SCENE 7. THE SAME AND KULÍGIN

_Kulígin._ Here is your Katerína. Do with her what you please! Her body

is here, take it; but her soul is not yours now: she is now before the

Judge who is more merciful than you! (_Puts her on the ground and runs

away._)

_Kabanóv_ (_rushes to Katerína_). Kátya! Kátya!

_Mrs. Kabanóv._ Enough! It is a sin even to weep for her!

_Kabanóv._ Mamma, you have killed her! You! You!

_Mrs. Kabanóv._ How dare you? Are you forgetting yourself? Do you know

to whom you are speaking?

_Kabanóv._ You have killed her! You! You!

_Mrs. Kabanóv._ I ’ll talk to you at home. (_Bowing low to the people._)

I thank you, good people, for your services! (_All bow._)

_Kabanóv._ It is well with you, Kátya! But why am I left in this world

to suffer! (_Falls on his wife’s body._)

Mikhaíl Evgráfovich Saltykóv. (pseud. Shchedrín). (1826-1889.)

Saltykóv was descended from an ancient noble family. He received his

first education at home, at ten years of age entered the Moscow

Institute for Sons of Noblemen, and two years later was chosen, on

account of his excellent progress, to be sent to the Lyceum at

Tsárskoe-Seló. In that school the memory of its distinguished alumnus,

Púshkin, was still fresh, and it was expected that there should be a

continuator of the great poet in every class. Thus Saltykóv wrote his

first poem in 1841, but he soon abandoned poetry for satire. After

leaving the Lyceum, Saltykóv threw himself into the whirlpool of

pleasures, even in this emulating the older generation. In 1847

appeared his first story. The following year he wrote _A Mixed

Affair_, which, like his previous effort, was quite weak and

insignificant, but as it happened to have made its appearance in the

critical year 1848, when the censorship was unusually severe, he was

suspected of evil purposes and was banished to the Government of

Vyátka. He there remained eight years, but served with distinction

under the Governor and rose to various posts of eminence. Upon his

return from exile he published his _Provincial Sketches_, in which he

gave some gloomy pictures of provincial oppression and dishonesty.

Saltykóv created a special language for his satires, which, on account

of the endless allusions and masterly word-creations, are the despair

of the translator and have made his admirable works less known abroad

than they deserve to be. In his long literary career Saltykóv has

adapted himself to the conditions of the time, and thus his satires

give a continuous record of the reverse of Russian life for upwards of

forty years. Among his best works are _Pompadours and Pompadouresses_,

_The Tashkentians_, _Refuge Monrepos_, _Diary of a Provincial at St.

Petersburg_, and his famous _The Golovlévs_, which enjoys a reputation

like Gógol’s _Dead Souls_.

In English translation are to be found: _Tchinovniks_, _Sketches of

Provincial Life_, from the memoirs of the retired Conseiller de Cour

Stchedrin (Saltikow), translated with notes from the Russian by F.

Aston, London, 1861; _The Recollections of Onésime Chenapan_, _The

Self-Sacrificing Rabbit_, and _The Eagle as Mecænas_, in _The Humour

of Russia_, by E. L. Voynich, London and New York, 1895; in Free

Russia were given _The Fool_, in vol. i., No. 5, _The Deceitful Editor

and the Credulous Reader_, in vol. i., No. 9, _Story of how One

Peasant Saved Two Generals_, in vol. ii., No. 6, and _Misha and

Vania_, in vol. iii., Nos. 6 and 7.

FROM “BEYOND THE BORDER”

Having grown tired of my fruitless sojourn in the world of concrete

facts, I self-confidently attempted to fly as a steel-grey eagle into

the sphere of abstractions. In my younger days I took such flights quite

often. Together with my other companions I liked to pamper myself with

excursions into that region where one is supposed to get “revelations of

invisible things,” and, I remember, these excursions were a source of

great pleasure to me. I cannot say I saw that region clearly defined,

but, in any case, the contemplation of it evoked in me no fear, but a

decidedly pleasurable sensation. In general, we then lived with more

vigour (of course, I have in view only myself and my contemporaries),

though I must confess our basal fund of life was impaired by

inconsistencies that bordered on frivolities. Two lives went side by

side: one, so to say, _pro domo_, the other for the fear of the Jews,

that is, in the manner of a justificatory document to the authorities.

You are sitting at home and with your whole being, so to say, have

transferred yourself into the sphere of the “revelation of invisible

things.” Suddenly, the fateful hour strikes,--run to your bureau! You

don your trowsers and your office uniform, and fifteen minutes later you

are in an entirely different sphere, in the sphere of the “confirmation

of visible things.” Of course, the questions in the two places are quite

different. In the first sphere the question is whether the golden age is

to be sought behind or before us; in the second the question is the

establishment of golden ages by means of provincial government offices

and departments of charity, on the basis of explicit statutory

enactments anent this subject. You stay there a while, scratch your pen,

and behold! again strikes the fateful hour. You run home again, change

your trowsers, put on a coat or a smoking-jacket, and you transport

yourself once more into the sphere of the “revelation of invisible

things.” Thus our youth passed----

The present generation will, no doubt, regard this running from one

sphere into another as not very consistent, but in those days we managed

to unite them, and we felt no awkwardness. And now, after many, many

years, passing in accidental solitude, the stream of my youth has

suddenly burst upon me. Come, thought I, I will run, as in olden days.

However, I did not get as far as running, for, though my youthful

recollections streamed upon me with vim, I had to convince myself that

my legs were not what they used to be, and that the blood in my veins

was no longer the same. And then, the questions that these recollections

brought back--really, I do not know what to call them. Some, who are

more lenient, call them untimely, while others, who are unquestionably

evil-minded, blankly call them harmful---- Well, you may judge for

yourself.

The first question: “Does history console?” Some forty years ago--I am

quite sure of it--I should in all truth have answered: “Yes, it

consoles.” But what shall I say now? To tell the truth, I have even

forgotten how to think by principles, without prefatory admixtures. I

begin with the tenebrousness of Time, and no sooner does light begin to

glimmer than I strike river Pinéga with Vilyúy, or some statute of

abatement, and there I stick fast. Precisely that has happened now.

Barely had the question peeped at me, and barely had I proceeded to

dismember it, when God knows whence bobbed up Major-General Terrible and

so flashed his eyes at me that I was completely stunned. “No, I had

better to-morrow--” I confusedly said to myself, and I that very moment

hastened to duck so that my ears might not be seen.

The second question: “Can one live with the people, and depend upon

them?” Forty years ago I certainly should have answered: “One not only

can, but it is not possible to live otherwise.” Now---- No sooner do I

begin to expatiate and prove “from principle” that human activity

outside of the sphere of the people is objectless and senseless, than

the hide of my whole being begins to shudder. There stare at me those

fellows of Hunting Row,[22] those colabourers of Hay Market, and, at

last, a whole mass of temporising rascals, _à la_ Napoleon III., who,

too, had proclaimed: _tout pour le peuple et par le peuple_---- Of

course, the conclusion was that I had better to-morrow----

The third question: “Is it possible to lead a life in which you are

supposed to eat mushroom pie exclusively that you may restrain your

tongue behind your teeth?” Forty years ago I, no doubt, should have

answered again: “No, it is not possible to live that way.” And

now?--Now: “No, I had better to-morrow----”

In short, I attempted to give answers to a whole stack of questions, but

alas! neither concreteness, nor abstraction,--nothing awakened impotent

thought. I struggled for quite a while, and I came very near calling

out: “Vódka!” but fortunately that drink is not so accessible in Paris

as to console one at will.

So I lay me down to sleep, having carried away from my two-days’ blues

the truth that under certain conditions of life a spree must be

considered not so much from the standpoint of a vitiated will as in the

sense of an irrepressible necessity of a grieving soul---- I had a

disturbed, painful dream. At first there hovered before me some

incoherent fragments, but by degrees they formed themselves into

something connected, there was a whole colloquy, the heroine of which

was--a swine! However, this colloquy is so interesting that I do not

regard it nugatory to share it with my readers in the form in which my

memory has preserved it.

THE TRIUMPHANT SWINE, OR THE CONVERSATION OF THE SWINE WITH TRUTH--AN

INTERRUPTED SCENE

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

SWINE, _stall-fed beast; his bristles have become glossy and shining

as the result of uninterrupted contact with the stable mire_.

TRUTH, _a person that, by rights, is supposed to be eternally young,

but in reality is badly knocked up. By order of the authorities she

is covered with rags, through which glints her full classical

uniform_, i. e., _nakedness_.

_The action takes place in the stable._

_Swine_ (_screwing up his face_). Is it true what they say, that the sun

is shining in the sky?

_Truth._ Yes, Swine.

_Swine._ Really? I have never seen any of your suns here in the stable

where I live.

_Truth._ That ’s so, Swine, because when Nature was creating you, she

kept on saying: ’T is not for you, O Swine, to see the bright sun!

_Swine._ You don’t say! (_Authoritatively._) In my opinion, all these

suns of yours are rank heresy--eh?

(_Truth, silent and embarrassed, arranges her rags. In the audience are

heard voices: “You are right, Swine! Heresy! Heresy!”_)

_Swine_ (_continues to grimace_). Is it so?--I have heard that they say

in papers that liberty is the most precious possession of human society?

_Truth._ Yes, Swine.

_Swine._ In my opinion, we are surfeited with liberty. Here, I have been

living without intermission in this stable, and I have no worry! What

more do I want? If I take a notion, I stick my snout in the trough, or

rummage the manure----what more liberty do I want? (_Authoritatively._)

You are all traitors, as I look at you--eh?

(_Truth again tries to conceal her nakedness. The audience shouts: “You

are right, Swine! Traitors! Traitors!” Some of the audience demand that

Truth shall be taken to the police station. The swine grunts with

self-satisfaction, seeing himself equal to the situation._)

_Swine._ What ’s the use, taking Truth to the station? They ’ll only

keep her there for appearances, and then they ’ll let her out again.

