Short Fiction quotes

“Then he must have been brave,” said I.

“No. Pushing oneself in where you are not needed, does not prove you to be brave.”

“Then what do you call brave?”

“Brave?—Brave?—” repeated the captain, with the air of one to whom such a question presents itself for the first time.

“He who does what he ought to do is brave,” he said, after thinking awhile.

I remembered that Plato defines courage as “The knowledge of what should and what should not be feared,” and despite the looseness and vagueness of the captain’s definition, I thought that the fundamental ideas of the two were not so different as they might appear, …

“That is just why I say ‘Youth,’ ” he added in a deep voice. “

What is there to be pleased at without ever having seen the thing? When one has seen it many times, one is not so pleased.

There are now, let us say, twenty of us officers here: one or other is sure to be killed or wounded, that is quite certain; today it may be I, tomorrow, he; the next day a third. So what is there to be pleased about?”

He always carried two things: a large icon hanging round his neck, and a dagger which he wore over his shirt even when in bed.

He sincerely believed that he had enemies.

To persuade himself that he must avenge himself on someone and wash away some insult with blood was his greatest enjoyment. He was convinced that hatred, vengeance, and contempt for the human race, were the noblest and most poetic of feelings.

Only very occasionally you heard the clang of a heavy gun, the sound of bayonets striking together, hushed voices, or the snorting of a horse. Nature seemed to breathe with pacifying beauty and power.

Can it be that there is not room for all men on this beautiful earth, under those immeasurable starry heavens?

Can it be possible that in the midst of this entrancing Nature, feelings of hatred, vengeance, or the passion for exterminating their fellows, can endure in the souls of men?

The spectacle was truly magnificent. The one thing that spoilt the general impression for me, who took no part in the affair and was unaccustomed to it, was that this movement, and the animation and the shouting, appeared unnecessary.

Involuntarily the comparison suggested itself to me of a man swinging his arms from the shoulders to cut the air with an axe.

Our troops had taken possession of the village, and not a single soul of the enemy remained in it, when the General and his suite, with which I had mingled, rode up to it.

… order to understand how impossible it was for him, at such a moment, to abstain from fighting an orderly, a Cossack, an infantryman, a peasant (in fact, anyone not of the artillery) who was rude to him, or happened merely to be in his way.

He fought and rioted not so much for his own pleasure as to maintain the spirit of soldiership in general, of which he felt himself to be the representative.

The third soldier, who sat on his heels smoking a clay pipe, was the artillery driver Chikin. He had an earring in one of his ears, bristling little moustaches, and the physiognomy of a bird.

“Do you know why?” he answered with resolute frankness.

“In obedience to tradition! You know there exists in Russia a most curious tradition about the Caucasus, making it out to be a ‘promised land’ for all unfortunates.”

“Yes, that is almost true,” said I. “Most of us—”

“Ugh! the damned thing!” just then remarked Antonov behind us, as he spat over his shoulder with vexation, “just missed my legs!”

All my attempts to seem calm, and all our cunning phrases, suddenly seemed to me insufferably silly after that simple exclamation.

The enemy had really placed two guns where we had seen the Tartars riding, and they fired a shot every twenty or thirty minutes at our men who were felling the wood. My platoon was ordered forward to the plain to answer the enemy’s fire.

His last moments were as clear and calm as his whole life had been.

He had lived too honestly and been too artless for his simple faith in a future heavenly life to be shaken at the decisive moment.

“Your honour!” said Nikolayev, coming up to me, “the Captain asks you to come and have tea with him.”

I have noticed always and everywhere, but especially in the Caucasus, the peculiar tact with which our soldiers avoid mentioning anything that might have a bad effect on a comrade’s spirits.

A Russian soldier’s spirit does not rest on easily inflammable enthusiasm which cools quickly, like the courage of Southern nations; it is as difficult to inflame him as it is to depress him.

He does not need scenes, speeches, war-cries, songs, and drums; on the contrary, he needs quiet, order, and an absence of any affectation.

And God knows why such a sin came about—how it was that it occurred to him to ruin his own soul—but as to what he left written on this paper, I don’t understand it at all.

Truly, you can never account for what is going on in the world.

“God gave me all that a man can desire—wealth, name, intellect, noble aspirations. I wanted to enjoy myself, and I trod in the mire all that was best in me. I have done nothing dishonorable, I am not unfortunate, I have not committed any crime;

“God gave me all that a man can desire—wealth, name, intellect, noble aspirations. I wanted to enjoy myself, and I trod in the mire all that was best in me.

I have done nothing dishonorable, I am not unfortunate, I have not committed any crime; but I have done worse: I have destroyed my feelings, my intellect, my youth.

I became entangled in a filthy net, from which I could not escape, and to which I could not accustom myself. I feel that I am falling lower and lower every moment, and I cannot stop my fall.

but I have done worse: I have destroyed my feelings, my intellect, my youth. I became entangled in a filthy net, from which I could not escape, and to which I could not accustom myself.

I feel that I am falling lower and lower every moment, and I cannot stop my fall.

“And what ruined me? Was there in me some strange passion which I might plead as an excuse? No!

“

I once thought that the nearness of death would rouse my soul. I was mistaken.

In a quarter of an hour I shall be no more, yet my view has not in the least changed. I see with the same eyes, I hear with the same ears, I think the same thoughts;

You listen to the steady murmur of voices which reaches you across the water, and to the majestic sounds of the firing which, it seems to you, now grows stronger in Sevastopol.

Some feeling of courage or pride surely enters your soul, and the blood flows faster in your veins, at the thought that you, too, are in Sevastopol.

“Your honour, you’re steering straight into the Constantine,” says the old seaman, who has turned to see where you are steering.

“And afterwards it was nothing much either, only it did smart when they drew the skin together.

The chief thing, your honour, is not to think: if you don’t think, it’s nothing much. It mostly all comes of thinking.

”

“It’s my missus, your honour!” remarks the sailor, with a look that seems to say, “You must excuse her; it’s a woman’s way to say foolish things.”

You begin to understand the defenders of Sevastopol; without knowing why, you begin to feel ashamed of yourself before this man.

To show your sympathy and admiration you are tempted to say too much;

He wishes to say more, something pathetic, but only repeats, “Forgive me, brothers!” At this moment a sailor approaches him, places the cap on the head the wounded man raises, and then quietly, placidly swinging his arms, returns to his cannon.

“That’s the way with seven or eight every day,” the naval officer remarks to you, answering the look of horror on your face, and he yawns as he rolls another yellow cigarette.

So now you have seen the defenders of Sevastopol where they are defending it, and, somehow, you return with a tranquil, heightened spirit, paying no heed to the balls and bombs whose whistle accompanies you all the way to the ruined theatre.

