove that he had been taught the conceptions of "over" and "under," and the intelligent boy, who, I am sure, knew what "over" and "under" was, when he was three years old, put his hand on the book when he was told to put it under it. I have all the time observed such examples, and they prove more clearly than anything else how useless, strange, and disgraceful, I feel like saying, this object instruction is for Russian children. A Russian child cannot and will not believe (he has too much respect for the teacher and for himself) that the teacher is in earnest when he asks him whether the ceiling is above or below, or how many legs he has. In arithmetic, too, we have seen that pupils who did not even know how to write the numbers and during the whole time of the instruction were exercised only in mental calculations up to 10, for half an hour did not stop blundering in every imaginable way in response to questions which the teacher put to them within the limit of 10. Evidently the instruction of mental calculation brought no results, and the syntactical difficulty, which consists in unravelling a question that is improperly put, has remained the same as ever. And thus, the practical results of the examination which took place did not confirm the usefulness of the development. But I will be more exact and conscientious. Maybe the process of development, which at first is confined not so much to the study, as to the analysis of what the pupils know already, will produce results later on. Maybe the teacher, who at first takes possession of the pupils' minds by means of the analysis, later guides them firmly and with ease, and from the narrow sphere of the descriptions of a table and the count of 2 and 1 leads them into the real sphere of knowledge, in which the pupils are no longer confined to learning what they know already, but also learn something new, and learn that new information in a new, more convenient, more intelligent manner. This supposition is confirmed by the fact that all the German pedagogues and their followers, among them Mr. Bunákov, say distinctly that object instruction is to serve as an introduction to "home science" and "natural science." But we should be looking in vain in Mr. Bunákov's manual to find out how this "home science" is to be taught, if by this word any real information is to be understood, and not the descriptions of a hut and a vestibule,--which the children know already. Mr. Bunákov, on page 200, after having explained that it is necessary to teach where the ceiling is and where the stove, says briefly: "Now it is necessary to pass over to the third stage of object instruction, the contents of which have been defined by me as follows: The study of the country, county, Government, the whole realm with its natural products and its inhabitants, in general outline, as a sketch of home science and the beginning of natural science, with the predominance of reading, which, resting on the immediate observations of the first two grades, broadens the mental horizon of the pupils,--the sphere of their concepts and ideas. We can see from the mere definition that here the objectivity appears as a complement to the explanatory reading and narrative of the teacher,--consequently, what is said in regard to the occupations of the third year has more reference to the discussion of the second occupation, which enters into the composition of the subject under instruction, which is called the native language,--the explanatory reading." We turn to the third year,--the explanatory reading, but there we find absolutely nothing to indicate how the new information is to be imparted, except that it is good to read such and such books, and in reading to put such and such questions. The questions are extremely queer (to me, at least), as, for example, the comparison of the article on water by Ushínski and of the article on water by Aksákov, and the request made of the pupils that they should explain that Aksákov considers water as a phenomenon of Nature, while Ushínski considers it as a substance, and so forth. Consequently, we find here again the same foisting of views on the pupils, and of subdivisions (generally incorrect) of the teacher, and not one word, not one hint, as to how any new knowledge is to be imparted. It is not known what shall be taught: natural history, or geography. There is nothing there but reading with questions of the character I have just mentioned. On the other side of the instruction about the word,--grammar and orthography,--we should just as much be looking in vain for any new method of instruction which is based on the preceding development. Again the old Perevlévski's grammar, which begins with philosophical definitions and then with syntactical analysis, serves as the basis of all new grammatical exercises and of Mr. Bunákov's manual. In mathematics, too, we should be looking in vain, at that stage where the real instruction in mathematics begins, for anything new and more easy, based on the whole previous instruction of the exercises of the second year up to 20. Where in arithmetic the real difficulties are met with, where it becomes necessary to explain the subject from all its sides to the pupil, as in numeration, in addition, subtraction, division, in the division and multiplication of fractions, you will not find even a shadow of anything easier, any new explanation, but only quotations from old arithmetics. The character of this instruction is everywhere one and the same. The whole attention is directed toward teaching the pupil what he already knows. And since the pupil knows what he is being taught, and easily recites in any order desired what he is asked to recite by the teacher, the teacher thinks that he is really teaching something, and the pupil's progress is great, and the teacher, paying no attention to what forms the real difficulty of teaching, that is, to teaching something new, most comfortably stumps about in one spot. This explains why our pedagogical literature is overwhelmed with manuals for object-lessons, with manuals about how to conduct kindergartens (one of the most monstrous excrescences of the new pedagogy), with pictures and books for reading, in which are eternally repeated the same articles about the fox and the blackcock, the same poems which for some reason are written out in prose in all kinds of permutations and with all kinds of explanations; but we have not a single new article for children's reading, not one Russian, nor Church-Slavic grammar, nor a Church-Slavic dictionary, nor an arithmetic, nor a geography, nor a history for the popular schools. All the forces are absorbed in writing text-books for the instruction of children in subjects they need not and ought not to be taught in school, because they are taught them in life. Of course, there is no end to the writing of such books; for there can be only one grammar and arithmetic, but of exercises and reflections, like those I have quoted from Bunákov, and of the orders of the decomposition of numbers from Evtushévski, there may be an endless number. Pedagogy is in the same condition in which a science would be that would teach how a man ought to walk; and people would try to discover rules about how to teach the children, how to enjoin them to contract this muscle, stretch that muscle, and so forth. This condition of the new pedagogy results directly from its two fundamental principles: (1) that the aim of the school is development and not science, and (2) that development and the means for attaining it may be theoretically defined. From this has consistently resulted that miserable and frequently ridiculous condition in which the whole matter of the schools now is. Forces are wasted in vain, and the masses, who at the present moment are thirsting for education, as the dried-up grass thirsts for rain, and are ready to receive it, and beg for it,--instead of a loaf receive a stone, and are perplexed to understand whether they were mistaken in regarding education as something good, or whether something is wrong in what is being offered to them. That matters are really so there cannot be the least doubt for any man who becomes acquainted with the present theory of teaching and knows the actual condition of the school among the masses. Involuntarily there arises the question: how could honest, cultured people, who sincerely love their work and wish to do good,--for such I regard the majority of my opponents to be,--have arrived at such a strange condition and be in such deep error? This question has interested me, and I will try to communicate those answers which have occurred to me. Many causes have led to it. The most natural cause which has led pedagogy to the false path on which it now stands, is the criticism of the old order, the criticism for the sake of criticism, without positing new principles in the place of those criticized. Everybody knows that criticizing is an easy business, and that it is quite fruitless and frequently harmful, if by the side of what is condemned one does not point out the principles on the basis of which this condemnation is uttered. If I say that such and such a thing is bad because I do not like it, or because everybody says that it is bad, or even because it is really bad, but do not know how it ought to be right, the criticism will always be useless and injurious. The views of the pedagogues of the new school are, above all, based on the criticism of previous methods. Even now, when it seems there would be no sense in striking a prostrate person, we read and hear in every manual, in every discussion, "that it is injurious to read without comprehension; that it is impossible to learn by heart the definitions of numbers and operations with numbers; that senseless memorizing is injurious; that it is injurious to operate with thousands without being able to count 2-3," and so forth. The chief point of departure is the criticism of the old methods and the concoction of new ones to be as diametrically opposed to the old as possible, but by no means the positing of new foundations of pedagogy, from which new methods might result. It is very easy to criticize the old-fashioned method of studying reading by means of learning by heart whole pages of the psalter, and of studying arithmetic by memorizing what a number is, and so forth. I will remark, in the first place, that nowadays there is no need of attacking these methods, because there will hardly be found any teachers who would defend them, and, in the second place, that if, criticizing such phenomena, they want to let it be known that I am a defender of the antiquated method of instruction, it is no doubt due to the fact that my opponents, in their youth, do not know that nearly twenty years ago I with all my might and main fought against those antiquated methods of pedagogy and coöperated in their abolition. And thus it was found that the old methods of instruction were not good for anything, and, without building any new foundation, they began to look for new methods. I say "without building any new foundation," because there are only two permanent foundations of pedagogy: (1) The determination of the criterion of what ought to be taught, and (2) the criterion of how it has to be taught, that is, the determination that the chosen subjects are most necessary, and that the chosen method is the best. Nobody has even paid any attention to these foundations, and each school has in its own justification invented quasi-philosophical justificatory reflections. But this "theoretical substratum," as Mr. Bunákov has accidentally expressed himself quite well, cannot be regarded as a foundation. For the old method of instruction possessed just such a theoretical substratum. The real, peremptory question of pedagogy, which fifteen years ago I vainly tried to put in all its significance, "Why ought we to know this or that, and how shall we teach it?" has not even been touched. The result of this has been that as soon as it became apparent that the old method was not good, they did not try to find out what the best method would be, but immediately set out to discover a new method which would be the very opposite of the old one. They did as a man may do who finds his house to be cold in winter and does not trouble himself about learning why it is cold, or how to help matters, but at once tries to find another house which will as little as possible resemble the one he is living in. I was then abroad, and I remember how I everywhere came across messengers roving all over Europe in search of a new faith, that is, officials of the ministry, studying German pedagogy. We have adopted the methods of instruction current with our nearest neighbours, the Germans, in the first place, because we are always prone to imitate the Germans; in the second, because it was the most complicated and cunning of methods, and if it comes to taking something from abroad, of course, it has to be the latest fashion and what is most cunning; in the third, because, in particular, these methods were more than any others opposed to the old way. And thus, the new methods were taken from the Germans, and not by themselves, but with a theoretical substratum, that is, with a quasi-philosophical justification of these methods. This theoretical substratum has done great service. The moment parents or simply sensible people, who busy themselves with the question of education, express their doubt about the efficacy of these methods, they are told: "And what about Pestalozzi, and Diesterweg, and Denzel, and Wurst, and methodics, heuristics, didactics, concentrism?" and the bold people wave their hands, and say: "God be with them,--they know better." In these German methods there also lay this other advantage (the cause why they stick so eagerly to this method), that with it the teacher does not need to try too much, does not need to go on studying, does not need to work over himself and the methods of instruction. For the greater part of the time the teacher teaches by this method what the children know, and, besides, teaches it from a text-book, and that is convenient. And unconsciously, in accordance with an innate human weakness, the teacher is fond of this convenience. It is very pleasant for me, with my firm conviction that I am teaching and doing an important and very modern work, to tell the children from the book about the suslik, or about a horse's having four legs, or to transpose the cubes by twos and by threes, and ask the children how much two and two is; but if, instead of telling about the suslik, the teacher had to tell or read something interesting, to give the foundations of grammar, geography, sacred history, and of the four operations, he would at once be led to working over himself, to reading much, and to refreshing his knowledge. Thus, the old method was criticized, and a new one was taken from the Germans. This method is so foreign to our Russian un-pedantic mental attitude, its monstrosity is so glaring, that one would think that it could never have been grafted on Russia, and yet it is being applied, even though only in a small measure, and in some way gives at times better results than the old church method. This is due to the fact that, since it was taken in our country (just as it originated in Germany) from the criticism of the old method, the faults of the former method have really been rejected, though, in its extreme opposition to the old method, which, with the pedantry characteristic of the Germans, has been carried to the farthest extreme, there have appeared new faults, which are almost greater than the former ones. Formerly reading was taught in Russia by attaching to the consonants useless endings (_buki_--_uki_, _vyedi_--_yedi_), and in Germany _es em de ce_, and so forth, by attaching a vowel to each consonant, now in front, and now behind, and that caused some difficulty. Now they have fallen into the other extreme, by trying to pronounce the consonants without the vowels, which is an apparent impossibility. In Ushínski's grammar (Ushínski is with us the father of the sound method), and in all the manuals on sound, a consonant is defined thus: "That sound which cannot be pronounced by itself." And it is this sound which the pupil is taught before any other. When I remarked that it is impossible to pronounce _b_ alone, but that it always gives you _b[)u]_, I was told that was due to the inability of some persons, and that it took great skill to pronounce a consonant. And I have myself seen a teacher correct a pupil more than ten times, though he seemed quite satisfactorily to pronounce short _b_, until at last the pupil began to talk nonsense. And it is with these _b's_, that is, sounds that cannot be pronounced, as Ushínski defines them, or the pronunciation of which demands special skill, that the instruction of reading begins according to the pedantic German manuals. Formerly syllables were senselessly learned by heart (that was bad); diametrically opposed to this, the new fashion enjoins us not to divide up into syllables at all, which is absolutely impossible in a long word, and which in reality is never done. Every teacher, according to the sound method, feels the necessity of letting a pupil rest after a part of a word, having him pronounce it separately. Formerly they used to read the psalter, which, on account of its high and deep style, is incomprehensible to the children (which was bad); in contrast to this the children are made to read sentences without any contents whatever, to explain intelligible words, or to learn by heart what they cannot understand. In the old school the teacher did not speak to the pupil at all; now the teacher is ordered to talk to them on anything and everything, on what they know already, or what they do not need to know. In mathematics they formerly learned by heart the definition of operations, but now they no longer have anything to do with operations, for, according to Evtushévski, they reach numeration only in the third year, and it is assumed that for a whole year they are to be taught nothing but numbers up to ten. Formerly the pupils were made to work with large abstract numbers, without paying any attention to the other side of mathematics, to the disentanglement of the problem (the formation of an equation). Now they are taught solving puzzles, forming equations with small numbers before they know numeration and how to operate with numbers, though experience teaches any teacher that the difficulty of forming equations or the solution of puzzles are overcome by a general development in life, and not in school. It has been observed--quite correctly--that there is no greater aid for a pupil, when he is puzzled by a problem with large numbers, than to give him the same problem with smaller numbers. The pupil, who in life learns to grope through problems with small numbers, is conscious of the process of solving, and transfers this process to the problem with large numbers. Having observed this, the new pedagogues try to teach only the solving of puzzles with small numbers, that is, what cannot form the subject of instruction and is only the work of life. In the instruction of grammar the new school has again remained consistent with its point of departure,--with the criticism of the old and the adoption of the diametrically opposite method. Formerly they used to learn by heart the definition of the parts of speech, and from etymology passed over to syntax; now they not only begin with syntax, but even with logic, which the children are supposed to acquire. According to the grammar of Mr. Bunákov, which is an abbreviation of Perevlévski's grammar, even with the same choice of examples, the study of grammar begins with syntactical analysis, which is so difficult and, I will say, so uncertain for the Russian language, which does not fully comply with the classic forms of syntax. To sum up, the new school has removed certain disadvantages, of which the chief are the superfluous addition to the consonants and the memorizing of definitions, and in this it is superior to the old method, and in reading and writing sometimes gives better results; but, on the other hand, it has introduced new defects, which are that the contents of the reading are most senseless and that arithmetic is no longer taught as a study. In practice (I can refer in this to all the inspectors of schools, to all the members of school councils, who have visited the schools, and to all the teachers), in practice, in the majority of schools, where the German method is prescribed, this is what takes place, with rare exceptions. The children learn not by the sound system, but by the method of letter composition; instead of saying _b_, _v_, they say _b[)u]_, _v[)u]_, and break up the words into syllables. The object instruction is entirely lost sight of, arithmetic does not proceed at all, and the children have absolutely nothing to read. The teachers quite unconsciously depart from the theoretical demands and fall in with the needs of the masses. These practical results, which are repeated everywhere, should, it seems, prove the incorrectness of the method itself; but among the pedagogues, those that write manuals and prescribe rules, there exists such a complete ignorance of and aversion to the knowledge of the masses and their demands that the relation of reality to these methods does not in the least impair the progress of their business. It is hard to imagine the conception about the masses which exists in this world of the pedagogues, and from which result their method and all the consequent manner of instruction. Mr. Bunákov, in proof of how necessary the object instruction and development is for the children of a Russian school, with extraordinary naïveté adduces Pestalozzi's words: "Let any one who has lived among the common people," he says, "contradict my words that there is nothing more difficult than to impart any idea to these creatures. Nobody, indeed, gainsays that. The Swiss pastors affirm that when the people come to them to receive instruction they do not understand what they are told, and the pastors do not understand what the people say to them. City dwellers who settle in the country are amazed at the inability of the country population to express themselves; years pass before the country servants learn to express themselves to their masters." This relation of the common people in Switzerland to the cultured class is assumed as the foundation for just such a relation in Russia. I regard it as superfluous to expatiate on what is known to everybody, that in Germany the people speak a special language, called Plattdeutsch, and that in the German part of Switzerland this Plattdeutsch is especially far removed from the German language, whereas in Russia we frequently speak a bad language, while the masses always speak a good Russian, and that in Russia it will be more correct to put these words of Pestalozzi in the mouth of peasants speaking of the teachers. A peasant and his boy will say quite correctly that it is very hard to understand what those creatures, meaning the teachers, say. The ignorance about the masses is so complete in this world of the pedagogues that they boldly say that to the peasant school come little savages, and therefore boldly teach them what is down and what up, that a blackboard is placed on a stand, and that underneath it there is a groove. They do not know that if the pupils asked the teacher, there would turn up very many things which the teacher would not know; that, for example, if you rub off the paint from the board, nearly any boy will tell you of what kind of wood the board is made, whether of pine, linden, or aspen, which the teacher cannot tell; that a boy will always tell better than the teacher about a cat or a chicken, because he has observed them better than the teacher; that instead of the problem about the wagons the boy knows the problems about the crows, about the cattle, and about the geese. (About the crows: There flies a flock of crows, and there stand some oak-trees: if two crows alight on each, a crow will be lacking; if one on each, an oak-tree will be lacking. How many crows and how many oak-trees are there? About the cattle: For one hundred roubles buy one hundred animals,--calves at half a rouble, cows at three roubles, and oxen at ten roubles. How many oxen, cows, and calves are there?) The pedagogues of the German school do not even suspect that quickness of perception, that real vital development, that contempt for everything false, that ready ridicule of everything false, which are inherent in every Russian peasant boy,--and only on that account so boldly (as I myself have seen), under the fire of forty pairs of intelligent youthful eyes, perform their tricks at the risk of ridicule. For this reason, a real teacher, who knows the masses, no matter how sternly he is enjoined to teach the peasant children what is up and what down, and that two and three is five, not one real teacher, who knows the pupils with whom he has to deal, will be able to do that. Thus, the chief causes which have led us into such error are: (1) the ignorance about the masses; (2) the involuntarily seductive ease of teaching the children what they already know; (3) our proneness to imitate the Germans, and (4) the criticism of the old, without putting down a new, foundation. This last cause has led the pedagogues of the new school to this, that, in spite of the extreme external difference of the new method from the old, it is identical with it in its foundation, and, consequently, in the methods of instruction and in the results. In either method the essential principle consists in the teacher's firm and absolute knowledge of what to teach and how to teach, and this knowledge of his he does not draw from the demands of the masses and from experience, but simply decides theoretically once for all that he must teach this or that and in such a way, and so he teaches. The pedagogue of the ancient school, which for briefness' sake I shall call the church school, knows firmly and absolutely that he must teach from the prayer-book and the psalter by making the children learn by rote, and he admits no alterations in his methods; in the same manner the teacher of the new, the German, school knows firmly and absolutely that he must teach according to Bunákov and Evtushévski, begin with the words "whisker" and "wasp," ask what is up and what down, and tell about the favourite suslik, and he admits no alterations in his method. Both of them base their opinion on the firm conviction that they know the best methods. From the identity of the foundations arises also a further similarity. If you tell a teacher of the church reading that it takes the children a long time and causes them difficulty to acquire reading and writing, he will reply that the main interest is not in the reading and writing, but in the "divine instruction," by which he means the study of the church books. The same you will be told by a teacher of Russian reading according to the German method. He will tell you (all say and write it) that the main question is not the rapidity of the acquisition of the art of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but in the "development." Both place the aim of instruction in something independent of reading, writing, and arithmetic, that is, of science, in something else, which is absolutely necessary. This similarity continues down to the minutest details. In either method all instruction previous to the school, all knowledge acquired outside the school, is not taken into account,--all entering pupils are regarded as equally ignorant, and all are made to learn from the beginning. If a boy who knows the letters and the syllables _a_, _be_, enters a church school, he is made to change them to _buki-az_--_ba_. The same is true of the German school. Just so, in either school it happens that some children cannot learn the rudiments. Just so, with either method, the mechanical side of instruction predominates over the mental. In either school the pupils excel in a good handwriting and good enunciation with absolutely exact reading, that is, not as it is spoken, but as it is written. Just so, with either method, there always reigns an external order in the school, and the children are in constant fear and can be guided only with the greatest severity. Mr. Korolév has incidentally remarked that in instruction according to the sound method blows are not neglected. I have seen the same in the schools of the German method, and I assume that without blows it is impossible to get along even in the new German school, because, like the church school, it teaches without asking what the pupil finds interesting to know, but what, in the teacher's opinion, seems necessary, and so the school can be based only on compulsion. Compulsion is attained with children generally by means of blows. The church and the new German school, starting from the same principles and arriving at the same results, are absolutely identical. But, if it came to choosing one of the two, I should still prefer the church school. The defects are the same, but on the side of the church school is the custom of a thousand years and the authority of the church, which is so powerful with the masses. Having finished the analysis and criticism of the German school, I consider it necessary,--in view of what I have said, namely, that criticism is fruitful only when, condemning, it points out how that which is bad ought to be,--I consider it necessary to speak of those foundations of instruction which I regard as legitimate, and on which I rear my method of instruction. In order to elucidate in what I find these unquestionable foundations of every pedagogical activity, I shall be compelled to repeat myself, that is, to repeat what I said fifteen years ago in the pedagogical periodical, _Yásnaya Polyána_, which I then published. This repetition will not be tedious for the pedagogues of the new school, because what I then wrote is not exactly forgotten, but has never been considered by the pedagogues,--and yet I still think that just what was expressed by me at that time might have placed pedagogy, as a theory, on a firm foundation. Fifteen years ago, when I took up the matter of popular education without any preconceived theories or views on the subject, with the one desire to advance the matter in a direct and straightforward manner, I, as a teacher in my school, was at once confronted with two questions: (1) What must I teach? and (2) How must I teach it? At that time, even as at the present, there existed the greatest diversity of opinion in the answers to these questions. I know that some pedagogues, who are locked up in their narrow theoretical world, think that there is no other light than what peeps through the windows, and that there is no longer any diversity of opinions. I ask those who think so to observe that it only seems so to them, just as it seems so to the circles that are opposed to them. In the whole mass of people who are interested in education, there exists, as it has existed before, the greatest diversity of opinions. Formerly, just as now, some, in reply to the question of what ought to be taught, said that outside of the rudiments the most useful information for a primary school is obtained from the natural sciences; others, even as now, that that was not necessary, and was even injurious; even as now, some proposed history, or geography, while others denied their necessity; some proposed the Church-Slavic language and grammar, and religion, while others found that, too, superfluous, and ascribed a prime importance to "development." On the question of how to teach there has always been a still greater diversity of answers. The most diversified methods of instructing in reading and arithmetic have been proposed. In the bookstalls there were sold, side by side, the self-teachers according to the _buki-az--ba_, Bunákov's lessons, Zolotóv's charts, Madame Daragán's alphabets, and all had their advocates. When I encountered these questions and found no answer for them in Russian literature, I turned to the literature of Europe. After having read what had been written on the subject and having made the personal acquaintance of the so-called best representatives of the pedagogical science in Europe, I not only failed to find anywhere an answer to the question I was interested in, but I convinced myself that this question does not even exist for pedagogy, as a science; that every pedagogue of any given school firmly believed that the methods which he used were the best, because they were based on absolute truth, and that it would be useless for him to look at them with a critical eye. However, because, as I said, I took up the matter of popular education without any preconceived notions, or because I took up the matter without prescribing laws from a distance about how I ought to teach, but became a schoolmaster in a village popular school in the backwoods,--I could not reject the idea that there must of necessity exist a criterion by means of which the question could be solved: What to teach and how to teach it. Should I teach the psalter by heart, or the classification of the organisms? Should I teach according to the sound alphabet, translated from the German, or from the prayer-book? In the solution of this question I was aided by a certain pedagogical tact, with which I am gifted, and especially by that close and impassioned relation in which I stood to the matter. When I entered at once into the closest direct relations with those forty tiny peasants that formed my school (I call them tiny peasants because I found in them the same characteristics of perspicacity, the same immense store of information from practical life, of jocularity, simplicity, and loathing for everything false, which distinguish the Russian peasant), when I saw that susceptibility, that readiness to acquire the information which they needed, I felt at once that the antiquated church method of instruction had outlived its usefulness and was not good for them. I began to experiment on other proposed methods of instruction; but, because compulsion in education, both by my conviction and by my character, are repulsive to me, I did not exercise any pressure, and, the moment I noticed that something was not readily received, I did not compel them, and looked for something else. From these experiments it appeared to me and to those teachers who instructed with me at Yásnaya Polyána and in other schools on the same principle of freedom, that nearly everything which in the pedagogical world was written about schools was separated by an immeasurable abyss from reality, and that many of the proposed methods, such as object-lessons, the natural sciences, the sound method, and others, called forth contempt and ridicule, and were not accepted by the pupils. We began to look for those contents and those methods which were readily taken up by the pupils, and struck that which forms my method of instruction. But this method stood in a line with all other methods, and the question of why it was better than the rest remained as unsolved as before. Consequently, the question of what the criterion was as to what to teach and how to teach received an even greater meaning for me; only by solving it could I be convinced that what I taught was neither injurious nor useless. This question both then and now has appeared to me as a corner-stone of the whole pedagogy, and to the solution of this question I devoted the publication of the pedagogical periodical _Yásnaya Polyána_. In several articles (I do not renounce anything I then said) I tried to put the question in all its significance and to solve it as much as I could. At that time I found no sympathy in all the pedagogical literature, not even any contradiction, but the most complete indifference to the question which I put. There were some attacks on certain details and trifles, but the question itself evidently did not interest any one. I was young then, and that indifference grieved me. I did not understand that with my question, "How do you know what to teach and how to teach?" I was like a man who, let us say, in a gathering of Turkish pashas discussing the question in what manner they may collect the greatest revenue from the people, should propose to them the following: "Gentlemen, in order to know how much revenue to collect from each, we must first analyze the question on what your right to exact that revenue is based." Obviously all the pashas would continue their discussion of the measures of extortion, and would reply only with silence to his irrelevant question. But the question cannot be circumvented. Fifteen years ago no attention was paid to it, and the pedagogues of every school, convinced that everybody else was talking to the wind and that they were right, most calmly prescribed their laws, basing their principles on philosophies of a very doubtful character, which they used as a substratum for their wee little theories. And yet, this question is not quite so difficult if we only renounce completely all preconceived notions. I have tried to elucidate and solve this question, and, without repeating those proofs, which he who wishes may read in the article, I will enunciate the results to which I was led. "The only criterion of pedagogy is freedom, the only method--experience." After fifteen years I have not changed my opinion one hair's breadth; but I consider it necessary to define with greater precision what I understand by these words, not only in respect to education in general, but also in respect to the particular question of popular education in a primary school. One hundred years ago the question what to teach and how to teach could have had no place either in Europe or with us. Education was inseparably connected with religion. To learn reading meant to learn Holy Writ. In the Mohammedan countries this relation of the rudiments and religion still persists in its full force. To learn means to learn the Koran, and, therefore, Arabic. But the moment religion ceased to be the criterion of what ought to be taught, and the school became independent of it, this question had to arise. But it did not arise because the school was not suddenly freed from its dependence on religion, but by imperceptible steps. Now it is accepted by everybody that religion cannot serve as the contents, nor as an indication of the method of education, and that education has different demands for its basis. In what do these demands consist? On what are they based? In order that these principles should be incontrovertible, it is necessary either that they be proved philosophically, incontrovertibly, or that, at least, all educated people should be agreed on them. But is it so? There can be no doubt whatsoever about this, that in philosophy have not been found those principles on which could be built up the decision of what ought to be taught, the more so since the matter itself is not an abstract, but a practical affair, which depends on an endless number of vital conditions. Still less can these principles be discovered in the common consent of all men who busy themselves with this matter, in the consent which we may take as a practical foundation, as an expression of the universal common sense. Not only in matters of popular, but even of higher education do we see a complete diversity of opinions among the best representatives of education, as, for example, in the question of classicism and realism. And yet, in spite of the absence of any foundations, we see education proceeding on its own path and on the whole being guided by only one principle, namely by freedom. There exist side by side the classical and the real school, each of which is prepared to regard itself as the only natural school, and both satisfy some want, for parents send their children to either. In the popular school the right to determine what the children shall learn, no matter from what standpoint we may consider this question, belongs just as much to the masses, that is, either to the pupils themselves, or to the parents who send the children to school, and so the answer to the question what the children are to be taught in a popular school can be got only from the masses. But, perhaps, we shall say that we, as highly cultured people, must not submit to the demands of the rude masses and that we must teach the masses what to wish. Thus many think, but to that I can give this one answer: give us a firm, incontrovertible foundation why this or that is chosen by you, show me a society in which the two diametrically opposed views on education do not exist among the highly cultured people; where it is not eternally repeated that if education falls into the hands of the clergy, the masses are educated in one sense, and if education falls into the hands of the progressists, the people are educated in another sense,--show me a state of society where that does not exist, and I will agree with you. So long as that does not exist, there is no criterion except the freedom of the learner, where, in matters of the popular school, the place of the learning children is taken by their parents, that is, by the needs of the masses. These needs are not only definite, quite clear, and everywhere the same throughout Russia, but also so intelligent and broad that they include all the most diversified demands of the people who are debating what the masses ought to be taught. These needs are: the knowledge of Russian and Church-Slavic reading, and calculation. The masses everywhere and always regard the natural sciences as useless trifles. Their programme is remarkable not only by its unanimity and firm definiteness, but, in my opinion, also by the breadth of its demands and the correctness of its view. The masses admit two spheres of knowledge, the most exact and the least subject to vacillation from a diversity of views,--the languages and mathematics; everything else they regard as trifles. I think that the masses are quite correct,--in the first place, because in this knowledge there can be no half information, no falseness, which they cannot bear, and, in the second, because the sphere of those two kinds of knowledge is immense. Russian and Church-Slavic grammar and calculation, that is, the knowledge of one dead and one living language, with their etymological and syntactical forms and their literatures, and arithmetic, that is, the foundation of all mathematics, form their programme of knowledge, which, unfortunately, but the rarest of the cultured class possess. In the third place, the masses are right, because by this programme they will be taught in the primary school only what will open to them the more advanced paths of knowledge, for it is evident that the thorough knowledge of two languages and their forms, and, in addition to them, of arithmetic, completely opens the paths to an independent acquisition of all other knowledge. The masses, as though feeling the false relation to them, when they are offered incoherent scraps of all kinds of information, repel that lie from themselves, and say: "I need know but this much,--the church language and my own and the laws of the numbers, but that other knowledge I will take myself if I want it." Thus, if we admit freedom as the criterion of what is to be taught, the programme of the popular schools is clearly and firmly defined, until the time when the masses shall express some new demands. Church-Slavic and Russian and arithmetic to their highest possible stages, and nothing else but that. That is the determination of the limits of the programme of the popular school, which, however, does not presume that all three subjects be introduced systematically. With such a programme the attainment