(_Lies down in the manure, and falls into sentimentality._) Oh, nowadays

those police people speak the same language as the feuilleton writers! A

few days ago I read in a paper that the cause of our weakness is that

our laws are only written for appearances----

_Truth._ So you read, Swine?

_Swine._ Now and then. Only I do not take it in as it is written---- I

understand it as I please---- (_To the audience._) So, as I say, my

friends! We will not send her to the police station, we ’ll get at her

in our own way---- To-day we ’ll put one little question to her, and

to-morrow--two---- (_Meditating._) We won’t get away with her at

once,--we ’ll just chaw her by degrees---- (_Panting, approaches Truth,

grabs her by her calf, and begins to bite her._) That ’s the way!

(_Truth shrinks with pain; the audience yells. Shouts are heard: “You

are a brick, Swine! You are a good one!”_)

_Swine._ What? You like it? Well, that ’ll be enough for this time!

(_Stops chawing._) Now, tell me, where is the root of evil?

_Truth_ (_confused_). The root of evil, Swine? The root of evil--the

root of evil--is (_with decision, and unexpectedly to herself_) in you,

Swine!

_Swine_ (_furious_). Ah, that ’s the way you talk! Now, look out! Did

n’t you say that universal truth was incomparably superior to

police-truth?

_Truth_ (_trying to avoid a direct answer_). Though under certain

conditions of life, one cannot deny----

_Swine._ Stop wagging your tail! We have heard of those ifs and buts

before! Talk straight! Is there in your opinion a certain special truth

that is superior to police-truth?

_Truth._ O Swine, how treacherously mean----

_Swine._ Very well, we ’ll talk later about that. (_Treading with

heavier step._) Go ahead! Is it true you have said that the laws must

protect all alike, for, say you, otherwise human society would change

into a chaotic mass of warring elements? What kind of laws have you been

talking about? What was the cause, madam, of your glibness, and at whose

door did you wish to place it--eh?

_Truth._ Ah, Swine!

_Swine._ Swine me no swine to my snout! I know without you that I am a

swine. I am a swine, and you are Truth---- (_The swine’s grunting sounds

like irony._) Go, Swine, make for Truth! (_Begins to chaw. To the

audience._) Fine, is n’t it?

(_Truth shudders with pain. The audience goes into convulsions. On all

sides is heard: “Fine! Give it to her, Swine! Give it to her! Go for

her! Chaw her! Look at that impudent one; she dares have anything to

say!”_)

────────────────────────────────────

The colloquy was interrupted here. I could not make out anything else,

because there was raised such a hubbub in the stable that I could only

dimly catch the sounds: “Is it true that in the university----” “Is it

true that in the female colleges----” In a twinkling of the eye Truth

was enmeshed in a whole net of stupidly treacherous deceit, and every

attempt at disentangling from that net was met by the swine’s chawing

and the thunder of the crowd: “Friends, let us judge her with the

people’s judgment!”

I lay like one fettered, expecting any moment to be chawed up myself. I,

who had all my life been repeating in frivolous self-confidence: “God

won’t permit it, the swine won’t eat me!”--suddenly yelled out at the

top of my voice: “The swine will eat me up! He will!”

That very moment a loud rap at the door made me wake up.

[22] Poultry and game market.

Dmítri Ivánovich Písarev. (1841-1868.)

Písarev was the son of wealthy gentlefolk who gave him a very careful

training at home, so that at the age of four he spoke fluently three

languages, at the age of eleven entered an advanced class of the

Gymnasium, graduating with a gold medal, and at sixteen years was by

especial permission admitted to the university. While there, he

contributed some reviews for periodicals and wrote an elaborate

dissertation on Apollonius of Tyana. In 1862 he was arrested for

having furnished a secret printing establishment with an article on

Herzen, and was kept for four years in prison. Here he composed his

essays for which he is known. He taught a philosophic sensualism and

denied the value of art, and with it of poetry for art’s sake,--in

short, he stood on the standpoint of Bazárov in Turgénev’s _Fathers

and Sons_. He thus represented the reaction of the early sixties

against the opportunism of the previous decade. In his _Flowers of

Harmless Humour_ he made an attack against the satirist Shchedrín,

whom he advised to abandon his literary labours for the popularisation

of the sciences. He died by accidental drowning.

FLOWERS OF HARMLESS HUMOUR

Poets fare badly in our days. Their credit is rapidly sinking. Unfeeling

critics and soulless scoffers are breaking down the public’s respect for

the great mysteries of the unconscious creative power. Formerly they

used to talk of a poet’s inspiration; formerly a poet was thought to be

a favourite of the gods and an intimate of the Muses. Though these

mythological metaphors were not supposed to be interpreted in a literal

sense, yet under these metaphors one continually felt something good and

mysterious, something intangible and inapproachable, something that must

for ever remain inaccessible to us, poor clodhoppers. Fellows of our

kind were permitted to learn something about it only from the indistinct

accounts of the artists who “like gods have access to the Olympian

halls,” where they are shown very interesting and frequently very

immodest scenes.

Now all that has changed. Brother clodhopper has gathered an enormous

force, and he undertakes to discuss everything. He does not acknowledge

any inspiration, does not hanker for any Olympian halls, in spite of the

fact that the poet gives a detailed account how a certain artist was

once shown in these halls “a white nape’s curvedness” in “eternal

ideals,” and things in general which “divinity discloses to mortals in

paltry doles” (A. Máykov). Our brother clodhopper denies all that with

his innate coarseness of feeling and boldness of expression. Those are

all flowers of fancy, he says, but you had better tell us: What mental

power does the poet possess? Is his development broad, and his culture

thorough?

What questions these are! Are they pertinent? Are they refined? Is it

permissible to summon a favourite of the gods and to question him like a

guilty high-school boy? If it at all has come to such unheard of

questions, if faith has been lost in divine inspiration, if the

periodicals find it more interesting to have their correspondents in

Paris or London, in Sarátov or Irkútsk, rather than upon Parnassus or in

the Olympian halls,--then, of course, there is nothing left for the

peaceable poet to do but to hang his darling lyre on a nail, and to

enter the Government service or turn to the sombre occupations of

agriculture. If it keeps on in that way, there will at last come a

dramatic moment, when the last poet will embrace the last esthetician

and, sobbing, will say to him:

“My friend, we are alone. The world has turned sour and is decaying. The

microscope and the scalpel give us no rest. If we do not conceal

ourselves or do not turn naturalists, they will put us alive into

spirits, in order to preserve complete the last specimens of an extinct

species that had remarkable external resemblances to man. My friend,

when we die, the last gate that leads to the Olympian dwellings will be

nailed up and securely hidden from view, not by bricks, but by a heap of

all the unsold copies of my poems and all the uncut sheets of your

critical essays.”

“Well,” will say the esthetician, “if it is so, then all is ended. The

gate will for ever remain inaccessible! No man will ever climb, no

animal will ever jump over my critiques and your poesy.” And, clasping

each other in a tight embrace, as people embrace on the grave of

everything that is dear to them, our last Mohicans will start on a run

to the shop to buy themselves a microscope and chemical retorts, as

appurtenances of a masquerade that is to save them from an untimely and

involuntary descent into spirits. The history of the regenerated

specimens of the extinct species will end by the esthetician’s and

poet’s marriage, _à la face du soleil et de la nature_, to two girls who

are medical practitioners and who in times of yore used to completely

upset their present admirers by their incomprehensibly solid education,

their indecently firm manner of thinking, and their complete absence of

feminine grace, that is, weakness, silliness, and affectation. The

children of these two happy pairs will get to hear some dim references

to estheticians and poets, but their grandchildren will never hear that.

Both species will become entirely unknown, as are unknown to us many

slugs of the primeval world, that have left neither bones, nor shells,

nor any other traces of their mundane existence.

From many separate features that are scattered in my prophetic

improvisation, the reader may notice that its realisation belongs to a

very distant future. In all likelihood the great-great-grandfathers and

the great-great-grandmothers of the last esthetician and the last poet

are at the present moment not yet in the wombs of their mothers; yet, in

spite of the remoteness of the decisive catastrophe, there are evil

omens of it even in our own time---- There are very many literary

parasites, but out of the murky and miserable crowd of the intellectual

proletariat rise only those who know how to acquire a flexible and

variegated form of expression. These brilliant parasites carry form to a

truly incredible perfection. They produce in their language the same

kind of wonderful roulades that Kóntski does on the violin or Rubinstein

on the piano. If this virtuosity is acquired by habit and practice, it,

naturally, behooves to make use of it: it is a capital from which one

must derive interest. And all the simple-minded reader has to do, is to

roll his eyes and take in the wonder! One is present at the creation of

a world in miniature: everything is made out of nothing; emptiness is

made to appear as fulness, and it is made to appear fulness so naturally

that one has only to shrug his shoulders: “Yes, he is an artist, a

painter, a professor of white magic, a Bosco, and even a Mikháyla

Vasílevich!” Of course, the public says “Ah!” and goes into ecstasies,

and how can it help going into ecstasies, when the miracles are produced

right before its eyes!

When the parasite begins to receive interest from his capital, he simply

and definitely creates, in order to apply his technical skill to

something. He has no prompting to tell society any ideas; he has no

feeling that is persistently seeking to come out and manifest itself; he

does not at all wish to act consciously upon the development of society

in one direction or another; he is not a thinker, not a social factor,

and not a poet in the higher and now forgotten sense of the word. He is

a master workman of articles, novels, or verses, and, being a sensible

artisan, he does not wish his skill to be lost in vain. Why should he

sit with folded hands, having learned a trade? Why should he not start

out on the hunt of roubles and laurel wreaths, as long as there are good

people who lavish both in fair abundance?

His reasoning is faultless, and this reasoning leads straightway to the

complete triumph and unlimited domination of pure art. Some people write

because their being boils over with the impassioned work of mind and

feelings. It is evident that their mind and feelings, being abroad

because of the creative process, are roused by impressions that are

independent of that process.