Thousands of human ambitions have had time to be wounded, thousands to be gratified and to expand, thousands to be lulled to rest in the arms of death.

So many pink coffins and linen palls!

And yet the same sounds from the bastions fill the air; still the French from their camp look with involuntary trepidation and fear at the yellowy earth of the bastions of Sevastopol, and count the embrasures from which the iron cannon frown fiercely;

To Captain Obzhógof, Lieutenant-Captain Miháylof was an aristocrat, and to Lieutenant-Captain Miháylof, Adjutant Kaloúgin was an aristocrat, because he was an adjutant and intimate with another adjutant. To Adjutant Kaloúgin, Count Nórdof was an aristocrat, because he was an aide-de-camp to the Emperor.

Vanity! vanity! vanity! everywhere, even on the brink of the grave and among men ready to die for a lofty cause.

Vanity! It seems to be the characteristic feature and special malady of our time. How is it that among our predecessors no mention was made of this passion, as of smallpox and cholera?

those who, considering vanity an inevitably existing fact and therefore justifiable, freely submit to it; those who regard it as a sad but unavoidable condition; and those who act unconsciously and slavishly under its influence?

Why did our Homers and Shakespeares speak of love, glory, and suffering, while the literature of today is an endless story of snobbery and vanity?

Twice the Lieutenant-Captain passed irresolutely by the group of his aristocrats, but drawing near them for the third time he made an effort and walked up to them. The group consisted of four officers: Adjutant Kaloúgin, Miháylof’s acquaintance;

… the windowsill looking at the fiery trails of the bombs crossing one another in the air, at flashes that for a moment lit up the dark sky, at the puffs of white smoke, and listened to the more and more frequent reports of the firing.

“Quel charmant coup d’œil! a?” said Kaloúgin, drawing his guest’s attention to the really beautiful sight. “Do you know, you sometimes can’t distinguish a bomb from a star.”

“Yes, I thought that was a star just now, and then saw it fall … there! it’s burst. And that big star—what do you call it?—looks just like a bomb.”

“How’s one to repulse ’em, when his whole force came on, killed all our men, and no re’forcements are given?”

The soldier was mistaken, the trench remained ours; but it is a curious fact, which anyone may notice, that a soldier wounded in action always thinks the affair lost, and imagines it to have been a very bloody fight.

“How is that? I was told they had been repulsed,” said Gáltsin irritably. “Perhaps they were driven back after you left? Is it long since you came away?”

he ran a few steps at full speed and lay down flat. When the bomb burst a considerable distance off, he felt exceedingly vexed with himself, and rose looking round to see if anyone had noticed his downfall, but no one was near.

But when fear has once entered the soul it does not easily yield to any other feeling.

He, who always boasted that he never even stooped, now hurried along the trench almost on all fours. He stumbled, and thought, “Oh! it’s awful! they’ll kill me for certain,” his breath came with difficulty, and perspiration broke out all over his body;

Having recognised Praskoúhin and made out what was wanted, Miháylof dropped his hand and passed on the order. The battalion became alert, the men took up their muskets, put on their cloaks, and set out.

No one, without experiencing it, can imagine the delight a man feels when, after three hours’ bombardment, he leaves so dangerous a spot as the lodgments.

During those three hours Miháylof, who more than once—and not without reason—had thought his end at hand, had had time to accustom himself to the conviction that he would certainly be killed, and that he no longer belonged to this world.

Kaloúgin, Prince Gáltsin, and a Colonel were walking arm-in-arm near the pavilion and talking of last night’s affair.

The main clue to the talk, as always in such cases, was not the affair itself but the part the speaker had taken in it.

Their faces and tones were serious, almost sorrowful, as if the losses of the night had touched and saddened every one of them.

It is very well to call some conqueror a monster because he destroys millions to gratify his ambition.

But go and ask any Ensign Petroúshef or Sublieutenant Antónof, on their conscience, and you will find that every one of us is a little Napoleon, a little monster, ready to start a battle and kill a hundred men, only to get an extra medal or one-third additional pay.

“No, I beg pardon,” said the Colonel, “it began first on the left side. I was there myself.”

Captain Zóbof, who spoke so loud, was on the boulevard, the shabbily-dressed Captain Obzhógof, the artillery captain who never curried favour with anyone, a Junker fortunate in his love affairs—all the same faces as the day before, and all with the same recurring motives.

Only Praskoúhin, Nefyórdof, and a few more were missing, and hardly anyone now remembered or thought of them, though there had not been time for their bodies to be washed, laid out, and put into the ground.

On our bastions and on the French parallels white flags are hung out, and between them in the flowery valley lie heaps of bootless, mangled corpses, clad in grey and blue, which workmen are removing and piling on to carts.

There, I have said what I wished to say this time. But a painful hesitation seizes me. Perhaps I ought to have left it unsaid.

Perhaps what I have said belongs to that class of evil truths which, unconsciously hidden within the soul of each one, should not be uttered for fear of becoming injurious, as the dregs in the bottle must not be shaken for fear of spoiling the wine.

Where in this tale is the evil shown that should be avoided? Where is the good that should be imitated? Who is the villain, who the hero of the story? All are good, and all are bad.

Where in this tale is the evil shown that should be avoided? Where is the good that should be imitated?

Who is the villain, who the hero of the story? All are good, and all are bad.

Not Kaloúgin, with his brilliant courage—bravoure de gentilhomme—and the vanity which influences all his actions; not Praskoúhin, the empty, harmless fellow (though he fell in battle for faith, throne, and fatherland); not Miháylof, with his shyness;

“Ah-a-a!” cried the younger Kozeltsóf, “this is wonderful!” and he began kissing his brother.

They kissed three times, but hesitated before the third kiss, as if the thought, “Why has it to be just three times?” had struck both of them.

“Well, I am glad!” said the elder, looking into his brother’s face: “come out into the porch and let’s have a talk.”

“It’s so provoking. … Just think, what a misfortune: do you know, we’ve had a whole bundle of things stolen on the way, and my shako was inside, so that I am in a terrible position. Whatever shall I appear in?”

Kozeltsóf secundus, Vladímir, was very like his brother Michael, but it was the likeness of an opening rosebud to a withered dog-rose.

He had the same fair hair as his brother, but it was thick, and curled about his temples, and a little tail of it grew down the delicate white nape of his neck—a sign of luck according to the nurses.

“

There now, and we were in such a hurry to get here! Always push on and push on! This is a fine place to hurry to!

”

but if courage is needed and firmness, which I lack, give them me. Deliver me from the shame and disgrace which are more than I can bear, and teach me what I must do to fulfil Thy will.”