of symmetrical results in all three subjects would naturally be desirable; but it cannot be said that the predominance of one subject over another would be injurious. The problem consists only in keeping within the limits of the programme. It may happen that from the demands of the parents, and especially from the knowledge of the teacher, this or that subject will be more prominent,--with a clerical person the Church-Slavic language, with a teacher from a county school--either Russian or arithmetic; in all these cases the demands of the masses will be satisfied, and the instruction will not depart from its fundamental criterion. The second part of the question, how to teach, that is, how to discover which method is the best, has remained just as unsolved. Just as in the first part of the question of what to teach, the assumption that on the basis of reflections it is possible to build a programme of instruction leads to contradictory schools, so it is also with the question as to how to teach. Let us take the very first stage of the teaching of reading. One asserts that it is easier to teach so from cards; another--according to the _b_, _v_ system; a third--according to Korf; a fourth--according to the _be_, _ve_, _ge_ system, and so forth. It is said that the nuns teach reading in six weeks by the _buki-az_--_ba_ system. And every teacher, convinced of the superiority of his method, proves this superiority either by the fact that he teaches with it faster than others, or by reflections of the character which Mr. Bunákov and the German pedagogues adduce. At the present time, when there are thousands of examples, we ought to know precisely by what to be guided in our choice. Neither theory, nor reflections, nor even the results of instruction can show this completely. Education and instruction are generally considered in the abstract, that is, the question is discussed how in the best and easiest manner to produce a certain act of instruction on a certain subject (whether it be one child or a mass of children). This view is quite faulty. All education and instruction can be viewed only as a certain relation of two persons or of two groups of persons having for their aim education or instruction. This definition, more general than all the other definitions, has special reference to popular education, where the question is the education of an immense number of persons, and where there can be no question about an ideal education. In general, with the popular education we cannot put the question, "How is the best education to be given?" just as with the question of the nutrition of the masses we cannot ask how the most nutritious and best loaf is to be baked. The question has to be put like this: "How is the best relation to be established between given people who want to learn and others who want to teach?" or, "How is the best bread to be made from given bolted flour?" Consequently the question of how to teach and what is the best method is a question of what will be the best relation between teacher and pupil. Nobody, I suppose, will deny that the best relation between teacher and pupil is that of naturalness, and that the contrary relation is that of compulsion. If so, the measure of all methods is to be found in the greater or lesser naturalness of relations and, therefore, in the lesser or greater compulsion in instruction. The less the children are compelled to learn, the better is the method; the more--the worse. I am glad that I do not have to prove this evident truth. Everybody is agreed that just as in hygiene the use of any food, medicine, exercise, that provokes loathing or pain, cannot be useful, so also in instruction can there be no necessity of compelling children to learn anything that is tiresome and repulsive to them, and that, if necessity demands that children be compelled, it only proves the imperfection of the method. Any one who has taught children has no doubt observed that the less the teacher himself knows the subject which he teaches and the less he likes it, the more will he have to have recourse to severity and compulsion; on the contrary, the more the teacher knows and loves his subject, the more natural and easy will his instruction be. With the idea that for successful instruction not compulsion is wanted, but the rousing of the pupil's interest, all the pedagogues of the school which is opposed to me agree. The only difference between us is that the conception that the teaching must rouse the child's interest is with them lost in a mass of other conflicting notions about "development," of the value of which they are convinced and in which they exercise compulsion; whereas I consider the rousing of the pupil's interest, the greatest possible ease, and, therefore, the non-compulsion and naturalness of instruction as the fundamental and only measure of good and bad instruction. Every progress of pedagogy, if we attentively consider the history of this matter, consists in an ever increasing approximation toward naturalness of relations between teacher and pupil, in a lessened compulsion, and in a greater ease of instruction. The objection was formerly made and, I know, is made even now that it is hard to find the limit of freedom which shall be permitted in school. To this I will reply that this limit is naturally determined by the teacher, his knowledge, his ability to manage the school; that this freedom cannot be prescribed; the measure of this freedom is only the result of the greater or lesser knowledge and talent of the teacher. This freedom is not a rule, but serves as a check in comparing schools between themselves, and as a check in comparing new methods which are introduced into the school curriculum. The school in which there is less compulsion is better than the one in which there is more. The method which at its introduction into the school does not demand an increase of discipline is good; but the one which demands greater severity is certainly bad. Take, for example, a more or less free school, such as mine was, and try to start a conversation in it about the table and the ceiling, or to transpose cubes,--you will see what it hubbub will arise in the school and how you will feel the necessity of restoring order by means of severity; try to tell them an interesting story, or to give them problems, or make one write on the board and let the others correct his mistakes, and allow them to leave the benches, and you will find them all occupied and there will be no naughtiness, and you will not have to increase your severity,--and you may safely say that the method is good. In my pedagogical articles I have given theoretical reasons why I find that only the freedom of choice on the side of the learners as to what they are to be taught and how can form a foundation of any instruction; in practice I have always applied these rules in the schools under my guidance, at first on a large scale, and later in narrower limits, and the results have always been very good, both for the teachers and the pupils, as also for the evolution of new methods,--and this I assert boldly, for hundreds of visitors have come to the Yásnaya Polyána school and know all about it. The consequences of such a relation to the pupils has been for the teachers that they did not consider that method best which they knew, but tried to discover other methods, became acquainted with other teachers for the purpose of learning their methods, tested new methods, and, above all, were learning something all the time. A teacher never permitted himself to think that in cases of failure it was the pupils' fault,--their laziness, playfulness, dulness, deafness, stammering,--but was firmly convinced that he alone was to blame for it, and for every failure of a pupil or of all the pupils he tried to find a remedy. For the pupils the result was that they learned readily, always begged the teachers to give them evening classes in the winter, and were absolutely free in the school,--which, in my conviction and experience, is the chief condition for successful progress in instruction. Between teachers and pupils there were always established friendly, natural relations, with which alone it is possible for the teacher to know his pupils well. If, from a first, external impression of the school, we were to determine the difference between the church, the German, and my own school, it would be this: in a church school you hear a peculiar, unnatural, monotonous shouting of all the pupils and now and then the stern cries of the teacher; in the German school you hear only the teacher's voice and now and then the timid voices of the pupils; in mine you hear the loud voices of the teachers and the pupils, almost simultaneously. As for the methods of instruction the consequences were that not one method of instruction was adopted or rejected because it was liked or not, but only because it was accepted or not by the pupils without compulsion. But in addition to the good results which were always obtained without fail from the application of my method by myself and by everybody else (more than twenty teachers), who taught according to my method ("without fail" I say for the reason that not once did we have a pupil who did not learn the rudiments), besides these results, the application of the principles of which I have spoken had the effect that during these fifteen years all the various modifications, to which my method was subjected, not only did not remove it from the needs of the masses, but, on the contrary, brought it nearer and nearer to them. The masses, at least in our parts, know the method itself and discuss it, and prefer it to the church method, which I cannot say of the sound method. In the schools which are conducted according to my method the teacher cannot remain motionless in his knowledge, such as he is and must be with the method of sounds. If a teacher according to the new German fashion wants to go ahead and perfect himself, he has to follow the pedagogical literature, that is, to read all those new inventions about the conversations about the suslik and about the transposition of the squares. I do not think that that can promote his personal education. On the contrary, in my school, where the subjects of instruction, language and mathematics, demand positive knowledge, every teacher, in advancing his pupils, feels the need of learning himself, which was constantly the case with all the teachers I had. Besides, the methods of instruction themselves, which are not settled once for all, but always strive to be as easy and as simple as possible, are modified and improved from the indications which the teacher discovers in the relations of the learners to his instruction. The very opposite to this I see in what, unfortunately, takes place in the schools of the German pattern, which of late have been introduced in our country in an artificial manner. The failure to recognize that before deciding what to teach and how to teach we must solve the question how we can find that out has led the pedagogues to a complete disagreement with reality, and the abyss which fifteen years ago was felt to exist between theory and practice has now reached the farthest limits. Now that the masses are on all sides begging for education, while pedagogy has more than ever passed to personal fancies, this discord has reached incredible proportions. This discord between the demands of pedagogy and reality has of late found its peculiarly striking expression not only in the matter of instruction itself, but also in another very important side of the school, namely in its administration. In order to show in what condition this matter has been and might be, I shall speak of Krapívensk County of the Government of Túla, in which I live, which I know, and which, from its position, forms the type of the majority of counties of central Russia. In 1862 fourteen schools were opened in a district of ten thousand souls, when I was rural judge; besides, there existed about ten schools in the district among the clericals and in the manors among the servants. In the three remaining districts of the county there were fifteen large and thirty small schools among the clericals and manorial servants. Without saying anything about the number of the learners, of which, I assume, there were in general not less than now, nor about the instruction itself, which was partly bad and partly good, but on the whole not worse than at present, I will tell how and on what that business was based. All schools were then, with few exceptions, based on a free agreement of the teacher with the parents of the pupils, or with the whole partnership of the peasants paying a lump sum for everybody. Such a relation between the parents or Communes and the teachers is even now met with in some exceedingly rare places of our county and of the Government in general. Everybody will agree that, leaving aside the question of the quality of instruction, such a relation of the teacher to the parents and peasants is most just, natural, and desirable. But, with the introduction of the law of 1864, this relation was abolished and is being abolished more and more. Everybody who knows the matter as it is will observe that with the abolition of this relation the people take less and less part in the matter of their education, which is only natural. In some County Councils the school tax of the peasants is even turned into the County Council, and the salary, appointment of teachers, location of schools,--all that is done quite independently of those for whom it is intended (in theory the peasants, no doubt, are members of the County Council, but in practice they have through this mediation no influence on their own schools). Nobody will, I suppose, assert that that is just, but some will say: "The illiterate peasants cannot judge what is good and what bad, and we must build for them as well as we can." But how do we know? Do we know firmly, are we all of one opinion, how to build schools? And does it not frequently turn out bad, for we have built much worse than they have? Thus, in relation to the administrative side of the schools I have again to put a third question, on the same basis of freedom: Why do we know how best to arrange a school? To this question German pedagogy gives an answer which is quite consistent with its whole system. It knows what the best school is, it has formed a clear, definite ideal, down to the minutest details, the benches, the hours of instruction, and so forth, and gives an answer: the school has to be such and such, according to this pattern,--this alone is good and every other school is injurious. I know that, although the desire of Henry IV. to give each Frenchman soup and a chicken was unrealizable, it was impossible to say that the desire was false. But the matter assumes an entirely different aspect when the soup is of a very questionable quality and is not a chicken soup, but a worthless broth. And yet the so-called science of pedagogy is in this matter indissolubly connected with power; both in Germany and with us there are prescribed certain ideal one-class, two-class schools, and so forth; and the pedagogical and the administrative powers do not wish to know the fact that the masses would like to attend to their own education. Let us see how such a view of popular education has been reflected in practice on the question of education. Beginning with the year 1862 the idea that education was necessary has more and more spread among the masses: on all sides schools were established by church servants, hired teachers, and the Communes. Whether good or bad, these schools were spontaneous and grew out directly from the needs of the masses; with the introduction of the law of 1864 this tendency was increased, and in 1870 there were, according to the reports, about sixty schools in Krapívensk County. Since then officials of the ministry and members of the County Council have begun to meddle more and more with school matters, and in Krapívensk County forty schools have been closed and schools of a lower order have been prohibited from being opened. I know that those who closed those schools affirm that these schools existed only nominally and were very bad; but I cannot believe it, because I know well-instructed pupils from three villages, Trósna, Lamíntsovo, and Yásnaya Polyána, where schools were closed. I also know�-and this will seem incredible to many�-what is meant by prohibiting the opening of schools. It means that, on the basis of a circular of the ministry of public instruction, which spoke of the prohibition of unreliable teachers (this, no doubt, had reference to the Nihilists), the school council transferred this prohibition to the minor schools, taught by sextons, soldiers, and so forth, which the peasants themselves had opened, and which, no doubt, are not at all comprised in the circular. But, instead, there exist twenty schools with teachers, who are supposed to be good because they receive a salary of two hundred roubles in silver, and the County Council has distributed Ushínski's text-books, and these schools are called one-class schools, because they teach in them according to a programme, and the whole year around, that is, also in summer, with the exception of July and August. Leaving aside the question of the quality of the former schools, we shall now take a glance at their administrative side, and we will compare, from this side, what was before, with what is now. In the administrative, external side of the school there are five main subjects, which are so closely connected with the school business itself that on their good or bad structure depend to a great extent the success and dissemination of popular education. These five subjects are: (1) the school building, (2) the schedule of instruction, (3) the distribution of the schools according to localities, (4) the choice of the teacher, and--what is most important--(5) the material means, the remuneration of the teachers. In regard to the school building the masses rarely have any difficulty, when they start a school for themselves, and if the Commune is rich and there are any communal buildings, such as a storehouse or a deserted inn, the Commune fixes it up; if there is none, it buys a building, at times even from a landed proprietor, or it builds one of its own. If the Commune is not well-to-do and is small, it hires quarters from a peasant, or establishes a rotation, and the teacher passes from hut to hut. If the Commune, as it most generally does, selects a teacher from its own midst, a manorial servant, a soldier, or a church servant, the school is located at the house of that person, and the Commune looks only after the heating. In any case, I have never heard that the question of the location of the school ever troubled a Commune, or that half the sum set aside for instruction should be lost, as is done by school councils, on the buildings, nay, not even one-sixth or one-tenth of the whole sum. The peasant Communes have arranged it one way or another, but the question of the school building has never been regarded as troublesome. Only under the influence of the higher authorities do there occur cases where the Communes build brick buildings with iron roofs. The peasants assume that the school is not in the structure, but in the teacher, and that the school is not a permanent institution, but that as soon as the parents have acquired knowledge, the next generation will get the rudiments without a teacher. But the County Council department of the ministry always assumes--since for it the whole problem consists in inspecting and classifying--that the chief foundation of the school is the structure and that the school is a permanent establishment, and so, as far as I know, now spends about one-half of its money on buildings, and inscribes empty school buildings in the list of the schools of the third order. In the Krapívensk County Council seven hundred roubles out of two thousand roubles are spent on buildings. The ministerial department cannot admit that the teacher (that educated pedagogue who is assumed for the masses) would lower himself to such an extent as to be willing to go, like a tailor, from hut to hut, or to teach in a smoky house. But the masses assume nothing and only know that for their money they can hire whom they please, and that, if they, the hiring peasants, live in smoky huts, the hired teacher has no reason to turn up his nose at them. In regard to the second question, about the division of the school time, the masses have always and everywhere invariably expressed one demand, and that is that the instruction shall be carried on in the winter only. Everywhere the parents quit sending their children in the spring, and those children who are left in the school, from one-fourth to one-fifth of the whole number, are the little tots or the children of rich parents, and they attend school unwillingly. When the masses hire a teacher themselves, they always hire him by the month and only for the winter. The ministerial department assumes that, just as in the institutions of learning there are two months of vacation, so it ought also to be in a one-class country school. From the standpoint of the ministerial department that is quite reasonable: the children will not forget their instruction, the teacher is provided for during the whole year, and the inspectors find it more comfortable to travel in the summer; but the masses know nothing about all that, and their common sense tells them that in winter the children sleep for ten hours, consequently their minds are fresh; that in winter there are no plays and no work for the children, and that if they study in winter as long as possible, taking in even the evenings, for which a lamp costing one rouble fifty kopeks is needed and kerosene costing as much, there will be enough instruction. Besides, in the summer every boy is of use to the peasant, and in summer proceeds the life instruction, which is more important than school learning. The masses say that there is no reason why they should pay the teacher during the summer. "Rather will we increase his pay for the winter months, and that will please him better. We prefer to hire a teacher at twenty-five roubles a month for seven months, than at twelve roubles a month for the whole year. For the summer the teacher will hire himself out elsewhere." As to the third question, the distribution of the schools according to localities, the arrangements of the masses most markedly differ from those of the school council. In the first place, the distribution of the schools, that is, whether there shall be more or less of them for a certain locality, always depends on the character of the whole population (when the masses themselves attend to it). Wherever the masses are more industrial and work out, where they are nearer to the cities, where they need the rudiments,--there there are more schools; where the locality is more removed and agricultural, there there are fewer of them. In the second place, when the masses themselves attend to the matter, they distribute the schools in such a way as to give all the parents a chance to make use of the schools in return for their money, that is, to send their children to school. The peasants of small, remote villages of from thirty to forty souls, where half the population will be found, prefer to have a cheap teacher in their own village, than an expensive one in the centre of the township, whither their children cannot walk or be driven. By this distribution of the schools, the schools themselves, as arranged by the peasants, depart, it is true, from the required pattern of the school, but, instead, acquire the most diversified forms, everywhere adapting themselves to local conditions. Here a clerical person from a neighbouring village teaches eight boys at his house, receiving fifty kopeks a month from each. Here a small village hires a soldier for eight roubles for the winter, and he goes from house to house. Here a rich innkeeper hires a teacher for his children for five roubles and board, and the neighbouring peasants join him, by adding two roubles for each of their boys. There a large village or a compact township levies fifteen kopeks from each of the twelve hundred souls and hires a teacher for 180 roubles for the winter. There the priest teaches, receiving as a remuneration either money, or labour, or both. The chief difference in this respect between the view of the peasants and that of the County Council is this: the peasants, according to the more or less favourable local conditions, introduce schools of a better or worse quality, but always in such a way that there is not a single locality where some kind of instruction is not offered; while with the arrangement of the County Council a large half of the population is left outside every possibility of partaking of that education even in the distant future. In matters of the petty villages, forming one-half of the population, the ministerial department acts most decisively. It says: "We provide schools where there is a building and where the peasants of the township have collected enough money to support a teacher at two hundred roubles. We will contribute from the County Council what is wanting, and the school is entered on the lists." The villages that are removed from the school may send their children there, if they so wish. Of course, the peasants do not take their children there, because it is too far, and yet they pay. Thus, in the Yásenets township all pay for three schools, but only 450 souls in three villages make use of the school, though there are in all three thousand souls; thus, only one-seventh of the population makes use of the school, though all pay for it. In the Chermóshen township there are nine hundred souls and there is a school there, but only thirty pupils attend it, because all the villages of that township are scattered. To nine hundred souls there ought to be four hundred pupils. And yet, both in the Yásenets and the Chermóshen townships the question of the distribution of schools is regarded as satisfactorily solved. In matters of the choice of a teacher, the masses are again guided by quite different views from the County Council. In choosing a teacher, the masses look upon him in their own way, and judge him accordingly. If the teacher has been in the neighbourhood, and the masses know what the results of his teaching are, they value him according to these results as a good or as a bad teacher; but, in addition to the scholastic qualities, the masses demand that the teacher shall be a man who stands in close relations to the peasant, able to understand his life and to speak Russian, and so they will always prefer a country to a city teacher. In doing so, the masses have no bias and no antipathy toward any class in particular: he may be a gentleman, official, burgher, soldier, sexton, priest,--that makes no difference so long as he is a simple man and a Russian. For this reason the peasants have no cause for excluding clerical persons, as the County Councils do. The County Councils select their teachers from among strangers, getting them from the cities, while the masses look for them among themselves. But the chief difference in this respect between the view of the Communes and that of the County Council consists in this: the County Council has only one type,--the teacher who has attended pedagogical courses, who has finished a course in a seminary or school, at two hundred roubles; but with the masses, who do not exclude this teacher and appreciate him, if he is good, there are gradations of all kinds of teachers. Besides, with the majority of school councils there are definite favourite types of teachers, for the most part such as are foreign to the masses and antagonistic to them, and other types which the school councils dislike. Thus, evidently, the favourite type of many counties of the Government of Túla are lady teachers; the disliked type are the clerical persons, and in the whole of the Túla and Krapívensk counties there is not one school with a teacher from the clergy, which is quite remarkable from an administrative point of view. In Krapívensk County there are fifty parishes. The clerical persons are the cheapest of teachers, because they are permanently settled and for the most part can teach in their own houses with the aid of their wives and daughters,--and these are, it seems, purposely avoided, as though they were very harmful people. In matters of the remuneration of the teachers, the difference between the view of the masses and that of the County Council has almost all been expressed in the preceding pages. It consists in this: (1) the masses choose a teacher according to their means, and they admit and know from experience that there are teachers at all prices, from two puds of flour a month to thirty roubles a month; (2) teachers are to be remunerated for the winter months, for those during which there can be some instruction; (3) the masses, in the housing of the school as also in matters of the remuneration of the teachers, always know how to find a cheap way: they give flour, hay, the use of carts, eggs, and all kinds of trifles, which are imperceptible to the world at large, but which improve the teacher's condition; (4) above all, a teacher is paid, or is remunerated in addition to the payment, by the parents of the pupils, who pay by the month, or by the whole Commune which enjoys the advantages of the school, and not by the administration that has no direct interest in the matter. The ministerial department cannot act differently in this respect. The norm of the salary for a model teacher is given, consequently these means have to be got together in some way. For example: a Commune intends to open a school,--the township gives it a certain number of kopeks per soul. The County Council calculates how much to add. If there are no demands made by other schools, it gives more, sometimes twice as much as the Commune has given; at times, when all the money has been distributed, it gives less, or entirely refuses to give any. Thus, there is in Krapívensk County a Commune which gives ninety roubles, and the County Council adds to that three hundred roubles for a school with an assistant; and there is another Commune which gives 250 roubles, and the County Council adds another fifty roubles; and a third Commune which offers fifty-six roubles, and the County Council refuses to add anything or to open the school, because that money is insufficient for a normal school, and all the money has been distributed. Thus, the chief distinctions between the administrative view of the masses and that of the County Council are the following: (1) the County Council pays great attention to the housing and spends large sums upon it, while the masses obviate this difficulty by domestic, economic means, and look upon the primary schools as temporary, passing institutions; (2) the ministerial department demands that instruction be carried on during the whole year, with the exception of July and August, and nowhere introduces evening classes, while the masses demand that instruction be carried on only in the winter and are fond of evening classes; (3) the ministerial department has a definite type of teachers, without which it does not recognize the school, and has a loathing for clerical persons and, in general, for local instructors; the masses recognize no norm and choose their teachers preferably from local inhabitants; (4) the ministerial department distributes the schools by accident, that is, it is guided only by the desire of forming a normal school, and has no care for that greater half of the population which under such a distribution is left outside the school education; the masses not only recognize no definite external form of the school, but in the greatest variety of ways get teachers with all kinds of means, arranging worse and cheaper schools with small means and good and expensive schools with greater means, and turn their attention to furnishing all localities with instruction in return for their money; (5) the ministerial department determines one measure of remuneration, which is sufficiently high, and arbitrarily increases the amount from the County Council; the masses demand the greatest possible economy and distribute the remuneration in such a way that those whose children are taught pay directly. It seems as though it would be superfluous to expatiate on how clearly the common sense of the masses is expressed in these demands, in contradistinction to that artificial structure, in which, at its very birth, they are trying to imprison the business of popular education. Even besides this, the feeling of justice is involuntarily provoked against such an order of things. See what is taking place. The masses have felt the necessity of education, and have begun to work in the direction of attaining their end. In addition to all the taxes which they pay, they have voluntarily imposed upon themselves the tax for education, that is, they have begun to hire teachers. What have we done? "Oh, you are able to pay," we said, "wait, then, for you are stupid and rude. Let us have the money, and we will arrange it for you in the best manner possible." The masses have given up their money (as I have said, in many County Councils the levy for the schools has been turned directly into a tax). The money was taken, and the education was arranged for them. I am not going to repeat about the artificiality of the education, but how the whole matter has been arranged. In Krapívensk County there are forty thousand souls, including girls, according to the last census. According to Bunyakóvski's table of the distribution of ten thousand of the Orthodox population for the year 1862, there ought to be, of the male sex between six and fourteen years, 1,834, and of the female sex, 1,989,--in all 3,823 to each ten thousand. According to my own observations, there ought to be more, no doubt on account of the increase of the population, so that the average school population may boldly be put at four thousand. In a school there are, on an average, in the large centres, about sixty pupils, and in the smaller, from ten to twenty-five. In order that all may receive instruction, the smaller centres, forming the greater half of the population, need schools for ten, fifteen, and twenty pupils, so that the average of a school, in my opinion, would be not more than thirty pupils. How many schools are, then, needed for sixteen thousand pupils? Divide sixteen thousand by thirty, and we get 530 schools. Let us assume that, although at the opening of the schools all pupils from seven to fifteen years of age will enter, not all will attend regularly for the period of eight years; let us reject one-fourth, that is 130 schools and, consequently, 4,200 pupils. Let us say that there are four hundred schools. Only twenty have been opened. The County Council gives two thousand roubles and has added one thousand roubles, making in all three thousand roubles. From some of the peasants, not from all, fifteen kopeks are levied from each soul, in all about four thousand roubles. On the building of schools seven hundred roubles are spent, and on the pedagogical courses twelve hundred roubles have been used in one year. But let us suppose that the County Council will act quite simply and sensibly, and will not waste money on pedagogical courses and other trifles; let us suppose that all peasants will pay the new school tax of fifteen kopeks, what will the future of this matter be? From the peasants six thousand, from the County Council three thousand, in all nine thousand. Let us assume that ten more schools will be added. Nine thousand roubles will barely suffice for the support of these schools, and that only in case the school council will act most prudently and economically. Consequently, with the County Council administration, thirty schools to forty thousand of the population are the highest limit of what the dissemination of the schools in the county may reach. And this limit of the school business can be attained only if the peasants will levy fifteen kopeks on each soul, which is extremely doubtful, and if the disbursement of this money will be in the hands of the peasants, and not of the County Council. I do not speak of the possible increase of three thousand roubles, because this increase of three thousand roubles partly falls back on those same peasants, and on the other hand is not secured by anything, forming only an accidental means. Thus, in order to bring the business of popular education to the state in which it ought to be, that is, in order that there shall be four hundred schools to the forty thousand of the population, and in order that the schools shall not be a toy, but may answer a real want of the masses, there is no other issue than that the peasants be taxed, not fifteen kopeks, but three roubles a soul, in order that the necessary three hundred roubles to each school be obtained. Even then I do not see any reason for thinking that as many schools as are needed would be built. Do we not see that now, when the simplest arithmetical calculation shows that the only means for the success of the schools is the simplification of methods, the simplicity and cheapness of the arrangement of the school,--the pedagogues are busy, as though having made a wager to concoct a most difficult, most complicated, and expensive (and, I must add, most bad) instruction? In the manuals of Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski I have figured up three hundred roubles' worth of aids to instruction which, in their opinion, are absolutely necessary for the establishment of a primary school. All they talk about in pedagogical circles is how to prepare improved teachers in the seminaries, so that a village might not be able to get them even for four hundred roubles. On that road of perfection, on which pedagogy stands, it is quite apparent to me that if 120,000 roubles were collected in a county, the pedagogues would find use for them all in twenty schools, with adjustable tables, seminaries for teachers, and so forth. Have we not seen that forty schools were closed in Krapívensk County, and that those who closed them were fully convinced that they thus advanced the cause of education, for now they have twenty "good" schools? But what is most remarkable is that those who express these demands are not in the least interested in knowing whether the masses for whom they are preparing all these things want them, and still less, who is going to pay for it all. But the County Councils are so befogged by these demands that they do not see the simple calculation and the simple justice. It is as though a man asked me to buy him two puds of flour for a month, and I bought him for that rouble a box of perfumed confectionery and reproached him for his ignorance, because he was dissatisfied. As I wish to remain true to my rule that criticism should point out how that which is not good ought to be, I shall try to show how the whole school business ought to be arranged, if it is not to be a plaything, and is to have a future. The answer is the same as to the first two questions,--freedom. The masses must be given the freedom to arrange their schools as they wish, and as little as possible should any one interfere in their arrangement. Only with such a view of the matter will all the obstacles to the dissemination of the schools be obviated, though they have seemed insuperable. The chief obstacles are the insufficiency of the means and the impossibility of increasing them. To the first the masses reply that they are using all the measures at their command to make the schools cost little; to the second they reply that the means will always be found so long as they themselves are the masters, and that they are not willing to increase the means for the support of that which they do not need. The essential difference between the view of the people and of the ministerial department consists in the following: (1) In the opinion of the masses there is no one definite norm and form of the school, outside and below which the school is not recognized, as is assumed by the ministerial department; a school may be of any kind, either a very good and expensive one, or a very poor and cheap one, but even in a very poor one reading and writing may be learned, and, as in a richer parish a better pope is appointed and a better church built, so also may a better school be built in a wealthy village, and a poorer school in a less well-to-do village; but just as one can pray equally well in a poor or in a rich parish, even so it is with learning. (2) The masses regard as the first condition of their education an even, equal distribution of this education, though it be in its lowest stage, and then only they propose a further, again an even, raising of the level of education, while the ministerial department considers it necessary to give to a certain chosen few, to one-twentieth of the whole number, a specimen of education, to show them how nice it is. (3) The ministerial department, either unable or purposely unwilling to calculate, has raised the educational business to such a high, expensive level, and one which is so foreign to the masses, that considering the high price at which the education is acquired, no issue from that situation can be foreseen, and the number of learners can never be increased; but the masses, who know how to calculate, and who are interested in that calculation, have no doubt long ago figured out what I have pointed out above, and see as clear as daylight that those expensive schools, which cost as much as four hundred roubles each, may be good indeed, but are not what they need, and try in every way possible to diminish the expenses for their schools. What, then, is to be done? How are the County Councils to act in order that this business may not be a plaything and a pastime, but shall have a future? Let them conform with the needs of the masses, and, so far as possible, cheapen and free the forms of the school, and afford the Communes the greatest possible power in the establishment of the schools. For this it is necessary that the County Councils shall entirely abandon the distribution of the taxes to the schools and the distribution of the schools according to localities, but shall leave this distribution to the peasants themselves. The determination of the pay to the teacher, the hiring, purchase, or building of the house, the choice of place and of the teacher himself,--all that ought to be left to the peasants. The County Council, that is, the school council, should only demand that the Communes inform it where and on what foundations schools have been established, not in order that, upon learning the facts, it shall prohibit them, as is done now, but in order that, learning about the conditions under which the school exists, it may add (if the conditions are in conformity with the demands of the council) from its County Council's sums, for the support of the school newly founded, a certain, definite part of what the school costs the Commune: a half, a third, a fourth, according to the quality of the school and the means and wishes of the County Council. Thus, for example, a village of twenty souls hires a transient man at two roubles a month to teach the children. The school council, that is, a person authorized by it, of whom I shall speak later, upon receiving that information, invites the transient to come to him, asks him what he knows and how he teaches, and, if the transient is the least bit educated and does not represent anything harmful, apportions to him the amount determined upon by the County Council, one-half, one-third, or one-fourth, in