It is really a hopeless task to view within small compass so prolific
and so intense a novelist as Féodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski. Indeed, I
long questioned the fitness of including him in this series of brief
studies, for his little fictions are few; but Russian literature knows
no more vigorous novelist than this inartistic though colossal figure,
and any compendious treatment of Russian writers would seem inadequate
which did not include the author of “Crime and Punishment.” Apart
from a few little stories, Dostoevski’s short fictional creations are
chiefly episodes in his long and mostly rambling novels--powerful
and compact little digressions often almost unrelated to the main
thread of the story, but worthy of existence separately as pieces of
impressionism.
* * * * *
No finer tribute could be paid to a man than to recognize him as the
apostle of humble folk--unless it were to add that this apostolate was
free from the taint of demagoguery and solely the vocation of a tender
spirit. Fifty years ago, in the Russia of the sixties, Dostoevski came
to the full enduement of his ministry for man. What Jean François
Millet saw in the French peasant, that the great Russian novelist
felt in the muzhik--the pathos of those who suffer under burdens, the
heart-break of hopeless toil, the unexpected beauty gleaming in the
midst of ugliness, honey hidden in the carcass of the lion.
No man ever lived a selfless life of service but his reward followed
him--though often enough too late to cheer the rigors of his way. So
too Dostoevski came to his own at last, but not till after a life of
suffering, banishment, disease, disappointment, poverty, and debt; and
he died just when his voice was heard most impressively, leaving his
master-novel unfinished, and its author wept by forty thousand mourners
who followed his bier as delegates, so to call them, of the uncounted
millions whose cries he had voiced.
* * * * *
We are all agreed that the function of literature is to portray life,
but when we have said that, we have not begun at the beginning. What
motive must be back of the portrayal? Or must there be no motive at all
save that of picturing life faithfully? Here is where opinions divide,
as well as upon that other question: Is all life proper subject-matter
for literary portrayal?
Russian literature especially furnishes ground for such questionings,
and the work of Dostoevski in particular; but to me it illustrates the
view which seems to be the true one. The literary portrayal of life
_must_ have a motive beyond that of mere faithful delineation, for it
is inevitable that the artist must foresee this truth: the effect which
the contemplation of certain aspects of life had upon him will be the
effect upon the reader after having read his transcription. So the
desire to reproduce an effect--impressionism, they call it in art--is
in itself a powerful motive, changing according to the greatness or
littleness of the effect to be produced.
Thus we have the whole range of possible motives for the portrayal of
life in literature--entertainment, teaching, arousement, propagandum,
what-not. This variation of motive naturally leads us to the question:
_Who_ should read? Certainly not every one should read everything;
hence many books not bad in themselves become bad influences when
placed in wrong hands. It is worth while remembering this in forming
our judgments.
The second question--Is all life proper subject-matter for literary
portrayal?--lies close beside the former. If we could assume that
certain literary delineations would be held as material sacred to
the pathologist of soul, of mind, of body, of society, we could
unhesitatingly say “Yes” to this question. But when we consider that
the inevitable destiny of great writing is its free distribution in
periodical or book form, we are certain that not all books are for all
readers.
In discussing the work of Gorki in this series this question is touched
upon. Here we face it also--Dostoevski is too true, too terrible,
at times too revolting, for every one to read. Let no one read him
who dreads to look upon scenes sad, terrible, funereal; who fears
to enter hospitals, prisons, charnel houses, and the place of knout
and execution. The message of this precursor of Bourget was not one
of lyric sweetness, he never dwelt in ecstasy upon the beauties of
forest and stream--man, not nature, was his theme. With a wildly
passionate understanding--perhaps a diseased and certainly an abnormal
understanding--he showed the furies of crime, the viciousness of those
whom society has thrust out, the dull brutality of the under dog, the
aborted egoism of those who haunt every dark way--but in all he found
goodness, for his eye was full of pity, always full of pity. To him
crime was a misfortune more than a mark of sheer evil. A dangerous
view? Yes--and a gentle one.
No man can persistently look upon his fellow men without awakening
his own real self. Now, see how this doctrine of expression works
itself out when we give due value to the personal equation. Here is
a man who was born October 30, 1821, in a charity hospital in Warsaw,
as the second of seven children. His father, a poor army surgeon, was
of excellent birth, though his family lived in but two rooms. Féodor
went to boarding-school when thirteen, was graduated with honors from
the Military School of Engineering in St. Petersburg, received a good
appointment, but soon resigned to give himself to literature.