The frightened, cramped, childish soul suddenly matured, brightened, and became aware of new, bright, and broad horizons.

He thought and felt many things during the short time this state continued, but soon fell into a sweet untroubled sleep, amid the continued booming of the cannonade and the rattle of the window panes.

“Well, suppose I have a try; who knows what the devil may do for one!

Even a mosquito, you know, wins his battles sometimes.

Only I must have a drink to keep up my courage.”

Just then a shrieking, glancing rifle-ball flew just over the talkers’ heads and struck a stone.

“Mind, or you’ll get your discharge in full before tonight,” said one of the soldiers.

And not only before night, but before two hours had passed, two of them had got their discharge in full, and five more were wounded; but the rest went on joking just the same.

“

Hear him a-whistlin through the fuse-hole just like a nightingale!

” remarked an artilleryman.

In front the foremost sledge is running on, always at the same distance; on the right and left everything is white and wavering. In vain the eye seeks some new object; not a post, not a stack, not a hedge—nothing to be seen.

Everywhere all is white, white and moving.

At one moment the horizon seems inconceivably remote, at the next closed in, two paces away on all sides.

It was with a feeling of naive self-satisfaction and melancholy.

Everything around me was so beautiful; its beauty had such an intense effect on me that it seemed to me I was beautiful myself, and my only vexation was that there was no one to admire me.

It is hot. I try to console myself by going to sleep. But the flies, the intolerable flies, will not even here give me any peace;

Those who have only just reached the pond give advice, and groan, and their faces express horror and despair. Of those who had arrived on the scene earlier some, tired of standing, sit down on the grass; others go back.

Old Matrona asks her daughter whether she has shut the door of the oven; the boy in his father’s coat flings stones with careful aim into the pond.

But now Trezorka, Fyodor Filippitch’s dog, comes running downhill from the house, barking and looking round in perplexity; and the figure of Fyodor himself, running down the hill and shouting something, comes into sight behind the thicket of wild rose.

And he started; the bells began ringing; the sledge began swaying from side to side; and the wind whistled through the runners.

And again we set off floating over the boundless sea of snow.

I slept soundly. When I was waked up by Alyoshka kicking me, and opened my eyes, it was morning. It seemed even colder than in the night. No snow was falling from above;

but still his motions were so slow, that Nekhliudof had time to walk back and forth three times from the puddle to the loom before Davidka got down from the oven.

Davidka Byélui or David White was white in reality: his hair, and his body, and his face all were perfectly white.

He was tall and very stout, but stout as peasants are wont to be, that is, not in the waist alone, but in the whole body. His stoutness, however, was of a peculiar flabby, unhealthy kind.

The theme was in somewhat the nature of a mazurka, sweet and graceful. The voices sounded now near at hand, now far distant; now a bass was heard, now a tenor, now a falsetto such as the Tyrolese warblers are wont to sing.

It was not a song, but the graceful masterly sketch of a song. I could not comprehend what it was, but it was beautiful.

Those voluptuous, soft chords of the guitar, that sweet, gentle melody, and that solitary figure of the man in black, amid the fantastic environment of the lake, the gleaming moon, and the twin spires of the cathedral rising in majestic silence, and the black tops …

… of the man in black, amid the fantastic environment of the lake, the gleaming moon, and the twin spires of the cathedral rising in majestic silence, and the black tops of the poplars—all was strange and perfectly beautiful, or at least seemed so to me.

All the confused, arbitrary impressions of life suddenly became full of meaning and beauty.

It seemed to me as though a fresh fragrant flower had sprung up in my soul.

“

Messieurs et mesdames, si vous croyez que je gagne quelque chose, vous vous trompez: je ne suis qu’un pauvre tiaple.

”

and still standing in the same place, I gazed abstractedly into the darkness after the little man, who was fast disappearing, as he went with ever-increasing swiftness with long strides into the city, followed by the merrymaking promenaders.

I was overmastered by a feeling of pain, of bitterness, and above all, of shame for the little man, for the crowd, for myself, as though it were I who had asked for money and received none; as though it were I who had been turned to ridicule.

Without looking any longer, feeling my heart oppressed, I also hurried with long strides toward the entrance of the Schweitzerhof. I could not explain the feeling that overmastered me;

In front of them skipped a buxom girl of ten, with round white knees which showed from under her thin embroideries. “Magnificent night!” the lady was saying in a sweet, happy voice, as I passed them.

“Oh, yes,” growled the Englishman lazily; and it was evident that he found it so enjoyable to be alive in the world, that it was too much trouble even to speak.

And it seemed as though all of them alike found it so comfortable and easy, so light and free, to be alive in the world, their faces and motions expressed such perfect indifference to the lives of everyone else, and such absolute confidence that it …

“

But in society the lackey is better dressed than the minstrel, and insults him with impunity. I am better dressed than the lackey, and insult him with impunity.

The porter considers me higher, but the minstrel lower, than himself; when I made the minstrel my companion, he felt that he was on an equality with us both, and behaved rudely.

“

A wretched, pitiable creature is man with his craving for positive solutions, thrown into this everlastingly tossing, limitless ocean of good and evil, of combinations and contradictions.

For centuries men have been struggling and laboring to put the good on one side, the evil on the other.

there was no cease to the noise of conversation and dancing. But there was a sense of awkwardness and constraint; everyone felt somehow or other—and this is not unusual—that all was not as it should be.

There were several attempts made to make things more lively, but simulated liveliness is much worse than melancholy.

One of the five young men, who was more discontented than anyone else, both with himself and with the others, and who had been feeling all the evening a sense of disgust, took his hat, and went out noiselessly on purpose, intending to go home.

… intermingling, poured forth and poured forth, so sweetly, so powerfully, and so spontaneously, that it was not so much that sounds were heard, as that some sort of beautiful stream of poetry, long known, but now for the first time expressed, gushed through the soul.

At each note that he played, Albert grew taller and taller.

At a little distance, he had no appearance of being either crippled or peculiar. Pressing the violin to his chin, and with an expression of listening with passionate attention to the tones that he produced, he convulsively moved his feet.

He shook himself, tried to swallow them back and wipe them away without attracting attention, but fresh tears followed and streamed down his face. By some sort of strange association of impressions, the first tones of Albert’s violin carried Delesof back to his early youth.

Old before his time, weary of life, a broken man, he suddenly felt as though he were a boy of seventeen again, self-satisfied and handsome, blissfully dull, unconsciously happy.

He remembered his first love for his cousin who wore a pink dress, he remembered his first confession of it in the linden alley; he remembered the warmth and the inexpressible charm of the fortuitous kiss;

“Certainly I am not a bad man: I might say I am far from being a bad man,” he thought. “

I might go so far as to say that I am a good man, when I compare myself with others.