precisely the same way the school council proceeds in reference to a clerical person hired by the Commune at five roubles per month, or in reference to a teacher hired at fifteen roubles per month. Of course, that is the way the school council acts in reference to the teachers hired by the Communes themselves; but if the Communes turn to the school council, the latter recommends to them teachers under the same conditions. But in doing so the County Council must not forget that there should not be merely teachers at two hundred roubles; the school council should be an employment agency for teachers of every description and of every price, from one rouble to thirty roubles a month. On buildings the school council ought not to spend or add anything, because they are one of the most unproductive items of expense. But the County Council ought not to disdain, as it now does, teachers at two, three, four, five roubles per month and locations in smoky huts or by rotation from farm to farm. The County Council ought to remember that the prototype of the school, that ideal toward which it ought to tend, is not a stone building with an iron roof, with blackboards and desks, such as we see in model schools, but the very hut in which the peasant lives, with those benches and tables on which he eats, and not a teacher in a Prince Albert or a lady teacher in a chignon, but a male teacher in a caftan and shirt, or a female teacher in a peasant skirt and with a kerchief on her head, and not with one hundred pupils, but with five, six, or ten. The County Council must have no bias or antipathy for certain types of teachers, as is the case at present. Thus, for example, the Túla County Council just now has a special bias for the type of school-teachers from the gymnasia and clerical schools, and the greater part of the schools in Túla County are in their charge. In Krapívensk County there exists a strange antipathy for teachers from the clerical profession, so that in this county, where there are as many as fifty parishes, there is not one clerical person employed as a teacher. The County Council, in proposing a teacher, ought to be guided by two chief considerations: in the first place, that the teacher should be as cheap as possible; in the second, that by his education he should stand as near to the masses as possible. Only thanks to the opposite view on the matter can be explained such an inexplicable phenomenon as that in Krapívensk County (almost the same is true of the whole Government and of the majority of Governments) there are fifty parishes and twenty schools, and that for these twenty schools there is not a single clerical teacher, although there is not a parish where a priest, or a deacon, or a sexton, or their daughters and wives could not be found, who would not be glad to do the teaching for one-fourth the pay that the teachers coming from the city would be willing to take. But I shall be told: What kind of schools will those be with bigots, drunken soldiers, expelled scribes, and sextons? And what control can there be over those formless schools? To this I will reply that, in the first place, these teachers, bigots, soldiers, and sextons are not so bad as they are imagined to be. In my school practice I often had to do with pupils from these schools, and some of them could read fluently and write beautifully, and soon abandoned the bad habits which they brought with them from those schools. All of us know peasants who have learned the rudiments in such schools, and it cannot be said that this learning was useless or injurious. In the second place, I will say that teachers of that calibre are especially bad because they are quite abandoned in the backwoods and teach without any aid or instruction, and that now there is not to be found a single one of the old teachers who would not tell you with regret that he does not know the new methods and has himself learned for copper pence, and that many of them, especially the younger church servants, are quite willing to learn the new methods. These teachers ought not to be rejected without further ado as absolutely worthless. There are among them better and worse teachers (and I have seen some very capable ones). They ought to be compared; the better of them ought to be selected, encouraged, brought together with other better teachers, and instructed,--which is quite feasible and precisely the thing in which the duty of the school council is to consist. But how are they to be controlled, watched, and taught, if they breed by the hundred in each county? In my opinion the work of the County Council and school council ought to consist in nothing but watching the pedagogical side of the business, and that is feasible, if these means will be taken: in every County Council, which has taken upon itself the duty of the dissemination of popular education, or the coöperation with it, there ought to be one person--whether it be an unpaid member of the school council, or a man at a salary of not less than one thousand roubles, hired by the County Council--who is to attend to the pedagogical side of the business in the county. That person ought to have a general, fresh education within the limits of a gymnasium course, that is, he must know Russian thoroughly and Church-Slavic partly, arithmetic and algebra thoroughly, and be a teacher, that is, know the practice of pedagogy. This person must be freshly educated, because I have observed that frequently the information of a man who has long ago finished his course even in a university, and who has not refreshed his education, is insufficient, not only for the guidance of teachers, but even for the examination of a village school. This person must by all means be a teacher himself in the same locality, in order that in his demands and instructions he may always have in view that pedagogical material with which the other teachers have to deal, and that he may sustain in himself that live relation to reality which is the chief preservative against error and delusion. If a County Council does not possess such a man and does not wish to employ one, it has, in my opinion, absolutely nothing to do with the popular education, except to give money, because every interference with the administrative side of the matter, in the way it is done now, can only be injurious. This member of the County Council, or the educated person hired by it, must have the best model school, with an assistant, in the county. In addition to conducting this school and applying to it all the newest methods of instruction, this head teacher ought to keep an eye on all the other schools. This school is not to be a model in the sense of introducing into it all kinds of cubes and pictures and all kinds of nonsense invented by the Germans, but the teacher in this school should experiment on just such peasant children as the other schools consist of, in order to determine the simplest methods which may be adopted by the majority of the teachers, sextons, and soldiers, who form the bulk of all the schools. Since with the arrangement which I propose there will certainly be formed large complete schools in the larger centres (as I think, in the proportion of one to twenty of all the other schools), and in these large schools the teachers will be of a grade of education equal to that of the seminarists who have finished a course in a theological school, the head teacher will visit all these larger schools, bring together these teachers on Sundays, point out to them the defects, propose new methods, give counsel and books for their own education, and invite them to his school on Sundays. The library of the head teacher ought to consist of several copies of the Bible, of Church-Slavic and Russian grammars, arithmetic, and algebra. The head teacher, whenever he has time, will visit also the small schools and invite their teachers to come to see him; but the duty of watching the minor teachers is imposed on the older teachers, who just in the same way visit their district and invite those teachers to come to see them on Sundays and on week-days. The County Council either pays the teachers for travelling, or, in adding its portion to what the Communes levy, makes it a condition that the Communes furnish transportation. The meetings of the teachers and the visits in similar or better schools are one of the chief conditions for the successful conduct of the business of education, and so the County Council ought to direct its main attention to the organization of these meetings, and not spare any money for them. Besides, in the large schools, where there will be more than fifty pupils, there ought to be chosen, instead of the assistants which they now have, such of the pupils, of either sex, as show marked ability for a teacher's calling, and they should be made assistants, two or three in each school. These assistants should receive a salary of fifty kopeks to one rouble per month, and the teacher should work with them separately in the evenings, so that they may not fall behind the others. These assistants, chosen from among the best, are to form the future teachers, to take the place of the lowest in the minor schools. Naturally the organization of these teachers' meetings, both for the smaller and the larger schools, and the head teacher's visits of inspection, and the formation of teachers from pupils acting as assistants may take place in a large variety of ways; the main point is that the surveillance of any number of schools (even though it may reach the norm of one school to every one hundred souls) is possible in this manner. With such an arrangement the teachers of both the large and the small schools will feel that their labours are appreciated, that they have not buried themselves in the backwoods without hope of salvation, that they have companions and guides, and that in the matter of instruction, both for their own further education and for the improvement of their situation, they have means for advancement. With such an arrangement, the devotee and the sexton who are able to learn will learn; while those who are unable or unwilling to do so will be replaced by some one else. The time of instruction ought to be, as is the wish of all peasants, during the seven winter months, and so the salary is to be determined by the month. With such an arrangement, leaving out the rapidity and the equal distribution of education, the advantage will be this, that the schools will be established in those centres where the necessity for them is felt by the masses, where they are established spontaneously and, therefore, firmly. Where the character of the population demands education it will be permanent. Just look: in the towns, the children of the innkeepers and well-to-do peasants learn to read in one way or another and never forget what they have learned; but in the backwoods, where a landed proprietor founds a school, the children learn well, but in ten years all is forgotten, and the population is as illiterate as ever. For this reason the centres, large or small, where the schools are established spontaneously, are particularly precious. Where such a school has germinated, no matter how poor it be, it will throw out roots, and sooner or later the population will be able to read and write. Consequently, these sprouts ought to be deemed precious, and not be treated, as they are everywhere,--they ought not to be forbidden, because the schools are not according to our taste, that is, the sprouts ought not to be killed, and branches stuck in the ground where they will not take root. With merely such an arrangement, without the establishment of costly and artificial seminaries, the chosen ones--those selected from the best of the pupils themselves, and those who are educated in the schools--will form that contingent of cheap popular teachers who will take the place of the soldiers and sextons and will fully satisfy all the demands of the masses and of the educated classes. The chief advantage of such an arrangement is that it alone gives the development of popular education a future, that is, takes us out from that blind alley into which the County Councils have gone, thanks to the expensive schools and to the absence of new sources for the increase of their numbers. Only when the masses themselves choose the centres for the schools, themselves choose teachers, determine the amount of the remuneration, and directly enjoy the advantages of the schools, will they be ready to add means for the schools if such should become necessary. I know Communes that paid fifty kopeks a soul for a school in each of their villages; but it is difficult to compel the peasants to pay fifteen kopeks for a school in the township, if not all of them can make use of it. For the whole county, for the County Council, the peasants will not add a single kopek, because they feel that they will not enjoy the advantages of their money. Only with such an arrangement will be found soon the means for the proper maintenance of all schools, of one to each one hundred souls, which seems so impossible in the present state of affairs. In addition to this, with the arrangement which I propose, the interests of the peasant Communes and of the County Council, as the representative of the intelligence of the locality, will indissolubly be connected. Let us say that the County Council gives one-third of what the peasants give. In furnishing this amount, it will evidently, in one way or another, see to it that the money is not wasted, and, consequently, will also keep an eye on the two-thirds given by the peasant Communes. The peasant Commune sees that the County Council gives its part, and so admits the right of the Council to follow the progress of the instruction. At the same time, it has an object-lesson in the difference which exists between a school maintained at a smaller and that maintained at a greater expense, and chooses the one which it needs or which is more accessible to it in accordance with its means. I will again take Krapívensk County, with which I am familiar, to show what difference the proposed arrangement would make. I cannot have the slightest doubt that the moment permission is granted to open schools, wherever wanted and of any description desired, there will at once appear very many schools. I am convinced that in Krapívensk County, in which there are fifty parishes, there will always be a school in each parish, because the parishes are always centres of population, and because among the church servants there will always be found one who is capable of teaching, likes to teach, and will find his advantage in it. In addition to the schools maintained by the church servants there will be opened those forty schools that have been closed (more correctly thirty, because ten of them were church schools), and there will be opened very many new schools, so that in a very short time there will be not far from four hundred instead of the twenty at present. I may be believed or not, but I will assume that in Krapívensk County 380 additional schools will be opened, the moment they are given over to the masses, so that there will be four hundred in all, and I will try to determine whether the existence of these four hundred schools, that is, of twenty times as many as at present, is possible under the conditions which I have assumed in discussing the existing order. Assuming that all peasants pay fifteen kopeks per soul, and the County Council gives three thousand roubles, there will be nine thousand roubles, which will suffice only for thirty schools with the former arrangement. But with the new arrangement: I assume that ten of the old schools are left intact; in these schools the teachers get twenty roubles per month, which, for the seven winter months, amounts to fourteen hundred roubles. I assume that in every parish there will be established a school with the teacher's salary at five roubles per month, which, for fifty schools, amounts to 1,750 roubles. I assume the remaining 340 schools are of the cheap character, at two roubles per month; fifteen roubles for each of the 340 schools makes 5,100 roubles. Thus the four hundred schools will demand an expenditure in salaries amounting to 8,250 roubles. There are still left 750 roubles for school appliances and transportation. The figures for the teachers' wages are not chosen arbitrarily by me: on the other hand, the expensive teachers are given a larger salary than they now get by the month for the whole year. Even so, the amount apportioned to the church servants is what they now receive in the majority of cases. But the cheap schools at two roubles per month are assumed by me at a higher rate than what the peasants in reality pay, so that the calculation may boldly be accepted. In this calculation is included the kernel of ten chief teachers and ten or more church servant teachers. It is evident that only with such a calculation will the school business be placed on a serious and possible basis and have a clear and definite future. If what I have pointed out does not convince anybody that will mean that I did not express clearly what I wanted to say, and do not wish to enter into any disputes with anybody. I know that no deaf people are so hopeless as those who do not want to hear. I know how it is with farmers. A new threshing-machine has been bought at a great expense, and it is put up and started threshing. It threshes miserably, no matter how you set the screw; it threshes badly, and the grain falls into the straw. There is a loss, and it is as clear as can be that the machine ought to be abandoned and another means be employed for threshing, but the money has been spent and the threshing-machine is put up. "Let her thresh," says the master. Precisely the same thing will happen with this matter. I know that for a long time to come there will flourish the object instruction, and cubes, and buttons instead of arithmetic, and hissing and sputtering, in teaching the letters, and twenty expensive schools of the German pattern, instead of the needed four hundred popular, cheap schools. But I know just as surely that the common sense of the Russian nation will not permit this false, artificial system of instruction to be foisted upon it. The masses are the chief interested person and the judge, and now do not pay a particle of attention to our more or less ingenious discussions about the manner in which the spiritual food of education is best to be prepared for them. They do not care, because they are firmly convinced that in the great business of their mental development they will not make a false step and will not accept what is bad,--and it would be like making pease stick to the wall to attempt to educate, direct, and teach them in the German fashion. WHAT MEN LIVE BY 1881 WHAT MEN LIVE BY We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. (First Ep. of John, iii. 14.) But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth, up his heart from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? (_Ib._ iii. 17.) My children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. (_Ib._ iii. 18.) Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. (_Ib._ iv. 7.) He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (_Ib._ iv. 8.) No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us. (_Ib._ iv. 12.) God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (_Ib._ iv. 16.) If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen. (_Ib._ iv. 20.) I. A shoemaker was lodging with his wife and children at the house of a peasant. He had no house, no land of his own, and supported his family by his shoemaker's trade. Bread was dear, but work was cheap, and he spent everything he made. The shoemaker and his wife had one fur coat between them, and even that was all worn to tatters; this was the second year that the shoemaker had been meaning to buy a sheepskin for a new fur coat. Toward fall the shoemaker had saved some money: three roubles in paper lay in his wife's coffer, and five roubles and twenty kopeks were outstanding in the village. In the morning the shoemaker went to the village to get him that fur coat. He put on his wife's wadded nankeen jacket over his shirt, and over it his cloth caftan; he put the three-rouble bill into his pocket, broke off a stick, and started after breakfast. He thought: "I shall get the five roubles from the peasant, will add my own three, and with that will buy me a sheepskin for the fur coat." The shoemaker came to the village, and called on the peasant: he was not at home, and his wife promised to send her husband with the money, but gave him none herself. He went to another peasant, but the peasant swore that he had no money, and gave him only twenty kopeks for mending a pair of boots. The shoemaker made up his mind to take the sheepskin on credit, but the furrier would not give it to him. "Bring me the money," he said, "and then you can choose any you please; we know what it means to collect debts." Thus the shoemaker accomplished nothing. All he got was the twenty kopeks for the boots he had mended, and a peasant gave him a pair of felt boots to patch with leather. The shoemaker was grieved, spent all the twenty kopeks on vódka, and started home without the fur coat. In the morning it had seemed frosty to him, but now that he had drunk a little he felt warm even without the fur coat. The shoemaker walked along, with one hand striking the stick against the frozen mud clumps, and swinging the felt boots in the other, and talking to himself. "I am warm even without a fur coat," he said. "I have drunk a cup, and the vódka is coursing through all my veins. I do not need a sheepskin. I have forgotten my woe. That's the kind of a man I am! What do I care! I can get along without a fur coat: I do not need it all the time. The only trouble is the old woman will be sorry. It is a shame indeed: I work for him, and he leads me by the nose. Just wait! If you do not bring the money, I'll take away your cap, upon my word, I will! How is this? He pays me back two dimes at a time! What can you do with two dimes? Take a drink, that is all. He says he suffers want. You suffer want, and am I not suffering? You have a house, and cattle, and everything, and here is all I possess; you have your own grain, and I have to buy it. I may do as I please, but I have to spend three roubles a week on bread. I come home, and the bread is gone: again lay out a rouble and a half! So give me what is mine!" Thus the shoemaker came up to a chapel at the turn of the road, and there he saw something that looked white, right near the chapel. It was growing dusk, and the shoemaker strained his eyes, but could not make out what it was. "There was no stone here," he thought. "A cow? It does not look like a cow. It looks like the head of a man, and there is something white besides. And what should a man be doing there?" He came nearer, and he could see plainly. What marvel was that? It was really a man, either alive or dead, sitting there all naked, leaning against the chapel, and not stirring in the least. The shoemaker was frightened, and thought to himself: "Somebody must have killed a man, and stripped him of his clothes, and thrown him away there. If I go up to him, I shall never clear myself." And the shoemaker went past. He walked around the chapel, and the man was no longer to be seen. He went past the chapel, and looked back, and saw the man leaning away from the building and moving, as though watching him. The shoemaker was frightened even more than before, and he thought to himself: "Shall I go up to him, or not? If I go up, something bad may happen. Who knows what kind of a man he is? He did not get there for anything good. If I go up, he will spring at me and choke me, and I shall not get away from him; and if he does not choke me, I may have trouble with him all the same. What can I do with him, since he is naked? Certainly I cannot take off the last from me and give it to him! May God save me!" And the shoemaker increased his steps. He was already a distance away from the chapel, when his conscience began to smite him. And the shoemaker stopped on the road. "What are you doing, Semén?" he said to himself. "A man is dying in misery, and you go past him and lose your courage. Have you suddenly grown so rich? Are you afraid that they will rob you of your wealth? Oh, Semén, it is not right!" Semén turned back, and went up to the man. II. Semén walked over to the man, and looked at him; and saw that it was a young man, in the prime of his strength, with no bruises on his body, but evidently frozen and frightened: he was leaning back and did not look at Semén, as though he were weakened and could not raise his eyes. Semén went up close to him, and the man suddenly seemed to wake up. He turned his head, opened his eyes, and looked at Semén. And this one glance made Semén think well of the man. He threw down the felt boots, ungirt himself, put his belt on the boots, and took off his caftan. "What is the use of talking?" he said. "Put it on! Come now!" Semén took the man by his elbows and began to raise him. The man got up. And Semén saw that his body was soft and clean, his hands and feet not calloused, and his face gentle. Semén threw his caftan over the man's shoulders. He could not find his way into the sleeves. So Semén put them in, pulled the caftan on him, wrapped him in it, and girded it with the belt. Semén took off his torn cap, intending to put it on the naked man, but his head grew cold, and so he thought: "My whole head is bald, while he has long, curly hair." He put it on again. "I had better put the boots on him." He seated himself and put the felt boots on him. The shoemaker addressed him and said: "That's the way, my friend! Now move about and get warmed up. This business will be looked into without us. Can you walk?" The man stood, looking meekly at Semén, but could not say a word. "Why don't you speak? You can't stay here through the winter. We must make for a living place. Here, take my stick, lean on it, if you are weak. Tramp along!" And the man went. And he walked lightly, and did not fall behind. As they were walking along, Semén said to him: "Who are you, please?" "I am a stranger." "I know all the people here about. How did you get near that chapel?" "I cannot tell." "Have people insulted you?" "No one has. God has punished me." "Of course, God does everything, but still you must be making for some place. Whither are you bound?" "It makes no difference to me." Semén was surprised. He did not resemble an evil-doer, and was gentle of speech, and yet did not say anything about himself. And Semén thought that all kinds of things happen, and so he said to the man: "Well, come to my house and warm yourself a little." Semén walked up to the farm, and the stranger did not fall behind, but walked beside him. A wind rose and blew into Semén's shirt, and his intoxication went away, and he began to feel cold. He walked along, sniffling, and wrapping himself in his wife's jacket, and he thought: "There is your fur coat: I went to get myself a fur coat, and I am coming back without a caftan, and am even bringing a naked man with me. Matréna will not praise me for it!" And as Semén thought of Matréna, he felt sorry; and as he looked at the stranger and recalled how he had looked at him at the chapel, his blood began to play in his heart. [Illustration: "'Whither are you bound?'" _Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko_] III. Semén's wife got things done early. She chopped the wood, brought the water, fed the children, herself took a bite of something, and fell to musing. She was thinking about when to set the bread, whether to-day or to-morrow. There was a big slice of it left. "If Semén has his dinner there," she thought, "and does not eat much for supper, the bread will last until to-morrow." Matréna turned the slice around and a second time, and thought: "I will not set any bread to-day. I have enough meal for just one setting. We shall somehow hold out until Friday." Matréna put the bread away, and seated herself at the table to put a patch in her husband's shirt. She was sewing and thinking of how he would buy a sheepskin for a fur coat. "If only the furrier does not cheat him, for my man is too simple for anything. He himself will not cheat a soul, but a little child can deceive him. Eight roubles is no small sum. One can pickup a good fur coat for it. It will not be tanned, still it will be a fur coat. How we suffered last winter without a fur coat! We could not get down to the river, or anywhere. And there he has gone out, putting everything on him, and I have nothing to dress in. He went away early; it is time for him to be back. If only my dear one has not gone on a spree!" Just as Matréna was thinking this, the steps creaked on the porch, and somebody entered. Matréna stuck the needle in the cloth, and went out into the vestibule. She saw two coming in: Semén, and with him a man without a cap and in felt boots. Matréna at once smelt the liquor in her husband's breath. "Well," she thought, "so it is: he has been on a spree." And when she saw that he was without his caftan, in nothing but the jacket, and that he was not bringing anything, but only keeping silent and crouching, something broke in Matréna's heart. "He has spent all the money in drinks," she thought, "and has been on a spree with some tramp, and has even brought him along." Matréna let them pass into the hut, and then stepped in herself. She saw the lean young man, and he had on him their caftan. No shirt was to be seen under the caftan, and he had no hat on his head. When he entered, he stood still, and did not stir, and did not raise his eyes. And Matréna thought: "He is not a good man,--he is afraid." Matréna scowled and went to the oven, waiting to see what would happen. Semén took off his cap and sat down on the bench like a good man. "Well, Matréna, will you let us have something for supper, will you?" he said. Matréna growled something under her breath. She stood at the oven, and did not stir: she looked now at the one, and now at the other, and shook her head. Semén saw that his wife was not in a good humour, but there was nothing to be done, and he acted as though he did not see it. He took the stranger by the arm: "Sit down, my friend," he said, "we shall have our supper." The stranger sat down on the bench. "Well, have you not cooked anything?" That simply roiled Matréna. "I have cooked, but not for you. You seem to have drunk away your senses, I see. You went to get a fur coat, and come back without your caftan, and have even brought some kind of a naked tramp with you. I have no supper for you drunkards." "Stop, Matréna! What is the use of wagging your tongue without any sense? First ask what kind of a man it is--" "Tell me what you did with the money." Semén stuck his hand into the caftan, took out the bill, and opened it before her. "Here is the money. Trifónov has not paid me,--he promised to give it to me to-morrow." That enraged Matréna even more: he had bought no fur coat, and the only caftan they had he had put on a naked fellow, and had even brought him along. She grabbed the bill from the table, and ran to put it away, and said: "I have no supper. One cannot feed all the drunkards." "Oh, Matréna, hold your tongue. First hear what I have to say--" "Much sense shall I hear from a drunken fool. With good reason did I object to marrying you, a drunkard. My mother gave me some linen, and you spent it on drinks; you went to buy a fur coat, and spent that, too." Semén wanted to explain to his wife that he had spent twenty kopeks only, and wanted to tell her that he had found the man; but Matréna began to break in with anything she could think of, and to speak two words at once. Even what had happened ten years before, she brought up to him now. Matréna talked and talked, and jumped at Semén, and grabbed him by the sleeve. "Give me my jacket. That is all I have left, and you have taken it from me and put it on yourself. Give it to me, you freckled dog,--may the apoplexy strike you!" Semén began to take off the bodice; as he turned back his arm, his wife gave the bodice a jerk, and it ripped at the seam. Matréna grabbed the jacket, threw it over her head, and made for the door. She wanted to go out, but stopped: her heart was doubled, for she wanted to have her revenge, and also to find out what kind of a man he was. IV. Matréna stopped and said: "If he were a good man, he would not be naked; but, as it is, he has not even a shirt on him. If he meant anything good, you would tell me where you found that dandy." "I am telling you: as I was walking along, I saw him sitting at the chapel, without any clothes, and almost frozen. It is not summer, and he was all naked. God sent me to him, or he would have perished. Well, what had I to do? All kinds of things happen! I picked him up and dressed him, and brought him here. Calm yourself! It is a sin, Matréna. We shall all die." Matréna wanted to go on scolding, but she looked at the stranger and kept silence. The stranger sat without moving, just as he had seated himself on the edge of the bench. His hands were folded on his knees, his head drooped on his breast, his eyes were not opened, and he frowned as though something were choking him. Matréna grew silent. And Semén said: "Matréna, have you no God?" When Matréna heard these words, she glanced at the stranger, and suddenly her heart became softened. She went away from the door, walked over to the oven corner, and got the supper ready. She placed a bowl on the table, filled it with kvas, and put down the last slice of bread. She handed them a knife and spoons. "Eat, if you please," she said. Semén touched the stranger. "Creep through here, good fellow!" he said. Semén cut up the bread and crumbled it into the kvas, and they began to eat. And Matréna sat down at the corner of the table, and leaned on her arm, and kept looking at the stranger. And Matréna pitied the stranger, and took a liking for him. And suddenly the stranger grew merry, stopped frowning, raised his eyes on Matréna, and smiled. They got through with their supper. The woman cleared the table, and began to ask the stranger: "Who are you?" "I am a stranger." "How did you get on the road?" "I cannot tell." "Has somebody robbed you?" "God has punished me." "And you were lying there naked?" "Yes, I was lying naked, and freezing. Semén saw me, took pity on me, pulled off his caftan, put it on me, and told me to come here. And you have given me to eat and to drink, and have pitied me. The Lord will save you!" Matréna got up, took from the window Semén's old shirt, the same that she had been patching, and gave it to the stranger; and she found a pair of trousers, and gave them to him. "Here, take it! I see that you have no shirt. Put it on, and lie down wherever it pleases you,--on the hanging bed or on the oven." The stranger took off the caftan, put on the shirt, and lay down on the hanging bed. Matréna put out the light, took the caftan, and climbed to where her husband was. Matréna covered herself with the corner of the caftan, and she lay and could not sleep: the stranger would not leave her mind. As she thought how he had eaten the last slice of bread and how there would be no bread for the morrow; as she thought how she had given him a shirt and a pair of trousers, she felt pretty bad; but when she thought of how he smiled, her heart was gladdened. Matréna could not sleep for a long time, and she heard that Semén, too, was not sleeping; he kept pulling the caftan on himself. "Semén!" "What is it?" "We have eaten up the last bread, and I have not set any. I do not know what to do for to-morrow. Maybe I had better ask Gossip Malánya for some." "If we are alive we shall find something to eat." The woman lay awhile and kept silence. "He must be a good man. But why does he not tell about himself?" "I suppose he cannot." "Semén!" "What?" "We give, but why does nobody give to us?" Semén did not know what to say. He only said, "Stop talking!" and turned over, and fell asleep. V. In the morning Semén awoke. The children were asleep; his wife had gone to the neighbours to borrow some bread. The stranger of last night, in the old trousers and shirt, was alone, sitting on the bench and looking upward. And his face was brighter than on the day before. And Semén said: "Well, dear man, the belly begs for bread, and the naked body for clothes. We must earn our living. Can you work?" "I do not know anything." Semén wondered at him, and said: "If only you are willing: people can learn anything." "People work, and I, too, will work." "What is your name?" "Michael." "Well, Mikháyla, you do not want to talk about yourself,--that is your business; but a man has to live. If you work as I order you, I will feed you." "God save you, and I will learn. Show me what to do!" Semén took the flax, put it on his fingers and began to make an end. "It is not a hard thing to do, you see." Mikháyla watched him, himself put the flax on his fingers, and made a thread end, as Semén had taught him. Semén showed him how to wax it. Mikháyla again learned the way at once. The master showed him how to weld the bristle, and how to whet, and Mikháyla learned it all at once. No matter what work Semén showed to him, he grasped it at once, and on the third day he began to sew as though he had done nothing else in all his life. He worked without unbending himself, ate little, between the periods of work kept silence, and all the time looked toward the sky. He did not go into the street, spoke no superfluous word, and did not jest or laugh. Only once was he seen to smile, and that was the first evening, when the woman gave him a supper. VI. Day was added to day, week to week, and the circle of a year went by. Mikháyla was living as before with Semén, and working. And the report spread about Semén's workman that nobody sewed a boot so neatly and so strongly as he. And people from all the surrounding country began to come to Semén for boots, and Semén's income began to grow. One time, in the winter, Semén was sitting with Mikháyla and working, when a tróyka with bells stopped at the door. They looked through the window: the carriage had stopped opposite the hut, and a fine lad jumped down from the box and opened the carriage door. Out of the carriage stepped a gentleman in a fur coat. He came out of the carriage, walked toward Semén's house, and went on the porch. Up jumped Matréna and opened the door wide. The gentleman bent his head and entered the hut; he straightened himself up, almost struck the ceiling with his head, and took up a whole corner. Semén got up, bowed to the gentleman, and wondered what he wanted. He had not seen such men. Semén himself was spare-ribbed, and Mikháyla was lean, and Matréna was as dry as a chip, while this one was like a man from another world: his face was red and blood-filled, his neck like a bull's, and altogether he looked as though cast in iron. The gentleman puffed, took off his fur coat, seated himself on a bench, and said: "Who is the master shoemaker?" Semén stepped forward, and said: "I, your Excellency." The gentleman shouted to his lad: "Oh, Fédka, let me have the material!" The lad came running in and brought a bundle. The gentleman took it and put it on the table. "Open it!" he said. The lad opened it. The gentleman pointed to the material, and said to Semén: "Listen now, shoemaker! Do you see the material?" "I do," he said, "your Honour." "Do you understand what kind of material this is?" Semén felt of it, and said: "It is good material." "I should say it is! You, fool, have never seen such before. It is German material: it costs twenty roubles." Semén was frightened, and he said: "How could we have seen such?" "That's it. Can you make me boots to fit my feet from this material?" "I can, your Honour." The gentleman shouted at him: "That's it: you can. You must understand for whom you are working, and what material you have to work on. Make me a pair of boots that will wear a year without running down or ripping. If you can, undertake it and cut the material; if you cannot, do not undertake it and do not cut the material. I tell you in advance: if the boots wear off or rip before the year is over, I will put you into jail; if they do not wear off or rip for a year, I will give you ten roubles for the work." Semén was frightened and did not know what to say. He looked at Mikháyla. He nudged him with his elbow, and said: "Friend, what do you say?" Mikháyla nodded to him: "Take the work!" Semén took Mikháyla's advice and undertook to make a pair of boots that would not wear down or rip. The gentleman shouted at his lad, told him to pull off the boot from his left foot, and stretched out his leg. "Take the measure!" Semén sewed together a piece of paper, ten inches in length, smoothed it out, knelt down, carefully wiped his hand on his apron so as not to soil the gentleman's stocking, and began to measure. He measured the sole, then the instep, and then the calf, but there the paper was not long enough. His leg at the calf was as thick as a log. "Be sure and do not make them too tight in the boot-leg!" Semén sewed up another piece to the strip. The gentleman sat and moved his toes in his stocking, and watched the people in the room. He caught sight of Mikháyla. "Who is that man there?" he asked. "That is my master workman,--he will make those boots." "Remember," said the gentleman to Mikháyla, "remember! Make them so that they will wear a year." Semén, too, looked at Mikháyla, and he saw that Mikháyla was not looking at the gentleman, but gazed at the corner, as though he saw some one there. Mikháyla looked and looked, suddenly smiled and shone bright. "What makes you show your teeth, fool? You had better be sure and get the boots in time." And Mikháyla said: "They will be done in time." "Exactly." The gentleman put on his boot and his fur coat, and wrapped himself up, and went to the door. He forgot to bow down, and hit his head against the lintel. The gentleman cursed awhile, and rubbed his head, and seated himself in the carriage, and drove away. When the gentleman was gone, Semén said: "He is mighty flinty! You can't kill him with a club. He has knocked out the lintel, but he himself took little harm." And Matréna said: "How can he help being smooth, with the life he leads? Even death will not touch such a sledge-hammer!" VII. And Semén said to Mikháyla: "To be sure, we have undertaken to do the work, if only we do not get into trouble! The material is costly, and the gentleman is cross. I hope we shall not make a blunder. Your eyes are sharper, and your hands are nimbler than mine, so take this measure! Cut the material, and I will put on the last stitches." Mikháyla did not disobey him, but took the gentleman's material, spread it out on the table, doubled it, took the scissors, and began to cut. Matréna came up and saw Mikháyla cutting, and was wondering at what he was doing. Matréna had become used to the shoemaker's trade, and she looked, and saw that Mikháyla was not cutting the material in shoemaker fashion, but in a round shape. Matréna wanted to say something, but thought: "Perhaps I do not understand how boots have to be made for a gentleman; no doubt Mikháyla knows better, and I will not interfere." Mikháyla cut the pair, and picked up the end, and began to sew, not in shoemaker fashion, with the two ends meeting, but with one end, like soft shoes. Again Matréna marvelled, but did not interfere. And Mikháyla kept sewing and sewing. They began to eat their dinner, and Semén saw that Mikháyla had made a pair of soft shoes from the gentleman's material. Semén heaved a sigh. "How is this?" he thought. "Mikháyla has lived with me a whole year, and has never made a