His first novel, “Poor People” (1846), won him the name of the
“new Gogol,” but in 1849 he was unjustly arrested for inciting to
insurrection, condemned to be shot, and reprieved after standing on the
executioner’s platform for twenty minutes in freezing weather while
almost naked. Four terrible years in a Siberian prison nearly completed
the ruin which a sickly constitution, shattered nerves, and epileptic
attacks had begun. Brückner puts it thus dramatically: “...for no
single moment, or at most when he collapsed under his load of bricks,
did he feel himself a man.” Yet, quite in the wonderful way that life
often takes, this very prison era made the man and the novelist.
When at length he was released from prison, he served three years in
the Siberian army, and finally was permitted to return home--to a
period of struggle with his little magazine, its silly suppression by
the censor, the ruin of his family, the death of his dear ones, the
exhausting fight to bear the load of debt, the flight from the debtors’
prison into foreign countries, the ill-rewarded toil which forever
harassed him, in short, to a cycle of suffering which might well have
worn out the strongest. No wonder that he had the sensation of being
flayed alive--that every breath of air held pains in store for him.
Now suppose that such a maddening plenitude of experience should clamor
for expression, why should not the unfortunate epileptic indite with
his pen the diseased, the abnormal, the despairing, sensations which
piled upon him with terrific weight year after year? He saw all with
sympathy, why should not his soul-cries rouse the world to pity for
what he saw?
There is an immeasurable area lying between that morbid mind which
loves to depict the purlieus of life and that brave heart which
reaches down deep into the filthy and the sickening for the sake of
dragging somewhat of value up to the light. Dostoevski conceived that
Russia could never energize her arm for saving service without a wide
knowledge of what existed in every place of nameless horror. As a
great natural pathologist, he understood the vagaries of the diseased
and the defective; in Siberia he perforce mingled with the lowest
criminals--the results he embodied in a score of novels, four or five
of them great novels, for those to read who dare look in the face the
life of the shadowy alleys, for those to avoid who prefer the light and
airy high-paths.
What is more, no pleasant bucolic pipe can rouse like a bugle-blast.
Those who play the notes of beauty will exalt or pacify the soul, but
those who would rouse the whole being must choose sturdy instruments
and various. To shift the similitude, Russia needed no soothing
unguents, her festering sores called for the heroic knife--first exact
diagnosis, then the knife. And Dostoevski showed always the truth--the
sordid, noisome, revolting, pitiful truth--and, as this serene prophet
saw that she would, Russia herself is more and more bravely using the
knife. Yet beauty and sweetness and upper air are in his stories, too,
especially if one sees beneath the surface.
* * * * *
Russia’s greatest novelists are really three: Turgenev, the
cosmopolitan, was an æsthete, an artist, a polished littérateur;
Tolstoi, the mystic, was a brooding reformer, too self-centered to
realize his humanitarian ideals, but a majestic figure in literature
as in life; Dostoevski, the profoundly religious psychologist, was an
unbalanced, fiery apostle, winging among the highest, stalking amidst
the lowest, seeing visions not given to common men.
Dostoevski’s novels are great not by reason of their art, but from
their artlessness, which is to say their explosive sincerity, like the
incoherent violence of one who feels things too powerful for orderly
utterance. In this they reflect his life only in that they reproduce
what the seismograph of his spirit recorded. Outwardly, he was quiet,
detached, even morose, his epileptic seizures doubtless sending him
into the companionship of his own life; but his soul shook with the
volcanic terrors which he perforce beheld, from his cradle in the
charity hospital, through the turbulent years of Siberia, Russia, and
the continent, down to the day of his too early taking-off at the age
of fifty-nine.
Not all of his novels are worth general reading, even were they all
available in English. He was too much preoccupied with his struggle
with debt, his physical sufferings, his inner life, his passion of
pity, his profound analyses of the characters about him, his tender
religious faith, to allow him to study the graces of expression. In
consequence, diffuseness and lack of compact, progressive plot--for
he had no dramatic skill--characterize his work, and when he does
rise to heights of beautiful utterance, which is not seldom, it is
the outbursting of sheer feeling, the power of his theme, not the
premeditated caperings of the self-conscious stylist. The man and his
vehement message are far bigger than his technique.
Seven of his works must here be dismissed in as many paragraphs as they
deserve chapters.