”

“Bosio is good, very good,” was his reply, “exquisite beyond words; but she does not touch me here,” he said, pointing to his sunken chest. “A singer must have passion, and she hasn’t any.

She is enjoyable, but she doesn’t torture you.

”

“Who said that he was old?” said Albert severely. “He can’t be old.

The artist can never be old.

Much is needed in an artist, but fire most of all,” he declared with glistening eyes, and raising both hands in the air. And, indeed, a terrible inner fire seemed to glow throughout his whole frame. “Ah, my God!” he exclaimed suddenly.

Anna Fyódorovna was still living, but was already so far from young that she did not even consider herself young, which means a good deal for a woman.

She had grown very fat, which is said to make a woman younger, but deep, soft wrinkles were apparent on her white plumpness.

She never went to town now, it was even difficult for her to get into her carriage, but she was still as kindhearted and still just as silly as ever (now that her beauty no longer biases one, the truth may be told).

Her mother’s voice, calling her to pour out the tea, roused the country lass from this momentary meditation. She lifted her head with a start and went into the tearoom.

Often the best results are obtained accidentally, and the more one tries the worse things turn out.

In the country, people rarely try to educate their children, and therefore, unwittingly, usually give them an excellent education. This was particularly so in Lisa’s case.

She walked with big steps and with a slight sway—a “duck’s waddle,” as the saying is. Her face, when she was occupied and not agitated by anything in particular, seemed to say to everyone who looked into it,

“It is good and gladsome to live in the world when one has people to love and one’s conscience is clear.”

Even in moments of vexation, trouble, excitement, or sadness, in spite of herself, there shone—through the tear in her eye, her frowning left eyebrow, and her compressed lips—a kind, straightforward spirit unspoilt by the intellect;

it seemed dull and unnecessary.

It was as if someone had said to her, “Little fool, little fool, for twenty years you have been trifling, serving someone without knowing why, and without knowing what life and happiness are!”

This is what she was thinking, as she gazed into the depths of the moonlit, motionless garden, more intensely, far more intensely, than she had ever thought it before. And what had caused these thoughts?

… now she had lived too long in the sad happiness of feeling the presence of this something in herself, and of now and again opening the secret chalice of her heart to contemplate its riches, to be able thoughtlessly to lavish its contents on anyone.

God grant she may enjoy this chary bliss to the grave! Who knows whether it is not the best and strongest? and whether it is not the only true and possible happiness?

“O Lord, my God,” she thought, “can it be that I have lost happiness and youth in vain, and that it will never be … never be? Can it be true?”

Everywhere there was a running and a dripping of clear drops. … The sparrows chattered incoherently, and fluttered to and fro on their little wings. On the sunny side, on fences, trees, and houses, all was movement.

There was youth and gladness in the sky and in the earth and in the heart of man.

In one of the principal streets there was straw lying in front of a large house; in the house lay the dying woman who had been hastening abroad.

The boy stood still for a moment, staring intently into his father’s face, then suddenly kicking up his foot, with a merry shriek he ran on.

“I’m pretending she’s my black horse, papa!”

shouted the boy, pointing to his sister.

“ ‘Thou takest from them Thy breath, they die and return to the dust from which they came. Thou breathest Thy spirit into them—they are created and renew the earth. Glory be to God now and forever.’ ”

The face of the dead woman was stern and solemn. Nothing stirred the pure, cold brow and the firmly set lips. She was all attention. But did she even now understand those grand words?

A month later a stone monument had been raised over the dead woman’s grave.

the dew glittered sparkling on the green grass; the transparent clouds turned white, and floated in haste across the bluish sky. The birds flitted to and fro in the thickets and twittered some happy song, like mad things.

The sappy leaves whispered joyously and calmly on the treetops, and the branches of the living trees, slowly, majestically, swayed above the fallen dead tree.

“Well, do then!” said Kátya.

“That’s all very well,” he said, “but life won’t sit still.”

“Why don’t you marry?” asked Kátya; “you would make an excellent husband.”

He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others. At the time his words seemed to me strange, and I did not understand them; but by degrees this became a conviction with me, without thinking about it.

He revealed to me a whole new world of joys in the present, without changing anything in my life, without adding anything except himself to each impression in my mind.

All that had surrounded me from childhood without saying anything to me, suddenly came to life. The mere sight of him made everything begin to speak and press for admittance to my heart, filling it with happiness.

to me now nothing seems bad, but only pitiful and amusing. Above all—le mieux est l’ennemi du bien. Will you believe it, when I hear a ring at the bell, or receive a letter, or even wake up in the morning, I’m frightened.

Life must go on, something may change; and nothing can be better than the present.

”

“It is all right,” I thought, “to do good to others and lead upright lives, as he says; but there is time for that later; and there are other things, for which the time is now or never.”

I wanted, not what I had got, but a life of struggle; I wanted feeling to be the guide of life, and not life to guide feeling.

If only I could go with him to the edge of a precipice and say, “One step, and I shall fall over—one movement, and I shall be lost!”

His face, which had been gentle and thoughtful, changed at once to its old expression of sagacity, penetration, and patronizing composure.

He would not show himself to me as a mere man, but had to be a demigod on a pedestal.

“Well, my dear?” he asked, turning towards me with an unconcerned air.

My religious ecstasies, my love for my husband, the fullness of my former life—all these now seem utterly remote and visionary. Once it seemed so plain and right that to live for others was happiness; but now it has become unintelligible.

Why live for others, when life had no attraction even for oneself?

I had given up my music altogether since the time of our first visit to Petersburg; but now the old piano and the old music tempted me to begin again.

“Did love!” I said, with my face buried in the handkerchief, while the bitter tears fell still more abundantly.

“If so, time is to blame for that, and we ourselves. Each time of life has its own kind of love.”

He was silent for a moment. “Shall I tell you the whole truth, if you really wish for frankness?

Suddenly I realized clearly and calmly that the past feeling, like the past time itself, was gone beyond recall, and that it would be not only impossible but painful and uncomfortable to bring it back.

And after all, was that time so good which seemed to me so happy? and it was all so long, long ago!

“Time for tea!” he said, and we went together to the parlour. At the door we met the nurse with the baby.

The top one, which he probably did not button up so often, was fixed on tightly; the middle one was hanging by a thread, and ought long ago to have been sewn on.

But it is a well-known fact that in a conversation, especially a business conversation, it is not at all necessary to understand what is being said to you, but only to remember what you yourself want to say.

The lady acted accordingly.

and he was watched. He was caught a second and a third time. People began to taunt him, the steward threatened to make him go as a soldier, the proprietress gave him a scolding, and his wife wept and was brokenhearted. Everything went wrong.