mistake, and now he has made such trouble for me. The gentleman ordered boots with long boot-legs, and he has made soft shoes, without soles, and has spoiled the material. How shall I now straighten it out with the master? No such material can be found." And he said to Mikháyla: "What is this, dear man, that you have done? You have ruined me. The master has ordered boots, and see what you have made!" He had just begun to scold Mikháyla, when there was a rattle at the door ring,--some one was knocking. They looked through the window: there was there a man on horseback, and he was tying up his horse. They opened the door: in came the same lad of that gentleman. "Good day!" "Good day, what do you wish?" "The lady has sent me about the boots." "What about the boots?" "What about the boots? Our master does not need them. Our master has bid us live long." "You don't say!" "He had not yet reached home, when he died in his carriage. The carriage drove up to the house, and the servants came to help him out, but he lay as heavy as a bag, and was stiff and dead, and they had a hard time taking him out from the carriage. So the lady has sent me, saying: 'Tell the shoemaker that a gentleman came to see him, and ordered a pair of boots, and left the material for them; well, tell him that the boots are not wanted, but that he should use the leather at once for a pair of soft shoes. Wait until they make them, and bring them with you.' And so that is why I have come." Mikháyla took the remnants of the material from the table, rolled them up, and took the soft shoes which he had made, and clapped them against each other, and wiped them off with his apron, and gave them to the lad. The lad took the soft shoes. "Good-bye, masters, good luck to you!" VIII. There passed another year, and a third, and Mikháyla was now living the sixth year with Semén. He was living as before. He went nowhere, did not speak an unnecessary word, and all that time had smiled but twice: once, when they gave him the supper, and the second time when the gentleman came. Semén did not get tired admiring his workman. He no longer asked him where he came from; he was only afraid that Mikháyla might leave him. One day they were sitting at home. The housewife was putting the iron pots into the oven, and the children were running on the benches, and looking out of the window. Semén was sharpening his knives at one window, and Mikháyla was heeling a shoe at the other. One of the little boys ran up to Mikháyla on the bench, leaned against his shoulder, and looked out of the window. "Uncle Mikháyla, look there: a merchant woman is coming to us with some little girls. One of the girls is lame." When the boy said that, Mikháyla threw down his work, turned to the window, and looked out into the street. And Semén marvelled. Mikháyla had never before looked into the street, and now he had rushed to the window, and was gazing at something. Semén, too, looked out of the window: he saw, indeed, a woman who was walking over to his yard. She was well dressed, and led two little girls in fur coats and shawls. The girls looked one like the other, so that it was hard to tell them apart, only one had a maimed left leg,--she walked with a limp. The woman walked up the porch to the vestibule, felt for the entrance, pulled at the latch, and opened the door. First she let the two girls in, and then entered herself. "Good day, people!" "You are welcome! What do you wish?" The woman seated herself at the table. The girls pressed close to her knees: they were timid before the people. "I want you to make some leather boots for the girls for the spring." "Well, that can be done. We have not made such small shoes, but we can do it. We can make sharp-edged shoes, or turnover shoes on linen. Mikháyla is my master." Semén looked around at Mikháyla, and he saw that Mikháyla had put away his work and was sitting and gazing at the girls. And Semén marvelled at Mikháyla. Indeed, the girls were pretty: black-eyed, chubby, ruddy-faced, and the fur coats and shawls which they had on were fine; but still Semén could not make out why he was gazing at them as though they were friends of his. Semén marvelled, and began to talk with the woman and to bargain. They came to an agreement, and he took the measures. The woman took the lame girl on her knees, and said: "For this girl take two measures: make one shoe for the lame foot, and three for the sound foot. They have the same size of feet, exactly alike. They are twins." Semén took the measure, and he said about the lame girl: "What has made her lame? She is such a pretty girl. Was she born this way?" "No, her mother crushed her." Matréna broke in,--she wanted to know who the woman was, and whose the children were, and so she said: "Are you not their mother?" "I am not their mother, nor their kin, housewife! I am a stranger to them: I have adopted them." "Not your children! How you care for them!" "Why should I not care for them? I nursed them with my own breast. I had a child of my own, but God took him away. I did not care for him so much as I have cared for them." "Whose are they, then?" IX. The woman began to talk, and said: "It was six years ago that these orphans lost their parents in one week: their father was buried on a Tuesday, and their mother died on Friday. These orphans were born three days after their father's death, and their mother did not live a day. At that time I was living with my husband in the village. We were their neighbours, our yard joining theirs. Their father was a lonely man; he worked in the forest. They dropped a tree on him, and it fell across his body and squeezed out his entrails. They had barely brought him home, when he gave up his soul to God, and that same week his wife bore twins,--these girls. The woman was poor and alone; she had neither old woman nor girl with her. "Alone she bore them, and alone she died. "I went in the morning to see my neighbour, but she, the dear woman, was already cold. As she died she fell on the girl, and wrenched her leg. The people came, and they washed and dressed her, and made a coffin, and buried her. All of them were good people. The girls were left alone. What was to be done with them? Of all the women I alone had a baby. I had been nursing my first-born boy for eight weeks. I took them for the time being to my house. The peasants gathered and thought and thought what to do with them, and they said to me: 'Márya, keep the girls awhile, and we will try and think what to do with them.' And I nursed the straight girl once, but the lame girl I would not nurse. I did not want her to live. But, I thought, why should the angelic soul go out, and so I pitied her, too. I began to nurse her, and so I raised my own and the two girls, all three of them with my own breasts. I was young and strong, and I had good food. And God gave me so much milk in my breasts that at times they overflowed. I would feed two of them, while the third would be waiting. When one rolled away, I took the third. And God granted that I should raise the three, but my own child I lost in the second year. And God has given me no other children. We began to earn more and more, and now we are living here with the merchant at the mill. The wages are big, and our living is good. I have no children, and how should I live if it were not for these girls? How can I help loving them? They are all the wax of my tapers that I have." With one hand the woman pressed the lame girl to her side, and with the other she began to wipe off her tears. And Matréna sighed, and said: "Not in vain is the proverb: 'You can live without parents, but not without God.'" And so they were talking among themselves, when suddenly the room was lighted as though by sheet lightning from the corner where sat Mikháyla. All looked at him, and they saw Mikháyla sitting with folded hands on his knees, and looking up, and smiling. X. The woman went away with the girls, and Mikháyla got up from his bench. He lay down his work, took off his apron, bowed to the master and to the housewife, and said: "Forgive me, people! God has forgiven me. You, too, should forgive me." And the master and his wife saw a light coming from Mikháyla. And Semén got up, and bowed to Mikháyla, and said: "I see, Mikháyla, you are not a simple man, and I cannot keep you, and must not beg you to remain. But tell me this: Why, when I found you and brought you home, were you gloomy, and when my wife gave you a supper, why did you smile at her and after that grow brighter? Later, when the gentleman ordered the boots, you smiled for the second time, and after that grew brighter, and now, when the woman brought her girls, you smiled for the third time, and grew entirely bright. Tell me, Mikháyla, why does such light come from you, and why did you smile three times?" And Mikháyla said: "The light comes from me, because I had been punished, and now God has forgiven me. And I smiled three times because I had to learn three words of God. And I have learned the three words: one word I learned when your wife took pity on me, and so I smiled for the first time. The second word I learned when the rich man ordered the boots, and then I smiled for the second time. And now, when I saw the girls, I learned the last, the third word, and I smiled for the third time." And Semén said: "Tell me, Mikháyla, for what did God punish you, and what are those words of God, that I may know them." And Mikháyla said: "God punished me for having disobeyed him. I was an angel in heaven, and I disobeyed God. I was an angel in heaven, and God sent me down to take the soul out of a woman. I flew down to the earth, and I saw the woman lying sick, and she had borne twins,--two girls. The girls were squirming near their mother, and she could not take them to her breasts. The woman saw me, and she knew that God had sent me for her soul. She wept, and said: 'Angel of God! My husband has just been buried,--he was killed by a tree in the forest. I have neither sister, nor aunt, nor granny,--there is no one to bring up my orphans, so do not take my soul! Let me raise my own children, and put them on their feet. Children cannot live without a father, without a mother.' And I listened to the mother, and placed one girl to her breast, and gave the other one into her hands, and rose up to the Lord in heaven. And I came before the Lord, and said: 'I cannot take the soul out of the mother in childbirth. The father was killed by a tree, the mother bore twins, and she begged me not to take the soul out of her, saying, Let me rear and bring up my children, and put them on their feet. Children cannot live without a father or mother. I did not take the soul out of the woman in childbirth.' And the Lord said: 'Go and take the soul out of the woman in childbirth! And you will learn three words: you will learn what there is in men, and what is not given to men, and what men live by. When you learn them, you will return to heaven.' I flew back to earth and took the soul out of the woman. "The little ones fell away from the breasts. The dead body rolled over on the bed and crushed one of the girls, and wrenched her leg. I rose above the village and wanted to take the soul to God; but the wind caught me, and my wings fell flat; and dropped off, and the soul went by itself before God, and I fell near the road on the earth." XI. And Semén and Matréna understood whom they had clothed and fed, and who had lived with them, and they wept for terror and for joy, and said the angel: "I was left all alone in the field, and naked. I had not known before of human wants, neither of cold, nor of hunger, and I became a man. I was starved and chilled and did not know what to do. I saw in the field a chapel made for the Lord, and I went to God's chapel and wanted to hide myself in it. The chapel was locked, and I could not get in. And I seated myself behind the chapel, to protect myself against the wind. The evening came, I was hungry and chilled, and I ached all over. Suddenly I heard a man walking on the road; he was carrying a pair of boots and talking to himself. And I saw a mortal face, for the first time since I had become a man, and that face was terrible to me, and I turned away from it. And I heard the man talking to himself about how he might cover his body in the winter from the cold, and how he might feed his wife and children. And I thought: 'I am dying from hunger and cold, and here comes a man, who is thinking only of how to cover himself and his wife with a fur coat, and of how to feed his family. He cannot help me.' The man saw me; he frowned, and looked gloomier still, and passed by me. And I was in despair. Suddenly I heard the man coming back. I looked at him and did not recognize him: before that death had been in his face, and now he was revived, and in his face I saw God. He came up to me, and clothed me, and took me with him, and led me to his house. I came to his house, and a woman came out of the house and began to talk. The woman was more terrible yet than the man; the dead spirit was coming out of her mouth, and I could not breathe from the stench of death. She wanted to send me out into the cold, and I knew that she would die if she drove me out. And suddenly her husband reminded her of God. And the woman suddenly changed. And when she gave us to eat, and looked at us, I glanced at her: there was no longer death in her,--she was alive, and I recognized God in her. "And I recalled God's first word: 'You will know what there is in men.' And I learned that there was love in men. And I rejoiced at it, because God had begun to reveal to me what He had promised, and I smiled for the first time. But I could not yet learn everything. I could not understand what was not given to men, and what men lived by. "I began to live with you, and lived a year, and there came a man, to order a pair of boots, such as would wear a year, without ripping or turning. I looked at him, and suddenly I saw behind his shoulder my companion, the angel of death. None but me saw that angel; but I knew him, and I knew that the sun would not go down before the rich man's soul would be taken away. And I thought: 'The man is providing for a year, and does not know that he will not live until evening.' And I thought of God's second word: 'You will learn what is not given to men.' "I knew already what there was in men. Now I learned what was not given to men. It is not given men to know what they need for their bodies. And I smiled for the second time. I was glad because I had seen my comrade the angel, and because God had revealed the second word to me. "But I could not understand everything. I could not understand what men lived by. And I lived and waited for God to reveal to me the last word. And in the sixth year came the twin girls with the woman, and I recognized the girls and knew how they were kept alive. I recognized them, and I thought: 'The mother begged me for the sake of the children, and I believed the mother and thought that the children could not live without father and mother, and yet a strange woman has fed them and reared them.' And when the woman was touched as she looked at the children and wept, I saw in her the living God, and I understood what men lived by. And I learned that God had revealed the third word to me and forgave me. And I smiled for the third time." XII. And the angel's body was bared and clothed in light, so that the eye could not behold him, and he spoke louder, as though the voice were coming not from him but from heaven. And the angel said: "I have learned that every man lives not by the care for himself, but by love. "It was not given to the mother to know what her children needed for life. It was not given to the rich man to know what he needed for himself. And it is not given to any man to know whether before evening he will need boots for his life, or soft shoes for his death. "I was kept alive when I was a man not by what I did for myself, but because there was love in a passer-by and in his wife, and because they pitied and loved me. The orphans were left alive not by what was done for them, but because there was love in the heart of a strange woman, and she pitied and loved them. And all men live not by what they do for themselves, but because there is love in men. "I knew before that God gave life to men and that He wanted them to live; now I understand even something else. "I understand that God does not want men to live apart, and so He has not revealed to them what each needs for himself, but wants them to live together, and so He has revealed to them what they all need for themselves and for all. "I understand now that it only seems to men that they live by the care for themselves, and that they live only by love. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, because God is love." And the angel began to sing the praise of God, and from his voice the whole hut shook. And the ceiling expanded, and a fiery column rose from earth to heaven. And Semén and his wife and children fell to the ground. And the wings were unfolded on the angel's shoulders, and he rose to heaven. And when Semén awoke, the hut was as before, and in the room were only his family. THE THREE HERMITS 1884 THE THREE HERMITS But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. (Matt. vi. 7-8.) A bishop was sailing in a ship from Arkhángelsk to Solóvki. On this ship there were pilgrims on their way to visit the saints. The wind was favourable, the weather clear, and the vessel did not roll. Of the pilgrims some were lying down, some eating, some sitting in groups, and some talking with each other. The bishop, too, came out on deck, and began to walk up and down on the bridge. He walked up to the prow and saw there several men sitting together. A peasant was pointing to something in the sea and talking, while the people listened to him. The bishop stopped to see what the peasant was pointing at: he could see nothing except that the sun was glistening on the water. The bishop came nearer and began to listen. When the peasant saw the bishop, he took off his cap and grew silent. And the people, too, when they saw the bishop, took off their caps and saluted him. "Do not trouble yourselves, friends," said the bishop. "I have just come to hear what you, good man, are telling about." "The fisherman is telling us about the hermits," said a merchant, who was a little bolder than the rest. "What about those hermits?" asked the bishop. He walked over to the gunwale and sat down on a box. "Tell me, too, and I will listen. What were you pointing at?" "There is an island glinting there," said the peasant, pointing forward and to the right. "On that island the hermits are living and saving their souls." "Where is that island?" asked the bishop. "Please to follow my hand! There is a small cloud; below it and a little to the left of it the island appears like a streak." The bishop looked and looked, but only the water was rippling in the sun, and he could not make out anything with his unaccustomed eye. "I do not see it," he said. "What kind of hermits are living on that island?" "God's people," replied the peasant. "I had heard about them for a long time, and never had any chance to see them; but two summers ago I saw them myself." The fisherman went on to tell how he went out to catch fish and was driven to that island, and did not know where he was. In the morning he walked out and came to an earth hut, and there he saw one hermit, and then two more came out. They fed him and dried him and helped him to mend his boat. "What kind of people are they?" asked the bishop. "One is small and stooping, a very old man, in an old cassock; he must be more than a hundred years old, the gray of his beard is turning green, and he smiles all the time, and is as bright as an angel of heaven. The second is taller; he, too, is old, and wears a ragged caftan; his broad gray beard is streaked yellow, and he is a powerful man: he turned my boat around as though it were a vat, before I had a chance to help him; he also is a cheerful man. The third man is tall; his beard falls down to his knees and is as white as snow; he is a gloomy man, and his brows hang over his eyes; he is all naked, and girded only with a piece of matting." "What did they tell you?" asked the bishop. "They did everything mostly in silence, and spoke little to one another. When one looked up, the others understood him. I asked the tall man how long they had been living there. He frowned and muttered something, as though he were angry, but the little hermit took his arm and smiled, and the tall one grew silent. All the little hermit said was: 'Have mercy on us,' and smiled." While the peasant spoke, the ship came nearer to the island. "Now you can see it plainly," said the merchant. "Please to look there, your Reverence!" he said, pointing to the island. The bishop looked up and really saw a black strip, which was the island. The bishop looked at it for quite awhile, then he went away from the prow to the stern, and walked over to the helmsman. "What island is this that we see there?" "That is a nameless island. There are so many of them here." "Is it true what they say, that some hermits are saving their souls there?" "They say so, your Reverence, but I do not know whether it is so. Fishermen say that they have seen them. But they frequently speak to no purpose." "I should like to land on that island and see the hermits," said the bishop. "How can I do it?" "The ship cannot land there," said the helmsman. "You can get there by a boat, but you must ask the captain." The captain was called out. "I should like to see those hermits," said the bishop. "Can I not be taken there?" The captain began to dissuade him. "It can be done, but it will take much time, and, I take the liberty of informing your Reverence, it is not worth while to look at them. I have heard people say that they were foolish old men: they understand nothing and cannot speak, just like the fishes of the sea." "I wish it," said the bishop. "I will pay you for the trouble, so take me there." It could not be helped. The sailors shifted the sails and the helmsman turned the ship, and they sailed toward the island. A chair was brought out for the bishop and put at the prow. He sat down and looked. All the people gathered at the prow, and all kept looking at the island. Those who had sharper eyes saw the rocks on the island, and they pointed to the earth hut. And one man could make out the three hermits. The captain brought out his spy-glass and looked through it and gave it to the bishop. "That's so," he said, "there, on the shore, a little to the right from that big rock, stand three men." The bishop looked through the glass and turned it to the right spot. There were three men there: one tall, a second smaller, and a third a very small man. They were standing on the shore and holding each other's hands. The captain walked over to the bishop, and said: "Here, your Reverence, the ship has to stop. If you wish to go there by all means, you will please go from here in a boat, and we will wait here at anchor." The hawsers were let out, the anchor dropped, the sails furled, and the vessel jerked and shook. A boat was lowered, the oarsmen jumped into it, and the bishop went down a ladder. He sat down on a bench in the boat, and the oarsmen pulled at the oars and rowed toward the island. They came near to the shore and could see clearly three men standing there: a tall man, all naked, with a mat about his loins; the next in size, in a tattered caftan; and the stooping old man, in an old cassock. There they stood holding each other's hands. The oarsmen rowed up to the shore and caught their hook in it. The bishop stepped ashore. The old men bowed to him. He blessed them, and they bowed lower still. Then the bishop began to talk to them: "I have heard," he said, "that you are here, hermits of God, saving your souls and praying to Christ our God for men. I, an unworthy servant of Christ, have been called here by the mercy of God to tend His flock, and so I wanted to see you, the servants of God, and to give you some instruction, if I can do so." The hermits kept silence, and smiled, and looked at one another. "Tell me, how do you save yourselves and serve God?" asked the bishop. The middle-sized hermit heaved a sigh and looked at the older, the stooping hermit. And the stooping hermit smiled, and said: "We do not know, O servant of God, how to serve God. We only support ourselves." "How, then, do you pray to God?" And the stooping hermit said: "We pray as follows: There are three of you and three of us,--have mercy on us!" And the moment the stooping hermit had said that, all three of them raised their eyes to heaven, and all three said: "There are three of you and three of us,--have mercy on us!" The bishop smiled, and said: "You have heard that about the Holy Trinity, but you do not pray the proper way. I like you, hermits of God, and I see that you want to please God, but do not know how to serve Him. I will teach you, not according to my way, but from the Gospel will I teach you as God has commanded all men to pray to Him." And the bishop began to explain to the hermits how God had revealed Himself to men: he explained to them about God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, and said: "God the Son came down upon earth to save men and taught them to pray as follows. Listen, and repeat after me." And the bishop began to say, "Our Father." And one of the hermits repeated, "Our Father," and the second repeated, "Our Father," and the third repeated, "Our Father." "Which art in heaven." The hermit repeated, "Which art in heaven." But the middle hermit got mixed in his words, and did not say it right; and the tall, naked hermit did not say it right: his moustache was all over his mouth, and he could not speak clearly; and the stooping, toothless hermit, too, lisped it indistinctly. The bishop repeated it a second time, and the hermits repeated it after him. And the bishop sat down on a stone, and the hermits stood around him and looked into his mouth and repeated after him so long as he spoke. And the bishop worked with them all day; he repeated one word ten, and twenty, and a hundred times, and the hermits repeated after him. They blundered, and he corrected them, and made them repeat from the beginning. The bishop did not leave the hermits until he taught them the whole Lord's prayer. They said it with him and by themselves. The middle-sized hermit was the first to learn it, and he repeated it all by himself. The bishop made him say it over and over again, and both the others said the prayer, too. It was beginning to grow dark, and the moon rose from the sea, when the bishop got up to go back to the ship. The bishop bade the hermits good-bye, and they bowed to the ground before him. He raised each of them, and kissed them, and told them to pray as he had taught them, and entered the boat, and was rowed back to the ship. And as the boat was rowed toward the ship, the bishop heard the hermits loudly repeating the Lord's prayer in three voices. The boat came nearer to the ship, and the voices of the hermits could no longer be heard, but in the moonlight they could be seen standing on the shore, in the spot where they had been left: the smallest of them was in the middle, the tallest on the right, and the middle-sized man on the left. The bishop reached the ship and climbed up to the deck. The anchors were weighed, the sails unfurled, and the wind blew and drove the ship, and on they sailed. The bishop went to the prow and sat down there and looked at the island. At first the hermits could be seen, then they disappeared from view, and only the island could be seen; then the island, too, disappeared, and only the sea glittered in the moonlight. The pilgrims lay down to sleep, and everything grew quiet on the deck. But the bishop did not feel like sleeping. He sat by himself at the prow and looked out to sea to where the island had disappeared, and thought of the good hermits. He thought of how glad they had been to learn the prayer, and thanked God for having taken him there to help the God's people,--to teach them the word of God. The bishop was sitting and thinking and looking out to sea to where the island had disappeared. There was something unsteady in his eyes: now a light quivered in one place on the waves, and now in another. Suddenly he saw something white and shining in the moonlight,--either a bird, a gull, or a white sail on a boat. The bishop watched it closely. "A sailboat is following after us," he thought. "It will soon overtake us. It was far, far away, but now it is very near. It is evidently not a boat, for there seems to be no sail. Still it is flying behind us and coming up close to us." The bishop could not make out what it was: a boat, no, it was not a boat; a bird, no, not a bird; a fish, no, not a fish! It was like a man, but too large for that, and then, how was a man to be in the middle of the ocean? The bishop got up and walked over to the helmsman. "See there, what is it?" "What is it, my friend? What is it?" asked the bishop, but he saw himself that those were the hermits running over the sea. Their beards shone white, and, as though the ship were standing still, they came up to it. The helmsman looked around and was frightened. He dropped the helm, and called out in a loud voice: "O Lord! The hermits are running after us on the sea as though it were dry land!" The people heard him, and rushed to the helm. All saw the hermits running and holding each other's hands. Those at the ends waved their hands, asking the ship to be stopped. All three were running over the water as though it were dry land, without moving their feet. Before the ship could be stopped, the hermits came abreast with the ship. They came up to the gunwale, raised their heads, and spoke in one voice: "O servant of God, we have forgotten your lesson. So long as we repeated it, we remembered it; but when we stopped for an hour, one word leaped out, and then the rest scattered. We do not remember a thing, so teach us again." The bishop made the sign of the cross, bent down to the hermits, and said: "Even your prayer, hermits of God, reaches the Lord. It is not for me to teach you. Pray for us sinful men!" And the bishop made a low obeisance to the hermits. And the hermits stopped, turned around, and walked back over the sea. And up to morning a light could be seen on the side where the hermits had departed. NEGLECT THE FIRE And You Cannot Put It Out 1885 NEGLECT THE FIRE And You Cannot Put It Out Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt. So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses. (Matt. xviii. 21-35.) There lived in a village a peasant, by the name of Iván Shcherbakóv. He lived well; he was himself in full strength, the first worker in the village, and he had three sons,--all of them on their legs: one was married, the second about to marry, and the third a grown-up lad who drove horses and was beginning to plough. Iván's wife was a clever woman and a good housekeeper, and his daughter-in-law turned out to be a quiet person and a good worker. There was no reason why Iván should not have led a good life with his family. The only idle mouth on the farm was his old, ailing father (he had been lying on the oven for seven years, sick with the asthma). Iván had plenty of everything, three horses and a colt, a cow and a yearling calf, and fifteen sheep. The women made the shoes and the clothes for the men and worked in the field; the men worked on their farms. They had enough grain until the next crop. From the oats they paid their taxes and met all their obligations. An easy life, indeed, might Iván have led with his children. But next door to him he had a neighbour, Gavrílo the Lame, Gordyéy Ivánov's son. And there was an enmity between him and Iván. So long as old man Gordyéy was alive, and Iván's father ran the farm, the peasants lived in neighbourly fashion. If the women needed a sieve or a vat, or the men had to get another axle or wheel for a time, they sent from one farm to another, and helped each other out in a neighbourly way. If a calf ran into the yard of the threshing-floor, they drove it out and only said: "Don't let it out, for the heap has not yet been put away." And it was not their custom to put it away and lock it up in the threshing-floor or in a shed, or to revile each other. Thus they lived so long as the old men were alive. But when the young people began to farm, things went quite differently. The whole thing began from a mere nothing. A hen of Iván's daughter-in-law started laying early. The young woman gathered the eggs for Passion week. Every day she went to the shed to pick up an egg from the wagon-box. But, it seems, the boys scared away the hen, and she flew across the wicker fence to the neighbour's yard, and laid an egg there. The young woman heard the hen cackle, so she thought: "I have no time now, I must get the hut in order for the holiday; I will go there later to get it." In the evening she went to the wagon-box under the shed, to fetch the egg, but it was not there. The young woman asked her mother-in-law and her brother-in-law if they had taken it; but Taráska, her youngest brother-in-law, said: "Your hen laid an egg in the neighbour's yard, for she cackled there and flew out from that yard." The young woman went to look at her hen, and found her sitting with the cock on the perch; she had closed her eyes and was getting ready to sleep. The woman would have liked to ask her where she laid the egg, but she would not have given her any answer. Then the young woman went to her neighbour. The old woman met her. "What do you want, young woman?" "Granny, my hen has been in your yard to-day,--did she not lay an egg there?" "I have not set eyes on her. We have hens of our own, thank God, and they have been laying for quite awhile. We have gathered our own eggs, and we do not need other people's eggs. Young woman, we do not go to other people's yards to gather eggs." The young woman was offended. She said a word too much, the neighbour answered with two, and the women began to scold. Iván's wife was carrying water, and she, too, took a hand in it. Gavrílo's wife jumped out, and began to rebuke her neighbour. She reminded her of things that had happened, and mentioned things that had not happened at all. And the tongue-lashing began. All yelled together, trying to say two words at the same time. And they used bad words. "You are such and such a one; you are a thief, a sneak; you are simply starving your father-in-law; you are a tramp." "And you are a beggar: you have torn my sieve; and you have our shoulder-yoke. Give me back the yoke!" They grabbed the yoke, spilled the water, tore off their kerchiefs, and began to fight. Gavrílo drove up from the field, and he took his wife's part. Iván jumped out with his son, and they all fell in a heap. Iván was a sturdy peasant, and he scattered them all. He yanked out a piece of Gavrílo's beard. People ran up to them, and they were with difficulty pulled apart. That's the way it began. Gavrílo wrapped the piece of his beard in a petition and went to the township court to enter a complaint. "I did not raise a beard for freckled Iván to pull it out." In the meantime his wife bragged to the neighbours that they would now get Iván sentenced and would have him sent to Siberia, and the feud began. The old man on the oven tried to persuade them to stop the first day they started to quarrel, but the young people paid no attention to him. He said to them: "Children, you are doing a foolish thing, and for a foolish thing have you started a feud. Think of it,--the whole affair began from an egg. The children picked up the egg,--well, God be with them! There is no profit in one egg. With God's aid there will be enough for everybody. Well, you have said a bad word, so correct it, show her how to use better words! Well, you have had a fight,--you are sinful people. That, too, happens. Well, go and make peace, and let there be an end to it! If you keep it up, it will only be worse." The young people did not obey the old man; they thought that he was not using sense, but just babbling in old man's fashion. Iván did not give in to his neighbour. "I did not pull his beard," he said. "He jerked it out himself; but his son has yanked off my shirt-button and has torn my whole shirt. Here it is." And Iván, too, took the matter to court. The case was heard before a justice of the peace, and in the township court. While they were suing each other, Gavrílo lost a coupling-pin out of his cart. The women in Gavrílo's house accused Iván's son of having taken it. "We saw him in the night," they said, "making his way under the window to the cart, and the gossip says that he went to the dram-shop and asked the dram-shopkeeper to take the pin from him." Again they started a suit. But at home not a day passed but that they quarrelled, nay, even fought. The children cursed one another,--they learned this from their elders,--and when the women met at the brook, they did not so much strike the beetles as let loose their tongues, and to no good. At first the men just accused each other, but later they began to snatch up things that lay about loose. And they taught the women and children to do the same. Their life grew worse and worse. Iván Shcherbakóv and Gavrílo the Lame kept suing one another at the meetings of the Commune, and in the township court, and before the justices of the peace, and all the judges were tired of them. Now Gavrílo got Iván to pay a fine, or he sent him to the lockup, and now Iván did the same to Gavrílo. And the more they did each other harm, the more furious they grew. When dogs make for each other, they get more enraged the more they fight. You strike a dog from behind, and he thinks that the other dog is biting him, and gets only madder than ever. Just so it was with these peasants: when they went to court, one or the other was punished, either by being made to pay a fine, or by being thrown into prison, and that only made their rage flame up more and more toward one another. "Just wait, I will pay you back for it!" And thus it went on for six years. The old man on the oven kept repeating the same advice. He would say to them: "What are you doing, my children? Drop all your accounts, stick to your work, don't show such malice toward others, and it will be better. The more you rage, the worse will it be." They paid no attention to the old man. In the seventh year the matter went so far that Iván's daughter-in-law at a wedding accused Gavrílo before people of having been caught with horses. Gavrílo was drunk, and he did not hold back his anger, but struck the woman and hurt her so that she lay sick for a week, for she was heavy with child. Iván rejoiced, and went with a petition to the prosecuting magistrate. "Now," he thought, "I will get even with my neighbour: he shall not escape the penitentiary or Siberia." Again Iván was not successful. The magistrate did not accept the petition: they examined the woman, but she was up and there were no marks upon her. Iván went to the justice of the peace; but the justice sent the case to the township court. Iván bestirred himself in the township office, filled the elder and the scribe with half a bucket of sweet liquor, and got them to sentence Gavrílo to having his back flogged. The sentence was read to Gavrílo in the court. The scribe read: "The court has decreed that the peasant Gavrílo Gordyéy receive twenty blows with rods in the township office." Iván listened to the decree and looked at Gavrílo, wondering what he would do. Gavrílo, too, heard the decree, and he became as pale as a sheet, and turned away and walked out into the vestibule. Iván followed him out and wanted to go to his horse, when he heard Gavrílo say: "Very well, he will beat my back, and it will burn, but something of his may burn worse than that." When Iván heard these words, he returned to the judges. "Righteous judges! He threatens to set fire to my house. Listen, he said it in the presence of witnesses." Gavrílo was called in. "Is it true that you said so?" "I said nothing. Flog me, if you please. Evidently I must suffer for my truth, while he may do anything he wishes." Gavrílo wanted to say something more, but his lips and cheeks trembled. He turned away toward the wall. Even the judges were frightened as they looked at him. "It would not be surprising," they thought, "if he actually did some harm to his neighbour or to himself." And an old judge said to them: "Listen, friends! You had better make peace with each other. Did you do right, brother Gavrílo, to strike a pregnant woman? Luckily God was merciful to you, but think what crime you might have committed! Is that good? Confess your guilt and beg his pardon! And he will pardon you. Then we shall change the decree." The scribe heard that, and said: "That is impossible, because on the basis of Article 117 there has taken place no reconciliation, but the decree of the court has been handed down, and the decree has to be executed." But the judge paid no attention to the scribe. "Stop currycombing your tongue. The first article, my friend, is to remember God, and God has commanded me to make peace." And the judge began once more to talk to the peasants, but he could not persuade them. Gavrílo would not listen to him. "I am fifty years old less one," he said, "and I have a married son. I have not been beaten in all my life, and now freckled Iván has brought me to being beaten with rods, and am I to beg his forgiveness? Well, he will--Iván will remember me!" Gavrílo's voice trembled again. He could not talk. He turned around and went out. From the township office to the village was a distance of ten versts, and Iván returned home late. The women had already gone out to meet the cattle. He unhitched his horse, put it away, and entered the hut. The room was empty. The children had not yet returned from the field, and the women were out to meet the cattle. Iván went in, sat down on a bench, and began to think. He recalled how the decision was announced to Gavrílo, and how he grew pale, and turned to the wall. And his heart was pinched. He thought of how he should feel if he were condemned to be flogged. He felt sorry for Gavrílo. He heard the old man coughing on the oven. The old man turned around, let down his legs, and sat up. He pulled himself with difficulty up to the bench, and coughed and coughed, until he cleared his throat, and leaned against the table, and said: "Well, have they condemned him?" Iván said: "He has been sentenced to twenty strokes with the rods." The old man shook his head. "Iván, you are not doing right. It's wrong, not wrong to him, but to yourself. Well, will it make you feel easier, if they flog him?" "He will never do it again," said Iván. "Why not? In what way is he doing worse than you?" "What, he has not harmed me?" exclaimed Iván. "He might have killed the woman; and he even now threatens to set fire to my house. Well, shall I bow to him for it?" The old man heaved a sigh, and said: "You, Iván, walk and drive wherever you please in the free world, and I have passed many years on the oven, and so you think that you see everything, while I see nothing. No, my son, you see nothing,--malice has dimmed your eyes. Another man's sins are in front of you, but your own are behind your back. You say that he has done wrong. If he alone had done wrong, there would be no harm. Does evil between people arise from one man only? Evil arises between two. You see his badness, but you do not see your own. If he himself were bad, and you good, there would be no evil. Who pulled out his beard? Who blasted the rick which was at halves? Who is dragging him to the courts? And yet you put it always on him. You yourself live badly, that's why it is bad. Not thus did I live, and no such thing, my dear, did I teach you. Did I and the old man, his father, live this way? How did we live? In neighbourly fashion. If his flour gave out, and the woman came: 'Uncle Frol, I need some flour.'