Others write in order to act upon society. The aim of their activity is

independent of the process, as we see in Byelínski, Dobrolyúbov, and the

author of _What is to be Done?_[23]

Others again write because they have learned to write and because they

can write without the least labour, just as a nightingale sings and a

rose exhales perfume. Their activity is causeless and aimless, that is,

they have a cause and an aim, but these can have no effect upon the

direction of the creative process. Suppose the versifier wants to have a

beaver collar sewn on to his warm overcoat. Here is a stimulating cause

for dipping his pen in the inkstand; however, he will, in all

probability, not write of beaver collars, but of the vicissitudes of

fate that affected three ancient sages,[24] or of the misfortunes of a

poor girl who died in the spring by the sounds of her father’s fiddle,

or of some other elevated and beautiful thing that has nothing in common

with the tempting display of the furrier next door.

He has also an aim: the versifier wishes to sell his poem to a

periodical, to get for it as much as possible, and to receive on account

all they will give him. Yet Seneca, Lucan, and Lucius warmly discuss the

immortality of the soul, and not where he will get most, whether in the

“Contemporary” or the “Memoirs of the Fatherland.” And dying Mánya, in

her last moments, is interested in the spring leafage, instead of

disquieting herself with the ticklish question: I wonder whether they

will let me have fifty roubles in advance at the “Russian Word”?

It is clear that cause and aim do not penetrate into the sanctuary of

creativeness. The sanctuary remains unpolluted, and people that pine for

a beaver collar and that dream of a tempting advance payment may be

recognised as high priests of pure art. The question will, naturally,

not be changed if instead of a beaver collar I should put a craving for

literary glory, and instead of an advance payment of fifty

roubles--applauses at public readings. The priest of pure art will in

either case remain true to his vocation, and in either case he will

remain a magnificent specimen of the genus parasite.

If it is not quite clear to the readers why our lyric poets, who

represent a complete absence of ideas, may be included in the list of

parasites that despoil the ideas of others, I will at once set them

aright. Our lyric poets feed their destitution on the tiniest grains of

thought and feelings that are the common possession of all men, stupid

and wise, cultured and uncultured, honest and dishonest. Every man has

some kind of a feeling when he looks at a pretty woman, and everybody

knows that sensation and understands that it is known to others also,

and that, consequently, it is useless and uninteresting to tell others

about it. But the lyricists live, like the humming-birds, on flower

dust; they have turned this trifling and well-known sentiment to their

advantage and have begun to elicit an income from it, thanks to their

ability to create something out of nothing and to clothe the intangible

dust in thin-woven and variegated garments of iambics, chorees,

anapests, dactyls, and amphibrachs.

The lyric poets, being tiny birds in the great family of parasites,

prosper on what everybody knows and none but the lyric poets can or wish

to make use of. Other larger parasites exploit in their favour not small

grains of feeling and germs of thought, but whole, big feelings and

whole, well-developed thoughts. These priests of pure art devour

remarkable theories and majestic world conceptions. There are among

these priests sparrows, and there are also elephants, and, as the

proverb says, the bigger the vessel, the better the sailing,--the

elephants, naturally, lay hold of the broadest and most daring world

conceptions. They discuss with another’s voice the most important and

the greatest questions of life; they perform their variations with so

much aplomb and with such overpowering thunder that the reader is

intimidated and reverentially bows his head before them.

But the temple of pure art is open alike for all its real devotees, for

all the priests who have a pure heart and are innocent of independent

mental labour. Thanks to this circumstance, the reader, though he may

marvel and not believe his eyes, will see at the same altar, on the one

hand, our little lyric poet Fet, on the other, our great humorist

Shchedrín.

[23] Chernyshévski, whose name was tabooed by the censors.

[24] Máykov is meant; see p. 344.

Count Lev Nikoláevich Tolstóy. (1828-.)

Count Tolstóy was born in the estate of Yásnaya Polyána, in the

Government of Túla. In 1837 his family settled in Moscow, but his

father died soon after, and he returned to Yásnaya Polyána. In 1843 he

entered the university at Kazán, and in 1848 graduated from the

Faculty of Jurisprudence at St Petersburg. He again returned to his

estate, where he remained till 1851. He then enrolled in the army and

was stationed in the Caucasus, where he began his literary career with

his sketches, _Childhood_, _The Incursion_, _Boyhood_, _The Cossacks_.

He took part in the Crimean War, and during the campaign wrote his

stories about _Sebastopol_. After the war Tolstóy settled in St.

Petersburg, where he published a series of shorter stories. In these

his disenchantment with existing conditions is clearly perceptible. In

1862 he married the daughter of Doctor Behrs, and went back to the

estate of Yásnaya Polyána. Here he devoted himself to the education of

the peasants and edited an educational periodical, _Yásnaya Polyána_,

in which he evolved his radical views. Soon after he assumed a

negative attitude to all progress, and has remained in it ever since.

From 1865 to 1869 appeared his great novel _War and Peace_. Then he

again returned to his pedagogical activity, and composed a large

number of short stories for the peasants. In 1875 began to appear his

other great novel, _Ánna Karénin_. At the same time he wrote his

_Confession_, and devoted himself to the composition of theological

tracts. His newly formulated theory of a return to common labour and

simplicity of life has found many followers who emulate the life of

their master under the name of Tolstoyists.

The first novel of Tolstóy’s to be translated was _The Cossacks_, by

Eugene Schuyler, in 1878. Since then such a large number of

translations of most of his works have appeared that it is not

advisable to give them here; they may easily be found in late

publishers’ annuals. The following names figure as translators of

Tolstóy: A. Hulme Beaman, M. Cruger, E. J. Dillon, A. Delano, N. H.

Dole, H. Sutherland Edwards, Constance Garnett, G. B. Halsted, Isabel

Hapgood, Ch. Johnston, A. Loranger, Y. A. Ludwig, Louise Maude, W.

Aylmer Maude, Count Norraikow, C. Dopoff, S. Rapoport and J.

Kenworthy, V. Tchertkoff, W. M. Thompson, B. R. Tucker.

FROM “ÁNNA KARÉNIN”

“Do you know, I have been thinking of you,” said Sergyéy Ivánovich.

“From what that doctor has told me, there are some awful things going on

in your county; the doctor is quite a clever fellow. I have been telling

you and I repeat it now: it is wrong for you not to go to the meetings

and altogether to keep away from all agrarian interests. If decent

people are going to withdraw from them, then, of course, everything will

go God knows how. We are paying out money; it all goes on salaries, and

we have no schools, no medical assistants, no midwives, no apothecary

shops, nothing.”

“I have tried,” Levín answered softly and unwillingly, “but I can’t!

What ’s to be done?”

“What is it that you can’t! I confess, I do not understand you.

Indifference and inability I do not admit; is it, then, simply

indolence?”

“Neither the one, nor the other, nor the third. I have tried, and I see

that I can’t do anything,” said Levín.

He did not pay much attention to what his brother was saying. As he

looked beyond the river at the field, he distinguished something black,

but he could not make out whether it was a horse or a clerk on

horseback.

“Why can’t you do anything? You have made an attempt, and in your

opinion you did not succeed, so you have given it up. Have n’t you any

ambition?”

“Ambition,” said Levín, touched to the quick by his brother’s words, “is

incomprehensible to me. If they had told me in the university that

others understand integral calculus, and that I do not, there would be a

case for ambition. But here one must be convinced first of all that one

must have a certain ability for that, and above all, that these affairs

are really important.”

“Well, is n’t that important?” said Sergyéy Ivánovich, himself touched

to the quick because his brother regarded as unimportant that which

interested him, and because, evidently, he was not listening.

“It does not seem important to me, and does not interest me, so what are

you going to do about that?” answered Levín, having in the meantime made

out that what he saw was really the clerk and that the clerk had, no

doubt, told the peasants to stop ploughing. They were turning over the

ploughs. “Is it possible, they have done the ploughing?” he thought.

“But listen,” said his elder brother, with a frown on his beautiful,

intelligent face, “there are limits to everything. It ’s all very nice

to be an odd fellow, and a sincere man, and not to like deception,--I

understand all that; but what you are saying has either no sense, or a

very bad sense. How is it you find it unimportant that the people whom

you profess to love----”

“I never professed,” thought Konstantín Levín.

“Are dying without receiving any aid? Coarse midwives are killing the

children, and the people are steeped in ignorance and remain in the

power of every scribe, whereas you have the means at hand to correct all

that, and you do nothing, because in your opinion it is not important.”

Sergyéy Ivánovich had placed a dilemma before him: “Either you are so

undeveloped that you cannot see all that you are able to do, or you do

not wish to sacrifice your quiet and your vainglory, or what not, in

order to do it.”

Konstantín Levín felt that there was nothing left for him to do but

submit or confess an absence of love for the common weal. And this

offended and grieved him.

“Both,” he spoke with decision; “I can’t see how one can----”

“What? You can’t, by making proper use of money, give them medical

help?”

“As far as I can see, it is impossible---- I see no possibility of

furnishing medical aid in all the places of the four thousand square

versts of our county, with our freshets, blizzards, and working season.

Besides, I have no faith in medicine.”

“Come now, that is not just---- I can give you a thousand examples----

Well, and schools?”

“What are the schools for?”

“You don’t mean that! Can there be any doubt of the use of education? If

it is good for you, it is also good for everybody else.”

Konstantín Levín felt himself morally pushed to the wall, and so he

became excited and involuntarily expressed the main cause of his

indifference to the common good.

“May be all that is good. But why should I bother about establishing

medical centres which I am not going to use, or schools to which I am

not going to send my children, to which even the peasants do not want to

send theirs, and I am not yet firmly convinced that they should?” said

he.

This unexpected view of the affair for a moment startled Sergyéy

Ivánovich; but he at once thought out a new plan of attack. He kept

silent, pulled out one fishing-rod, threw it in at another place, and,

smiling, turned to his brother.