He was a kindhearted man; not wicked, but only weak; liking drink, and so in the habit of it that he could not leave it off.

Sometimes his wife would row at him and even beat him when he came home drunk, and he would cry, saying: “Unfortunate man that I am, what shall I do? Blast my eyes, I’ll leave it off! Never again!”

… innkeeper’s horse under its belly with the selvedge torn from his wife’s shawl, and at last he began to sprinkle all sorts of sores with vitriol, to drench them with something out of a bottle, and sometimes to give internally whatever came into his head.

And the more horses he tormented and killed, the more he was believed in, and the more of them were brought to him.

I feel that for us educated people it would hardly be proper to laugh at Polikéy. The methods he employed are the same that have influenced our fathers, that influence us, and will influence our children.

And the more horses he tormented and killed, the more he was believed in, and the more of them were brought to him.

I feel that for us educated people it would hardly be proper to laugh at Polikéy.

The methods he employed are the same that have influenced our fathers, that influence us, and will influence our children.

Dounyásha ran out and found the peasant in the passage. He was still bareheaded, and had drawn out his purse, and was stooping untying its strings, while he held the money between his teeth.

Perhaps he imagined that as long as the money was not in his purse it was not his.

When Dounyásha called him he grew frightened.

Pákhtin, smiling, went to the glass hall, to join Syévernikov.

He was fond of having his last word appear to be a joke.

And so it came out at that time, too.

She had lived uninterruptedly for forty years in Moscow. She had neither much intelligence, nor great wealth, and she did not think much of connections—on the contrary; and there was not a man who did not respect her.

She was so convinced that everybody ought to respect her that everybody actually respected her.

There were some young liberals from the university who did not recognize her power, but these gentlemen made a bold front only in her absence.

They waited for him with the mass. As he stood at the altar, where he usually stood, Iván Petróvich rather reflected than prayed, which made him dissatisfied with himself.

Like many people of that time, and, so far as that goes, of all times, he was not quite clear in matters of religion.

He was past fifty years of age; he never omitted carrying out any rite, attended church, and went to communion once a year; in talking to his only daughter, he instructed her in the articles of faith;

He said that he did not see any. The Spinner said:

“You do not see it, because it is so fine. I do not see it myself.”

The Fool was glad, and ordered some more thread of this kind, and paid her for what he got.

It is different with us wild birds. We have much strength, and we can fly faster than anybody; still we do not fly away from people, but of our own accord go to their hands when we are called. We remember that they feed us.”

“You do not run away from people because you have never seen a roast Falcon, but we, you know, see roast Cocks.”

The Jackals had eaten up all the carrion in the woods, and had nothing to eat. So an old Jackal was thinking how to find something to feed on. He went to an Elephant, and said:

But the Jackal said to him:

“Why, then, do you command us to do what is impossible? Did we not drive away our first king for telling us to do what could not be done?”

When the Elephant died in the swamp the Jackals came and ate him up.

“

Not from hunger, not from love, not from rage, not from terror are all our sufferings, but from our bodies comes all the evil in the world.

From them come hunger, and love, and rage, and terror.”

“In vain do you beat me: it is not my fault that I am gray—God has made me so.”

“We do not beat the Wolf for being gray, but for eating the sheep.”

Once upon a time two Peasants drove toward each other and caught in each other’s sleighs. One cried:

They quarrelled for some time. A third Peasant saw them and said:

“If you are in a hurry, back up!”

A Peasant went to town to fetch some oats for his Horse. He had barely left the village, when the Horse began to turn around, toward the house. The Peasant struck the Horse with his whip. She went on, and kept thinking about the Peasant:

The Front Horse pulled well, but the Hind Horse kept stopping all the time. The load of the Hind Horse was transferred to the front cart; when all was transferred, the Hind Horse went along with ease, and said to the Front Horse:

“Work hard and sweat! The more you try, the harder they will make you work.”

When they arrived at the tavern, their master said:

He took the axe, and began to chop it; but the axe was so dull that it was not possible to cut with it. Then he took the saw; the saw was worthless, and did not saw. So he said:

“Stop quarrelling awhile; the axe does not chop, and the saw does not saw. First grind your axe and file your saw, and then quarrel.”

But the Peasants grew angrier still at one another, because one had a dull axe, and the other a dull saw. And they came to blows.

The Chicks did as they were ordered and tried to creep into their shells, but were unable to do so, and only crushed their wings. Then one of the Chicks said to his mother:

“If we are to stay all the time in our shells, you ought never to have hatched us.”

A Corncrake had made a nest in the meadow late in the year, and at mowing time his Mate was still sitting on her eggs.

When the Goat went away, the woman began once more to feed the Cow with bread, and to talk to her.

“There is no honesty in men,” thought the Goat. “I stood still better than the Cow, and was beaten for it.”

He stepped aside, took a run, hit against the milk-pail, spilled the milk, and hurt the old woman.

The Kids peered out of the window, and said:—

“The voice is our mamma’s, but the legs are those of a wolf. We cannot let you in.”

A farmer’s wife was annoyed by mice eating up the tallow in her cellar. She shut the cat into the cellar, so that the cat might catch the mice.

“Now I will praise you. You roared splendidly.”

And since that time the Ass is always braying, and always expects to be praised.

A fool had an excellent knife.

And the peasant with the team said:—

“It is not a big cricket, but it chirps so as to be heard!”

In the upper part of a house lived a rich barin, and on the floor below lived a poor tailor. The tailor was always singing songs at his work, and prevented the barin from sleeping.

But it grew tiresome to him; he took the money and returned it to the barin, saying:—

“Take back your money and let me sing my songs again, or I shall die of melancholy.”

A Squirrel was leaping from limb to limb, and fell directly upon a sleeping Wolf. The Wolf jumped up, and was going to devour him. But the Squirrel begged the Wolf to let him go.

The Wolf let him go, and the Squirrel leaped up into a tree, and from there it said:—

“You are melancholy because you are bad. Wickedness consumes your heart. But we are happy because we are good, and do no one any harm.”

Uncle Mitya had a very fine bay horse.

“Then why do you want the book?

Your quarrel reminds me of two bald men who fought for possession of a comb, when neither had any hair on his head.

”

The Wolf did not stop to dispute the matter, but merely said:—

“If the dogs were not so near, I would teach you whose place it is; but now the right is on your side.”

Some soldiers made a foray into hostile territory. A peasant ran out into the field where his horse was, and tried to catch it. But the horse would not come to the peasant.

“Of course they would make you carry burdens.”

“Well, don’t I carry burdens for you? So then it is all the same to me whether I work for you or your enemies.”