--'Go, young woman, into the granary, and take as much as you need.' If he had nobody to send out with the horses,--'Go, Iván, and look after his horses!' And if I was short of anything, I used to go to him. 'Uncle Gordyéy, I need this and that.' And how is it now? The other day a soldier was talking about Plévna. Why, your war is worse than what they did at Plévna. Do you call this living? It is a sin! You are a peasant, a head of a house. You will be responsible. What are you teaching your women and your children? To curse. The other day Taráska, that dirty nose, cursed Aunt Arína, and his mother only laughed at him. Is that good? You will be responsible for it. Think of your soul. Is that right? You say a word to me, and I answer with two; you box my ears, and I box you twice. No, my son, Christ walked over the earth and taught us fools something quite different. If a word is said to you,--keep quiet, and let conscience smite him. That's what he, my son, has taught us. If they box your ears, you turn the other cheek to them: 'Here, strike it if I deserve it.' His own conscience will prick him. He will be pacified and will do as you wish. That's what he has commanded us to do, and not to crow. Why are you silent? Do I tell you right?" Iván was silent, and he listened. The old man coughed again, and with difficulty coughed up the phlegm, and began to speak again: "Do you think Christ has taught us anything bad? He has taught us for our own good. Think of your earthly life: are you better off, or worse, since that Plévna of yours was started? Figure out how much you have spent on these courts, how much you have spent in travelling and in feeding yourself on the way? See what eagles of sons you have! You ought to live, and live well, and go up, but your property is growing less. Why? For the same reason. From your pride. You ought to be ploughing with the boys in the field and attend to your sowing, but the fiend carries you to court or to some pettifogger. You do not plough in time and do not sow in time, and mother earth does not bring forth anything. Why did the oats not do well this year? When did you sow them? When you came back from the city. And what did you gain from the court? Only trouble for yourself. Oh, son, stick to your business, and attend to your field and your house, and if any one has offended you, forgive him in godly fashion, and things will go better with you, and you will feel easier at heart." Iván kept silence. "Listen, Iván! Pay attention to me, an old man. Go and hitch the gray horse, and drive straight back to the office: squash there the whole business, and in the morning go to Gavrílo, make peace with him in godly fashion, and invite him to the holiday" (it was before Lady-day), "have the samovár prepared, get a half bottle, and make an end to all sins, so that may never happen again, and command the women and children to live in peace." Iván heaved a sigh, and thought: "The old man is speaking the truth," and his heart melted. The only thing he did not know was how to manage things so as to make peace with his neighbour. And the old man, as though guessing what he had in mind, began once more: "Go, Iván, do not put it off! Put out the fire at the start, for when it burns up, you can't control it." The old man wanted to say something else, but did not finish, for the women entered the room and began to prattle like magpies. The news had already reached them about how Gavrílo had been sentenced to be flogged, and how he had threatened to set fire to the house. They had found out everything, and had had time in the pasture to exchange words with the women of Gavrílo's house. They said that Gavrílo's daughter-in-law had threatened them with the examining magistrate. The magistrate, they said, was receiving gifts from Gavrílo. He would now upset the whole case, and the teacher had already written another petition to the Tsar about Iván, and that petition mentioned all the affairs, about the coupling-pin, and about the garden,--and half of the estate would go back to him. Iván listened to their talk, and his heart was chilled again, and he changed his mind about making peace with Gavrílo. In a farmer's yard there is always much to do. Iván did not stop to talk with the women, but got up and went out of the house, and walked over to the threshing-floor and the shed. Before he fixed everything and started back again, the sun went down, and the boys returned from the field. They had been ploughing up the field for the winter crop. Iván met them, and asked them about their work and helped them to put up the horses. He laid aside the torn collar and was about to put some poles under the shed, when it grew quite dark. Iván left the poles until the morrow; instead he threw some fodder down to the cattle, opened the gate, let Taráska out with the horses into the street, to go to the night pasture, and again closed the gate and put down the gate board. "Now to supper and to bed," thought Iván. He took the torn collar and went into the house. He had entirely forgotten about Gavrílo, and about what his father had told him. As he took hold of the ring and was about to enter the vestibule, he heard his neighbour on the other side of the wicker fence scolding some one in a hoarse voice. "The devil take him!" Gavrílo was crying to some one. "He ought to be killed." These words made all the old anger toward his neighbour burst forth in Iván. He stood awhile and listened to Gavrílo's scolding. Then Gavrílo grew quiet, and Iván went into the house. He entered the room. Fire was burning within. The young woman was sitting in the corner behind the spinning-wheel; the old woman was getting supper ready; the eldest son was making laces for the bast shoes, the second was at the table with a book, and Taráska was getting ready to go to the night pasture. In the house everything was good and merry, if it were not for that curse,--a bad neighbour. Iván was angry when he entered the room. He knocked the cat down from the bench and scolded the women because the vat was not in the right place. Iván felt out of humour. He sat down, frowning, and began to mend the collar. He could not forget Gavrílo's words, with which he had threatened him in court, and how he had said about somebody, speaking in a hoarse voice: "He ought to be killed." The old woman got Taráska something to eat. When he was through with his supper, he put on a fur coat and a caftan, girded himself, took a piece of bread, and went out to the horses. The eldest brother wanted to see him off, but Iván himself got up and went out on the porch. It was pitch-dark outside, the sky was clouded, and a wind had risen. Iván stepped down from the porch, helped his little son to get on a horse, frightened a colt behind him, and stood looking and listening while Taráska rode down the village, where he met other children, and until they all rode out of hearing. Iván stood and stood at the gate, and could not get Gavrílo's words out of his head, "Something of yours may burn worse." "He will not consider himself," thought Iván. "It is dry, and a wind is blowing. He will enter somewhere from behind, the scoundrel, and will set the house on fire, and he will go free. If I could catch him, he would not get away from me." This thought troubled Iván so much that he did not go back to the porch, but walked straight into the street and through the gate, around the corner of the house. "I will examine the yard,--who knows?" And Iván walked softly down along the gate. He had just turned around the corner and looked up the fence, when it seemed to him that something stirred at the other end, as though it got up and sat down again. Iván stopped and stood still,--he listened and looked: everything was quiet, only the wind rustled the leaves in the willow-tree and crackled through the straw. It was pitch-dark, but his eyes got used to the darkness: Iván could see the whole corner and the plough and the penthouse. He stood and looked, but there was no one there. "It must have only seemed so to me," thought Iván, "but I will, nevertheless, go and see," and he stole up along the shed. Iván stepped softly in his bast shoes, so that he did not hear his own steps. He came to the corner, when, behold, something flashed by near the plough, and disappeared again. Iván felt as though something hit him in the heart, and he stopped. As he stopped he could see something flashing up, and he could see clearly some one in a cap squatting down with his back toward him, and setting fire to a bunch of straw in his hands. He stood stock-still. "Now," he thought, "he will not get away from me. I will catch him on the spot." Before Iván had walked two lengths of the fence it grew quite bright, and no longer in the former place, nor was it a small fire, but the flame licked up in the straw of the penthouse and was going toward the roof, and there stood Gavrílo so that the whole of him could be seen. As a hawk swoops down on a lark, so Iván rushed up against Gavrílo the Lame. "I will twist him up," he thought, "and he will not get away from me." But Gavrílo the Lame evidently heard his steps and ran along the shed with as much speed as a hare. "You will not get away," shouted Iván, swooping down on him. He wanted to grab him by the collar, but Gavrílo got away from him, and Iván caught him by the skirt of his coat. The skirt tore off, and Iván fell down. Iván jumped up. "Help! Hold him!" and again he ran. As he was getting up, Gavrílo was already near his yard, but Iván caught up with him. He was just going to take hold of him, when something stunned him, as though a stone had come down on his head. Gavrílo had picked up an oak post near his house and hit Iván with all his might on the head, when he ran up to him. Iván staggered, sparks flew from his eyes, then all grew dark, and he fell down. When he came to his senses, Gavrílo was gone. It was as light as day, and from his yard came a sound as though an engine were working, and it roared and crackled there. Iván turned around and saw that his back shed was all on fire and the side shed was beginning to burn; the fire, and the smoke, and the burning straw were being carried toward the house. "What is this? Friend!" cried Iván. He raised his hands and brought them down on his calves. "If I could only pull it out from the penthouse, and put it out! What is this? Friends!" he repeated. He wanted to shout, but he nearly strangled,--he had no voice. He wanted to run, but his feet would not move,--they tripped each other up. He tried to walk slowly, but he staggered, and he nearly strangled. He stood still again and drew breath, and started to walk. Before he came to the shed and reached the fire, the side shed was all on fire, and he could not get into the yard. People came running up, but nothing could be done. The neighbours dragged their own things out of their houses, and drove the cattle out. After Iván's house, Gavrílo's caught fire; a wind rose and carried the fire across the street. Half the village burned down. All they saved from Iván's house was the old man, who was pulled out, and everybody jumped out in just what they had on. Everything else was burned, except the horses in the pasture: the cattle were burned, the chickens on their roosts, the carts, the ploughs, the harrows, the women's chests, the grain in the granary,--everything was burned. Gavrílo's cattle were saved, and they dragged a few things out of his house. It burned for a long time, all night long. Iván stood near his yard, and kept looking at it, and saying: "What is this? Friends! If I could just pull it out and put it out!" But when the ceiling in the hut fell down, he jumped into the hottest place, took hold of a brand, and wanted to pull it out. The women saw him and began to call him back, but he pulled out one log and started for another: he staggered and fell on the fire. Then his son rushed after him and dragged him out. Iván had his hair and beard singed and his garments burnt and his hands blistered, but he did not feel anything. "His sorrow has bereft him of his senses," people said. The fire died down, but Iván was still standing there, and saying: "Friends, what is this? If I could only pull it out." In the morning the elder sent his son to Iván. "Uncle Iván, your father is dying: he has sent for you, to bid you good-bye." Iván had forgotten about his father, and did not understand what they were saying to him. "What father?" he said. "Send for whom?" "He has sent for you, to bid you good-bye. He is dying in our house. Come, Uncle Iván!" said the elder's son, pulling him by his arm. Iván followed the elder's son. When the old man, was carried out, burning straw fell on him and scorched him. He was taken to the elder's house in a distant part of the village. This part did not burn. When Iván came to his father, only the elder's wife was there, and the children on the oven. The rest were all at the fire. The old man was lying on a bench, with a taper in his hand, and looking toward the door. When his son entered, he stirred a little. The old woman went up to him and said that his son had come. He told her to have him come closer to him. Iván went up, and then the old man said: "What have I told you, Iván? Who has burned the village?" "He, father," said Iván, "he,--I caught him at it. He put the fire to the roof while I was standing near. If I could only have caught the burning bunch of straw and put it out, there would not have been anything." "Iván," said the old man, "my death has come, and you, too, will die. Whose sin is it?" Iván stared at his father and kept silence; he could not say a word. "Speak before God: whose sin is it? What have I told you?" It was only then that Iván came to his senses, and understood everything. And he snuffled, and said: "Mine, father." And he knelt before his father, and wept, and said: "Forgive me, father! I am guilty toward you and toward God." The old man moved his hands, took the taper in his left hand, and was moving his right hand toward his brow, to make the sign of the cross, but he did not get it so far, and he stopped. "Glory be to thee, O Lord! Glory be to thee, O Lord!" he said, and his eyes were again turned toward his son. "Iván! Oh, Iván!" "What is it, father?" "What is to be done now?" Iván was weeping. "I do not know, father," he said. "How am I to live now, father?" The old man closed his eyes and lisped something, as though gathering all his strength, and he once more opened his eyes and said: "You will get along. With God's aid will you get along." The old man was silent awhile, and he smiled and said: "Remember, Iván, you must not tell who started the fire. Cover up another man's sin! God will forgive two sins." And the old man took the taper into both hands, folded them over his heart, heaved a sigh, stretched himself, and died. * * * * * Iván did not tell on Gavrílo, and nobody found out how the fire had been started. And Iván's heart was softened toward Gavrílo, and Gavrílo marvelled at Iván, because he did not tell anybody. At first Gavrílo was afraid of him, but later he got used to him. The peasants stopped quarrelling, and so did their families. While they rebuilt their homes, the two families lived in one house, and when the village was built again, and the farmhouses were built farther apart, Iván and Gavrílo again were neighbours, living in the same block. And Iván and Gavrílo lived neighbourly together, just as their fathers had lived. Iván Shcherbakóv remembered his father's injunction and God's command to put out the fire in the beginning. And if a person did him some harm, he did not try to have his revenge on the man, but to mend matters; and if a person called him a bad name, he did not try to answer with worse words still, but to teach him not to speak badly. And thus he taught, also the women folk and the children. And Iván Shcherbakóv improved and began to live better than ever. THE CANDLE 1885 THE CANDLE Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil. (Matt. v. 38, 39.) This happened in the days of slavery. There were then all kinds of masters. There were such as remembered their hour of death and God, and took pity on their people, and there were dogs,--not by that may their memory live! But there were no meaner masters than those who from serfdom rose, as though out of the mud, to be lords! With them life was hardest of all. There happened to be such a clerk in a manorial estate. The peasants were doing manorial labour. There was much land, and the land was good, and there was water, and meadows, and forests. There would have been enough for everybody, both for the master and for the peasants, but the master had placed over them a clerk, a manorial servant of his from another estate. The clerk took the power into his own hand, and sat down on the peasants' necks. He was a married man,--he had a wife and two married daughters,--and had saved some money: he might have lived gloriously without sin, but he was envious, and stuck fast in sin. He began by driving the peasants to manorial labour more than the usual number of days. He started a brick-kiln, and he drove all the men and women to work in it above their strength, and sold the brick. The peasants went to the proprietor in Moscow to complain against him, but they were not successful. When the clerk learned that the peasants had entered a complaint against him, he took his revenge out of them. The peasants led a harder life still. There were found faithless people among the peasants: they began to denounce their own brothers to the clerk, and to slander one another. And all the people became involved, and the clerk was furious. The further it went, the worse it got, and the clerk carried on so terribly that the people became afraid of him as of a wolf. When he drove through the village, everybody ran away from him as from a wolf, so as not to be seen by him. The clerk saw that and raved more than ever because people were afraid of him. He tortured the peasants with beating and with work, and they suffered very much from him. It used to happen that such evil-doers were put out of the way, and the peasants began to talk that way about him. They would meet somewhere secretly, and such as were bolder would say: "How long are we going to endure this evil-doer? We are perishing anyway,--and it is no sin to kill a man like him." One day the peasants met in the forest, before Easter week: the clerk had sent them to clean up the manorial woods. They came together at dinner-time, and began to talk: "How can we live now?" they said. "He will root us up. He has worn us out with work: neither in the daytime nor at night does he give any rest to us or to the women. And the moment a thing does not go the way he wants it to, he nags at us and has us flogged. Semén died from that flogging; Anísim he wore out in the stocks. What are we waiting for? He will come here in the evening and will again start to torment us. We ought just to pull him down from his horse, whack him with an axe, and that will be the end of it. We will bury him somewhere like a dog, and mum is the word. Let us agree to stand by each other and not give ourselves away." Thus spoke Vasíli Mináev. He was more furious at the clerk than anybody else. The clerk had him flogged every week, and had taken his wife from him and made her a cook at his house. Thus the peasants talked, and in the evening the clerk came. He came on horseback, and immediately began to nag them because they were not cutting right. He found a linden-tree in the heap. "I have commanded you not to cut any lindens down," he said. "Who cut it down? Tell me, or I will have every one of you flogged!" He tried to find out in whose row the linden was. They pointed to Sídor. The clerk beat Sídor's face until the blood came, and struck Vasíli with a whip because his pile was small. He rode home. In the evening the peasants met again, and Vasíli began to speak. "Oh, people, you are not men, but sparrows! 'We will stand up, we will stand up!' but when the time for action came, they all flew under the roof. Even thus the sparrows made a stand against the hawk: 'We will not give away, we will not give away! We will make a stand, we will make a stand!' But when he swooped down on them, they made for the nettles. And the hawk seized one of the sparrows, the one he wanted, and flew away with him. Out leaped the sparrows: 'Chivik, chivik!' one of them was lacking. 'Who is gone? Vánka. Well, served him right!' Just so you did. 'We will not give each other away, we will not give each other away!' When he took hold of Sídor, you ought to have come together and made an end of him. But there you say, We will not give away, we will not give away! We will make a stand, we will make a stand!' and when he swooped down on you, you made for the bushes." The peasants began to talk that way oftener and oftener, and they decided fully to make away with the clerk. During Passion week the clerk told the peasants to get ready to plough the manorial land for oats during Easter week. That seemed offensive to the peasants, and they gathered during Passion week in Vasíli's back yard, and began to talk. "If he has forgotten God," they said, "and wants to do such things, we must certainly kill him. We shall be ruined anyway." Peter Mikhyéev came to them. He was a peaceable man, and did not take counsel with the peasants. He came, and listened to their speeches, and said: "Brothers, you are planning a great crime. It is a serious matter to ruin a soul. It is easy to ruin somebody else's soul, but how about our own souls? He is doing wrong, and the wrong is at his door. We must suffer, brothers." Vasíli grew angry at these words. "He has got it into his head that it is a sin to kill a man. Of course it is, but what kind of a man is he? It is a sin to kill a good man, but such a dog even God has commanded us to kill. A mad dog has to be killed, if we are to pity men. If we do not kill him, there will be a greater sin. What a lot of people he will ruin! Though we shall suffer, it will at least be for other people. Men will thank us for it. If we stand gaping he will ruin us all. You are speaking nonsense, Mikhyéev. Will it be a lesser sin if we go to work on Christ's holiday? You yourself will not go." And Mikhyéev said: "Why should I not go? If they send me, I will go to plough. It is not for me. God will find out whose sin it is, so long as we do not forget him. Brothers, I am not speaking for myself. If we were enjoined to repay evil with evil, there would be a commandment of that kind, but we are taught just the opposite. You start to do away with evil, and it will only pass into you. It is not a hard thing to kill a man. But the blood sticks to your soul. To kill a man means to soil your soul with blood. You imagine that when you kill a bad man you have got rid of the evil, but, behold, you have reared a worse evil within you. Submit to misfortune, and misfortune will be vanquished." The peasants could not come to any agreement: their thoughts were scattered. Some of them believed with Vasíli, and others agreed with Peter's speech that they ought not commit a crime, but endure. The peasants celebrated the first day, the Sunday. In the evening the elder came with the deputies from the manor, and said: "Mikhaíl Seménovich, the clerk, has commanded me to get all the peasants ready for the morrow, to plough the field for the oats." The elder made the round of the village with the deputies and ordered all to go out on the morrow to plough, some beyond the river, and some from the highway. The peasants wept, but did not dare to disobey, and on the morrow went out with their ploughs and began to plough. Mikhaíl Seménovich, the clerk, awoke late, and went out to look after the farm. His home folk--his wife and his widowed daughter (she had come for the holidays)--were all dressed up. A labourer hitched a cart for them, and they went to mass, and returned home again. A servant made the samovár, and when Mikhaíl Seménovich came, they sat down to drink tea. Mikhaíl Seménovich drank his tea, lighted a pipe, and sent for the elder. "Well," he said, "have you sent out the peasants to plough?" "Yes, Mikhaíl Seménovich." "Well, did all of them go?" "All. I placed them myself." "Of course, you have placed them,--but are they ploughing? Go and see, and tell them that I will be there in the afternoon, and by that time they are to plough a desyatína to each two ploughs, and plough it well. If I find any unploughed strips, I will pay no attention to the holiday." "Yes, sir." The elder started to go out, but Mikhaíl Seménovich called him back. He called him back, but he hesitated, for he wanted to say something and did not know how to say it. He hesitated awhile, and then he said: "Listen to what those robbers are saying about me. Tell me everything,--who is scolding me, or whatever they may be saying. I know those robbers: they do not like to work; all they want to do is to lie on their sides and loaf. To eat and be idle, that is what they like; they do not consider that if the time of ploughing is missed it will be too late. So listen to what they have to say, and let me know everything you may hear! Go, but be sure you tell me everything and keep nothing from me!" The elder turned around and left the room. He mounted his horse and rode into the field to the peasants. The clerk's wife had heard her husband's talk with the elder, and she came in and began to implore him. The wife of the clerk was a peaceable woman, and she had a good heart. Whenever she could, she calmed her husband and took the peasants' part. She came to her husband, and began to beg him: "My dear Míshenka, do not sin, for the Lord's holiday! For Christ's sake, send the peasants home!" Mikhaíl Seménovich did not accept his wife's words, but only laughed at her: "Is it too long a time since the whip danced over you that you have become so bold, and meddle in what is not your concern?" "Míshenka, my dear, I have had a bad dream about you. Listen to my words and send the peasants home!" "Precisely, that's what I say. Evidently you have gathered so much fat that you think the whip will not hurt you. Look out!" Seménovich grew angry, knocked the burning pipe into her teeth, sent her away, and told her to get the dinner ready. Mikhaíl Seménovich ate cold gelatine, dumplings, beet soup with pork, roast pig, and milk noodles, and drank cherry cordial, and ate pastry for dessert; he called in the cook and made her sit down and sing songs to him, while he himself took the guitar and accompanied her. Mikhaíl Seménovich was sitting in a happy mood and belching, and strumming the guitar, and laughing with the cook. The elder came in, made a bow, and began to report what he had seen in the field. "Well, are they ploughing? Will they finish the task?" "They have already ploughed more than half." "No strips left?" "I have not seen any. They are afraid, and are working well." "And are they breaking up the dirt well?" "The earth is soft and falls to pieces like a poppy." The clerk was silent for awhile. "What do they say about me? Are they cursing me?" The elder hesitated, but Mikhaíl Seménovich commanded him to tell the whole truth. "Tell everything! You are not going to tell me your words, but theirs. If you tell me the truth, I will reward you; and if you shield them, look out, I will have you flogged. O Kátyusha, give him a glass of vódka to brace him up!" The cook went and brought the elder the vódka. The elder saluted, drank the vódka, wiped his mouth, and began to speak. "I cannot help it," he thought, "it is not my fault if they do not praise him; I will tell him the truth, if he wants it." And the elder took courage and said: "They murmur, Mikhaíl Seménovich, they murmur." "What do they say? Speak!" "They keep saying that you do not believe in God." The clerk laughed. "Who said that?" "All say so. They say that you are submitting to the devil." The clerk laughed. "That is all very well," he said, "but tell me in particular what each says. What does Vasíli say?" The elder did not wish to tell on his people, but with Vasíli he had long been in a feud. "Vasíli," he said, "curses more than the rest." "What does he say? Tell me!" "It is too terrible to tell. He says that you will die an unrepenting death." "What a brave fellow!" he said. "Why, then, is he gaping? Why does he not kill me? Evidently his arms are too short. All right," he said, "Vasíli, we will square up accounts. And Tíshka, that dog, I suppose he says so, too?" "All speak ill of you." "But what do they say?" "I loathe to tell." "Never mind! Take courage and speak!" "They say: 'May his belly burst, and his guts run out!'" Mikhaíl Seménovich was delighted, and he even laughed. "We will see whose will run out first. Who said that? Tíshka?" [Illustration: "But the candle was still burning" _Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko_] "Nobody said a good word. All of them curse you and threaten you." "Well, and Peter Mikhyéev? What does he say? He, too, I suppose, is cursing me?" "No, Mikhaíl Seménovich, Peter is not cursing." "What does he say?" "He is the only one of all the peasants who is not saying anything. He is a wise peasant. I wondered at him, Mikhaíl Seménovich." "How so?" "All the peasants were wondering at what he was doing." "What was he doing?" "It is wonderful. I rode up to him. He is ploughing the slanting desyatína at Túrkin Height. As I rode up to him, I heard some one singing such nice, high tones, and on the plough-staff something was shining." "Well?" "It was shining like a light. I rode up to him, and there I saw a five-kopek wax candle was stuck on the cross-bar and burning, and the wind did not blow it out. He had on a clean shirt, and was ploughing and singing Sunday hymns. And he would turn over and shake off the dirt, but the candle did not go out. He shook the plough in my presence, changed the peg, and started the plough, but the candle was still burning and did not go out." "And what did he say?" "He said nothing. When he saw me, he greeted me and at once began to sing again." "What did you say to him?" "I did not say anything to him, but the peasants came up and laughed at him: 'Mikhyéev will not get rid of his sin of ploughing during Easter week even if he should pray all his life.'" "What did he say to that?" "All he said was: 'Peace on earth and good-will to men.' He took his plough, started his horses, and sang out in a thin voice, but the candle kept burning and did not go out." The clerk stopped laughing. He put down the guitar, lowered his head, and fell to musing. He sat awhile; then he sent away the cook and the elder, went behind the curtain, lay down on the bed, and began to sigh and to sob, just as though a cart were driving past with sheaves. His wife came and began to speak to him; he gave her no answer. All he said was: "He has vanquished me. My turn has come." His wife tried to calm him. "Go and send them home! Maybe it will be all right. See what deeds you have done, and now you lose your courage." "I am lost," he said. "He has vanquished me." His wife cried to him: "You just have it on your brain, 'He has vanquished me, he has vanquished me.' Go and send the peasants home, and all will be well. Go, and I will have your horse saddled." The horse was brought up, and the clerk's wife persuaded him to ride into the field to send the peasants home. Mikhaíl Seménovich mounted his horse and rode into the field. He drove through the yard, and a woman opened the gate for him, and he passed into the village. The moment the people saw the clerk, they hid themselves from him, one in the yard, another around a corner, a third in the garden. The clerk rode through the whole village and reached the outer gate. The gate was shut, and he could not open it while sitting on his horse. He called and called for somebody to open the gate, but no one would come. He got down from his horse, opened the gate, and in the gateway started to mount again. He put his foot into the stirrup, rose in it, and was on the point of vaulting over the saddle, when his horse shied at a pig and backed up toward the picket fence; he was a heavy man and did not get into his saddle, but fell over, with his belly on picket. There was but one sharp post in the picket fence, and it was higher than the rest. It was this post that he struck with his belly. He was ripped open and fell to the ground. When the peasants drove home from their work, the horses snorted and would not go through the gate. The peasants went to look, and saw Mikhaíl lying on his back. His arms were stretched out, his eyes stood open, and all his inside had run out and the blood stood in a pool,--the earth had not sucked it in. The peasants were frightened. They took their horses in by back roads, but Mikhyéev alone got down and walked over to the clerk. He saw that he was dead, so he closed his eyes, hitched his cart, with the aid of his son put the dead man in the bed of the cart, and took him to the manor. The master heard about all these things, and to save himself from sin substituted tenant pay for the manorial labour. And the peasants saw that the power of God was not in sin, but in goodness. THE TWO OLD MEN 1885 THE TWO OLD MEN Therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, for the Father seeketh such to worship him. (John iv. 19-23.) I. Two old men got ready to go to old Jerusalem to pray to God. One of them was a rich peasant; his name was Efím Tarásych Shevelév. The other was not a well-to-do man, and his name was Eliséy Bodróv. Efím was a steady man: he did not drink liquor, nor smoke tobacco, nor take snuff, had never cursed in his life, and was a stern, firm old man. He had served two terms as an elder, and had gone out of his office without a deficit. He had a large family,--two sons and a married grandson,--and all lived together. As to looks he was a sound, bearded, erect man, and only in his seventh decade did a gray streak appear in his beard. Eliséy was neither wealthy nor poor; in former days he used to work out as a carpenter, but in his old age he stayed at home and kept bees. One son was away earning money, and another was living at home. Eliséy was a good-natured and merry man. He liked to drink liquor and take snuff, and sing songs; but he was a peaceable man, and lived in friendship with his home folk and with the neighbours. In appearance he was an undersized, swarthy man, with a curly beard and, like his saint, Prophet Elisha, his whole head was bald. The old men had long ago made the vow and agreed to go together, but Tarásych had had no time before: he had so much business on hand. The moment one thing came to an end, another began; now he had to get his grandson married, now he was expecting his younger son back from the army, and now he had to build him a new hut. On a holiday the two old men once met, and they sat down on logs. "Well," said Eliséy, "when are we going to carry out our vow?" Efím frowned. "We shall have to wait," he said, "for this is a hard year for me. I have started to build a house,--I thought I could do it with one hundred, but it is going on now in the third. And still it is not done. We shall have to let it go till summer. In the summer, God willing, we shall go by all means." "According to my understanding," said Eliséy, "there is no sense in delaying. We ought to go at once. Spring is the best time." "The time is all right, but the work is begun, so how can I drop it?" "Have you nobody to attend to it? Your son will do it." "Do it? My eldest is not reliable,--he drinks." "When we die, friend, they will get along without us. Let your son learn it!" "That is so, but still I want to see things done under my eyes." "Oh, dear man! You can never attend to everything. The other day the women in my house were washing and cleaning up for the holidays. This and that had to be done, and everything could not be looked after. My eldest daughter-in-law, a clever woman, said: 'It is a lucky thing the holidays come without waiting for us, for else, no matter how much we might work, we should never get done.'" Tarásych fell to musing. "I have spent a great deal of money on this building," he said, "and I can't start out on the pilgrimage with empty hands. One hundred roubles are not a trifling matter." Eliséy laughed. "Don't sin, friend!" he said. "You have ten times as much as I, and yet you talk about money. Only say when we shall start. I have no money, but that will be all right." Tarásych smiled. "What a rich man you are!" he said. "Where shall you get the money from?" "I will scratch around in the house and will get together some there; and if that is not enough, I will let my neighbour have ten hives. He has been asking me for them." "You will have a fine swarm! You will be worrying about it." "Worrying? No, my friend! I have never worried about anything in life but sins. There is nothing more precious than the soul." "That is so; but still, it is not good if things do not run right at home." "If things do not run right in our soul, it is worse. We have made a vow, so let us go! Truly, let us go!" II. Eliséy persuaded his friend to go. Efím thought and thought about it, and on the following morning he came to Eliséy. "Well, let us go," he said, "you have spoken rightly. God controls life and death. We must go while we are alive and have strength." A week later the old men started. Tarásych had money at home. He took one hundred roubles with him and left two hundred with his wife. Eliséy, too, got ready. He sold his neighbour ten hives and the increase of ten other hives. For the whole he received seventy roubles. The remaining thirty roubles he swept up from everybody in the house. His wife gave him the last she had,--she had put it away for her funeral; his daughter-in-law gave him what she had. Efím Tarásych left all his affairs in the hands of his eldest son: he told him where to mow, and how many fields to mow, and where to haul the manure, and how to finish the hut and thatch it. He considered everything, and gave his orders. But all the order that Eliséy gave was that his wife should set out the young brood separately from the hives sold and give the neighbour what belonged to him without cheating him, but about domestic affairs he did not even speak: "The needs themselves," he thought, "will show you what to do and how to do it. You have been farming yourselves, so you will do as seems best to you." The old men got ready. The home folk baked a lot of flat cakes for them, and they made wallets for themselves, cut out new leg-rags, put on new short boots, took reserve bast shoes, and started. The home folk saw them off beyond the enclosure and bade them good-bye, and the old men were off for their pilgrimage. Eliséy left in a happy mood, and as soon as he left his village he forgot all his affairs. All the care he had was how to please his companion, how to keep from saying an unseemly word to anybody, how to reach the goal in peace and love, and how to get home again. As Eliséy walked along the road he either muttered some prayer or repeated such of the lives of the saints as he knew. Whenever he met a person on the road, or when he came to a hostelry, he tried to be as kind to everybody as he could, and to say to them God-fearing words. He walked along and was happy. There was only one thing Eliséy could not do: he wanted to stop taking snuff and had left his snuff-box at home, but he hankered for it. On the road a man offered him some. He wrangled with himself and stepped away from his companion so as not to lead him into sin, and took a pinch. Efím Tarásych walked firmly and well; he did no wrong and spoke no vain words, but there was no lightness in his heart. The cares about his home did not leave his mind. He was thinking all the time about what was going on at home,--whether he had not forgotten to give his son some order, and whether his son was doing things in the right way. When he saw along the road that they were setting out potatoes or hauling manure, he wondered whether his son was doing as he had been ordered. He just felt like returning, and showing him what to do, and doing it himself. III. The old men walked for live weeks. They wore out their home-made bast shoes and began to buy new ones. They reached the country of the Little-Russians. Heretofore they had been paying for their night's lodging and for their dinner, but when they came to the Little-Russians, people vied with each other in inviting them to their houses. They let them come in, and fed them, and took no money from them, but even filled their wallets with bread, and now and then with flat cakes. Thus the old men walked without expense some seven hundred versts. They crossed another Government and came to a place where there had been a failure of crops. There they let them into the houses and did not take any money for their night's lodging, but would not feed them. And they did not give them bread everywhere,--not even for money could the old men get any in some places. The previous year, so the people said, nothing had grown. Those who had been rich were ruined,--they sold everything; those who had lived in comfort came down to nothing; and the poor people either entirely left the country, or turned beggars, or just managed to exist at home. In the winter they lived on chaff and orach. One night the two old men stayed in a borough. There they bought about fifteen pounds of bread. In the morning they left before daybreak, so that they might walk a good distance before the heat. They marched some ten versts and reached a brook. They sat down, filled their cups with water, softened the bread with it and ate it, and changed their leg-rags. They sat awhile and rested themselves. Eliséy took out his snuff-horn. Efím Tarásych shook his head at him. "Why don't you throw away that nasty thing?" he asked. Eliséy waved his hand. "Sin has overpowered me," he said. "What shall I do?" They got up and marched on. They walked another ten versts. They came to a large village, and passed through it. It was quite warm then. Eliséy was tired, and wanted to stop and get a drink, but Tarásych would not stop. Tarásych was a better walker, and Eliséy had a hard time keeping up with him. "I should like to get a drink," he said. "Well, drink! I do not want any." Eliséy stopped. "Do not wait for me," he said. "I will just run into a hut and get a drink of water. I will catch up with you at once." "All right," he said. And Efím Tarásych proceeded by himself along the road, while Eliséy turned to go into a hut. Eliséy came up to the hut. It was a small clay cabin; the lower part was black, the upper white, and the clay had long ago crumbled off,--evidently it had not been plastered for a long time,--and the roof was open at one end. The entrance was from the yard. Eliséy stepped into the yard, and there saw that a lean, beardless man with his shirt stuck in his trousers in Little-Russian fashion was lying near the earth mound. The man had evidently lain down in a cool spot, but now the sun was burning down upon him. He was lying there awake. Eliséy called out to him, asking him to give him a drink, but the man made no reply. "He is either sick, or an unkind man," thought Eliséy, going up to the door. Inside he heard a child crying. He knocked with the door-ring. "Good people!" No answer. He struck with his staff against the door. "Christian people!" No stir. "Servants of the Lord!" No reply. Eliséy was on the point of going away, when he heard