“Poor Folk,” strongly influenced by Gogol’s “The Cloak,” was written
when Dostoevski was twenty-five. Though told in the handicapping
form of letters, it made an immediate impression. Simplicity, human
understanding, and compression--and the last was not one of his usual
virtues--mark this spiritual history of two lives. It is an effective
book, though not a great.
The years of Siberian torment yielded fruit in that remarkable
example of criminal psychology, “Memories of a House of the Dead,”
1861-62. Not Dickens, and certainly not Oscar Wilde, approached this
dispassionate record of a tremendously passionate and passion-inspiring
theme, the inside of a terrible prison, which stirred Europe just
when Hugo was issuing “Les Miserables.” “His calm account of their
unblushing knavery is entirely free from either vindictive malice
or superior contempt. He loved them because they were buried alive,
he loved them because of their wretchedness, with a love as far
removed from condescension as it was from secret admiration of their
bold wickedness.” These words of Professor Phelps are singularly
illuminating.
“Crime and Punishment,” the best known to English readers of the
author’s works, is by many considered his masterpiece. Notwithstanding
many waste places of digression, this book is a lofty peak. No one
could picture in a few words the tremendous story of that other Eugene
Aram--Raskolnikov--the philosophical student of crime, his double
murder, his confession to the courtesan Sonia, her great-hearted
reception of the news, her counsel that he confess his crime, their
life in Siberia, and the gradual regeneration of both souls through the
ministry of service.
Then, there are “The Gambler,” in which Dostoevski’s own passion for
the green table is evidently recorded; and “The Idiot,” a prince whose
unworldly sweetness is notable, even under the stress of epilepsy, and
whose influence over the lives of all about him is a genuine creation;
and “Possessed by Demons,” a portrayal of Nihilism, largely written
as a fling at Turgenev, whom Dostoevski never loved; and finally
that gigantic conception, “The Karamazov Brothers,” which he did not
live to complete--a terrible yet sublime work that promised to be as
soul-shaking as interminable.
The business of grown-up life is too serious to allow much space in
Russian literature for that most really serious subject, child-life.
Dostoevski is an exception. Though he has very few strong and
beautiful women characters, his tender heart felt for every child,
as witness the penetrating anecdotal sketch which here follows. Note
its characteristic humor, tinged with satire; see the pity of it--a
pity of situation, not of overwrought description; feel the essential
right-mindedness of it, written at a period when the modern view of
girlhood’s right to her own self was yet unpreached. This one powerful
plea--without a word of homily, as it is--forms big enough foundation
for the building of this man’s name for great-heartedness and ranks him
in this respect with Charles Dickens, whom he loved.
THE TREE AND THE WEDDING
_By Féodor Dostoevski_
A few days ago I saw a wedding.... But no! I had better tell you about
a Christmas tree. The wedding was fine in its way, and it pleased me
immensely; but the other episode was more interesting. It is difficult
to say why, at the sight of the wedding, I recalled the tree. This is
how it happened.
Exactly five years ago, on New Year’s Eve, I had been invited to a
children’s party. The personage who invited me was a well-known man
of affairs, with many connections, a wide acquaintance, involved in
intrigue; so it was quite natural to suppose that this children’s
party served as a mere pretext for the parents to crowd together and
to discuss other interesting matters in what seemed like an innocent,
accidental, and unpremeditated manner.
I was an outsider; I had little to talk about, and I therefore passed
the evening quite independently. There was another gentleman present,
who was apparently of no particular importance, and who, like myself,
had stumbled upon this domestic happiness. He, above all others,
attracted my attention. He was a tall, spare figure, quite serious in
aspect and very neat in dress. But it was evident that he was beyond
joyousness and domestic happiness. Once he betook himself to a corner,
he immediately ceased to smile, but frowned with his dense, black
brows. Except for the host, he was unacquainted with a single soul at
the party. It was apparent that he was terribly bored, and that he
sustained bravely until the end the rôle of a totally diverted and
happy individual. I learned later that this gentleman was from the
provinces, and had a very important head-splitting affair to settle
in the capital; that he had a letter of recommendation to our host,
who was not at all disposed to treat its bearer _con amore_, and
had invited him to the children’s party merely out of politeness.
He was not asked to join in a game of cards, nor to help himself to
a cigar; and no one thought to enter into conversation with him. It
was possible that the species of bird was recognized from a distance
by its feathers. At any rate, our gentleman, at a loss what to do
with his hands, found it necessary to stroke his side-whiskers. The
side-whiskers were indeed very good ones, but he stroked them with such
assiduity that to look at him it was quite natural to presume that the
side-whiskers came into the world first, and that the gentleman was
attached to them afterwards that he might stroke them.