An Eagle built a nest on a tree, and hatched out some eaglets. And a wild Sow brought her litter under the tree.

“No, brother; you see I am pulling down my ceiling so as to have something to heat my oven with.

We have such a curious one; the more I heat it up, the colder we are!

”

“Timoféich, you are evidently more clever than we are. You have no business to ask us fools. Take us where you please.

A man does not die twice, and one death cannot be escaped.

”

the ice will begin to break, and melt, and move; the water will begin to stir, and bubbles will rise; then, when it begins to boil, it whirls about and makes a noise. The same happens in the world from the heat.

Without heat everything is dead; with the heat everything moves and lives.

If there is little heat, there is little motion; with more heat, there is more motion; with much heat, there is much motion; with very much heat, there is also very much motion.

And who drives the water?—Again heat. Heat raises the water in the shape of vapour, and without this the water would not be falling down. A machine works—it is moved by steam. And who makes steam?—Wood. And in the wood is the sun’s heat.

Heat makes motion, and motion makes heat. And both heat and motion are from the sun.

It was dusk. The owls began to fly through the forest to find some prey.

In the morning the hunters try to follow the hare tracks, and they get mixed up on the double tracks and long leaps, and marvel at the hare’s cunning.

But the hare did not mean to be cunning. He is merely afraid of everything.

Man sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, smells with his nose, tastes with his mouth, and feels with his fingers. One man’s eyes see better, another man’s see worse. One hears from a distance, and another is deaf.

When I was cutting them down, the old poplar was already dying. When the leaves came out, I saw (it grew from two boughs) that one bough was bare; and that same summer it dried up completely.

The tree had been dying for quite awhile, and the tree knew it, so it tried to give its life to the shoots.

That was the reason why they grew so fast. I wanted to make it easier for the tree, and only killed all its children.

That was the reason why they grew so fast.

I wanted to make it easier for the tree, and only killed all its children.

A bird-cherry grew out on a hazel bush path and choked the bushes. I deliberated for a long time whether I had better cut down the bird-cherry, or not.

“It cannot be helped—apparently such is its fate,” I thought, and I picked up an axe myself and began to chop it with the peasant.

It is a pleasure to do any work, and it is a pleasure to chop.

It is a pleasure to let the axe enter deeply in a slanting line, and then to chop out the chip by a straight stroke, and to chop farther and farther into the tree.

“Ah,” thought Zhílin, “I know you, devils that you are. If you take me alive, you’ll put me in a pit and flog me. I will not be taken alive!”

Zhílin, though not a big fellow, was brave.

He drew his sword and dashed at the red-bearded Tartar, thinking: “Either I’ll ride him down, or disable him with my sword.”

He paid two hundred for you himself. Kazi-Mohammed was in debt to him, and he took you in payment. Three thousand roubles! Less than that won’t do. If you refuse to write, you will be put into a pit and flogged with a whip!”

“Eh!” thought Zhílin, “the more one fears them the worse it will be.”

So he sprang to his feet, and said, “You tell that dog that if he tries to frighten me I will not write at all, and he will get nothing. I never was afraid of you dogs, and never will be!”

Kostílin went barefoot, but got on still worse. The stones cut his feet, and he kept lagging behind.

Zhílin said: “If your feet get cut, they’ll heal again; but if the Tartars catch us and kill us, it will be worse!”

Kostílin did not reply, but went on, groaning all the time.

Kostílin was so frightened that he sank to the ground. But Zhílin laughed and said: “It’s a stag. Don’t you hear him breaking the branches with his antlers?

We were afraid of him, and he is afraid of us.

”

When they were gone, Aksyónof recalled what had been said, and when he remembered that his wife also had suspected him, he said to himself, “

It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we must appeal, and from Him alone expect mercy.

”

For twenty-six years Aksyónof lived as a convict in Siberia. His hair turned white as snow, and his beard grew long, thin, and grey.

All his mirth went; he stooped; he walked slowly, spoke little, and never laughed, but he often prayed.

In prison Aksyónof learnt to make boots, and earned a little money, with which he bought The Lives of the Saints. He read this book when there was light enough in the prison;

It was easy walking now. Our snowshoes clattered as they slid behind us from side to side of the hard-trodden road. The snow creaked under our boots, and the cold hoarfrost settled on our faces like down.

Seen through the branches, the stars seemed to be running to meet us, now twinkling, now vanishing, as if the whole sky were on the move.

I found my comrade sleeping, but woke him up, and related how we had got round the bear. After telling our peasant host to collect beaters for the morning, we had supper and lay down to sleep.

And as he ran, he called to the bear:

“Oh you idiot! What are you doing? Leave off! Leave off!”

The bear obeyed him, and leaving me ran away. When I rose, there was as much blood on the snow as if a sheep had been killed, and the flesh hung in rags above my eyes, though in my excitement I felt no pain.

“

Much wisdom I shall hear from a drunken fool.

I was right in not wanting to marry you—a drunkard. The linen my mother gave me you drank; and now you’ve been to buy a coat—and have drunk it, too!”

“

We give; but why does nobody give us anything?

”

“What dwells in man I already knew. Now I learnt what is not given him.

It is not given to man to know his own needs.

And I smiled for the second time. I was glad to have seen my comrade angel—glad also that God had revealed to me the second saying.

“

I have learnt that all men live not by care for themselves but by love.

“It was not given to the mother to know what her children needed for their life. Nor was it given to the rich man to know what he himself needed.

“It was not given to the mother to know what her children needed for their life. Nor was it given to the rich man to know what he himself needed.

Nor is it given to any man to know whether, when evening comes, he will need boots for his body or slippers for his corpse.

“I remained alive when I was a man, not by care of myself, but because love was present in a passerby, and because he and his wife pitied and loved me.

“

I understood that God does not wish men to live apart, and therefore he does not reveal to them what each one needs for himself; but he wishes them to live united, and therefore reveals to each of them what is necessary for all.

“I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.”

“I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live.

He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.

”

I shuddered. Yes—Death! Death will come, it will come and it ought not to come. Even in facing actual death I would certainly not feel anything of what I felt now. Then it would be simply fear, whereas now it was more than that.

I was actually seeing, feeling the approach of death, and along with it I felt that death ought not to exist.

My entire being was conscious of the necessity of the right to live, and at the same time of the inevitability of dying. This inner conflict was causing me unbearable pain. I tried to shake off the horror;

A terrible fear similar to the fear of death, when mingled with the recollections of my past life, developed into a horror as if life were departing.

Life and death were flowing into one another.

An unknown power was trying to tear my soul into pieces, but could not bend it. Once more I went out into the passage to look at the two men asleep; once more I tried to go to sleep.