somebody groaning within. "I wonder whether some misfortune has happened there to the people. I must see." And Eliséy went into the hut. IV. Eliséy turned the ring,--the door was not locked. He pushed the door open and walked through the vestibule. The door into the living-room was open. On the left there was an oven; straight ahead was the front corner; in the corner stood a shrine and a table; beyond the table was a bench, and on it sat a bareheaded old woman, in nothing but a shirt; her head was leaning on the table, and near her stood a lean little boy, his face as yellow as wax and his belly swollen, and he was pulling the old woman's sleeve, and crying at the top of his voice and begging for something. Eliséy entered the room. There was a stifling air in the house. He saw a woman lying behind the oven, on the floor. She was lying on her face without looking at anything, and snoring, and now stretching out a leg and again drawing it up. And she tossed from side to side,--and from her came that oppressive smell: evidently she was very sick, and there was nobody to take her away. The old woman raised her head, when she saw the man. "What do you want?" she said, in Little-Russian. "What do you want? We have nothing, my dear man." Eliséy understood what she was saying: he walked over to her. "Servant of the Lord," he said, "I have come in to get a drink of water." "There is none, I say, there is none. There is nothing here for you to take. Go!" Eliséy asked her: "Is there no well man here to take this woman away?" "There is nobody here: the man is dying in the yard, and we here." The boy grew quiet when he saw the stranger, but when the old woman began to speak, he again took hold of her sleeve. "Bread, granny, bread!" and he burst out weeping. Just as Eliséy was going to ask the old woman another question, the man tumbled into the hut; he walked along the wall and wanted to sit down on the bench, but before reaching it he fell down in the corner, near the threshold. He did not try to get up, but began to speak. He would say one word at a time, then draw his breath, then say something again. "We are sick," he said, "and--hungry. The boy is starving." He indicated the boy with his head and began to weep. Eliséy shifted his wallet on his back, freed his arms, let the wallet down on the ground, lifted it on the bench, and untied it. When it was open, he took out the bread and the knife, out off a slice, and gave it to the man. The man did not take it, but pointed to the boy and the girl, to have it given to them. Eliséy gave it to the boy. When the boy saw the bread, he made for it, grabbed the slice with both his hands, and stuck his nose into the bread. A girl crawled out from behind the oven and gazed at the bread. Eliséy gave her, too, a piece. He cut off another slice and gave it to the old woman. She took it and began to chew at it. "If you would just bring us some water," she said. "Their lips are parched. I wanted to bring some yesterday or to-day,--I do not remember when,--but I fell down and left the pail there, if nobody took it away." Eliséy asked where their well was. The old woman told him where. Eliséy went out. He found the pail, brought some water, and gave the people to drink. The children ate some more bread with water, and the old woman ate some, but the man would not eat. "My stomach will not hold it," he said. The woman did not get up or come to: she was just tossing on the bed place. Eliséy went to the shop, and bought millet, salt, flour, and butter. He found an axe, chopped some wood, and made a fire in the oven. The girl helped him. Eliséy cooked a soup and porridge, and fed the people. V. The man ate a little, and so did the old woman, and the girl and the little boy licked the bowl clean and embraced each other and fell asleep. The man and the old woman told Eliséy how it had all happened. "We lived heretofore poorly," they said, "but when the crop failed us, we ate up in the fall everything we had. When we had nothing left, we began to beg from our neighbours and from good people. At first they gave us some, but later they refused. Some of them would have been willing to give us to eat, but they had nothing themselves. Besides we felt ashamed to beg: we owed everybody money and flour and bread. I looked for work," said the man, "but could find none. People were everywhere looking for work to get something to eat. One day I would work, and two I would go around looking for more work. The old woman and the girl went a distance away to beg, but the alms were poor,--nobody had any bread. Still, we managed to get something to eat: we thought we might squeeze through until the new crop; but in the spring they quit giving us alms altogether, and sickness fell upon us. It grew pretty bad: one day we would have something to eat, and two we went without it. We began to eat grass. And from the grass, or from some other reason, the woman grew sick. She lay down, and I had no strength, and we had nothing with which to improve matters." "I was the only one," the old woman said, "who worked: but I gave out and grew weak, as I had nothing to eat. The girl, too, grew weak and lost her courage. I sent her to the neighbours, but she did not go. She hid herself in a corner and would not go. A neighbour came in two days ago, but when she saw that we were hungry and sick, she turned around and went out. Her husband has left, and she has nothing with which to feed her young children. So we were lying here and waiting for death." When Eliséy heard what they said, he changed his mind about catching up with his companion, and remained there overnight. In the morning Eliséy got up and began to work about the house as though he were the master. He set bread with the old woman and made a fire in the oven. He went with the girl to the neighbours to fetch what was necessary. Everything he wanted to pick up was gone: there was nothing left for farming, and the clothes were used up. Eliséy got everything which was needed: some things he made himself, and some he bought. Eliséy stayed with them one day, and a second, and a third. The little boy regained his strength, and he began to walk on the bench and to make friends with Eliséy. The girl, too, became quite cheerful and helped him in everything. She kept running after Eliséy: "Grandfather, grandfather!" The old woman got up and went to her neighbour. The man began to walk by holding on to the wall. Only the woman was lying down. On the third day she came to and asked for something to eat. "Well," thought Eliséy, "I had not expected to lose so much time. Now I must go." VI. The fourth day was the last of a fast, and Eliséy said to himself: "I will break fast with them. I will buy something for them for the holidays, and in the evening I must leave." Eliséy went once more to the village and bought milk, white flour, and lard. He and the old woman cooked and baked a lot of things, and in the morning Eliséy went to mass and came back and broke fast with the people. On that day the woman got up and began to move about. The man shaved himself, put on a clean shirt,--the old woman had washed it for him,--and went to a rich peasant to ask a favour of him. His mowing and field were mortgaged to the rich man, so he went to ask him to let him have the mowing and the field until the new crop. He came back gloomy in the evening, and burst out weeping. The rich man would not show him the favour; he had asked him to bring the money. Eliséy fell to musing. "How are they going to live now? People will be going out to mow, but they cannot go, for it is all mortgaged. The rye will ripen and people will begin to harvest it (and there is such a fine stand of it!), but they have nothing to look forward to,--their desyatína is sold to the rich peasant. If I go away, they will fall back into poverty." And Eliséy was in doubt, and did not go away in the evening, but put it off until morning. He went into the yard to sleep. He said his prayers and lay down, but could not fall asleep. "I ought to go,--as it is I have spent much time and money; but I am sorry for the people. You can't help everybody. I meant to bring them some water and give each a slice of bread, but see how far I have gone. Now I shall have to buy out his mowing and field. And if I buy out the field, I might as well buy a cow for the children, and a horse for the man to haul his sheaves with. Brother Eliséy Kuzmích, you are in for it! You have let yourself loose, and now you will not straighten out things." Eliséy got up, took the caftan from under his head, and unrolled it; he drew out his snuff-horn and took a pinch, thinking that he would clear his thoughts, but no,--he thought and thought and could not come to any conclusion. He ought to get up and go, but he was sorry for the people. He did not know what to do. He rolled the caftan up under his head and lay down to sleep. He lay there for a long time, and the cocks crowed, and then only did he fall asleep. Suddenly he felt as though some one had wakened him. He saw himself all dressed, with his wallet and staff, and he had to pass through a gate, but it was just open enough to let a man squeeze through. He went to the gate and his wallet caught on one side, and as he was about to free it, one of his leg-rags got caught on the other side and came open. He tried to free the leg-rag, but it was not caught in the wicker fence: it was the girl who was holding on to it, and crying, "Grandfather, grandfather, bread!" He looked at his foot, and there was the little boy holding on to it, and the old woman and the man were looking out of the window. Eliséy awoke, and he began to speak to himself in an audible voice: "I will buy out the field and the mowing to-morrow, and will buy a horse, and flour to last until harvest-time, and a cow for the children. For how would it be to go beyond the sea to seek Christ and lose him within me? I must get the people started." And Eliséy fell asleep until morning. He awoke early. He went to the rich merchant, bought out the rye and gave him money for the mowing. He bought a scythe,--for that had been sold, too,--and brought it home. He sent the man out to mow, and himself went to see the peasants: he found a horse and a cart for sale at the innkeeper's. He bargained with him for it, and bought it; then he bought a bag of flour, which he put in the cart, and went out to buy a cow. As he was walking, he came across two Little-Russian women, and they were talking to one another. Though they were talking in their dialect, he could make out what they were saying about him: "You see, at first they did not recognize him; they thought that he was just a simple kind of a man. They say, he went in to get a drink, and he has just stopped there. What a lot of things he has bought them! I myself saw him buy a horse and cart to-day of the innkeeper. Evidently there are such people in the world. I must go and take a look at him." When Eliséy heard that, he understood that they were praising him, and so he did not go to buy the cow. He returned to the innkeeper and gave him the money for the horse. He hitched it up and drove with the flour to the house. When he drove up to the gate, he stopped and climbed down from the cart. When the people of the house saw the horse, they were surprised. They thought that he had bought the horse for them, but did not dare say so. The master came out to open the gates. "Grandfather, where did you get that horse?" "I bought it," he said. "I got it cheap. Mow some grass and put it in the cart, so that the horse may have some for the night. And take off the bag!" The master unhitched the horse, carried the bag to the granary, mowed a lot of grass, and put it into the cart. They lay down to sleep. Eliséy slept in the street, and thither he had carried his wallet in the evening. All the people fell asleep. Eliséy got up, tied his wallet, put on his shoes and his caftan, and started down the road to catch up with Efím. VII. Eliséy had walked about five versts, when day began to break. He sat down under a tree, untied his wallet, and began to count his money. He found that he had seventeen roubles twenty kopeks left. "Well," he thought, "with this sum I cannot travel beyond the sea, but if I beg in Christ's name, I shall only increase my sin. Friend Efím will reach the place by himself, and will put up a candle for me. But I shall evidently never fulfil my vow. The master is merciful, and he will forgive me." Eliséy got up, slung his wallet over his shoulders, and turned back. He made a circle around the village so that people might not see him. And soon he reached home. On his way out he had found it hard: it was hard keeping up with Efím; but on his way home God made it easy for him, for he did not know what weariness was. Walking was just play to him, and he swayed his staff, and made as much as seventy versts a day. Eliséy came back home. The harvest was all in. The home folk were glad to see the old man. They asked all about him, why he had left his companion and why he had not gone to Jerusalem, but had returned home. Eliséy did not tell them anything. "God did not grant me that I should," he said. "I spent my money on the way, and got separated from my companion. And so I did not go. Forgive me for Christ's sake." He gave the old woman what money he had left. He asked all about the home matters: everything was right; everything had been attended to and nothing missed, and all were living in peace and agreement. Efím's people heard that very day that Eliséy had come back, and so they came to inquire about their old man. And Eliséy told them the same story. "You see," he said, "the old man started to walk briskly, and three days before St. Peter's day we lost each other. I wanted to catch up with him, but it happened that I spent all my money and could not go on, so I returned home." The people marvelled how it was that such a clever man had acted so foolishly as to start and not reach the place and merely spend his money. They wondered awhile, and forgot about it. Eliséy, too, forgot about it. He began to work about the house: he got the wood ready for the winter with his son, threshed the grain with the women, thatched the sheds, gathered in the bees, and gave ten hives with the young brood to his neighbour. When he got all the work done, he sent his son out to earn money, and himself sat down in the winter to plait bast shoes and hollow out blocks for the hives. VIII. All that day that Eliséy passed with the sick people, Efím waited for his companion. He walked but a short distance and sat down. He waited and waited, and fell asleep; when he awoke, he sat awhile,--but his companion did not turn up. He kept a sharp lookout for him, but the sun was going down behind a tree, and still Eliséy was not there. "I wonder whether he has not passed by me," he thought. "Maybe somebody drove him past, and he did not see me while I was asleep. But how could he help seeing me? In the steppe you can see a long distance off. If I go back, he may be marching on, and we shall only get farther separated from each other. I will walk on,--we shall meet at the resting-place for the night." When he came to a village, he asked the village officer to look out for an old man and bring him to the house where he stayed. Eliséy did not come there for the night. Efím marched on, and asked everybody whether they had seen a bald-headed old man. No one had seen him. Efím was surprised and walked on. "We shall meet somewhere in Odessa," he thought, "or on the boat," and then he stopped thinking about it. On the road he fell in with a pilgrim. The pilgrim, in calotte, cassock, and long hair, had been to Mount Athos, and was now going for the second time to Jerusalem. They met at a hostelry, and they had a chat and started off together. They reached Odessa without any accident. They waited for three days for a ship. There were many pilgrims there, and they had come together from all directions. Again Efím asked about Eliséy, but nobody had seen him. Efím provided himself with a passport,--that cost five roubles. He had forty roubles left for his round trip, and he bought bread and herring for the voyage. The ship was loaded, then the pilgrims were admitted, and Tarásych sat down beside the pilgrim he had met. The anchors were weighed, they pushed off from the shore, and the ship sailed across the sea. During the day they had good sailing; in the evening a wind arose, rain fell, and the ship began to rock and to be washed by the waves. The people grew excited; the women began to shriek, and such men as were weak ran up and down the ship, trying to find a safe place. Efím, too, was frightened, but he did not show it: where he had sat down on the floor on boarding the ship by the side of Tambóv peasants, he sat through the night and the following day; all of them held on to their wallets and did not speak. On the third day it grew calmer. On the fifth day they landed at Constantinople. Some of the pilgrims went ashore there, to visit the Cathedral of St. Sophia, which now the Turks hold; Tarásych did not go, but remained on board the ship. All he did was to buy some white bread. They remained there a day, and then again sailed through the sea. They stopped at Smyrna town, and at another city by the name of Alexandria, and safely reached the city of Jaffa. In Jaffa all pilgrims go ashore: from there it is seventy versts on foot to Jerusalem. At the landing the people had quite a scare: the ship was high, and the people were let down into boats below; but the boats were rocking all the time, and two people were let down past the boat and got a ducking, but otherwise all went safely. When all were ashore, they went on afoot; on the third day they reached Jerusalem at dinner-time. They stopped in a suburb, in a Russian hostelry; there they had their passports stamped and ate their dinner, and then they followed a pilgrim to the holy places. It was too early yet to be admitted to the Sepulchre of the Lord, so they went to the Monastery of the Patriarch. There all the worshippers were gathered, and the female sex was put apart from the male. They were all ordered to take off their shoes and sit in a circle. A monk came out with a towel, and began to wash everybody's feet. He would wash, and rub them clean, and kiss them, and thus he went around the whole circle. He washed Efím's feet and kissed them. They celebrated vigils and matins, and placed a candle, and served a mass for the parents. There they were fed, and received wine to drink. On the following morning they went to the cell of Mary of Egypt, where she took refuge. There they placed candles, and a mass was celebrated. From there they went to Abraham's Monastery. They saw the Sebak garden, the place where Abraham wanted to sacrifice his son to God. Then they went to the place where Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene, and to the Church of Jacob, the brother of the Lord. The pilgrim showed them all the places, and in every place he told how much money they ought to give. At dinner they returned to the hostelry. They ate, and were just getting ready to lie down to sleep, when the pilgrim, who was rummaging through his clothes, began to sigh. "They have pulled out my pocketbook with money in it," he said. "I had twenty-three roubles,--two ten-rouble bills, and three in change." The pilgrim felt badly about it, but nothing could be done, and all went to sleep. IX. As Efím went to sleep, a temptation came over him. "They have not taken the pilgrim's money," he thought, "he did not have any. Nowhere did he offer anything. He told me to give, but he himself did not offer any. He took a rouble from me." As Efím was thinking so, he began to rebuke himself: "How dare I judge the man, and commit a sin. I will not sin." The moment he forgot himself, he again thought that the pilgrim had a sharp eye on money, and that it was unlikely that they had taken the money from him. "He never had any money," he thought. "It's only an excuse." They got up before evening and went to an early mass at the Church of the Resurrection,--to the Sepulchre of the Lord. The pilgrim did not leave Efím's side, but walked with him all the time. They came to the church. There was there collected a large crowd of worshippers, Greeks, and Armenians, and Turks, and Syrians. Efím came with the people to the Holy Gate. A monk led them. He took them past the Turkish guard to the place where the Saviour was taken from the cross and anointed, and where candles were burning in nine large candlesticks. He showed and explained everything to them. Efím placed a candle there. Then the monks led Efím to the right over steps to Golgotha, where the cross stood; there Efím prayed; then Efím was shown the cleft where the earth was rent to the lowermost regions; then he was shown the place where Christ's hands and feet had been nailed to the cross, and then he was shown Adam's grave, where Christ's blood dropped on his bones. Then they came to the rock on which Christ sat when they put the wreath of thorns on his head; then to the post to which Christ was tied when he was beaten. Then Efím saw the stone with the two holes, for Christ's feet. They wanted to show him other things, but the people hastened away: all hurried to the grotto of the Lord's Sepulchre. Some foreign mass was just ended, and the Russian began. Efím followed the people to the grotto. He wanted to get away from the pilgrim, for in thought he still sinned against him, but the pilgrim stuck to him, and went with him to mass at the Sepulchre of the Lord. They wanted to stand close to it, but were too late. There was such a crowd there that it was not possible to move forward or back. Efím stood there and looked straight ahead and prayed, but every once in awhile he felt his purse, to see whether it was in his pocket. His thoughts were divided; now he thought that the pilgrim had deceived him; and then he thought, if he had not deceived him, and the pocketbook had really been stolen, the same might happen to him. X. Efím stood there and prayed and looked ahead into the chapel where the Sepulchre itself was, and where over the Sepulchre thirty-six lamps were burning. Efím looked over the heads to see the marvellous thing: under the very lamps, where the blessed fire was burning, in front of all, he saw an old man in a coarse caftan, with a bald spot shining on his whole head, and he looked very much like Eliséy Bodróv. "He resembles Eliséy," he thought. "But how can it be he? He could not have got here before me. The previous ship started a week ahead of us. He could not have been on that ship. On our ship he was not, for I saw all the pilgrims." Just as Efím was thinking this, the old man began to pray, and made three bows: once in front of him, to God, and twice to either side, to all the Orthodox people. And as the old man turned his head to the right, Efím recognized him. Sure enough, it was Bodróv: it was his blackish, curly beard, and the gray streak on his cheeks, and his brows, his eyes, his nose, and full face,--all his. Certainly it was he, Eliséy Bodróv. Efím was glad that he had found his companion, and he marvelled how Eliséy could have got there ahead of him. "How in the world did Bodróv get to that place in front?" he thought. "No doubt he met a man who knew how to get him there. When all go out, I will hunt him up, and I will drop the pilgrim in the colette, and will walk with him. Maybe he will take me to the front place." Efím kept an eye on Eliséy, so as not to lose him. When the masses were over, the people began to stir. As they went up to kiss the Sepulchre, they crowded and pushed Efím to one side. He was frightened lest his purse should be stolen. He put his hand to his purse and tried to make his way out into the open. When he got out, he walked and walked, trying to find Eliséy, both on the outside and in the church. In the church he saw many people in the cells: some ate, and drank wine, and slept there, and read their prayers. But Eliséy was not to be found. Efím returned to the hostelry, but he did not find his companion there either. On that evening the pilgrim, too, did not come back. He was gone, and had not returned the rouble to Efím. So Efím was left alone. On the following day Efím went again to the Sepulchre of the Lord with a Tambóv peasant, with whom he had journeyed on the ship. He wanted to make his way to the front, but he was again pushed back, and so he stood at a column and prayed. He looked ahead of him, and there in front, under the lamps, at the very Sepulchre of the Lord, stood Eliséy. He had extended his hands, like a priest at the altar, and his bald spot shone over his whole head. "Now," thought Efím, "I will not miss him." He made his way to the front, but Eliséy was not there. Evidently he had left. On the third day he again went to the Sepulchre of the Lord, and there he saw Eliséy standing in the holiest place, in sight of everybody, and his hands were stretched out, and he looked up, as though he saw something above him. And his bald spot shone over his whole head. "Now," thought Efím, "I will certainly not miss him; I will go and stand at the entrance, and then he cannot escape me." Efím went out and stood there for a long time. He stood until after noon: all the people had passed out, but Eliséy was not among them. Efím passed six weeks in Jerusalem, and visited all the places, Bethlehem, and Bethany, and the Jordan, and had a stamp put on a new shirt at the Lord's Sepulchre, to be buried in it, and filled a bottle of Jordan water, and got some earth, and candles with blessed fire, and in eight places inscribed names for the mass of the dead. He spent all his money and had just enough left to get home on, and so he started for home. He reached Jaffa, boarded a ship, landed at Odessa, and walked toward his home. XI. Efím walked by himself the same way he had come out. As he was getting close to his village, he began to worry again about how things were going at his house without him. In a year, he thought, much water runs by. It takes a lifetime to get together a home, but it does not take long to ruin it. He wondered how his son had done without him, how the spring had opened, how the cattle had wintered, and whether the hut was well built. Efím reached the spot where the year before he had parted from Eliséy. It was not possible to recognize the people. Where the year before they had suffered want, now there was plenty. Everything grew well in the field. The people picked up again and forgot their former misery. In the evening Efím reached the very village where the year before Eliséy had fallen behind. He had just entered the village, when a little girl in a white shirt came running out of a hut. "Grandfather, grandfather! Come to our house!" Efím wanted to go on, but the girl would not let him. She took hold of his coat and laughed and pulled him to the hut. A woman with a boy came out on the porch, and she, too, beckoned to him: "Come in, grandfather, and eat supper with us and stay overnight!" Efím stepped in. "I can, at least, ask about Eliséy," he thought. "This is the very hut into which he went to get a drink." Efím went inside. The woman took off his wallet, gave him water to wash himself, and seated him at the table. She fetched milk, cheese, cakes, and porridge, and placed it all on the table. Tarásych thanked her and praised the people for being hospitable to pilgrims. The woman shook her head. "We cannot help receiving pilgrims," she said. "We received life from a pilgrim. We lived forgetting God, and God punished us in such a way that all of us were waiting for death. Last summer we came to such a point that we were all lying down sick and starved. We should certainly have died, but God sent us an old man like you. He stepped in during the daytime to get a drink; when he saw us, he took pity on us and remained at our house. He gave us to eat and to drink, and put us on our feet again. He cleared our land from debt, and bought a horse and cart and left it with us." The old woman entered the room, and interrupted her speech: "We do not know," she said, "whether he was a man or an angel of the Lord. He was good to us all, and pitied us, and then went away without giving his name, so that we do not know for whom to pray to God. I see it as though it happened just now: I was lying down and waiting for death to come; I looked up and saw a man come in,--just a simple, bald-headed man,--and ask for a drink. I, sinful woman, thought that he was a tramp, but see what he did! When he saw us he put down his wallet, right in this spot, and opened it." The girl broke in. "No, granny," she said, "first he put his wallet in the middle of the room, and only later did he put it on the bench." And they began to dispute and to recall his words and deeds: where he had sat down, and where he had slept, and what he had done, and what he had said to each. Toward evening the master of the house came home on a horse, and he, too, began to tell about Eliséy, and how he had stayed at their house. "If he had not come to us," he said, "we should all of us have died in sin. We were dying in despair, and we murmured against God and men. But he put us on our feet, and through him we found out God, and began to believe in good people. May Christ save him! Before that we lived like beasts, and he has made men of us." They gave Efím to eat and to drink, and gave him a place to sleep, and themselves went to bed. As Efím lay down, he could not sleep, and Eliséy did not leave his mind, but he thought of how he had seen him three times in Jerusalem in the foremost place. "So this is the way he got ahead of me," he thought. "My work may be accepted or not, but his the Lord has accepted." In the morning Efím bade the people good-bye: they filled his wallet with cakes and went to work, while Efím started out on the road. XII. Efím was away precisely a year. In the spring he returned home. He reached his house in the evening. His son was not at home,--he was in the dram-shop. He returned intoxicated, and Efím began to ask him about the house. He saw by everything that the lad had got into bad ways without him. He had spent all the money, and the business he had neglected. His father scolded him, and he answered his father with rude words. "You ought to have come back yourself," he said. "Instead, you went away and took all the money with you, and now you make me responsible." The old man became angry and beat his son. The next morning Efím Tarásych went to the elder to talk to him about his son. As he passed Eliséy's farm, Eliséy's wife was standing on the porch and greeting him: "Welcome, friend!" she said. "Did you, dear man, have a successful journey?" Efím Tarásych stopped. "Thank God," he said, "I have been at Jerusalem, but I lost your husband on the way. I hear that he is back." And the old woman started to talk to him, for she was fond of babbling. "He is back, my dear; he has been back for quite awhile. He returned soon after Assumption day. We were so glad to see him back. It was lonely without him. Not that we mean his work,--for he is getting old. But he is the head, and it is jollier for us. How happy our lad was! Without him, he said, it was as without light for the eyes. It was lonely without him, my dear. We love him so much!" "Well, is he at home now?" "At home he is, neighbour, in the apiary, brushing in the swarms. He says it was a fine swarming season. The old man does not remember when there has been such a lot of bees. God gives us not according to our sins, he says. Come in, dear one! He will be so glad to see you." Efím walked through the vestibule and through the yard to the apiary, to see Eliséy. When he came inside the apiary, he saw Eliséy standing without a net, without gloves, in a gray caftan, under a birch-tree, extending his arms and looking up, and his bald spot shone over his whole head, just as he had stood in Jerusalem at the Lord's Sepulchre, and above him, through the birch-tree, the sun glowed, and above his head the golden bees circled in the form of a wreath, and did not sting him. Efím stopped. Eliséy's wife called out to her husband: "Your friend is here." Eliséy looked around. He was happy, and walked over toward his friend, softly brushing the bees out of his beard. "Welcome, friend, welcome, dear man! Did you have a successful journey?" "My feet took me there, and I have brought you some water from the river Jordan. Come and get it! But whether the Lord has received my work--" "Thank God! Christ save you!" Efím was silent. "I was there with my feet, but in spirit you were there, or somebody else--" "It is God's work, my friend, God's work." "On my way home I stopped at the hut where I lost you." Eliséy was frightened, and he hastened to say: "It is God's work, my friend, God's work. Well, won't you step in? I will bring some honey." And Eliséy changed the subject, and began to speak of home matters. Efím heaved a sigh. He did not mention the people of the hut to Eliséy, nor what he had seen in Jerusalem. And he understood that God has enjoined that each man shall before his death carry out his vow--with love and good deeds. WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO 1885 WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO Shoemaker Martýn Avdyéich lived in the city. He lived in a basement, in a room with one window. The window looked out on the street. Through it the people could be seen as they passed by: though only the feet were visible, Martýn Avdyéich could tell the men by their boots. He had lived for a long time in one place and had many acquaintances. It was a rare pair of boots in the neighbourhood that had not gone once or twice through his hands. Some he had resoled; on others he had put patches, or fixed the seams, or even put on new uppers. Frequently he saw his own work through the window. He had much to do, for he did honest work, put in strong material, took no more than was fair, and kept his word. If he could get a piece of work done by a certain time he undertook to do it, and if not, he would not cheat, but said so in advance. Everybody knew Avdyéich, and his work never stopped. Avdyéich had always been a good man, but in his old age he thought more of his soul and came near unto God. Even while Martýn had been living with a master, his wife had died, and he had been left with a boy three years of age. Their children did not live long. All the elder children had died before. At first Martýn had intended sending his son to his sister in a village, but then he felt sorry for the little lad, and thought: "It will be hard for my Kapitóshka to grow up in somebody else's family, and so I will keep him." Avdyéich left his master, and took up quarters with his son. But God did not grant Avdyéich any luck with his children. No sooner had the boy grown up so as to be a help to his father and a joy to him, than a disease fell upon him and he lay down and had a fever for a week and died. Martýn buried his son, and was in despair. He despaired so much that he began to murmur against God. He was so downhearted that more than once he asked God to let him die, and rebuked God for having taken his beloved only son, and not him. He even stopped going to church. One day an old man, a countryman of Avdyéich's, returning from Tróitsa,--he had been a pilgrim for eight years,--came to see him. Avdyéich talked with him and began to complain of his sorrow: "I have even no desire to live any longer, godly man. If I could only die. That is all I am praying God for. I am a man without any hope." And the old man said to him: "You do not say well, Martýn. We cannot judge God's works. Not by our reason, but by God's judgment do we live. God has determined that your son should die, and you live. Evidently it is better so. The reason you are in despair is that you want to live for your own enjoyment." "What else shall we live for?" asked Martýn. And the old man said: "We must live for God, Martýn. He gives us life, and for Him must we live. When you shall live for Him and shall not worry about anything, life will be lighter for you." Martýn was silent, and he said: "How shall we live for God?" And the old man said: "Christ has shown us how to live for God. Do you know how to read? If so, buy yourself a Gospel and read it, and you will learn from it how to live for God. It tells all about it." These words fell deep into Avdyéich's heart. And he went that very day and bought himself a New Testament in large letters, and began to read. Avdyéich had meant to read it on holidays only, but when he began to read it, his heart was so rejoiced that he read it every day. Many a time he buried himself so much in reading that all the kerosene would be spent in the lamp, but he could not tear himself away from the book. And Avdyéich read in it every evening, and the more he read, the clearer it became to him what God wanted of him, and how he should live for God; and his heart grew lighter and lighter. Formerly, when he lay down to sleep, he used to groan and sob and think of his Kapitóshka, but now he only muttered: "Glory be to Thee, glory to Thee, O Lord! Thy will be done!" Since then Avdyéich's life had been changed. Formerly, he used on a holiday to frequent the tavern, to drink tea, and would not decline a drink of vódka. He would drink a glass with an acquaintance and, though he would not be drunk, he would come out of the tavern in a happier mood, and then he would speak foolish things, and would scold, or slander a man. Now all that passed away from him. His life came to be calm and happy. In the morning he sat down to work, and when he got through, he took the lamp from the hook, put it down on the table, fetched the book from the shelf, opened it, and began to read it. And the more he read, the better he understood it, and his mind was clearer and his heart lighter. One evening Martýn read late into the night. He had before him the Gospel of St. Luke. He read the sixth chapter and the verses: "And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." And he read also the other verses, where the Lord says: "And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like: he is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great." When Avdyéich read these words, there was joy in his heart. He took off his glasses, put them on the book, leaned his arms on the table, and fell to musing. And he began to apply these words to his life, and he thought: "Is my house on a rock, or on the sand? It is well if it is founded on a rock: it is so easy to sit alone,--it seems to me that I am doing everything which God has commanded; but if I dissipate, I shall sin again. I will just proceed as at present. It is so nice! Help me, God!" This he thought, and he wanted to go to sleep, but he was loath to tear himself away from the book. And he began to read the seventh chapter. He read about the centurion, about the widow's son, about the answer to John's disciples, and he reached the passage where the rich Pharisee invited the Lord to be his guest, and where the sinning woman anointed His feet and washed them with her tears, and he justified her. And he reached the 44th verse, and read: "And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment." When he had read these verses, he thought: "He gave no water for His feet; he gave no kiss; he did not anoint His head with oil." And again Avdyéich took off his glasses and placed them on the book, and fell to musing. "Evidently he was just such a Pharisee as I am. He, no doubt, thought only of himself: how to drink tea, and be warm, and in comfort, but he did not think of the guest. About himself he thought, but no care did he have for the guest. And who was the guest?