Aside from this figure, participating after the manner described
in the domestic happiness of the host--who had five well-fed boy
youngsters--there was another gentleman who diverted me. He, however,
was of a totally different character. In fact, a real personage.
They called him Julian Mastakovich. The very first glance could have
told you that he was a respected guest, and that his relation to the
host was similar to the host’s relation to the man who stroked his
side-whiskers. The host and the hostess showered compliments upon
him, waited upon him, flattered him, conducted their guests into his
presence for introduction, while him they did not conduct to any one
else. I observed how a tear glistened in the host’s eyes when Julian
Mastakovich said that seldom had he spent so pleasant an evening.
I experienced a disagreeable feeling before this person, and so after
admiring the children I went into the small drawing-room, which was
almost empty, and sat down in a kind of flowery arbor belonging to the
hostess, and occupying almost half of the room.
The children were incredibly charming, and seemed determined not
to resemble their elders, notwithstanding all the efforts of their
mothers and governesses. In a twinkling they bared the tree to its
last bonbon, and had managed to break half of the playthings before
they knew for whom they were designated. Especially fine to look at was
a dark-eyed, curly-haired lad, who aimed at me continuously with his
wooden gun. But, above all, my attention was attracted by his sister,
a girl of eleven years, as lovely as Cupid, quiet, pensive, pale, with
large, musing eyes, slightly projecting out of their circles. The other
children had somehow offended her; for that reason, she came into the
very room where I sat, and, betaking herself into a corner, was soon
occupied with her doll. The guests looked with great deference in the
direction of her father, a wealthy proprietor, and some one mentioned
in a half-whisper that a dowry of three hundred thousand rubles had
already been laid aside for her.
I turned around to glance at those interested in this circumstance,
and my gaze fell upon Julian Mastakovich, who, having thrust his hands
behind him and inclined his head a trifle to the side, was listening
with a marked intentness to the chatter of these folk.
Afterward I could not help but feel astonished at the sageness of
the hosts in distributing the children’s gifts. The little girl who
already had a dowry of three hundred thousand rubles received the
most expensive doll. Then followed the other gifts, growing lower in
value in proportion to the lower standing of the parents of these happy
children. The last youngster, a boy of ten years, meagre, diminutive,
freckled, and red-haired, received only a small volume of tales dealing
with the bountifulness of nature, the joy of tears, and the like; the
book contained no pictures, not even a decoration. He was the son of a
poor widow, the governess of the host’s children, and had a haunted,
suppressed look. He was dressed in a wretched cotton jacket. Having
received his book, he hovered for a long time around the toys. He had
the most intense longing to play with the other children, but dared
not. It was evident that he already felt and understood his position.
It is a favorite occupation of mine to observe children. It is highly
interesting to mark in them certain early and free inclinations of
their natures. I noted how the red-haired boy was tempted by the
expensive playthings of the other children--and especially by a toy
theatre, in which he showed a most eager desire to play some rôle--to
such a degree that he adopted an ingratiating manner to attain his
end. He smiled and joined the other children in their play, gave
up his apple to one puffed-up youngster who already had a whole
handkerchiefful of gifts tied to his body, and even offered to carry
another boy on his back, if only they would not drive him away from the
theatre. Soon, however, a bully in the party gave him a sound drubbing.
The boy did not dare to cry out. Presently the governess, his mother,
appeared, and ordered him not to interfere with the other children’s
play. The boy came into the room where the little girl was. She
permitted him to join her, and the two of them were at once absorbed
very earnestly in the rich doll.
I had been sitting in the ivy bower a half-hour and had almost dozed
off, while listening to the small chatter of the red-haired boy and the
beauty with three hundred thousand rubles’ dowry, solicitous over the
doll, when suddenly Julian Mastakovich walked into the room. He took
advantage of a particularly disgraceful quarrel among the children to
steal out of the reception-room. I had noticed that only a few moments
before he was discussing very fervently with the father of the future
rich bride, whose acquaintance he had only just made, the preëminence
of one kind of service over another. At this instant he stood as if
lost in thought, and seemed to be making a calculation of some sort
upon his fingers.