“You will pardon me: in the first place, a medical centre is much

needed. There, we had to send for the county doctor to attend to Agáfya

Mikháylovna.”

“Well, I think her hand will always stay crooked.”

“That is an open question---- Then, a literate peasant will make a more

useful labourer.”

“I don’t know, you may ask anybody you please,” answered Konstantín

Levín emphatically,--“literate peasants are much worse as labourers. You

can’t fix the roads with them; and if they have to build a bridge, they

’ll swipe the material.”

“However,” frowningly said Sergyéy Ivánovich, who did not like

contradictions, especially such as continually jumped from one subject

to another and without connection adduced new proofs, so that it was

impossible to tell what to answer first, “however, that is not the

question. Let me ask you, do you acknowledge education to be a benefit

to the people?”

“I do,” said Levín incautiously, and immediately was conscious that he

did not say what was in his mind. He felt that since he did acknowledge

it, the proof would be forthcoming that he was talking senseless bosh.

He did not know how that would be argued, but he was sure that the

logical deduction was forthcoming, and he waited for that proof.

The argument was much simpler than Konstantín Levín had expected it.

“If you acknowledge it to be beneficial,” said Sergyéy Ivánovich, “you,

as an honest man, can’t help loving this thing and sympathising with it,

and consequently you can’t help wishing to work for it.”

“But I have not yet acknowledged this to be good,” said Konstantín

Levín, blushing.

“What? You have just told me----”

“That is, I do not acknowledge it to be good or possible.”

“You can’t know that, not having made an effort.”

“Well, granted,” said Levín, though he did not at all grant it,

“granted, it is so; I still can’t see, why I should bother about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, since we have gotten so far in our discussion, explain it to me

from the philosophical point of view,” said Levín.

“I don’t understand what need there is here of philosophy,” said Sergyéy

Ivánovich, in a tone which sounded to Levín as if he did not acknowledge

his brother’s right to discuss philosophy. This irritated Levín.

“It is this,” he said excitedly, “I think that the prime mover of all

our actions is, after all, our personal happiness. I, as a nobleman, see

at present nothing in the agrarian institutions by which my interests

are advanced. The roads are no better, and they can’t be better; my

horses take me just as easily over bad roads. I need no doctors and no

medical centres. I don’t want a justice of the peace,--I have never had

recourse to him, and I never will. I not only need no schools, but I

find them injurious, as I have told you. For me the agrarian

institutions mean only an obligation to pay eighteen kopeks per

desyatína, to travel to town, in order to pass the nights with bedbugs,

and to listen to all kinds of nonsense and commonplaces,--but my

personal interest in no way incites me.”

“Wait a moment,” Sergyéy Ivánovich interrupted him, with a smile, “our

personal interest did not incite us to work for the liberation of the

peasants, yet we worked.”

“No!” Konstantín interrupted him, getting ever more excited. “The

liberation of the peasants was an entirely different matter. There was a

personal interest connected with it. We wanted to get rid of the yoke

which was oppressing us, all the good people. But to be an alderman, to

discuss how many cleaners of privies are needed, and how the pipes are

to be laid in the town I am not living in,--to be a juryman and sit in

judgment over a peasant who has stolen a ham, and for six hours to

listen to all kinds of nonsense that is threshed out by the defence and

by the procurators, and the presiding judge asking my old peasant,

Aléshka the fool: ‘Do you, Mr. Defendant, plead guilty to

misappropriating the ham, eh?’”

Konstantín Levín was getting away from the argument, and began to act

the presiding judge and Aléshka the fool; it seemed to him that it all

was pertinent to the discussion.

But Sergyéy Ivánovich shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, what is it you are up to?”

“I want to say that I will always, with all my might, defend the rights

that touch me--my interest; that, when I was a student and the secret

police made a raid on us and read our letters, I was ready with all my

might to defend these rights, to defend my rights of culture and of

liberty. I can understand military duties that touch the fate of my

children, my brothers, and myself; I am ready to discuss what touches

me; but I do not understand, and do not want to understand, why I should

consider what to do with forty thousand roubles of the county money, or

why I should sit in judgment over Aléshka the fool.”

Konstantín Levín spoke as if the dam of his words had broken loose.

Sergyéy Ivánovich smiled.

“Suppose you will have a case at law to-morrow: well, would you prefer

to be judged in the old criminal court?”

“I will not have a case in court. I will not cut anybody’s throat, and I

have no need to do so. By the way!” he continued, again jumping over to

an entirely irrelevant matter, “all our county institutions and such

things are very much like the birch saplings that we stick up, as on

Whitsun Monday, in order to make them look like a forest that has grown

up of its own accord in Europe; but I have not the heart to water these

birches, nor have I any faith in them.”

Sergyéy Ivánovich only shrugged his shoulders, expressing by this motion

that he was at a loss to account for these birches in their discussion,

though he immediately saw what his brother had intended to say by them.

“Really, that is not a way of discussing the matter,” he remarked.

But Konstantín Levín was anxious to put himself right in regard to his

defect, of which he was conscious, that is, his indifference to the

common good, and he continued:

“I think,” said Konstantín, “that no activity can be permanent if it is

not based on personal interest. This is a universal truth, a philosophic

truth,” said he, emphatically repeating the word “philosophic,” as if to

show that he, too, had a right, like anybody else, to talk of

philosophy.

Sergyéy Ivánovich smiled again. “He has a philosophy of his own to suit

his inclinations,” thought he.

“Well, you had better leave philosophy alone,” said he. “The main

problem of philosophy has been in all ages to discover the necessary

connection that exists between personal and common interests. But that

is not to the point; it behooves me to correct your comparison. The

birch saplings were not stuck up, but some were set out, and some were

planted, and one has to tend them carefully. Only those nations have a

future, only those nations may be called historical, that have

discernment in what is important and significant in their institutions,

and that value them.”

Sergyéy Ivánovich transferred the question into the field of

philosophical history, which was inaccessible to Konstantín Levín, and

showed him the whole injustice of his view.

“But as to your having no love for it,--you must pardon me,--it is a

case of our Russian indolence and mannerism, and I am convinced that it

is only a temporary aberration which will pass.”

Konstantín was silent. He felt that he had been demolished all around,

but he felt at the same time that his brother did not understand what he

had intended to convey. But he did not know why he was not understood:

because he did not express clearly his thoughts, or because his brother

did not wish to understand him, or because he could not. However, he did

not pursue this thought any longer; he did not answer his brother, and

fell to musing about something different, some personal matter of his.

Sergyéy Ivánovich fastened his last fishing-rod, untied the horse, and

they drove away.

The waggon-load was full. Iván jumped down and led the gentle, well-fed

horse by the bridle. The woman threw her rake on the waggon, and,

swinging her arms, went with a rapid step to the other women who were

walking together. When Iván drove into the road, he joined a whole

procession of other waggons. The women were walking behind the waggons,

with their rakes over their shoulders, adorned with bright flowers and

prating away with their sonorous, merry voices. A coarse, low, woman’s

voice started a song and sang it out to the refrain; then half a hundred

of low and high healthy voices caught the refrain and sang the song

again from the beginning.

The singing women were approaching Levín, and it appeared to him as

though a cloud, discharging peals of joy, were passing over him. The

cloud came nearer, and overwhelmed him, and the stack on which he was

lying, and all the other stacks, and the waggons, and the whole meadow

with the distant field,--all moved and rocked with the rhythmical

measure of this wild, hilarious song, with its exclamations, its

whistling and shouting. Levín envied them their healthy merriment, and

he wished to take part in the expression of this joy of life. But he

could do nothing, and he was obliged to lie, and look and listen. When

the people disappeared with their song from the eye and the ear, a heavy

feeling of melancholy, on account of his loneliness, his physical

inactivity, his hostility to this world, took possession of Levín.

Some of the very peasants who had more than anybody else been disputing

with him on account of the hay, those whom he had offended, or those who

had wished to cheat him,--those very peasants merrily bowed to him and

evidently had no evil thought of him, nor could they have any; they had

not only no repentance but even no recollection of their having wished

to cheat him. Everything was drowned in the sea of the merry mass work.

God has given the day, God has given the strength to work. And the day

and the strength are devoted to work, and in it is its own reward. For

whom is this work? What will be the fruits of this work? These are

secondary, unimportant considerations.

Levín often admired this life, often experienced the feeling of envy

towards the people that lived this life, but it was to-day for the first

time, especially under the influence of what he had seen of the

relations of Iván Parménov to his young wife, that Levín was possessed

of the idea that it depended upon him to change the burdensome, empty,

artificial, and personal life which he was living for this busy, pure,

social, charming life.

The old man who had been sitting by his side had long ago gone home; the

people had all disappeared. Those who lived near by had gone home, and

those that were from a distance were preparing their supper and their

camp in the meadow. Unnoticed by the people, Levín remained lying on the

stack, in order to see, listen, and think. Those who had stayed for the

night in the field hardly closed their eyes in the short summer night.

At first one could hear a universal merry conversation and laughter

during the supper, and then again songs and laughter.

The whole long work-day had left no other trace in them but merriment.

Before the morning dawn everything grew quiet. One could hear only the

nocturnal sounds of the unsilenced frogs in the swamp, and of the horses

that neighed in the meadow in the mist that rose before morning.

Awakening from his revery, Levín climbed down from the stack and,

looking at the stars, he knew that night had passed.

“Well, what am I going to do? How am I going to do it?” said he to

himself, trying to formulate for himself all that he had thought out and

that he had felt in that short night. All that he had thought and felt

was divided into three different mental processes. One was the

renunciation of his old life, of his useless education. This

renunciation caused him pleasure, and it was easy and simple for him.