I was bowing to the earth, repeating all the prayers I knew, composing new ones; and I was adding each time, “Reveal Thy existence to me!” I became quiet, waiting for an answer. But no answer came, as if there were nothing to answer.

I was alone, alone with myself and was answering my own questions in place of him who would not answer.

“What am I created for?” “To live in a future life,” I answered. “Then why this uncertainty and torment? I cannot believe in future life. I did believe when I asked, but not with my whole soul. Now I cannot, I cannot!

“Ask and it shall be given unto you,” I remembered, and began to entreat; in doing so I felt no real comfort, but just surcease of despair. Perhaps it was not entreaty on my part, but only denial of Him.

You retreat a step from Him, and He goes from you a mile.

I did not believe in Him, and yet here I was entreating Him. But He did not reveal Himself. I was balancing my accounts with Him, and was blaming Him. I simply did not believe.

But if this is not, then there is no death and no fear, and nothing is being torn asunder within me, and I am not afraid of any calamity which may come.

At that moment the full light of the truth was kindled in me, and I grew into what I am now.

If all this horror does not necessarily exist around me, then it certainly does not exist within me.

Only the old man lying on the top of the oven kept telling them again and again: “Children, what are you doing? Stop all this paying back; keep to your work, and don’t bear malice—it will be better for you.

The more you bear malice, the worse it will be.

”

“Keep your tongue still, my friend,” said he. “

The first of all laws is to obey God, Who loves peace.

” And the Judge began again to persuade the peasants, but could not succeed. Gabriel would not listen to him.

‘Uncle Gordéy,’ I’d say, ‘I want so-and-so!’ ‘Take it Uncle Trol!’ That’s how it was between us, and we had an easy time of it. But now? … That soldier the other day was telling us about the fight at Plevna.

Why, there’s war between you worse than at Plevna!

Is that living? … What a sin it is! You are a man and master of the house; it’s you who will have to answer. What are you teaching the women and the children? To snarl and snap?

The old man sighed, and said: “You go about the wide world, Iván, while I am lying on the oven all these years, so you think you see everything, and that I see nothing. … Ah, lad!

It’s you that don’t see; malice blinds you.

Others’ sins are before your eyes, but your own are behind your back. ‘He’s acted badly!’ What a thing to say! If he were the only one to act badly, how could strife exist? Is strife among men ever bred by one alone?

The old man sighed, and said: “You go about the wide world, Iván, while I am lying on the oven all these years, so you think you see everything, and that I see nothing. … Ah, lad! It’s you that don’t see; malice blinds you.

Others’ sins are before your eyes, but your own are behind your back.

‘He’s acted badly!’ What a thing to say! If he were the only one to act badly, how could strife exist? Is strife among men ever bred by one alone? Strife is always between two. His badness you see, but your own you don’t.

… Ah, lad! It’s you that don’t see; malice blinds you. Others’ sins are before your eyes, but your own are behind your back. ‘He’s acted badly!’ What a thing to say! If he were the only one to act badly, how could strife exist?

Is strife among men ever bred by one alone? Strife is always between two.

His badness you see, but your own you don’t. If he were bad, but you were good, there would be no strife. Who pulled the hair out of his beard? Who spoilt his haystack? Who dragged him to the law court?

“Go, Iván, don’t put it off!

Put out the fire before it spreads, or it will be too late.

”

“What is this, friends? …” cried Iván, lifting his arms and striking his thighs. “

Why, all I had to do was just to snatch it out from under the eaves and trample on it!

What is this, friends? …” he kept repeating. He wished to shout, but his breath failed him; his voice was gone. He wanted to run, but his legs would not obey him, and got in each other’s way.

The old man closed his eyes, moved his lips as if to gather strength, and opening his eyes again, said: “You’ll manage. If you obey God’s will, you’ll manage!” He paused, then smiled, and said: “Mind, Iván! Don’t tell who started the fire!

Hide another man’s sin, and God will forgive two of yours!

” And the old man took the candle in both hands and, folding them on his breast, sighed, stretched out, and died.

“

Ah, neighbour, when we die they’ll get on without us.

Let your son begin now to get some experience.”

The other day the womenfolk at home were washing and housecleaning for Easter. Here something needed doing, there something else, and they could not get everything done. So my eldest daughter-in-law, who’s a sensible woman, says: ‘

We may be thankful the holiday comes without waiting for us, or however hard we worked we should never be ready for it.

’ ”

“Regret it! Not I, neighbour!

I never regretted anything in my life, except my sins. There’s nothing more precious than the soul.

”

“

But what if our souls are neglected? That’s worse.

We took the vow, so let us go! Now, seriously, let us go!”

“

Tomorrow I will redeem their cornfield, and will buy them a horse, and flour to last till the harvest, and a cow for the little ones; or else while I go to seek the Lord beyond the sea, I may lose Him in myself.

”

We were dying in despair, murmuring against God and man. But he set us on our feet again; and through him we learned to know God, and to believe that there is good in man. May the Lord bless him!

We used to live like animals; he made human beings of us.

”

“So that is how he got ahead of me,” thought Efím. “

God may or may not have accepted my pilgrimage, but He has certainly accepted his!

”

Efím sighed, and did not speak to Elisha of the people in the hut, nor of how he had seen him in Jerusalem.

But he now understood that the best way to keep one’s vows to God and to do His will, is for each man while he lives to show love and do good to others.

“For God, Martin,” said the old man. “

He gives you life, and you must live for Him.

When you have learnt to live for Him, you will grieve no more, and all will seem easy to you.”

“Oh, Granny, Granny,” said Martin, “that’s our way—but it’s not God’s way.

If he should be whipped for stealing an apple, what should be done to us for our sins?

”

“God bids us forgive,” said Martin, “or else we shall not be forgiven.

Forgive everyone; and a thoughtless youngster most of all.

”

Iván laughed and said, “

How can I, alone, put all you to death? If I were not a fool I would explain it to you, but as it is, I don’t understand it myself.

”

But the Devil said, “

I do it all out of pity for you fools. If I didn’t torture myself you would remain fools forever.

But, having worked with my head, I can now teach you.”

“Are you not ashamed of yourselves? To go fighting on account of these lassies, when they themselves have forgotten all about it, and are playing happily together.

Dear little souls! They are wiser than you!

”

“

Fortune turns like a wheel. One man it lifts, another it sets down!

Does not the old man grieve over all he has lost?”

“

If I were to tell you what is happiness and what is misfortune, you would not believe me.

You had better ask my wife. She is a woman, and what is in her heart is on her tongue. She will tell you the whole truth.”

We have fuel to burn when it is cold, and we have our fur cloak. And we have time to talk, time to think of our souls, and time to pray.

