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.