Other thoughts and ideas touched upon the life which he now wanted to

live. He clearly felt the simplicity, purity, and legality of this life,

and he was convinced that he would find in it that satisfaction, that

rest and dignity, the absence of which had caused him such painful

sensations. But the third series of thoughts circled about the question

how to make that transition from the old life to the new. But here he

could see nothing clearly. “To have a wife. Have work and the necessity

for work. Should I leave Pokróvskoe? Should I buy land? Join society?

Marry a peasant woman? How am I to do it?” he asked himself again and

found no answer. “However, I have not slept the whole night, and I have

no clear ideas,” said he to himself. “I will think it out later. One

thing is certain, this night has decided my fate. All my former ideas of

family life are bosh,” said he to himself. “This is much simpler and

better----”

“How beautiful!” thought he, as he looked at a strange, mother-of-pearl

shell of white cirrus clouds that stopped over his head in the middle of

the sky. “How superb everything is in this superb night! When has this

shell been formed? It is only a moment ago I was looking at the sky, and

there was nothing there but two white streaks. Yes, just so

imperceptibly have my views of life been changed!”

FROM “WAR AND PEACE”

NAPOLEON’S ENTRY INTO MOSCOW

On the night of the thirteenth of September was given Kutúzov’s order

for the Russian army to retreat beyond the Moskvá on the Ryazán road.

The first divisions started in the night. As long as it was dark, they

were in no hurry and moved slowly and in good order. But when the moving

army reached the Dorogomílov bridge at daybreak, they could see ahead of

them the endless masses of the army, pressing and hurrying over the

bridge, and emerging on the other side, and stopping up the streets and

byways, and behind them followed similar endless masses. An unnecessary

haste and alarm took possession of the army. They all pushed forward to

the bridge, over the bridge, to the fords, and into the boats. Kutúzov

had himself taken by back streets beyond the Moskvá.

By ten o’clock on the morning of September 14th there were left at large

in the Dorogomílov suburb only the battalions of the rear-guard. The

army was already beyond the Moskvá and out of sight of Moscow.

At just that time, at ten o’clock on the morning of September 14th,

Napoleon stood among his soldiers on the Poklónnaya Hill, and surveyed

the spectacle before him. Beginning with September 7th and up to

September 14th, from the battle at Borodinó up to the enemy’s entry into

Moscow, during all the days of that alarming and memorable week, there

was that unusual autumn weather, which always puzzles people, when the

low sun is warmer than in spring, when everything gleams in the pure,

rarified air, so as to hurt the eyes, when the breast grows stronger and

fresher as it inhales the fragrant autumn air, when even the nights are

warm, and when in these dark and warm nights golden stars shower down

from the heavens, causing continual fear and joy.

It was just such weather on September 14th, at ten o’clock in the

morning. The morning shone with a magic glow. Moscow spread far and wide

from the Poklónnaya Hill, with its river, its gardens and churches, and

seemed to be living its own life, its cupolas sparkling like stars in

the sunbeams.

At the sight of the strange city with its unfamiliar forms of unusual

architecture, Napoleon experienced that somewhat envious and restless

curiosity which people generally experience at the sight of forms of a

strange life that knows nothing of them. Evidently the city was living

with all the manifestations of its life. By those indefinable signs, by

which a living body is unfailingly distinguished at a great distance

from a dead one, Napoleon saw from the Poklónnaya Hill the palpitation

of life in the city, and, as it were, felt the breath of that great and

beautiful body. Looking at Moscow, every Russian feels that she is a

mother; every stranger, who looks at her and does not know her maternal

meaning, must perceive the feminine character of this city, and Napoleon

felt it too.

“There it is, at last, that famous Asiatic city with its innumerable

churches,--that holy Moscow! I ought to have seen it long ago!” said

Napoleon and, dismounting his horse, ordered to unfold before him the

map of that Moscow and called up the translator, Lelorme d’Ideville.

“A city that is taken by the enemy is like a girl who has lost her

innocence,” thought he (he had said so to Tuchkóv in Smolénsk). And from

this point of view he surveyed the Eastern beauty that lay before him

and that he had not yet seen. It appeared strange to him that at last

his old wish, which had seemed to him to be impossible, was fulfilled.

In the clear morning light he looked, now at the city, now at the map,

studying the details of the city, and the confidence of possessing it

agitated and frightened him.

“But could it have been otherwise?” thought he. “There is the capital:

it lies at my feet, expecting its fate. Where is Alexander now, and what

is he thinking about? Strange, beautiful, majestic city! And this is a

strange and majestic moment! In what light do I appear to them?” thought

he of his army. “Here is the reward for all these men of little faith,”

thought he, as he looked at those who surrounded him and at the

battalions that were defiled before him. “One word of mine, one motion

of my hand, and this ancient city of the Tsars is in ruins. But my mercy

is ever ready to be shown to the conquered. I must be magnanimous and

truly great. But no, it is not true that I am in Moscow,” it suddenly

occurred to him. “Still, there it lies at my feet, playing and trembling

with its golden cupolas and crosses in the rays of the sun. But I will

spare it. On the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will

write great words of justice and mercy---- Alexander will feel that more

painfully than anything else, I know him.” It seemed to Napoleon that

the chief meaning of what was happening consisted in his personal

contest with Alexander. “From the summit of the Kremlin--yes, that is

the Kremlin, yes--will I give them laws of justice, will I show them the

true meaning of civilisation: I will cause generations of boyárs to

mention with love the name of their conqueror. I will tell the

deputation that I did not wish and do not now wish war; that I have made

war only on the false politics of their Court, that I love and respect

Alexander, and that I will accept in Moscow the conditions of peace,

such as is worthy of me and of my nations. I will not make use of the

fortune of war in order to lower their respected Tsar. ‘Boyárs,’ will I

say to them, ‘I want no war, I want the peace and well-being of all my

subjects----’ Indeed, I know their presence will inspire me, and I shall

speak as I always do,--clearly, majestically, and grandly. But is it

really true that I am in Moscow? Yes, there it is!”

“Bring the boyárs to me,” he said to his suite. A general at once

galloped away with a brilliant suite to fetch the boyárs.

Two hours passed. Napoleon had his breakfast, and again stood in the

same place upon Poklónnaya Hill, waiting for the deputation. His speech

to the boyárs was already clearly formed in his imagination. That speech

was full of dignity and grandeur, as Napoleon understood them.

That mood of magnanimity which Napoleon intended to exercise in Moscow

carried him away. In his imagination he appointed days of assembly in

the palace of the Tsars, where the Russian dignitaries were to meet the

dignitaries of the French Emperor. He mentally appointed a governor who

would be able to gain the love of the populace. Having heard that there

were many charitable institutions in Moscow, he decided in his

imagination to shower his favours on all these establishments. He

thought that, as it was necessary in Africa to sit in the mosque in a

burnous, so one must in Moscow be as charitable as the Tsars. And in

order to touch most deeply the hearts of the Russians, he, like every

Frenchman, who cannot imagine anything touching without the memory of

his dear, his tender, his poor mother, decided to have written in large

letters over these institutions: “Establishment dedicated to my dear

mother.” No, simply: “House of my mother,” he concluded with himself.

“But am I really in Moscow? Yes, there it is, before me; but why is the

deputation so late in making its appearance?” thought he.

In the meanwhile an agitated consultation took place between the

Imperial generals and marshals in the back of his suite. Those who had

been sent out to fetch the deputation returned with the news that Moscow

was deserted, that everybody had left the city. The faces of the

consulting men were pale and agitated. Not the fact that Moscow had been

abandoned by its inhabitants, however important that incident may have

appeared, frightened them, but how they were to announce it to the

Emperor, and how to avoid placing his Majesty into that terrible

position which the French call ridiculous, when they would inform him

that he had in vain been waiting so long for the boyárs, that there were

left crowds of drunken men, but no one else. Some said that it was by

all means necessary to get together some kind of a deputation; other

rejected that opinion and insisted that it behooved them carefully and

cleverly to prepare the Emperor, and to tell him the truth.

“But we must tell him by all means,” said the gentlemen of the suite.

“But, gentlemen--” The situation was the more difficult since the

Emperor, in considering his plans of magnanimity, was patiently walking

up and down, in front of the map, now and then shielding his eyes, in

order to look down the road to Moscow, and smiling happily and proudly.

“But it is awkward--impossible!” said the gentlemen of the suite,

shrugging their shoulders, and not venturing to pronounce the suppressed

terrible word, _le ridicule_.

In the meanwhile the Emperor, tiring of his vain expectation and feeling

with his histrionic sentiment that the majestic moment was lasting too

long and, consequently, was beginning to lose its majesticalness, gave a

sign with his hand. A single shot of the signalling cannon was heard,

and the troops that were besieging Moscow from various sides moved upon

the city, through the Tver, Kalúga, and Dorogomílov toll-gates. The

troops moved faster and faster, outrunning each other, in a rapid march

and a gallop, disappearing in the clouds of dust which they raised, and

filling the air with their deafening voices. Carried away by the

movement of the troops, Napoleon rode with the army to the Dorogomílov

toll-gate, but there he stopped again and, dismounting his horse, walked

up and down by the Kammer-Kolleg rampart, awaiting the deputation----

All this time Moscow was deserted. There were still some people in it,

there was still left one fiftieth part of all its former inhabitants,

but it was deserted. It was as deserted as is a queenless beehive in its

last moments.

In the queenless hive there is no life, but at a superficial glance it

appears as full of life as others. The bees swarm in the warm rays of an

afternoon sun just as merrily about the queenless hive, as around the

other live hives; from a distance it is just as fragrant with honey, and

bees fly in and out of it as before. But one has only to look more

closely at it, to discover that there is no life left within. The bees

do not fly here as in the live hives; not the same odour and not the

same sound strike the bee-keeper. To the bee-keeper’s tap on the wall of

the great beehive there is no longer the former immediate, unison answer

and humming of tens of thousands of bees that threateningly lower their

backs and by the swift motion of their wings produce that aërial life

sound, but some discordant buzzing is heard in various places of the

empty beehive. From the entrance does not proceed, as formerly, a

fragrant alcoholic odour of honey and pollen, nor does it exhale a warm

breath of fulness, but with the odour of honey is mingled an odour of

emptiness and decay.