--The Lord Himself. Would I have done so, if He had come to me?" And Avdyéich leaned his head on both his arms and did not notice how he fell asleep. "Martýn!" suddenly something seemed to breathe over his very ear. Martýn shuddered in his sleep: "Who is that?" He turned around and looked at the door, but there was nobody there. He bent down again, to go to sleep. Suddenly he heard distinctly: "Martýn, oh, Martýn, remember, to-morrow I will come to the street." Martýn awoke, rose from his chair, and began to rub his eyes. He did not know himself whether he had heard these words in his dream or in waking. He put out the light and went to sleep. Avdyéich got up in the morning before daybreak, said his prayers, made a fire, put the beet soup and porridge on the stove, started the samovár, tied on his apron, and sat down at the window to work. And, as he sat there at work, he kept thinking of what had happened the night before. His thoughts were divided: now he thought that it had only seemed so to him, and now again he thought he had actually heard the voice. "Well," he thought, "such things happen." Martýn was sitting at the window and not so much working as looking out into the street, and if somebody passed in unfamiliar boots, he bent over to look out of the window, in order to see not merely the boots, but also the face. A janitor passed by in new felt boots; then a water-carrier went past; then an old soldier of the days of Nicholas, in patched old felt boots, holding a shovel in his hands, came in a line with the window. Avdyéich recognized him by his felt boots. The old man's name was Stepánych, and he was living with a neighbouring merchant for charity's sake. It was his duty to help the janitor. Stepánych began to clear away the snow opposite Avdyéich's window. Avdyéich cast a glance at him and went back to his work. "Evidently I am losing my senses in my old age," Avdyéich laughed to himself. "Stepánych is clearing away the snow, and I thought that Christ was coming to see me. I, old fool, am losing my senses." But before he had made a dozen stitches, something drew him again toward the window. He looked out, and there he saw Stepánych leaning his shovel against the wall and either warming or resting himself. He was an old, broken-down man, and evidently shovelling snow was above his strength. Avdyéich thought: "I ought to give him some tea; fortunately the samovár is just boiling." He stuck the awl into the wood, got up, placed the samovár on the table, put some tea in the teapot, and tapped with his finger at the window. Stepánych turned around and walked over to the window. Avdyéich beckoned to him and went to open the door. "Come in and get warmed up!" he said. "I suppose you are feeling cold." "Christ save you! I have a breaking in my bones," said Stepánych. He came in, shook off the snow and wiped his boots so as not to track the floor, but he was tottering all the time. "Don't take the trouble to rub your boots. I will clean up,--that is my business. Come and sit down!" said Avdyéich. "Here, drink a glass of tea!" Avdyéich filled two glasses and moved one of them up to his guest, and himself poured his glass into the saucer and began to blow at it. Stepánych drank his glass; then he turned it upside down, put the lump of sugar on top of it, and began to express his thanks; but it was evident that he wanted another glass. "Have some more," said Avdyéich; and he poured out a glass for his guest and one for himself. Avdyéich drank his tea, but something kept drawing his attention to the window. "Are you waiting for anybody?" asked the guest. "Am I waiting for anybody? It is really a shame to say for whom I am waiting: no, I am not exactly waiting, but a certain word has fallen deep into my heart: I do not know myself whether it is a vision, or what. You see, my friend, I read the Gospel yesterday about Father Christ and how He suffered and walked the earth. I suppose you have heard of it?" "Yes, I have," replied Stepánych, "but we are ignorant people,--we do not know how to read." "Well, so I read about how He walked the earth. I read, you know, about how He came to the Pharisee, and the Pharisee did not give Him a good reception. Well, my friend, as I was reading last night about that very thing, I wondered how he could have failed to honour Father Christ. If He should have happened to come to me, for example, I should have done everything to receive Him. But he did not receive Him well. As I was thinking of it, I fell asleep. And as I dozed off I heard some one calling me by name: I got up and it was as though somebody were whispering to me: 'Wait,' he said: 'I will come to-morrow.' This he repeated twice. Would you believe it,--it has been running through my head,--I blame myself for it,--and I am, as it were, waiting for Father Christ." Stepánych shook his head and said nothing. He finished his glass and put it sidewise, but Avdyéich took it again and filled it with tea. "Drink, and may it do you good! I suppose when He, the Father, walked the earth, He did not neglect anybody, and kept the company mostly of simple folk. He visited mostly simple folk, and chose His disciples mostly from people of our class, labouring men, like ourselves the sinners. He who raises himself up, He said, shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be raised. You call me Lord, He said, but I will wash your feet. He who wants to be the first, He said, let him be everybody's servant; because, He said, blessed are the poor, the meek the humble, and the merciful." Stepánych forgot his tea. He was an old man and easily moved to tears. He sat there and listened, and tears flowed down his cheeks. "Take another glass!" said Avdyéich. But Stepánych made the sign of the cross, thanked him for the tea, pushed the glass away from him, and got up. "Thank you, Martýn Avdyéich," he said. "You were hospitable to me, and have given food to my body and my soul." "You are welcome. Come in again,--I shall be glad to see you," said Avdyéich. Stepánych went away. Martýn poured out the last tea, finished another glass, put away the dishes, and again sat down at the window to work,--to tap a boot. And as he worked, he kept looking out of the window,--waiting for Christ and thinking of Him and His works. And all kinds of Christ's speeches ran through his head. There passed by two soldiers, one in Crown boots, the other in boots of his own; then the proprietor of a neighbouring house came by in clean galoshes, and then a baker with a basket. All of these went past the window, and then a woman in woollen stockings and peasant shoes came in line with the window. She went by the window and stopped near a wall. Avdyéich looked at her through the window, and saw that she was a strange, poorly dressed woman, with a child: she had stopped with her back to the wind and was trying to wrap the child, though she did not have anything to wrap it in. The woman's clothes were for the summer, and scanty at that. Avdyéich could hear the child cry in the street, and her vain attempt to quiet it. Avdyéich got up and went out of his room and up to the staircase, and called out: "Clever Woman! Clever woman!" The woman heard him and turned around. "Why are you standing there in the cold with the child? Come in here! It will be easier for you to wrap the child in a warm room. Here, this way!" The woman was surprised. She saw an old man in an apron, with glasses over his nose, calling to her. She followed him in. They went down the stairs and entered the room, and Martýn took the woman up to the bed. "Sit down here, clever woman, nearer to the stove, and get warm and feed the child." "There is no milk in my breasts,--I have not had anything to eat since morning," said the woman, but still she took the child to her breast. Avdyéich shook his head, went to the table, fetched some bread and a bowl, opened a door in the stove, filled the bowl with beet soup, and took out the pot of porridge, but it was not done yet. He put the soup on the table, put down the bread, and took off a rag from a hook and put it down on the table. "Sit down, clever woman, and eat, and I will sit with the babe,--I used to have children of my own, and so I know how to take care of them." The woman made the sign of the cross, sat down at the table, and began to eat, while Avdyéich seated himself on the bed with the child. He smacked his lips at it, but could not smack well, for he had no teeth. The babe kept crying all the time. Avdyéich tried to frighten it with his finger: he quickly carried his finger down toward the babe's mouth and pulled it away again. He did not put his finger into the child's mouth, because it was black,--all smeared with pitch. But the child took a fancy for his finger and grew quiet, and then began even to smile. Avdyéich, too, was happy. The woman was eating in the meantime and telling him who she was and whither she was going. "I am a soldier's wife," she said. "My husband was driven somewhere far away eight months ago, and I do not know where he is. I had been working as a cook when the baby was born; they would not keep me with the child. This is the third month that I have been without a place. I have spent all I had saved. I wanted to hire out as a wet-nurse, but they will not take me: they say that I am too thin. I went to a merchant woman, where our granny lives, and she promised she would take me. I thought she wanted me to come at once, but she told me she wanted me next week. She lives a distance away. I am all worn out and have worn out the dear child, too. Luckily our landlady pities us for the sake of Christ, or else I do not know how we should have lived until now." Avdyéich heaved a sigh, and said: "And have you no warm clothes?" "Indeed, it is time now to have warm clothing, dear man! But yesterday I pawned my last kerchief for twenty kopeks." The woman went up to the bed and took her child, but Avdyéich got up, went to the wall, rummaged there awhile, and brought her an old sleeveless cloak. "Take this!" he said. "It is an old piece, but you may use it to wrap yourself in." The woman looked at the cloak and at the old man, and took the cloak, and burst out weeping. Avdyéich turned his face away; he crawled under the bed, pulled out a box, rummaged through it, and again sat down opposite the woman. And the woman said: "May Christ save you, grandfather! Evidently He sent me to your window. My child would have frozen to death. When I went out it was warm, but now it has turned dreadfully cold. It was He, our Father, who taught you to look through the window and have pity on me, sorrowful woman." Avdyéich smiled, and said: "It is He who has instructed me: clever woman, there was good reason why I looked through the window." Martýn told the soldier woman about his dream, and how he had heard a voice promising him that the Lord would come to see him on that day. "Everything is possible," said the woman. She got up, threw the cloak over her, wrapped the child in it, and began to bow to Avdyéich and to thank him. "Accept this, for the sake of Christ," said Avdyéich, giving her twenty kopeks, with which to redeem her kerchief. The woman made the sign of the cross, and so did Avdyéich, and he saw the woman out. She went away. Avdyéich ate some soup, put the things away, and sat down once more to work. He was working, but at the same time thinking of the window: whenever it grew dark there, he looked up to see who was passing. There went by acquaintances and strangers, and there was nothing peculiar. Suddenly Avdyéich saw an old woman, a huckstress, stop opposite the very window. She was carrying a basket with apples. There were but few of them left,--evidently she had sold all, and over her shoulder she carried a bag with chips. No doubt, she had picked them up at some new building, and was on her way home. The bag was evidently pulling hard on her shoulder; she wanted to shift it to her other shoulder, so she let the bag down on the flagstones, set the apple-basket on a post, and began to shake down the chips. While she was doing that, a boy in a torn cap leaped out from somewhere, grasped any apple from the basket, and wanted to skip out, but the old woman saw him in time and turned around and grabbed the boy by the sleeve. The boy yanked and tried to get away, but the old woman held on to him with both her hands, knocked down his cap, and took hold of his hair. The boy cried, and the old woman scolded. Avdyéich did not have time to put away the awl. He threw it on the floor, jumped out of the room, stumbled on the staircase, and dropped his glasses. He ran out into the street. The old woman was pulling the boy's hair and scolding him. She wanted to take him to a policeman; the little fellow struggled and tried to deny what he had done: "I did not take any, so why do you beat me? Let me go!" Avdyéich tried to separate them. He took the boy's arm, and said: "Let him go, granny, forgive him for Christ's sake!" "I will forgive him in such a way that he will not forget until the new bath brooms are ripe. I will take the rascal to the police station!" Avdyéich began to beg the old woman: "Let him go, granny, he will not do it again. Let him go, for Christ's sake!" The woman let go of him. The boy wanted to run, but Avdyéich held on to him. "Beg the grandmother's forgiveness," he said. "Don't do that again,--I saw you take the apple." The boy began to cry, and he asked her forgiveness. "That's right. And now, take this apple!" Avdyéich took an apple from the basket and gave it to the boy. "I will pay for it, granny," he said to the old woman. "You are spoiling these ragamuffins," said the old woman. "He ought to be rewarded in such a way that he should remember it for a week." "Oh, granny, granny!" said Avdyéich. "That is according to our ways, but how is that according to God's ways? If he is to be whipped for an apple, what ought to be done with us for our sins?" The old woman grew silent. And Avdyéich told the old woman the parable of the lord who forgave his servant his whole large debt, after which the servant went and took his fellow servant who was his debtor by the throat. The old woman listened to him, and the boy stood and listened, too. "God has commanded that we should forgive," said Avdyéich, "or else we, too, shall not be forgiven. All are to be forgiven, but most of all an unthinking person." The old woman shook her head and sighed. "That is so," said the old woman, "but they are very much spoiled nowadays." "Then we old people ought to teach them," said Avdyéich. "That is what I say," said the old woman. "I myself had seven of them,--but only one daughter is left now." And the old woman began to tell where and how she was living with her daughter, and how many grandchildren she had. "My strength is waning," she said, "but still I work. I am sorry for my grandchildren, and they are such nice children,--nobody else meets me the way they do. Aksyútka will not go to anybody from me. 'Granny, granny dear, darling!'" And the old woman melted with tenderness. "Of course, he is but a child,--God be with him!" the old woman said about the boy. She wanted to lift the bag on her shoulders, when the boy jumped up to her, and said: "Let me carry it, granny! I am going that way." The old woman shook her head and threw the bag on the boy's shoulders. They walked together down the street. The old woman had forgotten to ask Avdyéich to pay her for the apple. Avdyéich stood awhile, looking at them and hearing them talk as they walked along. When they disappeared from sight, he returned to his room. He found his glasses on the staircase,--they were not broken,--and he picked up his awl and again sat down to work. He worked for awhile; he could not find the holes with the bristle, when he looked up and saw the lampman lighting the lamps. "It is evidently time to strike a light," he thought, and he got up and fixed the lamp and hung it on the hook, and sat down again to work. He finished a boot: he turned it around and looked at it, and he saw that it was well done. He put down his tool, swept up the clippings, put away the bristles and the remnants and the awls, took the lamp and put it on the table, and fetched the Gospel from the shelf. He wanted to open the book where he had marked it the day before with a morocco clipping, but he opened it in another place. And just as he went to open the Gospel, he thought of his dream of the night before. And just as he thought of it, it appeared to him as though something were moving and stepping behind him. He looked around, and, indeed, it looked as though people were standing in the dark corner, but he could not make out who they were. And a voice whispered to him: "Martýn, oh, Martýn, have you not recognized me?" "Whom?" asked Avdyéich. "Me," said the voice. "It is I." And out of the dark corner came Stepánych, and he smiled and vanished like a cloud and was no more. "And it is I," said a voice. And out of the dark corner came the woman with the babe, and the woman smiled and the child laughed, and they, too, disappeared. "And it is I," said a voice. And out came the old woman and the boy with the apple, and both smiled and vanished. And joy fell on Avdyéich's heart, and he made the sign of the cross, put on his glasses, and began to read the Gospel, there where he had opened it. And at the top of the page he read: "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in." And at the bottom of the page he read: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Matt. xxv.) And Avdyéich understood that his dream had not deceived him, that the Saviour had really come to him on that day, and that he had received Him. TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK ILLUSTRATIONS 1885 TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK ILLUSTRATIONS THE FIEND PERSISTS, BUT GOD RESISTS In ancient times there lived a good master. He had plenty of everything, and many slaves served him. And the slaves prided themselves on their master. They said: "There is not a better master under heaven. He feeds us and dresses us well, and gives us work to do according to our strength, and never offends us with a word, and bears no grudge against any one; he is not like other masters who torture their slaves worse than cattle, and punish them with cause and without cause, and never say a good word to them. Our master wishes us good, and does us good, and speaks good words to us. We do not want any better life." Thus the slaves boasted of their master. And the devil was annoyed to see the slaves living well and in love with their master. And the devil took possession of one of the master's slaves, Aleb. He took possession of him and commanded him to seduce other slaves. And when all the slaves were resting and praising their master, Aleb raised his voice and said: "Brothers, in vain do you pride yourselves on the goodness of your master. Try to do the devil's bidding, and he, too, will be kind to you. We serve our master well, and please him in everything. He needs only to have a thing in mind, and we do it.--we guess his thoughts. Why, then, should he not be good to us? Stop doing his bidding and do him some wrong, and he will be like everybody else, and will repay evil with evil, much worse than the worst of masters." And the other slaves began to dispute with Aleb. They disputed and made a wager. Aleb undertook to anger the good master. He undertook to do so on condition that if he did not succeed in making him angry, he should lose his holiday garment, but if he did, each should give him his own holiday garment, and, besides, they promised to defend him against the master and to free him if the master should put him in irons or throw him into prison. They made this wager, and Aleb promised to anger the master on the following morning. Aleb was serving in the master's sheepfold and tended on costly thoroughbred rams. And so, when the good master came the next morning with his guests to the sheepfold to show them his favourite expensive rams, the devil's labourer winked to his companions: "Watch me now! I am going to anger the master." All the slaves gathered and looked through the door and over the enclosure, and the devil climbed a tree and looked from there into the yard, to see how his labourer was going to serve him. The master walked through the yard, showing his guests the sheep and lambs, and he wanted to show them his best ram. "The other rams are nice, too, but the one with the twisted horns is priceless, and I think more of him than of the pupil of my eye." The sheep and the lambs were shying from the people in the yard, and the guests could not get a good look at the expensive ram. The moment the ram stopped, the labourer of the devil, as though by accident, frightened the sheep, and they got all mixed. The guests could not make out which was the expensive ram. The master got tired of it, so he said: "Aleb, my dear friend, take the trouble carefully to catch the best ram with the twisted horns and to hold him awhile." The moment the master had said that, Aleb rushed forward, like a lion, into the midst of the rams and caught the priceless ram by his fleece. He got hold of the wool, and with one hand he seized the left hind leg and raised it and in the eyes of the master jerked it in such a way that it snapped like a linden post. Aleb had broken the ram's leg beneath the knee. The ram began to bleat and fell down on his fore legs. Aleb grasped the right leg while the left hung loose like a whip-cord. The guests and all the slaves groaned, and the devil rejoiced, when he saw how cleverly Aleb had done his work. The master looked blacker than night. He frowned, lowered his head, and did not say a word. The guests and the slaves were silent. They waited to see what would happen. The master was silent, then shook himself, as though he wanted to throw something off, and raised his head and lifted it to the sky. He looked at it for a short time, and the wrinkles on his face disappeared, and he smiled and lowered his eyes on Aleb. He looked at Aleb, and smiled, and said: "O Aleb, Aleb! Your master has commanded you to anger me. But my master is stronger than yours: you have not angered me, but I will anger your master. You were afraid that I would punish you, and you wanted to be free, Aleb. Know, then, that you will receive no punishment from me, and, since you wanted to be free, I free you in the presence of these my guests. Go in all four directions and take your holiday garment with you!" And the good master went with his guests to the house. But the devil ground his teeth and fell down from the tree and sank through the earth. LITTLE GIRLS WISER THAN OLD PEOPLE It was an early Easter. They had just quit using sleighs. In the yards lay snow, and rills ran down the village. A large puddle had run down from a manure pile into a lane between two farms. And at this puddle two girls, one older than the other, had met. Both of them had been dressed by their mothers in new bodices. The little girl had a blue bodice, and the elder a yellow one with a design. Both had their heads wrapped in red kerchiefs. After mass the two girls went to the puddle, where they showed their new garments to each other, and began to play. They wanted to plash in the water. The little girl started to go into the puddle with her shoes on, but the older girl said to her: "Don't go, Malásha, your mother will scold you. I will take off my shoes, and you do the same." The girls took off their shoes, raised their skirts, and walked through the puddle toward each other. Malásha stepped in up to her ankles, and said: "It is deep, Akúlka, I am afraid." "Never mind," she replied, "it will not be any deeper. Come straight toward me!" They came closer to each other. Akúlka said: "Malásha, look out, and do not splash it up, but walk softly." She had barely said that when Malásha plumped her foot into the water and bespattered Akúlka's bodice, and not only her bodice, but also her nose and eyes. When Akúlka saw the spots on her bodice, she grew angry at Malásha, and scolded her, and ran after her, and wanted to strike her. Malásha was frightened and, seeing what trouble she had caused, jumped out of the puddle and ran home. Akúlka's mother passed by; she saw her daughter's bodice bespattered and her shirt soiled. "Where, accursed one, did you get yourself so dirty?" "Malásha has purposely splashed it on me." Akúlka's mother grasped Malásha and gave her a knock on the nape of her neck. Malásha began to howl, and her mother ran out of the house. "Why do you strike my daughter?" she began to scold her neighbour. One word brought back another, and the women began to quarrel. The men, too, ran out, and a big crowd gathered in the street. All were crying, and nobody could hear his neighbour. They scolded and cursed each other; one man gave another man a push, and a fight had begun, when Akúlka's grandmother came out. She stepped in the midst of the peasants, and began to talk to them: "What are you doing, dear ones? Consider the holiday. This is a time for rejoicing. And see what sin you are doing!" They paid no attention to the old woman, and almost knocked her off her feet. She would never have stopped them, if it had not been for Akúlka and Malásha. While the women exchanged words, Akúlka wiped off her bodice, and went back to the puddle in the lane. She picked up a pebble and began to scratch the ground so as to let the water off into the street. While she was scratching, Malásha came up and began to help her: she picked up a chip and widened the rill. The peasants had begun to fight, just as the water went down the rill toward the place where the old woman was trying to separate the men. The girls ran, one from one side of the rill, the other from the other side. "Look out, Malásha, look out!" shouted Akúlka. Malásha wanted to say something herself, but could not speak for laughter. The girls were running and laughing at a chip which was bobbing up and down the rill. They ran straight into the crowd of the peasants. The old woman saw them and said to the peasants: "Shame on you before God, men! You have started fighting on account of these two girls, and they have long ago forgotten it: the dear children have been playing nicely together. They are wiser than you." The men looked at the girls, and they felt ashamed. Then they laughed at themselves, and scattered to their farms. "Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." THE TWO BROTHERS AND THE GOLD In ancient times there lived not far from Jerusalem two brothers, the elder named Athanasius, and the younger John. They lived in a mountain, not far from the city, and supported themselves on what people offered them. The brothers passed all their days at work. They worked not for themselves, but for the poor. Wherever were those who were oppressed by labour, or sick people, or orphans, or widows, thither the brothers went, and there they worked, and received no pay. Thus the two brothers passed the whole week away from each other, and met only on Saturday evening in their abode. On Sunday alone did they stay at home, and then they prayed and talked with each other. And an angel of the Lord came down to them and blessed them. On Monday they separated each in his own direction. Thus they lived for many years, and each week the angel of the Lord came down to them and blessed them. One Monday, when the brothers had already gone out to work and had gone each in his direction, the elder brother, Athanasius, was loath to part from his brother, and he stopped and looked back. John was walking with lowered head, in his direction, without looking back. But suddenly John, too, stopped and, as though he had suddenly noticed something, gazed at something, while shielding his eyes. Then he approached what he was gazing at, suddenly jumped to one side, and, without looking back, ran down-hill and up-hill again, away from the place, as though a wolf were after him. Athanasius was surprised. He went back to that spot, to see what it was that had so frightened his brother. He went up to it and saw something shining in the sun. He came nearer, and there lay a heap of gold on the ground, as though poured out from a measure. And Athanasius was still more surprised, both at the gold and at his brother's leap. "Why was he frightened, and why did he run away?" thought Athanasius. "There is no sin in gold. The sin is in man. With gold one may do wrong, but also some good. How many orphans and widows may be fed, how many naked people dressed, and the poor and sick aided with this gold! We now serve people, but our service is small, though it is to the best of our strength. With this gold, however, we can serve people better." Thus Athanasius thought, and he wanted to tell it all to his brother; but John was out of the range of hearing, and could be seen only as a speck the size of a beetle on another mountain. Athanasius took off his cloak, scooped up as much gold as he was able to carry away, threw it on his shoulder, and carried it into the city. He came to a hostelry and left the gold with the keeper, and went back for the rest. When he had brought all the gold, he went to the merchants, bought some land in the city, and stones and timber, and hired labourers, and began to build three houses. Athanasius lived for three months in the city, and built three houses there: one--an asylum for widows and orphans, another--a hospital for the sick and the lame, and a third--for pilgrims and for the needy. And Athanasius found three God-fearing old men, and one of them he placed in charge of the asylum, the second--of the hospital, and the third--of the hostelry. And Athanasius had still three thousand gold coins left. He gave each old man one thousand coins to distribute them to the poor. The three houses began to fill up with people, and the people began to praise Athanasius for everything he had done. And Athanasius was glad of that and did not feel like leaving the city. But he loved his brother and so he bade the people farewell and, without keeping a single coin, went back to his abode, wearing the same old garment in which he had come. As Athanasius was approaching his mountain, he thought: "My brother did not judge rightly when he jumped from the gold and ran away from it. Have I not done better?" And no sooner had Athanasius thought so than he saw the angel who used to bless him standing in the road and looking threateningly at him. And Athanasius was frightened and only said: "For what, O Lord?" And the angel opened his lips, and said: "Go hence! You are not worthy of living with your brother. One leap of your brother is worth all the deeds which you have done with your gold." And Athanasius began to speak of how many poor people and pilgrims he had fed, and how many orphans he had housed. And the angel said: "The devil who placed the gold there has also taught you these words." Then only did his conscience trouble him, and he saw that he had done his deeds not for God, and he wept and began to repent. The angel stepped out of the road and opened the path on which his brother, John, was already standing and waiting for him. After that Athanasius no longer submitted to the temptation of the devil who had scattered the gold, and he understood that not with gold, but only with words can we serve God and men. And the brothers began to live as before. ILYÁS In the Government of Ufá there lived a Bashkir, Ilyás. His father had left him no wealth. His father had died a year after he had got his son married. At that time Ilyás had seven mares, two cows, and a score of sheep; but Ilyás was a good master and began to increase his possessions; he worked with his wife from morning until night, got up earlier than anybody, and went to bed later, and grew richer from year to year. Thus Ilyás passed thirty-five years at work, and came to have a vast fortune. Ilyás finally had two hundred head of horses, 150 head of cattle, and twelve hundred sheep. Men herded Ilyás's herds and flocks, and women milked the mares and cows, and made kumys, butter, and cheese. Ilyás had plenty of everything, and in the district everybody envied him his life. People said: "Ilyás is a lucky fellow. He has plenty of everything,--he does not need to die." Good people made Ilyás's friendship and became his friends. And guests came to him from a distance. He received them all, and fed them, and gave them to drink. No matter who came, he received kumys, and tea, and sherbet, and mutton. If guests came to see him, a sheep or two were killed, and if many guests arrived, he had them kill a mare. Ilyás had two sons and a daughter. He had got all of them married. When Ilyás had been poor, his sons had worked with him and had herded the horses and the cattle and the sheep; but when they grew rich, the sons became spoiled, and one of them even began to drink. One of them, the eldest, was killed in a fight, and the other, the younger, had a proud wife, and did not obey his father, and his father had to give him a separate maintenance. Ilyás gave him a house and cattle, and his own wealth was diminished. Soon after a plague fell on Ilyás's sheep, and many of them died. Then there was a famine year, the hay crop was a failure, and in the winter many head of cattle died. Then the Kirgizes drove off the best herd of horses. And thus Ilyás's estate grew less, and he fell lower and lower, and his strength began to wane. When he was seventy years old, he began to sell off his furs, rugs, saddles, and tents, and soon had to sell his last head of cattle, so that he was left without anything. Before he knew it, all was gone, and in his old age he had to go with his wife to live among strangers. All that Ilyás had left of his fortune was what garments he had on his body, a fur coat, a cap, and his morocco slippers and shoes, and his wife, Sham-shemagi, who was now an old woman. The son to whom he had given the property had left for a distant country, and his daughter had died. And so there was nobody to help the old people. Their neighbour, Muhamedshah, took pity on them. Muhamedshah was neither rich nor poor, and he lived an even life, and was a good man. He remembered Ilyás's hospitality, and so pitied him, and said to Ilyás: "Come to live with me, Ilyás, and bring your wife with you! In the summer work according to your strength in my truck-garden, and in the winter feed the cattle, and let Sham-shemagi milk the mares and make kumys. I will feed and clothe you and will let you have whatever you may need." Ilyás thanked his neighbour, and went to live with his wife as Muhamedshah's labourers. At first it was hard for them, but soon they got used to the work, and the old people worked according to their strength. It was profitable for the master to keep these people, for they had been masters themselves and knew all the order and were not lazy, but worked according to their strength; but it pained Muhamedshah to see the well-to-do people brought down so low. One day distant guests, match-makers, happened to call on Muhamedshah; and the mulla, too, came. Muhamedshah ordered his men to catch a sheep and kill it. Ilyás flayed the sheep and cooked it and sent it in to the guests. They ate the mutton, drank tea, and then started to drink kumys. The guests and the master were sitting on down cushions on the rugs, drinking kumys out of bowls, and talking; but Ilyás got through with his work and walked past the door. When Muhamedshah saw him, he said to a guest: "Did you see the old man who just went past the door?" "I did," said the guest; "but what is there remarkable about him?" "What is remarkable is that he used to be our richest man. Ilyás is his name; maybe you have heard of him?" "Of course I have," said the guest. "I have never seen him, but his fame has gone far abroad." "Now he has nothing left, and he lives with me as a labourer, and his wife is with him,--she milks the cows." The guest was surprised. He clicked with his tongue, shook his head, and said: "Evidently fortune flies around like a wheel: one it lifts up, another it takes down. Well, does the old man pine?" "Who knows? He lives quietly and peaceably, and works well." Then the guest said: "May I speak with him? I should like to ask him about his life." "Of course you may," said the master, and he called out of the tent: "Babay!" (This means "grandfather" in the Bashkia language.) "Come in and drink some kumys, and bring your wife with you!" Ilyás came in with his wife. He exchanged greetings with the guests and with the master, said a prayer, and knelt down at the door; but his wife went back of a curtain and sat down with the mistress. A bowl of kumys was handed to Ilyás. Ilyás saluted the guests and the master, made a bow, drank a little, and put down the bowl. "Grandfather," the guest said to him, "I suppose it makes you feel bad to look at us and think of your former life, considering what fortune you had and how hard your life is now." But Ilyás smiled and said: "If I should tell you about my happiness and unhappiness, you would not believe me,--you had better ask my wife. She is a woman, and what is in her heart is on her tongue: she will tell you all the truth about this matter." And the guest spoke to her behind the curtain: "Well, granny, tell us how you judge about your former happiness and present sorrow." And Sham-shemagi spoke from behind the curtain: "I judge like this: My husband and I lived for fifty years trying to find happiness, and we did not find it; but now it is the second year that we have nothing left and that we live as labourers, and we have found that happiness and need no other." The guests were surprised and the master marvelled, and he even got up to throw aside the curtain and to look at the old woman. But the old woman was standing with folded hands, smiling and looking at her husband, and the old man was smiling, too. The old woman said once more: "I am telling you the truth, without any jest: for half a century we tried to find happiness, and so long as we were rich, we did not find it; now nothing is left, and we are working out,--and we have come to have such happiness that we wish for no other.". "Wherein does your happiness lie?" "In this: when we were rich, my husband and I did not have an hour's rest: we had no time to talk together, to think of our souls, or to pray. We had so many cares! Now guests called on us,--and there were the cares about what to treat them to and what presents to make so that they should not misjudge us. When the guests left, we had to look after the labourers: they thought only of resting and having something good to eat, but we cared only about having our property attended to,--and so sinned. Now we were afraid that a wolf would kill a colt or a calf, and now that thieves might drive off a herd. When we lay down to sleep, we could not fall asleep, fearing lest the sheep might crush the lambs. We would get up in the night and walk around; no sooner would we be quieted than we would have a new care,--how to get fodder for the winter. And, worse than that, there was not much agreement between my husband and me. He would say that this had to be done so and so, and I would say differently, and so we began to quarrel, and sin. Thus we lived from one care to another, from one sin to another, and saw no happy life." "Well, and now?" "Now my husband and I get up, speak together peaceably, in agreement, for we have nothing to quarrel about, nothing to worry about,--all the care we have is to serve our master. We work according to our strength, and we work willingly so that our master shall have no loss, but profit. When we come back, dinner is ready, and supper, and kumys. If it is cold, there are dung chips to make a fire with and a fur coat to warm ourselves. For fifty years we looked for happiness, but only now have we found it." The guests laughed. And Ilyás said: "Do not laugh, brothers! This is not a joke, but a matter of human life. My wife and I were foolish and wept because we had lost our fortune, but now God has revealed the truth to us, and we reveal this to you, not for our amusement but for your good." And the mulla said: "That was a wise speech, and Ilyás has told the precise truth,--it says so, too, in Holy Writ." And the guests stopped laughing and fell to musing. A FAIRY-TALE About Iván the Fool and His Two Brothers, Semén the Warrior and Tarás the Paunch, and His Dumb Sister Malánya, and About the Old Devil and the Three Young Devils 1885 A FAIRY-TALE About Iván the Fool and His Two Brothers, Semén the Warrior and Tarás the Paunch, and His Dumb Sister Malánya, and About the Old Devil and the Three Young Devils I. In a certain kingdom, in a certain realm, there lived a rich peasant. He had three sons, Semén the Warrior, Tarás the Paunch, and Iván the Fool, and a daughter Malánya, the dumb old maid. Semén the Warrior went to war, to serve the king; Tarás the Paunch went to a merchant in the city, to sell wares; but Iván the Fool and the girl remained at home, to work and hump their backs. Semén the Warrior earned a high rank and an estate, and married a lord's daughter. His salary was big, and his estate was large, but still he could not make both ends meet: whatever he collected, his wife scattered as though from a sleeve, and they had no money. Semén the Warrior came to his estate, to collect the revenue. His clerk said to him: "Where shall it come from? We have neither cattle, nor tools: neither horses, nor cows, nor plough, nor harrow. Everything has to be provided, then there will be an income." And Semén the Warrior went to his father: "You are rich, father," he said, "and you have not given me anything. Cut off a third and I will transfer it to my estate." And the old man said: "You have brought nothing to my house, why should I give you a third? It will be unfair to Iván and to the girl." But Semén said: "But he is a fool, and she is a dumb old maid. What do they need?" And the old man said: "As Iván says so it shall be!" But Iván said: "All right, let him have it!" So Semén the Warrior took his third from the house, transferred it to his estate, and again went away to serve the king. Tarás the Paunch, too, earned much money,--and married a merchant woman. Still he did not have enough, and he came to his father, and said: "Give me my part!" The old man did not want to give Tarás his part: "You," he said, "have brought nothing to the house, and everything in the house has been earned by Iván. I cannot be unfair to him and to the girl." But Tarás said: "What does he want it for? He is a fool. He cannot marry, for no one will have him; and the dumb girl does not need anything, either. Give me," he said, "half of the grain, Iván! I will not take your tools, and of your animals I want only the gray stallion,--you cannot plough with him." Iván laughed. "All right," he said, "I will earn it again." So Tarás, too, received his part. Tarás took the grain to town, and drove off the gray stallion, and Iván was left with one old mare, and he went on farming and supporting his father and his mother. II. The old devil was vexed because the brothers had not quarrelled in dividing up, but had parted in love. And so he called up three young devils. "You see," he said, "there are three brothers, Semén the Warrior, Tarás the Paunch, and Iván the Fool. They ought to be quarrelling, but, instead, they live peacefully; they exchange with each other bread and salt. The fool has spoiled all my business. Go all three of you.