“Three hundred ... three hundred,” he whispered. “Eleven ... twelve
... thirteen ... sixteen ... five years! Say, at four per cent--five
times twelve equal sixty; at compound interest ... well, let us suppose
in five years it ought to reach four hundred. Yes, that’s it.... But
the rascal surely has it salted away at more than four per cent. Eight
or ten is more likely. Well, let’s say five hundred--five hundred
thousand at the very least; not counting a few extra for rags ... h’m
...”
Having ended his calculation, he sneezed vigorously and moved to leave
the room, when suddenly, his eye alighting upon the little girl, he
stopped. He did not see me behind the vases of flowers. He seemed to
me to be violently agitated. Either his calculation had upset him, or
something else; but he did not know what to do with his hands, and
was unable to remain on one spot. His agitation increased--_ne plus
ultra_--when he stopped and threw another determined glance at the
future bride. He was about to move forward, but first looked around.
Then he approached the child on his tiptoes, as if conscious of guilt.
Smiling, he bent over her and kissed her head; while she, not expecting
this onslaught, cried out from fright.
“What are you doing here, sweet child?” he asked in a whisper,
glancing around him, and pinching the little girl’s cheek.
“We are playing....”
“Ah! With him?” Julian Mastakovich looked askew at the boy. “Go into
the next room, like a nice little boy,” he said to him.
The boy was silent and gazed at him with perturbed eyes. Julian
Mastakovich looked around once more and bent over the little girl.
“And what have you, sweet child, a doll?” he asked.
“Yes, a doll,” answered the little girl, frowning, and quailing visibly.
“A doll.... And do you know, sweet child, what the doll is made of?”
“I don’t know,” answered the little girl in a whisper, lowering her
head.
“Of rags, my darling.... And you, my boy, you had better go into the
other room to your fellows,” said Julian Mastakovich, as he looked
severely at the youngster. The girl and the boy frowned and caught hold
of each other. They did not wish to part.
“And do you know why they gave you this doll?” asked Julian
Mastakovich, lowering his voice more and more.
“I don’t know.”
“Because you have been a lovely and well-behaved child the entire week.”
At this juncture, Julian Mastakovich, agitated to the utmost, looked
round and, lowering his tone to a whisper, asked finally in an almost
inaudible voice, dying away more and more from agitation and impatience:
“And will you love me, sweet girlie, when I shall come as a guest to
your papa and mamma?”
Having said this, Julian Mastakovich made one more effort to kiss the
lovely child; but the red-haired boy, quick to see that she was at the
point of tears, seized her hands and, out of deep sympathy for her,
began to whimper. Julian Mastakovich became quite angry.
“Begone, begone from here, begone!” he said to the boy. “Begone into
the other room! Begone to your own fellows!”
“No, don’t go! Don’t go! _You_ had better go,” said the young girl,
“but leave him alone, leave him alone!” She was almost in tears.
Presently there was a commotion just within the door. Julian
Mastakovich immediately rose to his feet, somewhat frightened. The
red-haired boy was even more frightened. He left his companion and
stole out silently, with his hands brushing the wall, into the
dining-room. To hide his confusion, Julian Mastakovich followed him.
He was as red as a lobster, and when he looked in the glass he seemed
appalled as his own image. Perhaps he was annoyed at his rage and
impatience. Perhaps the calculation he made earlier on his fingers had
so affected him, tempting and inflaming him, that, notwithstanding his
position and dignity, he was impelled to act like a young boy to attain
his object, despite the fact that the object in any case could be
attained only five years hence. I followed the esteemed gentleman into
the dining-room and witnessed a strange scene. Julian Mastakovich, his
face all red from irritation and malice, was pursuing the red-haired
boy, who, retreating farther and farther from him, did not know what to
do with himself in his fright.
“Begone with you! What are you doing here? Begone, you
good-for-nothing! Begone! Stealing fruit, are you? Stealing fruit?
Begone, good-for-nothing! Begone, unclean one! Begone, begone to the
likes of yourself!”
The frightened boy, driven to desperate measures, tried to get under
the table. Then his pursuer, enraged to the last degree, drew out his
long batiste handkerchief and lashed it out at the cowering boy.
It is necessary to mention that Julian Mastakovich was a trifle fat.
He was a satiated, red-cheeked, stoutish person, large at the waist
and with fat legs; he was as round as a nut. He began to perspire, to
pant, and to grow fearfully red. His fury knew no bounds, so great was
his feeling of malice and--who knows?--perhaps jealousy. I laughed out
loud. Julian Mastakovich turned around, and in spite of his importance
was covered with most abject confusion. At this instant the host
entered by the opposite door. The boy climbed out from under the table
and wiped his knees and elbows. Julian Mastakovich made haste to put
his handkerchief, which he held by one corner, to his nose.