At the entrance are no longer found the watch-bees, ready to defend the

hive to the last extremity, with their backs raised up and trumpeting

the alarm. There is no longer that even and soft sound, that palpitation

of work, resembling the sound of boiling, but one hears the incoherent,

discordant noise of disorder. Black, slender, honey-covered

plunderer-bees fly timidly and stealthily out of one hive into another;

they do not sting, but avoid danger. Formerly bees flew in with burdens

and out again without anything; now they fly off laden with booty.

The bee-keeper opens the lower part of the hive and looks at its bottom.

Instead of the black rows of well-fed bees that, pacified by their work,

hung down to the very bottom, holding each other by the legs, and with a

continuous murmur of labour drawing out the wax, now sleepy, dried-up

bees wander about distractedly over the bottom and over the walls of the

hive. Instead of the floor being pasted even with glue, and swept clean

by the fanning wings, it is covered with bits of wax, with excrements of

the bees, and with half-dead bees that barely move their feet, and with

entirely dead bees that have not been removed.

The bee-keeper opens the upper part of the hive, and inspects the top.

Instead of serried ranks of bees that have filled up all the interstices

in the honeycomb and that are warming their young brood, he sees only

the artistic, complicated work of the comb, but no longer in its

previous virgin purity. Everything is neglected and obstructed: the

black plunderer-bees race rapidly and stealthily over the structure;

while his own bees, dried up, wizened, and flaccid as if from age,

loiter slowly, without disturbing anyone, wishing nothing, and having

lost the consciousness of life. Drones, wasps, humble-bees, and moths in

their flight aimlessly beat against the walls of the hive. Here and

there, between the wax with the dead brood and the honey, is at times

heard from various sides an angry buzzing: two bees, from old habit, are

somewhere cleaning a nest of the hive, and carefully, above their

strength, dragging away a bee or humble-bee, not knowing themselves why

they are doing it. In another corner, two old bees are quarrelling, or

cleaning, or feeding each other, without thinking whether they are doing

it out of friendship or enmity. In a third place a crowd of bees press

against each other, and, attacking some victim, beat and choke it. And

the weakened or killed bee slowly, softly, like down, falls from above

upon the heap of corpses.

The bee-keeper unscrews the two middle combs, in order to see the nest.

In place of the thick, black rows of thousands of bees, sitting back to

back, and guarding the highest secrets of birth, he sees hundreds of

drowsy, barely living skeletons of bees. They have died, nearly all of

them, before they knew it, sitting on the sanctum which they have

guarded, and which is no more. They exhale an odour of decay and death.

Only a few of them are stirring: they rise, lazily fly up and alight on

the hand of the enemy, whom they sting, not being able to die, while the

other, the dead bees fall down like scales of fishes. The bee-keeper

closes the hive and marks it with a piece of chalk, and in proper time

breaks it open and burns it out.

Just so empty was Moscow when Napoleon, tired, restless, and frowning,

walked up and down the Kammer-Kolleg rampart, waiting for the external,

but, according to his ideas, necessary preservation of proprieties,--the

deputation.

Some people were still moving about senselessly in various corners of

Moscow, preserving the old habits, but not understanding what they were

doing.

When, with proper caution, it was announced to Napoleon that Moscow was

deserted, he angrily looked at him who reported it and, turning away,

continued to walk in silence.

“Bring the carriage,” said he. He seated himself in the carriage with an

adjutant of the day, and drove into the suburb.

“Moscow is deserted. What an incredible event!” said he to himself.

He did not drive into the city, but stopped at an inn in the Dorogomílov

suburb.

The finale of the theatrical performance was not a success!

Glyeb Ivánovich Uspénski. (1840-1902.)

Uspénski was born in the city of Túla, where his father was a

government official. He attended the Gymnasia at Túla and Chernígov,

devoting much of his time to the reading of the Russian classics. He

then studied at the universities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, leaving

them in 1863 without graduating. His literary career began in 1866

with a series of sketches under the general title of _Customs of

Perdition Street_, in which he described the proletariat that eke out

their existence in small provincial towns, struggling with hunger and

cold, and drowning in liquor the cheerless monotony of their lives. He

next gave, in _Observations of a Lazy Fellow_ and other stories, a

series of types from the proletariat of intelligence in the same

provincial towns. In 1871 he went abroad, and wrote his _Letters from

Servia_. Upon his return he determined to turn his attention to the

“source,” that is, to the peasant. He settled for that purpose in the

country, in the Government of Samára, but his experience was

disappointing: he saw the peasant in his crude and savage nakedness.

His _Drudgery_, which is the result of his study of peasant morality,

was a revelation to Russia. Heretofore the peasant had been either

idealised or detracted, according to the literary camp to which the

writer belonged, but now he was for the first time painted from

nature, without reserve or bias. His greatest production is _The Power

of the Land_, based on another study in the Government of Nóvgorod, in

which he comes to the conclusion that the peasant can be saved only

when he is returned to his land.

In English translation: _The Steam Chicken_ and _A Trifling Defect in

the Mechanism_, in _The Humour of Russia_, by E. L. Voynich, London

and New York, 1895.

FROM “THE POWER OF THE LAND”

IVÁN PETRÓV

Iván Petróv belongs to that useless, incomprehensible, disgraceful class

of village people (certainly disgraceful to such a country as Russia)

that has grown up in the last twenty years and that one can’t help

calling by any other name than “village proletariat.” This new-born

proletariat could absolutely have been avoided, if millions of measures

that are directed for the good of the masses paid at least as much

attention to the people’s conception of the world as they do to their

taxable qualities.

A peasant is frequently led to turn his back on his land and to prefer

the tavern to his house by some such inconsistency in the peasant

“rights” by which he may one day be a foreman of a jury or a judge who,

by pronouncing the life-giving words “not guilty!” magnanimously saves

some unfortunate man, and the next day after this manifestation of his

great “right” may be beaten black and blue by the village official

because while intoxicated he had insulted his elder with the words: “O

you stub-nosed bunny!” One would have to discard all morality, all

spiritual life, all ability to live according to one’s own ideas, if one

wanted to move silently and without murmuring between these two poles of

the peasant “rights.” But this example is only a drop in the sea of that

radical disorder that undermines the most radical foundations of the

popular world conception and that evolves a man “without any prospects,”

“without a to-morrow,” and tries to make a labourer and slave of a man

who, by the very essence of his nature, cannot exist otherwise than with

the consciousness that he is a “master.”

Look at this Iván Petróv, nicknamed Bosýkh: he is a man of great

physical power, and an agile and skilful workman; his wife is strong,

clever, and skilful, and was once a beauty; he can have all the land he

wants. In addition to being a husbandman, he is also a good village

joiner and a shoemaker; and even as a common day labourer--chopping

wood, or pressing hay--he could, by receiving seventy kopeks a day and

his board, live without any care. Instead, he has given up his farm, he

beats his wife, and she is continually weeping and complaining against

him; his three children loiter for days at a time in dirty rags in the

streets and without being cared for, and nobody knows whether they are

being fed. Though his hut is one of a row of new peasant huts where one

may see print curtains, Vienna furniture, clocks under glass globes,

etc., it is the acme of disorder: it is nearly all in ruins; instead of

window panes there are only rags; and yet one may see by the structure

of the cabin and outhouses that it was once a “rich” house, and that the

barns extended some two hundred feet in length; the posts are all of

oak, nearly six feet in circumference----

And the “master” himself? Ask about him the village people of standing,

and they will all give bad reports of him: he has sold the same hay to

three different parties, and the money he has spent in drinks; he has

taken on credit, “against the calf,” in three different shops, but he

has not paid anywhere, while he has sold the calf to somebody else and,

as usual, has spent the money in liquor. He has been several times

flogged in the village office for using abusive language to the

authorities, for unpaid taxes, and for beating his wife, whom, upon

returning from his punishment, he beat again mercilessly in the field.

“Don’t give him any money, for the Lord’s sake, don’t advance him any!”

is the advice a wary villager gives you.

“Don’t trust him a hair’s breadth!” says another villager who has been

cheated by Iván.

And yet, let Iván “come to” for a week or two, what a splendid, what a

good and clever, man he is! How much humour there is in him, how much

observation, tenderness, magnanimity, self-detraction, and how much

youthful freshness of soul! What is it then that sends him in an

intoxicated state into the wet and dirty gutter, without boots, without

garments, his swollen face downward, and his broad shoulders beaten by

the rains and the wind? The whole village remembers his family, and all

say that the Bosýkhs were at one time among the first farmers, that Iván

used to live peaceably with his wife, that they had been “first-class”

workers; all are convinced that let him only awaken and he will be

priceless, that he has “golden hands”; and they wonder why he has turned

his back to everything, why he cheats, causes disturbances, and like a

tramp does an occasional day’s work only to spend his wages in the

tavern.

Now, Iván’s intoxication has changed into a disease. The people

characterise this disease that oppresses not only Iván, but whole masses

of the village proletariat like him, by the name of “weakness.”

Physically Iván is, like hundreds of similar “weak” peasants, not only

healthy and strong, but even powerful, consequently his weakness did not

spring from physical but some other causes. I have had frequent

conversations with Iván in regard to these “weaknesses”; for a long time

they led to no satisfactory results, and often they were only confusing,

especially to the writer of these lines, that is, to a man who has been

in the habit of explaining the wretched state of the masses almost

exclusively as springing from material want, misery, taxes, and so

forth. I shall here relate one of these conversations as an example.

“Do tell me, Iván, why are you drinking so much?” I ask Iván in one of

those clear moments when he “comes to,” repents his dreadful actions,

and ponders over his bitter fate.

Iván draws a deep sigh and speaks with contrition, almost in a whisper:

“I have humoured myself too much---- I don’t know what to think---- We

had better not speak of it!---- When I think it over, I wish I were

dead, I swear I wish I were!”