--get hold of them, and mix them up in such a way that they shall tear out one another's eyes. Can you do it?" "We can," they said. "How are you going to do it?" "We will do it like this," they said: "First we will ruin them, so that they will have nothing to eat; then we will throw them all in a heap, so that they will quarrel together." "Very well," he said. "I see that you know your business. Go, and do not return to me before you have muddled all three, or else I will flay all three of you." The three devils all went to a swamp, and considered how to take hold of the matter: they quarrelled and quarrelled, for they wanted each of them to get the easiest job, and finally they decided to cast lots for each man. If one of them got through first, he was to come and help the others. The devils cast lots, and set a time when they were to meet again in the swamp, in order to find out who was through, and who needed help. When the time came, the devils gathered in the swamp. They began to talk about their affairs. The first devil, Semén the Warrior's, began to speak. "My affair," he said, "is progressing. To-morrow my Semén will go to his father." His comrades asked him how he did it. "In the first place," he said, "I brought such bravery over Semén that he promised his king to conquer the whole world, and the king made him a commander and sent him out to fight the King of India. They came together for a fight. But that very night I wet all his powder, and I went over to the King of India and made an endless number of soldiers for him out of straw. When Semén's soldiers saw the straw soldiers walking upon them on all sides, they lost their courage. Semén commanded them to fire their cannon and their guns, but they could not fire them. Semén's soldiers were frightened and ran away like sheep. And the King of India vanquished them. Semén is disgraced,--they have taken his estate from him, and to-morrow he is to be beheaded. I have only one day's work left to do: to let him out of the prison, so that he can run home. To-morrow I shall be through with him, so tell me which of you I am to aid!" Then the other devil, Tarás's, began to speak: "I do not need any help," he said, "for my affair is also progressing nicely,--Tarás will not live another week. In the first place, I have raised a belly on him, and made him envious. He is so envious of other people's property that, no matter what he sees, he wants to buy it. He has bought up an endless lot of things and spent all his money on them and is still buying. He now buys on other people's money. He has quite a lot on his shoulders, and is so entangled that he will never free himself. In a week the time will come for him to pay, and I will change all his wares into manure,--and he will not be able to pay his debts, and will go to his father's." They began to ask the third devil, Iván's. "How is your business?" "I must say, my business is not progressing at all. The first thing I did was to spit into his kvas jug, so as to give him a belly-ache, and I went to his field and made the soil so hard that he should not be able to overcome it. I thought that he would never plough it up, but he, the fool, came with his plough and began to tear up the soil. His belly-ache made him groan, but he stuck to his ploughing. I broke one plough of his, but he went home, fixed another plough, wrapped new leg-rags on him, and started once more to plough. I crept under the earth, and tried to hold the ploughshare, but I could not do it,--he pressed so hard on the plough; the ploughshares are sharp, and he has cut up my hands. He has ploughed up nearly the whole of it,--only a small strip is left. Come and help me, brothers, or else, if we do not overpower him, all our labours will be lost. If the fool is left and continues to farm, they will have no want, for he will feed them all." Semén's devil promised to come on the morrow to help him, and thereupon the devils departed. III. Iván ploughed up all the fallow field, and only one strip was left. His belly ached, and yet he had to plough. He straightened out the lines, turned over the plough, and went to the field. He had just made one furrow, and was coming back, when something pulled at the plough as though it had caught in a root. It was the devil that had twined his legs about the plough-head and was holding it fast. "What in the world is that?" thought Iván. "There were no roots here before, but now there are." Iván stuck his hand down in the furrow, and felt something soft. He grabbed it and pulled it out. It was as black as a root, but something was moving on it. He took a glance at it, and, behold, it was a live devil. "I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing!" And Iván swung him and was about to strike him against the plough-handle; but the devil began to scream. "Do not beat me," he said, "and I will do for you anything you wish." "What will you do for me?" "Say what you want!" Iván scratched himself. "My belly aches,--can you cure me?" "I can," he said. "Very well, cure me!" The devil bent down to the furrow, scratched awhile in it, pulled out a few roots,--three of them in a bunch,--and gave them to Iván. "Here," he said, "is a root, which, if you swallow, will make your ache go away at once." Iván took the roots, tore them up, and swallowed one. His belly-ache stopped at once. Then the devil began to beg again: "Let me go, now, and I will slip through the earth, and will not come up again." "All right," he said, "God be with you!" And the moment Iván mentioned God's name, the devil bolted through the earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was left. Iván put the remaining two roots in his cap, and started to finish his work. He ploughed up the strip, turned over the plough, and went home. He unhitched the horse, came to the house, and there found his eldest brother, Semén the Warrior, with his wife, eating supper. His estate had been taken from him, and he had with difficulty escaped from prison and come to his father's to live. Semén saw Iván, and, "I have come to live with you," he said. "Feed me and my wife until I find a new place!" "All right," he said, "stay here!" Iván wanted to sit down on a bench, but the lady did not like the smell of Iván. So she said to her husband: "I cannot eat supper with a stinking peasant." "All right," he said, "I have to go anyway to pasture the mare for the night." Iván took some bread and his caftan, and went out to herd his mare. IV. That night Semén's devil got through with his work and by agreement went to find Iván's devil, to help to make an end of the fool. He came to the field and looked for him everywhere, but found only the hole. "Something has evidently gone wrong with my comrade," he thought,--"I must take his place. The ploughing is done,--I shall have to catch him in the mowing time." The devil went to the meadows and sent a flood on the mowing so that it was all covered with mud. Iván returned in the morning from the night watch, whetted his scythe, and went out to mow the meadows. He came, and began to mow: he swung the scythe once, and a second time, and it grew dull and would not cut,--it was necessary to grind it. Iván worked hard and in vain. "No," he said, "I will go home, and will bring the grindstone with me, and a round loaf. If I have to stay here for a week, I will not give up until I mow it all." When the devil heard it he thought: "This fool is stiff-necked,--I cannot get at him. I must try something else." Iván came back, ground his scythe, and began to mow. The devil crept into the grass and began to catch the scythe by the snath-end and to stick the point into the ground. It went hard with Iván, but he finished the mowing, and there was left only one scrubby place in the swamp. The devil crawled into the swamp and thought: "If I get both my paws cut, I will not let him mow it." Iván went into the swamp; the grass was not dense, but he found it hard to move the scythe. Iván grew angry and began to swing the scythe with all his might. The devil gave in; he had hardly time to get away,--he saw that matters were in bad shape, so he hid in a bush. Iván swung the scythe with all his might and struck the bush, and cut off half of the devil's tail. Iván finished the mowing, told the girl to rake it up, and himself went to cut the rye. He went out with a round knife, but the bobtailed devil had been there before him and had so mixed up the rye that he could not cut it with the round knife. Iván went back, took the sickle, and began to cut it; he cut all the rye. "Now I must go to the oats," he said. The bobtailed devil heard it, and thought: "I could not cope with him on the rye, but I will get the better of him in the oats,--just let the morning come." The devil ran in the morning to the oats-field, but the oats were all cut down. Iván had cut them in the night, to keep them from dropping the seed. The devil grew angry: "The fool has cut me all up, and has worn me out. I have not seen such trouble even in war-time. The accursed one does not sleep,--I cannot keep up with him. I will go now to the ricks, and will rot them all." And the devil went to the rye-rick, climbed between the sheaves, and began to rot them: he warmed them up, and himself grew warm and fell asleep. Iván hitched his mare, and went with the girl to haul away the ricks. He drove up to one and began to throw the sheaves into the cart. He had just put two sheaves in when he stuck his fork straight into the devil's back; he raised it, and, behold, on the prongs was a live devil, and a bobtailed one at that, and he was writhing and twisting, and trying to get off. "I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing! Are you here again?" "I am a different devil," he said. "My brother was here before. I was with your brother Semén." "I do not care who you are," he replied, "you will catch it, too." He wanted to strike him against the ground, but the devil began to beg him: "Let me go, and I will not do it again, and I will do for you anything you please." "What can you do?" "I can make soldiers for you from anything." "What good are they?" "You can turn them to any use you please: they will do anything." "Can they play music?" "They can." "All right, make them for me!" And the devil said: "Take a sheaf of rye, strike the lower end against the ground, and say: 'By my master's command not a sheaf shall you stand, but as many straws as there are so many soldiers there be.'" Iván took the sheaf, shook it against the ground, and spoke as the devil told him to. And the sheaf fell to pieces, and the straws were changed into soldiers, and in front a drummer was drumming, and a trumpeter blowing the trumpet. Iván laughed. "I declare," he said, "it is clever. This is nice to amuse the girls with." "Let me go now," said the devil. "No," he said, "I will do that with threshed straw, and I will not let full ears waste for nothing. I will thresh them first." So the devil said: "Say, 'As many soldiers, so many straws there be! With my master's command again a sheaf it shall stand.'" Iván said this, and the sheaf was as before. And the devil begged him again: "Let me go now!" "All right!" Iván caught him on the cart-hurdle, held him down with his hand, and pulled him off the fork. "God be with you!" he said. The moment he said, "God be with you," the devil bolted through the earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was left. Iván went home, and there he found his second brother. Tarás and his wife were sitting and eating supper. Tarás the Paunch had not calculated right, and so he ran away from his debts and came to his father's. When he saw Iván, he said: "Iván, feed me and my wife until I go back to trading!" "All right," he said, "stay with us!" Iván took off his caftan, and seated himself at the table. But the merchant's wife said: "I cannot eat with a fool. He stinks of sweat." So Tarás the Paunch said: "Iván, you do not smell right, so go and eat in the vestibule!" "All right," he said, and, taking bread, he went out. "It is just right," he said, "for it is time for me to go and pasture the mare for the night." V. That night Tarás's devil got through with his job, and he went by agreement to help out his comrades,--to get the best of Iván the Fool. He came to the field and tried to find his comrades, but all he saw was a hole in the ground; he went to the meadows, and found a tail in the swamp, and in the rye stubbles he found another hole. "Well," he thought, "evidently some misfortune has befallen my comrades; I must take their place, and go for the fool." The devil went forth to find Iván. But Iván was through with the field, and was chopping wood in the forest. The brothers were not comfortable living together, and they had ordered the fool to cut timber with which to build them new huts. The devil ran to the woods, climbed into the branches, and did not let Iván fell the trees. Iván chopped the tree in the right way, so that it might fall in a clear place; he tried to make it fall, but it came down the wrong way, and fell where it had no business to fall, and got caught in the branches. Iván made himself a lever with his axe, began to turn the tree, and barely brought it down. Iván went to chop a second tree, and the same thing happened. He worked and worked at it, and brought it down. He started on a third tree, and again the same happened. Iván had expected to cut half a hundred trunks, and before he had chopped ten it was getting dark. Iván was worn out. Vapours rose from him as though a mist were going through the woods, but he would not give up. He chopped down another tree, and his back began to ache so much that he could not work: he stuck the axe in the wood, and sat down to rest himself. The devil saw that Iván had stopped, and was glad: "Well," he thought, "he has worn himself out, and he will stop soon. I will myself take a rest," and he sat astride a bough, and was happy. But Iván got up, pulled out his axe, swung with all his might, and hit the tree so hard from the other side that it cracked and came down with a crash. The devil had not expected it and had no time to straighten out his legs. The bough broke and caught the devil's hand. Iván began to trim, and behold, there was a live devil. Iván was surprised. "I declare," he said, "you are a nasty thing! Are you here again?" "I am not the same," he said. "I was with your brother Tarás." "I do not care who you are,--you will fare the same way." Iván swung his axe, and wanted to crush him with the back of the axe. The devil began to beg him: "Do not kill me,--I will do anything you please for you." "What can you do?" "I can make as much money for you as you wish." "All right, make it for me!" And the devil taught him how to do it. "Take some oak leaves from this tree," he said, "and rub them in your hands. The gold will fall to the ground." Iván took some leaves and rubbed them,--and the gold began to fall. "This is nice to have," he said, "when you are out celebrating with the boys." "Let me go now!" said the devil. "All right!" Iván took his lever, and freed the devil. "God be with you," he said, and the moment he mentioned God's name, the devil bolted through the earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was left. VI. The brothers built themselves houses, and began to live each by himself. But Iván got through with his field work, and brewed some beer and invited his brothers to celebrate with him. They would not be Iván's guests: "We have never seen a peasant celebration," they said. Iván treated the peasants and their wives, and himself drank until he was drunk, and he went out into the street to the khorovód. He went up to the women, and told them to praise him. "I will give you what you have not seen in all your lives." The women laughed, and praised him. When they got through, they said: "Well, let us have it!" "I will bring it to you at once," he said. He picked up the seed-basket and ran into the woods. The women laughed: "What a fool he is!" And they forgot about him, when, behold, he was running toward them, and carrying the basket full of something. "Shall I let you have it?" "Yes." Iván picked up a handful of gold and threw it to the women. O Lord, how they darted for the money! The peasants rushed out and began to tear it out of the hands of the women. They almost crushed an old woman to death. Iván laughed. "Oh, you fools," he said, "why did you crush that old woman? Be more gentle, and I will give you some more." He began to scatter more gold. People ran up, and Iván scattered the whole basketful. They began to ask for more. But Iván said: "That is all. I will give you more some other time. Now let us have music! Sing songs!" The women started a song. "I do not like your kind of songs," he said. "What kind is better?" "I will show you in a minute," he said. He went to the threshing-floor, pulled out a sheaf, straightened it up, placed it on end, and struck it against the ground. "At your master's command not a sheaf shall you stand, each straw a soldier shall be." The sheaf flew to pieces, and out came the soldiers, and the drums began to beat and the trumpets to sound. Iván told the soldiers to play songs, and went into the street with them. The people were surprised. The soldiers played songs, and then Iván took them back to the threshing-floor, and told nobody to follow him. He changed the soldiers back into a sheaf, and threw it on the loft. He went home and went to sleep behind the partition. VII. On the next morning his eldest brother, Semén the Warrior, heard of it, and he went to see Iván. "Reveal to me," he said, "where did you find those soldiers, and where did you take them to?" "What is that to you?" he said. "What a question! With soldiers anything may be done. You can get a kingdom for yourself." Iván was surprised. "Indeed? Why did you not tell me so long ago?" he said. "I will make as many for you as you please. Luckily the girl and I have threshed a lot of straw." Iván took his brother to the threshing-floor, and said: "Look here! I will make them for you, but you take them away, or else, if we have to feed them, they will ruin the village in one day." Semén the Warrior promised that he would take the soldiers away, and Iván began to make them. He struck a sheaf against the floor, there was a company; he struck another, there was a second, and he made such a lot of them that they took up the whole field. "Well, will that do?" Semén was happy, and said: "It will do. Thank you, Iván." "All right," he said. "If you need more, come to me, and I will make you more. There is plenty of straw to-day." Semén the Warrior at once attended to the army, collected it as was proper, and went forth to fight. No sooner had Semén the Warrior left, than Tarás the Paunch came. He, too, had heard of the evening's affair, and he began to beg his brother: "Reveal to me, where do you get the gold money from? If I had such free money, I would with it gather in all the money of the whole world." Iván was surprised. "Indeed? You ought to have told me so long ago," he said. "I will rub up for you as much as you want." His brother was glad: "Give me at least three seed-baskets full!" "All right," he said, "let us go to the woods! But hitch up the horse, or you will not be able to carry it away." They went to the woods, and Iván began to rub the oak leaves. He rubbed up a large heap. "Will that do, eh?" Tarás was happy. "It will do for awhile," he said. "Thank you, Iván." "You are welcome. If you need more, come to me, and I will rub up some more,--there are plenty of leaves left." Tarás the Paunch gathered a whole wagon-load of money, and went away to trade with it. Both brothers left the home. And Semén went out to fight, and Tarás to trade. And Semén the Warrior conquered a whole kingdom for himself, while Tarás the Paunch made a big heap of money by trading. The brothers met, and they revealed to one another where Semén got the soldiers, and Tarás the money. Semén the Warrior said to his brother: "I have conquered a kingdom for myself, and I lead a good life, only I have not enough money to feed my soldiers with." And Tarás the Paunch said: "And I have earned a whole mound of money, but here is the trouble: I have nobody to guard the money." So Semén the Warrior said: "Let us go to our brother! I will tell him to make me more soldiers, and I will give them to you to guard your money; and you tell him to rub me more money with which to feed the soldiers." And they went to Iván. When they came to him, Semén said: "I have not enough soldiers, brother. Make me some more soldiers,--if you have to work over two stacks." Iván shook his head. "I will not make you any soldiers, for nothing in the world." "But you promised you would." "So I did, but I will not make them for you." "Why, you fool, won't you make them?" "Because your soldiers have killed a man. The other day I was ploughing in the field, when I saw a woman driving with a coffin in the road, and weeping all the time. I asked her who had died, and she said, 'Semén's soldiers have killed my husband in a war.' I thought that the soldiers would make music, and there they have killed a man. I will give you no more." And he stuck to it, and made no soldiers for him. Then Tarás the Paunch began to beg Iván to make him more gold money. But Iván shook his head. "I will not rub any, for nothing in the world." "But you promised you would." "So I did, but I will not do it." "Why, you fool, will you not do it?" "Because your gold coins have taken away Mikháylovna's cow." "How so?" "They just did. Mikháylovna had a cow, whose milk the children sipped, but the other day the children came to me to ask for some milk. I said to them: 'Where is your cow?' And they answered: 'Tarás the Paunch's clerk came, and he gave mother three gold pieces, and she gave him the cow, and now we have no milk to sip.' I thought you wanted to play with the gold pieces, and you take the cow away from the children. I will not give you any more." And the fool stuck to it, and did not give him any. So the brothers went away. They went away, and they wondered how they might mend matters. Then Semén said: "This is what we shall do. You give me money to feed the soldiers with, and I will give you half my kingdom with the soldiers to guard your money." Tarás agreed to it. The brothers divided up, and both became kings, and rich men. VIII. But Iván remained at home, supporting father and mother, and working the field with the dumb girl. One day Iván's watch-dog grew sick: he had the mange and was dying. Iván was sorry for him, and he took some bread from the dumb girl, put it in his hat, and took it out and threw it to the dog. But the cap was torn, and with the bread one of the roots fell out. The old dog swallowed it with the bread. And no sooner had he swallowed it than he jumped up, began to play and to bark, and wagged his tail,--he was well again. When his father and his mother saw that, they were surprised. "With what did you cure the dog?" And Iván said to them: "I had two roots with which to cure all diseases, and he swallowed one." It happened that at that time the king's daughter grew ill, and the king proclaimed in all the towns and villages that he would reward him who should cure her, and that if it should be an unmarried man, he should have his daughter for a wife. The same was also proclaimed in Iván's village. Father and mother called Iván, and said to him: "Have you heard what the king has proclaimed? You said that you had a root, so go and cure the king's daughter. You will get a fortune for the rest of your life." "All right," he said. And he got ready to go. He was dressed up, and went out on the porch, and saw a beggar woman with a twisted arm. "I have heard that you can cure," she said. "Cure my arm, for I cannot dress myself." And Iván said: "All right!" He took the root, gave it to the beggar woman, and told her to swallow it. She swallowed it, and was cured at once and could wave her arm. Iván's parents came out to see him off on his way to the king, and when they heard that he had given away the last root and had nothing left with which to cure the king's daughter, they began to upbraid him. "You have taken pity on the beggar woman, but you have no pity on the king's daughter." But he hitched his horse, threw a little straw into the hamper, and was getting ready to drive away. "Where are you going, fool?" "To cure the king's daughter." "But you have nothing to cure her with!" "All right," he said, and drove away. He came to the king's palace, and the moment he stepped on the porch, the king's daughter was cured. The king rejoiced, and sent for Iván. He had him all dressed up: "Be my son-in-law!" he said. "All right," he said. And Iván married the king's daughter. The king died soon after, and Iván became king. Thus all three brothers were kings. IX. The three brothers were reigning. The elder brother, Semén the Warrior, lived well. With his straw soldiers he got him real soldiers. He commanded his people to furnish a soldier to each ten homes, and every such soldier had to be tall of stature, and white of body, and clean of face. And he gathered a great many such soldiers and taught them all what to do. And if any one acted contrary to his will, he at once sent his soldiers against that person, and did as he pleased. And all began to be afraid of him. He had an easy life. Whatever he wished for, or his eyes fell upon, was his. He would send out his soldiers, and they would take away and bring to him whatever he needed. Tarás the Paunch, too, lived well. The money which he had received from Iván he had not spent, but he had increased it greatly. He, too, had good order in his kingdom. The money he kept in coffers, and exacted more money from the people. He exacted money from each soul for walking past, and driving past, and for bast shoes, and leg-rags, and shoe-laces. And no matter what he wished, he had; for money they brought him everything, and they went to work for him, because everybody needs money. Nor did Iván the Fool live badly. As soon as he had buried his father-in-law, he took off his royal garments and gave them to his wife to put away in the coffer. He put on his old hempen shirt and trousers, and his bast shoes, and began to work. "I do not feel well," he said. "My belly is growing larger, and I cannot eat, nor sleep." He brought his parents and the dumb girl, and began to work again. People said to him: "But you are a king!" "All right," he said, "but a king, too, has to eat." The minister came to him, and said: "We have no money with which to pay salaries." "All right," he said, "if you have none, pay no salaries!" "But they will stop serving you." "All right," he said, "Let them stop serving! They will have more time for work. Let them haul manure. They have not hauled any for a long time." People came to Iván to have a case tried. One said: "He stole money from me." But Iván replied: "All right, evidently he needed it." All saw that Iván was a fool. His wife said to him: "They say about you that you are a fool." "All right," he said. Iván's wife, too, was a fool, and she thought and thought. "Why should I go against my husband?" she said. "The thread belongs where the needle is." She took off her regal garments, put them in a coffer, and went to the dumb girl to learn to work. She learned, and began to help her husband. All the wise men left Iván's kingdom, and only the fools were left. Nobody had any money. They lived and worked and fed themselves and all good people. X. The old devil waited and waited for some news from the young devils about how they had destroyed the three brothers, but none came. He went to find out for himself: he looked everywhere for the three, but found only three holes. "Well," he thought, "evidently they did not get the best of them. I shall have to try it myself." He went to find the brothers, but they were no longer in their old places. He found them in different kingdoms. All three were living and reigning there. That vexed the old devil. "I shall have to do the work myself," he said. First of all he went to King Semén. He did not go to him in his own form, but in the shape of a general. He went to him, and said: "I have heard that you, King Semén, are a great warrior. I have had good instruction in this business, and I want to serve you." King Semén began to ask him questions, and he saw that he was a clever man, and so received him into his service. The old general began to teach King Semén how to gather a great army. "In the first place," he said, "you must collect more soldiers, for too many people in your kingdom are walking about idly. You must shave the heads of all the young men without exception, and then you will have an army which will be five times as large as it is now. In the second place, you must introduce new guns and cannon. I will get you the kind of guns that fire one hundred bullets at once, as though pouring out pease. And I will get you cannon that burn with their fire: whether a man, or a horse, or a wall,--they burn everything." King Semén listened to his new general, and ordered all the young men without exception to be drafted as soldiers, and started new factories. He had a lot of new guns and cannon made, and at once started a war against a neighbouring king. The moment the enemy's army came out against him, he ordered his soldiers to fire at them with bullets and to burn them with the cannon fire. He at once maimed and burnt one-half the army. The neighbouring king became frightened, and he surrendered and gave up his kingdom to him. King Semén was happy. "Now I will vanquish the King of India," he said. But the King of India heard of King Semén, and adopted all his inventions and added a few of his own. The King of India drafted not only all the young men, but he also made all the unmarried women serve as soldiers, and so he had even more soldiers than King Semén. He adopted all of King Semén's guns and cannon, and introduced flying in the air and throwing explosive bombs from above. King Semén went out to make war on the King of India. He thought that he would conquer him as he had conquered before; but the scythe was cutting too fine,--the King of India did not give Semén's army a chance to fire a single shot, for he sent his women into the air, to throw explosive bombs on Semén's army. The women began to pour the bombs on Semén's army, like borax on cockroaches, and the whole army ran away, and King Semén was left alone. The King of India took possession of the whole of Semén's kingdom, and Semén the Warrior ran whither his eyes took him. The old devil had done up this brother, and he made for King Tarás. He took the shape of a merchant and settled in Tarás's kingdom. He started an establishment, and began to issue money. The merchant paid high prices for everything, and the whole nation rushed to the merchant to get his money. And the people had so much money that they paid all their back taxes and paid on time all the taxes as they fell due. King Tarás was happy. "Thanks to the merchant," he thought, "I shall now have more money than ever, and my life will improve." And King Tarás fell on new plans. He began to build himself a new palace: he commanded the people to haul lumber and stone, and to come to work, and offered high prices for everything. King Tarás thought that as before the people would rush to work for him. But, behold, all the lumber and stone was being hauled to the merchant, and only the labourers were rushing to the king. King Tarás offered higher prices, but the merchant went higher still. King Tarás had much money, but the merchant had more still, and the merchant could offer better pay than the king. The royal palace came to a standstill,--it could not be built. King Tarás wanted to get a garden laid out. When the fall came, King Tarás proclaimed that he wanted people to come and set out trees for him; but nobody came, as they were all digging a pond for the merchant. Winter came. King Tarás wanted to buy sable furs for a new coat, and he sent out men to buy them. The messenger came back, and said that there were no sables,--that all the furs were in the merchant's possession, as he had offered a higher price, and that he had made himself a sable rug. King Tarás wanted to have some stallions. He sent messengers to buy them for him; but they came back, and said that the merchant had all the good stallions, and they were hauling water and filling up the pond. All the business of the king came to a stop. Men would not do anything for him, but worked only for the merchant; all he received was the merchant's money, for taxes. And the king collected such a mass of money that he did not know what to do with it, and his life grew bad. The king stopped planning things, and only thought of how he might pass his life peacefully, but he could not do so. He was oppressed in everything. His cooks, and his coachmen, and his servants began to leave him for the merchant. And he began to suffer for lack of food. He would send the women to market to buy provisions, but there was nothing there, for the merchant bought up everything, and all he received was money for taxes. King Tarás grew angry and sent the merchant abroad; but the merchant settled at the border and continued to do his work: as before, people dragged for the merchant's money all the things from the king to him. The king was in a bad plight: he did not eat for days at a time, and the rumour was spread that the merchant was boasting that he was going to buy the king himself with his money. King Tarás lost his courage, and did not know what to do. Semén the Warrior came to him, and said: "Support me, for the King of India has vanquished me." But Tarás himself was pinched. "I have not eaten myself for two days," he said. XI. The old devil had done up the two brothers, and now went to Iván. The old devil took the shape of a general, and he came to Iván and tried to persuade him to provide himself with an army. "It will not do for a king to live without an army," he said. "Just command me, and I will gather soldiers from among your people, and will get you up an army." Iván took his advice. "All right," he said, "get me up an army: teach them to play good music,--I like that." The old devil started to go over the kingdom, to gather volunteers. He said that they should go and get their crowns shaved, for which they would get a bottle of vódka each, and a red cap. The fools laughed at him. "We have all the liquor we want," they said, "for we distil it ourselves, and as for caps, our women will make us any we want, even motley ones, with tassels at that." Not one of them would go. The old devil went to Iván and said: "Your fools will not go of their own will; you will have to force them." "All right," he said, "drive them by force!" And so the old devil announced that all the fools were to inscribe themselves as soldiers, and that Iván would execute those who would not go. The fools came to the general and said: "You say that the king will have us killed if we do not become soldiers, but you do not tell us what we shall have to do as soldiers. They say that soldiers, too, are killed." "Yes, that cannot be helped." When the fools heard that, they became stubborn. "We will not go," they said. "If so, let us be killed at home! Death cannot be escaped anyway." "Fools that you are!" said the old devil. "A soldier may be killed or not, but if you do not go, King Iván will certainly have you killed." The fools considered the matter, and went to see Iván the Fool. "Your general has come," they said, "and tells us all to turn soldiers. 'If you become soldiers,' he says, 'you may be killed, or not, but if you do not become soldiers King Iván will certainly put you to death.' Is that true?" Iván began to laugh. "How can I, one man, have you all put to death? If I were not a fool, I should explain that to you, but as it is, I do not understand it myself." "If so," they said, "we shall not become soldiers." "All right," he said, "don't." The fools went to the general and refused to become soldiers. The old devil saw that his business did not work, so he went to the King of Cockroachland, and got into his favour. "Let us go," he said, "and wage war on King Iván, and vanquish him. He has no money, but he has plenty of grain, and cattle, and all kinds of things." The King of Cockroachland went out to make war: he had gathered a large army, and collected guns and cannon, and left his borders, to enter Iván's kingdom. People came to Iván and said: "The King of Cockroachland is coming against us." "All right," he said, "let him come." The King of Cockroachland crossed the border, and sent the advance-guard to find Iván's army. They looked and looked for it, and could not find it. They thought that they might wait for it to show up. But they heard nothing about it,--there was no army to fight. The King of Cockroachland sent out his men to take possession of the villages. The soldiers came to one village,--and there the fools jumped out to look at the soldiers and to marvel at them. The soldiers began to take away the grain and the cattle: the fools gave it all up, and did not resist. The soldiers went to the next village, and the same happened. The soldiers walked for a day or two, and everywhere the same happened. They gave up all they had, and nobody resisted, and they invited the soldiers to come and live with them: "If you, dear people," they said, "have not enough to live on in your country, come and settle among us." The soldiers walked and walked, but no army was to be found; everywhere people were living, and feeding themselves and other people, and they did not resist, but invited them to come and live with them. The soldiers felt bad, and they came back to the King of Cockroachland. "We cannot fight here," they said, "so take us to some other place: war would be a good thing, but this is as though we were to cut soup. We cannot fight here." The King of Cockroachland grew wroth, and commanded his soldiers to march through the whole kingdom, and destroy villages and houses, and burn the grain and kill the cattle. "If you do not obey my command," he said, "I shall have you all executed." The soldiers became frightened, and began to carry out the king's command. They started to burn the houses and the grain, and to kill the cattle. And still the fools did not resist, but only wept. The old men wept, and the old women wept, and the children wept. "Why do you offend us? Why do you destroy the property? If you need it, take it along!" The soldiers felt ashamed. They did not go any farther, and the whole army ran away. XII. The old devil went away,--he could not get at Iván by means of the soldiers. The old devil changed into a clean-looking gentleman, and went to live in Iván's kingdom: he wished to get at him by means of money, as he had done with Tarás the Paunch. "I want to do you good," he said, "and to teach you what is good and proper. I will build a house in your country, and will start an establishment." "All right," he said, "stay here!" The clean-looking gentleman stayed overnight, and the following morning he took a large bag of gold to the market-square, and a sheet of paper, and said: "You are all of you living like pigs. I will teach you how to live. Build me a house according to this plan! You work, and I will show you how, and will pay gold money to you." And he showed them the gold. The fools were astounded: they had no such a thing as money, and only exchanged things among themselves, or paid with work. They marvelled at the gold and said: "They are nice things." And for these gold things they began to give him what they had and to work for him. The old devil rejoiced and thought: "My affair is proceeding favourably. I will now ruin Iván completely, as I have ruined Tarás, and will buy him up, guts and all." As soon as the fools had any gold, they gave it all away to their women for necklaces, and their girls wove it into their braids, and the children began to play in the streets with those pretty things. When all had enough of it, they refused to get any more. The clean-looking gentleman's palace was not half done, and the grain and the cattle were not yet attended to for the year. And the gentleman demanded that they should go and work for him, and haul his grain, and drive his cattle; he promised them much gold for everything and for all work. But no one came to work, and they brought nothing to him. Only now and then a boy or girl would run in to exchange an egg for a gold coin; otherwise nobody came, and he had nothing to eat. The clean-looking gentleman was starved, and he went to the village to buy something to eat: he went into one yard, and offered a gold coin for a chicken, but the woman would not take it. "I have too many of them as it is," she said. He went to a homeless woman, to buy a herring of her, and offered her a gold coin. "I do not want it, dear man," she said. "I have no children, and so there is nobody to play with it; I myself have three of these for show." He went to a peasant to buy bread of him, but the peasant, too, would not take the money. "I do not want it," he said. "If you want bread, for Christ's sake, wait, and I will have my wife cut you off a piece." The devil just spit out and ran away from the peasant. Not only would he not take anything for Christ's sake, but it was worse than cutting him even to hear that word. And so he did not get any bread. Everywhere it was the same; no matter where the devil went, they gave him nothing for money, but said: "Bring us something else, or come and work for it, or take it for Christ's sake!" But the devil had nothing but money. He did not like to work, and for Christ's sake he could not take anything. The old devil grew angry. "What else do you want, if I give you money? You can buy anything for money, or hire a labourer." The fools paid no attention to him. "No," they said, "we do not want it. We have no taxes and no wages to pay, so what do we want with the money?" The old devil went to bed without eating supper. This affair reached the ears of Iván the Fool. They went to ask him: "What shall we do? A clean-looking gentleman has appeared among us: he is fond of eating and drinking, and does not like to work, and does not beg for Christ's sake, but only offers us gold pieces. So long as we did not have enough of them, we gave him everything, but now we do not give him any more. What shall we do with him? We are afraid that he will starve." Iván listened to what they had to say. "All right," he said, "we shall have to feed him. Let him go from farm to farm as a shepherd!" The old devil could not help himself, and he began to go from farm to farm. The turn came to Iván's farm. The old devil came to dinner, and the dumb girl was just fixing it. Those who were lazy used to deceive her. Without having worked they came to dinner earlier and ate up all the porridge. And so the dumb girl contrived to tell the good-for-nothing by their hands: if one had calluses, she seated him at the table, but if not, she gave him what was left of the dinner. The old devil climbed behind the table; but the dumb girl took hold of his hands, and there were no calluses; the hands were clean and smooth, and the nails long. The dumb girl bawled, and pulled the devil out from behind the table. Iván's wife said to him: "Don't take it amiss, clean gentleman! My sister-in-law will not let a man without calluses sit down at the table. Wait awhile! Let the people eat first, and then you will get what is left." The old devil was insulted, because at the king's house they would feed him with the swine. He said to Iván: "What a fool's law you have in your country to let all men work with their hands! You have invented that in your stupidity. Do men work with their hands only? How do you suppose clever people work?" But Iván said: "How can we fools know? We labour mostly with our hands and with our backs." "That is so, because you are fools. I will teach you," he said, "how to work with your heads. You will see that with your heads you can work faster than with your hands." Iván marvelled. "Indeed," he said, "we are called fools for good reason." And the old devil said: "But it is not easy to work with the head. You do not give me anything to eat because I have no calluses on my hands, and you do not know that it is a hundred times harder to work with the head. At times it just makes the head burst." Iván fell to musing. "But why do you torture yourself so much, my dear? It is no small matter to have your head burst. You had better do some easy work,--with your hands and back." And the devil said: "The reason I torture myself is because I pity you fools. If I did not torture myself, you would remain fools to the end of your days. I have worked with my head, and now I will teach you, too." Iván marvelled. "Teach us," he said, "for now and then the hands get tired, and it would be nice to use the head instead." The devil promised to teach him. And Iván proclaimed throughout his kingdom that a clean-looking man had appeared who would teach people how to work with their heads, that they could work more with their heads than with their hands, and that they should come and learn. In Iván's kingdom there was a high tower, and a straight staircase led up to it, and at the top there was a spy-room. Iván took the gentleman there so that he might see better. The gentleman stood up on the tower and began to speak from it. The fools gathered around to look at him. The fools thought that he would show them in fact how to work with the head instead of the hands. But the old devil taught them only in words how to live without working. The fools did not understand a word. They looked and looked and went away, each to his work. The old devil stood on the tower a day, and a second day, and kept talking. He wanted to eat; but the fools did not have enough sense to send some bread up to the tower. They thought that if he could work better with his head than with his hands, he would somehow earn bread for himself with his head. The old devil stood another day in the tower-room, and kept talking all the time. And the people came up and looked, and looked and went away. Then Iván asked: "Well, has the gentleman begun to work with his head?" "Not yet," people said, "he is still babbling." The old devil stood another day on the tower and began to weaken; he tottered and struck his head against a post. One of the fools saw that, and told Iván's wife about it, and she ran to her husband in the field. "Come, let us go and see," she said. "The gentleman is beginning to work with his head." Iván was surprised. "Indeed?" he said. He turned in the horse, and went to the tower. When he came up to it, the old devil was weakened from hunger and tottering from side to side and knocking his head against the posts. Just as Iván came up, the devil stumbled and fell and rattled down the stairs, head foremost: he counted all the steps. "Well," said Iván, "the clean-looking gentleman told the truth when he said that at times the head bursts. This is worse than calluses: such works will leave bumps on the head." The old devil came down the whole staircase and struck his head against the ground. Iván wanted to go and see how much work he had done, but suddenly the earth gave way, and the old devil went through the earth, and nothing but a hole was left. Iván scratched himself. "I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing! It is again he. He must be the father of those others. What a big fellow he is!" Iván is still living, and people are all the time rushing to his kingdom, and his brothers, too, came to him, and he is feeding them all. If any one comes and says: "Feed me!" he replies: "All right, stay here, we have plenty of everything." They have but one custom in his country, and that is, if one has calluses on his hands, he may sit down at the table, and if he has not, he gets the remnants. * * * * * Transcriber's note: On page 133, the original read: "The Tartars after him. He into the river." This has been changed to "The Tartars after him. He threw himself into the river."