The host, not without perplexity, surveyed the three of us; but, like
a man who understood life and looked at it with a serious eye, availed
himself of the opportunity to speak to his guest alone.
“This is the youngster,” said he, pointing at the red-haired boy, “whom
I had the pleasure of mentioning to you....”
“Ah?” answered Julian Mastakovich, not yet fully recovered from his
discomfiture.
“He is the son of the governess of my children,” continued the host
in an appealing voice. “She is a poor woman, a widow, the wife of an
honest official; and it is for this reason that ... Julian Mastakovich,
is it possible to....”
“Oh, no, no!” Julian Mastakovich made haste to exclaim. “No, Philip
Alekseievich; I am sorry, but it is utterly impossible. There is no
vacancy, and even if there were, there would be ten candidates for the
place, each having a greater right to it than he.... It is a great
pity, a great pity....”
“Yes, a pity,” repeated the host. “He is such a modest, quiet lad....”
“And quite a scamp, I should say,” added Julian Mastakovich, his mouth
hysterically athwart. “Begone, boy! Why are you standing there? Go to
your equals!”
At this point he could not restrain himself any longer, and looked at
me with one eye. I too could not resist, and laughed straight in his
face. Julian Mastakovich turned away immediately, and with sufficient
distinctness for me to hear asked the host the identity of “that
strange young man.” They exchanged whispers and left the room. I
observed afterward how Julian Mastakovich, listening to the host, shook
his head incredulously.
Having laughed to my heart’s content, I returned to the reception-room.
There the great man, surrounded by the fathers and the mothers of
families, the host and the hostess, was speaking with great warmth
to a lady to whom he had just been introduced. The lady held by her
hand the little girl with whom only ten minutes before he had made
the scene. Now he was lavish in his praises and raptures over the
beauty, talents, manners, and breeding of the lovely child. He was
plainly playing the wheedler before the mother. She listened to him,
almost with tears of joy in her eyes. The father’s lips smiled. The
prevailing spirit of good-will rejoiced the heart of the host. Even
all the guests lent a sympathetic hand, and made the children stop
their games in order not to interfere with the conversation. The
entire atmosphere was saturated with devotion. I heard later how the
mother of the interesting little girl, touched to the very depths
of her heart, begged Julian Mastakovich, in most effusive language,
to do her the great honor of conferring on the house more often his
precious presence; I heard with what undisguised joy Julian Mastakovich
accepted the invitation, and how the guests, dispersing afterward in
various directions as propriety demanded, exchanged with one another
complimentary salutations regarding the host, the hostess, the little
girl, and in particular Julian Mastakovich.
“Is this gentleman married?” I asked almost aloud of an acquaintance
who stood nearest to Julian Mastakovich.
Julian Mastakovich threw at me a searching and malicious glance.
“No!” answered my acquaintance, mortified deeply at the awkwardness
which I committed purposely....
* * * * *
Not long ago I was passing the---- Church, and I was astonished at
the tremendous crowd that had gathered there. Every one talked about
a wedding. It was a bleak day in late autumn. I made my way through
the crowd and caught a glimpse of the bridegroom. He was a round,
satiated, pot-bellied little person, very much adorned. He ran hither
and thither, fussed, and gave orders. At last a murmur went through
the crowd, announcing the arrival of the bride. I squeezed through
the crowd and saw an astoundingly beautiful girl, who had hardly
experienced the first bloom of spring. But the beautiful girl was pale
and sad. She looked bewildered; and it seemed to me that her eyes
were red from newly-shed tears. The classic rigidity of her features
imparted to her beauty a kind of dignity and strength. But through all
this rigidity and dignity, through all this sadness, there penetrated
the first aspect of childhood’s innocence; it suggested something
naïve, fragile, and juvenile to the last degree; and though the look
bespoke resignation, it also seemed to utter a silent prayer for mercy.
It was said in the crowd that she had just passed her sixteenth
birthday. An intent scrutiny of the bridegroom suddenly revealed him to
me as Julian Mastakovich, whom I had not seen for exactly five years. I
looked at her.... My God! I quickly made haste to leave the church. In
the crowd they were telling each other how rich the bride was, that she
had a dowry of five hundred thousand rubles ... and so much besides in
rags....
“At any rate, his calculation was a good one!” I reflected, as I
jostled my way into the street.