“But why? Do tell me!”

“Why? Well, it ’s all--on account of--freedom! That ’s why! On account

of too much freedom!”

As this answer perplexes me, and I am absolutely unable to see how

“freedom” should ruin a man, Iván tries to dispel my perplexity, and he

gives me a more detailed explanation:

“On account of a free life, that ’s what it is!”

“But what does that mean?” I ask him, still perplexed.

“It means this: when I was living at the railroad station, I received

thirty-five roubles a month, and I had about ten men under my charge,

and I had an additional income of a rouble in silver for every

waggon,--now figure out how many waggons we sent out in a winter? Well,

it was there that I humoured myself----”

The word “humour” does not at all fit a strapping, forty years old,

bearded man, and it is hard to understand how in the explanation of his

conduct he can use an expression that is proper only for a baby. But

Iván cannot find a more exact word.

“Well, so I began to humour myself. When father was alive, I never took

a drop. He would have killed me, if I had, yes, he would have killed me

dead with his own hands. After father died, and I got married and had my

own household, I allowed myself a drink only when I was treated to it,

on a holiday, or once in a while a glass when I felt blue---- I was

careful, and I watched myself as long as I could. But when I had my

freedom at the railroad station, that is, my full liberty, then I began,

well, in a word, to be short, I let myself loose---- I kept it up for

days at a time, and I never could get enough---- I remember how it all

began, as though it were but yesterday: roadmaster Iván Rodiónych’s name

day fell on John of the Lent---- Well, he poured me out a glass of the

grape juice, they call it port---- I liked it, as I swallowed it--so I

took some more--and then gin, lemonade---- Since then that plague has

stayed with me. And why? It ’s all on account of freedom!---- Not being

used to it---- Making an easy living---- That ’s what it is from!---- I

used to have my pockets full of money---- Well, since then I have been a

regular pig----”

So it appears that “freedom,” “liberty, easy living, plenty of money,”

that is, that which is necessary for a man to establish himself, causes

his whole disorder, until he becomes “a regular pig.”

“Why did you spend your money not on your house but on drinking?” I ask

him.

“That ’s the trouble, I was not used to it! Life was too free to think

of house and farm---- Do anything you please, and nobody interferes with

you---- In short, there is a good chance to humour yourself----”

Seeing that his explanation explains nothing and that I am unable to

understand why an easy life makes a pig of a man, Iván tries to make his

idea clearer by an example, such as peasants are in the habit of having

recourse to in their conversations. I shall here give his example,

though I know that the reader will hardly be much enlightened by it.

“Because,” says he, “our peasant nature is n’t used to it---- We are by

nature a working lot---- Let me tell you an example---- There was living

in our neighbourhood a gentleman, by the name of Podsólnukhov, and he

was farming---- So he farmed and farmed, and seeing that there was no

profit in farming, he got it into his head to go into the dairy

business. He had no use for our breed of cattle, and it ’s so, our cows

are rather thin and coarse-haired---- ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I ’ll get a cow

from abroad.’ He sent for one. A telegram came, the cow was on her way,

and a learned German was bringing her---- There they were leading her,

why, almost in chains,--such a monster, some seven feet in height, ten

feet in length---- Her horns, her eyes, and such things,--God’s

wonder,--a regular giant, an Eruslán Lázarevich[25]---- They cleaned out

the cattle yard for her, spread some straw over it, and the moment she

came, she lay down on her side upon it. And the German asked for a lamp

to be used in the night. Very well. And the cow remained lying on her

side and eating in that posture. All the women did was to put the feed

within reach of her mouth. She kept on eating, but of milk there was not

a trace.

“‘What is the matter,’ says I to the German, ‘she is not giving any

milk?’

“‘Well,’ says he, ‘she is resting; it ’s so and so,’ says he. ‘She has

been travelling a long distance, and in the car, and so she is tired,

and is taking it easy----’

“‘How long,’ says I, ‘will she be taking it easy?’

“‘Maybe a month.’

“All right. We thought we would let her while away her time with our

village bull,--but that was a dreadful blunder. No sooner did he lay his

eyes on her majestic form, when he got frightened like a rabbit, for he

saw at once that he, with his country snout, had no business in her

presence,--and so he picked himself up and off he went, and it was only

twelve versts away that some peasants succeeded in catching him. But she

was resting herself all the time. She ate, and yawned, and ate again----

At last she evidently felt conscience-stricken and gave a whole pail of

milk. So our master said:

“‘Do you see, Iván?’ says he,--‘there is no comparison with our sickly

little cows!’

“‘Well, no, sir,’ says I; ‘considering what she has eaten up, our cattle

are worth more.’

“‘How so?’

“‘It ’s like this: figure out, how much she has eaten up, and compare it

with the milk she is giving. It ’s so, she does give a pailful, but that

pailful costs too much. If you were to give her feed to ten of our cows,

they would give you ten times the amount this monster is giving you.’

“Says the German: ‘She is not the kind of a breed,’ says he, ‘that ’s

just good for the milk; she is considering herself too; she is eating

for her own benefit--just look what firm flesh she has.’

“After these words says I to my master: ‘Do you see, sir,’ says I, ‘it

’s just it: our cows suit our case much better. We do not care about

their flesh, and they do not live for their benefit, but for work; they

give back what they eat up, and they do not consider themselves. Our

cows are born for work, and for work they live all their lives,--that ’s

their purpose.’

“And so there are all kinds of men. And we peasants are just the same.

We work the year round, and all our lives, without stopping. I tried to

get away from my peasant’s life, and I have almost killed myself with

drinking---- There are some who like that which is easy, and who want to

do nothing---- Some get rich by saving their money, but when I turned my

back on the village and ran away from a peasant’s work, and began to

live freely,--my money flew like chips. All I was interested in was how

to get rid of it, and I could think of no other place to spend it in but

the tavern. What? Well, I ’ll make a clean breast of it,” Iván spoke in

a whisper, “I had three mamzelles! I forgot the Law! I am speaking

before the Lord---- Freedom! liberty! I was only thinking how to do

wrong, pshaw! I so far forgot myself that I began to oppress my own

kind, my fellow-peasants! Why did I do it? I had simply lost my

conscience---- Some cold day they would be looking for me and having

found me in a saloon, they would bow and say:

“‘Let us have our hay; we have been here two days and spending our

money, but we can’t get at it.’

“It seems, it was not much for me to say to my assistant: ‘Mikháylo! Go

and get them the car!’ but Satan himself began to urge me on; so I sat

over my bottle, looking important, and said: ‘You have to do the best

you can.’

“‘But, friend, how are we to find it? We have walked all over the yards,

among whistling engines and no end of smoke, and we are afraid we shall

get killed yet, and we are worn out besides.’

“‘Look for it! Find the fellow you need!’

“‘But you, our protector----’

“And I would keep them off until someone of those present would say to

them:

“‘Stick three roubles into his mug,--that ’s what you want to do!’

“And it was only thus that I did them any favours---- If my wife came my

way, I used to scold her roundly. As long as I stayed in the village I

had use for her, but here where I had my freedom, I had others to pass

my time with, and what was I to do with her, a common peasant woman?

That ’s the kind of lawlessness I came to. I drank more and more, and

the authorities heard of it, and the superintendent of the division came

and mauled me all up (his face shone as he was telling this), and the

superintendent of traffic gave me a few mighty blows (a childish joy was

spread over his face), and they took me to the round-house, and laid it

on to me,--so I made the sign of the cross and, just as if I had risen

from the grave, I jumped up, and started on a run home, without my hat,

right through the cold! Over fields, over snowdrifts, by back roads, I

flew like a bird, not stopping for twenty-five versts, until I was back

to my farm. There I was, in my yard, without a thing to my name,

everything in ruins, but I felt as happy as if I had been resurrected.

Praised be the Lord! Praised be the Queen of Heaven! I am again a man, I

have found myself! I fell to my wife’s feet.

“‘Forgive me, my dear wife! Let me work, look after the farm! I shall

give up all my foolishness, I will be a man again!’

“And I went at it with a vim! I loved it all,--my field, my plough and

harrow, the sheds, the calf, the barn that was beginning to lean to one

side, and the fence, and the woodpile---- They were all my dear friends,

my nearest ones. It was just terrible to look at the desolation, but it

only gave me more courage. The more work I saw, the more work there was

ahead, the greater was my desire to do it, and the greater my

strength---- That ’s what our peasant nature is! But there where I had

been there was no work, but all kinds of distractions,--and money; but

that had almost deprived me of my senses, and I dragged my soul through

the mud, as a swine drags her belly. And what from? Freedom!----”

Iván would always begin and end his conversations with me by this

incomprehensible correlation of “freedom” and “moral fall,” but you see,

he not only did not make my misgivings clearer, but considerably

increased them.

[25] Giant of Russian fairy tales.

Aleksándr Ivánovich Levítov. (1842-1877.)

Levítov was the son of a village priest in the Government of Tambóv.

His early youth was passed at home in sordid peasant surroundings,

where he learned just enough from his father to be able to read

religious books. A seminarist having provided him with some of the

Russian classics, he acquired a taste for literature and entered a

Seminary. He was a brilliant student, but had to suffer much insult

from his brutal companions for his physical weakness. Scenes from the

Seminary later formed the main subject of his stories. He then entered

the Moscow University, but soon afterwards transferred himself to the

Medico-Surgical Institute at St. Petersburg. Having taken part in some

political agitation, he was exiled to the north-east. Here he

associated entirely with the lower classes, confirmed himself in his

vicious habit of drinking, and in his sober moments composed his

excellent _Steppe Sketches_, that abound in poetical descriptions of

southern nature and in detailed pictures of the inhabitants of the

steppe. Then began his roving life from town to town, from one capital

to another, living all the time in the purlieus of the cities, and in

cellars, garrets, and outhouses. This, combined with his chronic state

of intoxication, led to consumption, and he finally died in a clinic.

Levítov has given a series of pictures from the life of the most

degraded townspeople with whom he came in contact, under the name of

_The Misery of Country, Roads, and Towns_. They are a reflex of his

own experiences and make painful reading, though, but for some

discursiveness, they are artistic in conception and execution.

SHOEMAKER COCK-OF-THE-BOOTS

I

There was in our village a good fellow,--a shoemaker. We just called him

Cock-of-the-Boots, because he deserved the name. Early in the morning

and late at night you might have seen him staggering through the village

streets, and yelling, in his drunken fit, and repeating the same phrase:

“Come out, you village wiseacre, if there is such a one among you! Come

out,” he shouted, “and I will have a chat with you.”

But no one dared to come out, being sure to get the worst of it.

He had come to us from down Usmán way. He was such a thick-set,

homely-looking fellow, with thick, monstrous moustaches, and he wore a

blue coat. His wife was as stubby and homely as he, and all in wrinkles,

but she had on a chintz dress that was good enough for a shopkeeper’s

wife and a red shawl over her shoulders. You would think that the moment

he drove into the village he would make for the inn? The Lord bless you,

he made plump for the tavern. That is, he and his wife went into the

tavern, but the cart was left in charge of six good-looking young

fellows, all of them in extensible boots, caps, and blue nankeen coats.

They stood around the cart. People began to come up to them, and

somebody asked them:

“Say, what kind of people are you, honourable gentlemen? Whence do you

come and whither do you tend?”

“Step aside,” they replied to us, “step aside as far as you can, before

dad comes back from the tavern, or there will be trouble!”

We all had to laugh, seeing that these strapping fellows were trying to

frighten us with their “dad.”

We looked around: there he was coming out of the tavern with a bretzel

in his hands, his cap poised way back on his head, while his wife

carried a quart of brandy in her hand, in order to treat her sons.

“Go ahead,” he said, “and drink, and then find some quarters, for I am

sleepy.”

Right near the tavern there was living in a hut a crazy old woman. We

had nicknamed her the Blue Rig. She had no relatives of any sort, and

managed to live somehow by charity. While he was cooling himself off in

the tavern, his youngsters found out that she was helpless, and so they

immediately reported to him:

“Dad, there is hereabouts a destitute old woman. They call her Blue Rig,

and we might stop at her hut.”

They settled there, and before long they smoked the old woman out of her

house. The township chief sent some hundred-men to oust

Cock-of-the-Boots, but he gave the hundred-men a mighty drubbing, and

told them that it was his house, and that the chief had better attend to

his own business.

The chief marvelled at the fellow, and himself came down upon him with a

posse. The whole village went to see the fun.

Cock-of-the-Boots took up a daring attitude in front of the chief, his

hands akimbo; then he stroked his moustache and said:

“What made you, sir, come to me when I did not invite you? You had

better wait for an invitation.”

“How dare you?” began the chief.

Now each of Cock-of-the-Boots’s sons had a special name: their father

called one of them Prince Kutúzov, another Paskévich, a third Díbich.

“They are all my generalissimos,” he would say. When the chief began to

call him names, he turned to Díbich:

“Díbich! Take him out!”

Díbich, without any further ado, took the chief by his shoulder and led

him out. The hundred-men and some of the villagers tried to

interfere,--but these protectors got dreadfully mauled by

Cock-of-the-Boots and his sons.

“I myself,” cried Cock-of-the-Boots, “with my good fellows can kick out

two such villages as this. I,” says he, “will root out any man that will

undertake to oppress me, because I am not afraid of anybody, and my

children are not afraid of anybody but me.”

And his wife seconded him: “That ’s right,” says she, “we are not afraid

of anybody!”

It was a fine family we had to deal with.

“It ’s now up with Cock-of-the-Boots,” we villagers thought, after that

occurrence. “They ’ll certainly drag him to Siberia for insulting such a

great gentleman.” But that ’s where we were wrong. The chief complained

to the district superintendent, saying: “It is so and so, and I can’t do

anything with Cock-of-the-Boots, because,” says he, “he has a powerful

lot of sons, and they get the better of the whole village.”

No sooner did Cock-of-the-Boots hear of that letter than he slung a

wallet with a slice of bread over his shoulder, lighted his pipe,--he

had a small pipe with a short carved stem,--and off he went to the

capital of the province. A lot of gentlemen were just entering the

Governor’s palace, and he somehow managed to slip in with them into the

audience room, where he waited for the Governor to appear, in the

meantime angrily twisting his moustache.

Then came his turn.

“Who are you?” asked the Chief, “and what do you want?”

“I am, sir,” answered Cock-of-the-Boots, “a crown peasant and a

shoemaker. And what I want is that you should kick out the township

chief,--his name is so and so,--because he is an embezzler of the Tsar’s

treasure, and a great nuisance to the commune. That ’s what I want,”

says he.

They say that the gentlemen that were present were stunned, seeing how

freely he spoke with the General. The Governor himself frowned and

looked for a long time at Cock-of-the-Boots with angry eyes, and finally

he said:

“Do you, Cock-of-the-Boots,” says he, “want me to put you in jail for

insulting me in that way?”

But Cock-of-the-Boots only smiled, and his moustaches twitched, and he

said to the Governor: “Let me tell you,” says he, “that I won’t go to

jail, but straight to Peter, to complain to the Emperor himself; and you

are not strong enough to stop me,” says he, “because I am not afraid of

anybody except God in heaven,” and he threw his wallet over his

shoulders, and started out.

The gentlemen present could not keep back any longer and burst out

laughing, and the Governor himself laughed.

“What a bold fellow!” says he, “I have not seen the like of him in all

my life. Fetch him back,” says he, “and send him to my cabinet. I will

talk to him later.”

“I see no objection to having a talk with him,” said Cock-of-the-Boots,

smiling. “I am always ready to talk to a Governor.”

It is not known what the Governor and he talked about, only,

Cock-of-the-Boots had not yet reached his village when the township

chief had an order from the capital to the effect that he had been a

chief long enough.

II

You ought to have seen how we ever after honoured Cock-of-the-Boots. As

he and his wife passed a great part of their time in the tavern, they

were treated to many a cup by anybody who happened to be there and who

felt that they must offer them a part of their just labour. But

Cock-of-the-Boots would keep one of his hands in his pocket, and with

the other he would twist his moustache around his ears, saying:

“Now let we tell you why I am drinking all the time. It ’s because you

are all fools, and I can’t do anything with you.”

“That ’s correct,” was the invariable refrain of his wife.

And to tell the truth, if he had not been drinking so hard, he could

have gotten away with many a fellow, for he was very clever. He was a

great hand at his business! He could make any kind of boots, gentlemen’s

and shopkeepers’ boots, extensible and simple peasant boots,--it was

just a joy to look at them! The only trouble was, that accursed

Cock-of-the-Boots rarely ever finished a job. He nearly always carried

the leather that his customers gave him to the tavern to exchange it for

drinks.

“How did you dare, Cock-of-the-Boots, to buy drinks with my leather?”

they would ask him.

“Simply because I wanted to,” says he.

Nobody entered any complaints against him, because it did no good. He

knew how to amuse all the chiefs with his conversations and to gain all

kinds of favours from them. They tried to take the law into their own

hands, but that only ended in an all around fight, for his wife and sons

took his side, and also a stalwart sexton,--they called him

Katerínych,--and they easily vanquished the whole village. However, we

learned to find our way into Cock-of-the-Boots’s heart, only it took us

quite a while to find it out. All one had to do, when Cock-of-the-Boots

had spent the leather in drinks, was to take at once another piece to

him, and beg him not to spend this second piece.

“Won’t you, Grigóri Kuzmích, make me a pair of boots out of this? We ’ll

square up about the first piece later.”

“That ’s what I like!” Cock-of-the-Boots would say. “I like to be

trusted!” he would shout, “just as I would like to trust others, only I

have nothing to give.” And he immediately ordered his sons to make a

special effort with these boots.

“As you command, dad!” his sons would say, and they at once set to work,

so that you could see chips flying. They were a fine lot, and they

obeyed their parents so that we all envied them.

“Just look!” the whole village said, “father and mother are drunkards,

but the children are all right.” They not only were skilled in their

trade and could read and write, but every one of them had picked up some

specialty: one could play the accordion, another the guitar, or horn.

They used to go out, of a summer evening, into the street, after their

work was done, and, seating themselves in front of their hut, they began

to play some sweet song. There was not one of the whole family that did

not have a good voice. Their mother was such an insignificant woman to

look at; but when she began to trill “Lovely forget-me-not” with her

soft voice, everybody would stop to listen. Cock-of-the-Boots himself

was regarded as a first-class singer in these entertainments. At first

he would start with a fine tenor, and then he would carry the whole song

in a heavy bass. Where in the world did he get that bass from?

The whole village and people from the outlying hamlets used to come to

hear them.

Cock-of-the-Boots lived in this manner for three or four years. We all

got used to his intoxication, and shouting at night time, and his

blaspheming. We quit getting angry at him, because, in the first place,

he was a hopeless case, and, in the second, he did a great deal of good

in the village and the neighbouring hamlets. For example, if a rich

merchant began to flay the people in too open a manner, or the chief or

scribe put down the screws a little too tight, Cock-of-the-Boots and his

friend, the sexton, would go to their windows and would read them a

sermon, which made them wish they were dead.

“Just go away from these windows, good fellows, and stop this

disgraceful business,” such a man would say to them. “I ’ll treat you to

all the brandy you wish,” he would add.

They particularly annoyed the village dean. His daughters did not dare

to go out into the streets, or even stand outside the door, because the

dean had offended the sexton.

“Just wait, Katerínych!” the dean threatened the sexton, “I ’ll see to

it that you get your hair shaved off.”

“I am ready any minute,” said the sexton, “for I would rather live with

the devil in hell than be under your rule.”