For fifty years we sought happiness, but only now at last have we found it.

”

“

Often it befalls that a poor man is happier than a rich man. Call no man happy until he is dead.

”

“We pray in this way,” replied the hermit. “

Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us.

”

“

Your own prayer will reach the Lord, men of God. It is not for me to teach you.

Pray for us sinners.”

“No,” said the imp, “that was not the way I did it. All I did was to see that the peasant had more corn than he needed.

The blood of the beasts is always in man; but as long as he has only enough corn for his needs, it is kept in bounds.

While that was the case, the peasant did not grudge his last crust. But when he had corn left over, he looked for ways of getting pleasure out of it. And I showed him a pleasure—drinking!

After sitting a little while, he went on again. At first he walked easily: the food had strengthened him; but it had become terribly hot, and he felt sleepy; still he went on, thinking: “

An hour to suffer, a lifetime to live.

”

He was done up with the heat, his bare feet were cut and bruised, and his legs began to fail. He longed to rest, but it was impossible if he meant to get back before sunset.

The sun waits for no man, and it was sinking lower and lower.

“Oh dear,” he thought, “if only I have not blundered trying for too much! What if I am too late?”

“My field was God’s earth. Wherever I ploughed, there was my field. Land was free. It was a thing no man called his own.

Labour was the only thing men called their own.

”

“

These things are so, because men have ceased to live by their own labour, and have taken to depending on the labour of others.

In the old time, men lived according to God’s law. They had what was their own, and coveted not what others had produced.”

“

Now I see that evil spreads evil. The more people try to drive away evil, the more the evil grows.

Evil, it seems, cannot be destroyed by evil; but in what way it can be destroyed, I do not know. The calf obeyed its mistress and so all went well;

“

No evil and no good can befall me from anyone but from God.

”

But I shall not be going of my own free will, and God will know whose sin it is, and shall punish the offender accordingly. Yet we must not forget him. Brethren, I am not giving you my own views only.

The law of God is not to return evil for evil; indeed, if you try in this way to stamp out wickedness it will come upon you all the stronger.

It is not difficult for you to kill the man, but his blood will surely stain your own soul.

… the nobleman learned of the fatal accident which had befallen his superintendent, and of the brutal treatment which he had meted out to those under him, he freed the serfs, exacting a small rent for the use of his land and the other agricultural opportunities.

And thus the peasants clearly understood that the power of God is manifested not in evil, but in goodness.

And Pyotr Ivanovitch drove there. And he did, in fact, find them just finishing the first rubber, so that he came just at the right time to take a hand.

The previous history of Ivan Ilyitch was the simplest, the most ordinary, and the most awful.

Ivan Ilyitch died at the age of forty-five, a member of the Judicial Council.

But all this was accompanied with such a tone of the highest breeding, that it could not be called by harsh names; it all came under the rubric of the French saying, Il faut que la jeunesse se passe.

Everything was done with clean hands, in clean shirts, with French phrases, and, what was of most importance, in the highest society, and consequently with the approval of people of rank.

Such was Ivan Ilyitch’s career for five years, and then came a change in his official life. New methods of judicial procedure were established; new men were wanted to carry them out. And Ivan Ilyitch became such a new man.

There remained only those rare periods of being in love which did indeed come upon them, but never lasted long.

These were the islands at which they put in for a time, but they soon set off again upon the ocean of concealed hostility, that was made manifest in their aloofness from one another.

This aloofness might have distressed Ivan Ilyitch if he had believed that this ought not to be so, but by now he regarded this position as perfectly normal, and it was indeed the goal towards which he worked in his home life.

But the party itself was enjoyable. There were all the best people, and Ivan Ilyitch danced with Princess Trufonov, the sister of the one so well known in connection with the charitable association called, “Bear my Burden.”

His official pleasures lay in the gratification of his pride; his social pleasures lay in the gratification of his vanity.

But Ivan Ilyitch’s most real pleasure was the pleasure of playing “screw,” the Russian equivalent for “poker.”

Yes, life has been and now it’s going, going away, and I cannot stop it. Yes. Why deceive myself? Isn’t it obvious to everyone, except me, that I’m dying, and it’s only a question of weeks, of days—at once perhaps.

There was light, and now there is darkness. I was here, and now I am going! Where?

” A cold chill ran over him, his breath stopped. He heard nothing but the throbbing of his heart.

And Caius certainly was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilyitch, with all my feelings and ideas—for me it’s a different matter.

And it cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too awful.

“If I had to die like Caius, I should have known it was so, some inner voice would have told me so. But there was nothing of the sort in me.

The terrible, awful act of his dying was, he saw, by all those about him, brought down to the level of a casual, unpleasant, and to some extent indecorous, incident (somewhat as they would behave with a person who should enter a drawing-room smelling unpleasant).

It was brought down to this level by that very decorum to which he had been enslaved all his life.

He saw that no one felt for him, because no one would even grasp his position. Gerasim was the only person who recognised the position, and felt sorry for him. And that was why Ivan Ilyitch was only at ease with Gerasim.

“

We shall all die. So what’s a little trouble?

” he said, meaning by this to express that he did not complain of the trouble just because he was taking this trouble for a dying man, and he hoped that for him too someone would be willing to take the same trouble when his …

Then there is a ring at the front door. The doctor, perhaps. Yes, it is the doctor, fresh, hearty, fat, and cheerful, wearing that expression that seems to say, “You there are in a panic about something, but we’ll soon set things right for you.”

The doctor is aware that this expression is hardly fitting here, but he has put it on once and for all, and can’t take it off, like a man who has put on a frockcoat to pay a round of calls.

In a hearty, reassuring manner the doctor rubs his hands.

He took his legs down, lay sideways on his arm, and he felt very sorry for himself. He only waited till Gerasim had gone away into the next room; he could restrain himself no longer, and cried like a child.

He cried at his own helplessness, at his awful loneliness, at the cruelty of people, at the cruelty of God, at the absence of God.

“Why hast Thou done all this? What brought me to this? Why, why torture me so horribly?”

… hung down like a bag from his thin, sharp ribs, he stood solidly on his four weak legs, so that as little strain as possible might come on any one of them—at least on the right foreleg, which was weaker than all—and went to sleep.

There is an honorable old age, there is a miserable old age, there is a pitiable old age; there is also an old age that is both honorable and miserable.

The old age which the piebald gelding had reached was of this latter sort.

… there was something noble in the form of this horse, and in the terrible union in him of the repulsive signs of decrepitude, the increased variegatedness of his hide, and his actions, and the expression of self-dependence, and the calm consciousness of beauty and strength.

Like a living ruin he stood in the middle of the dewy field, alone; while not far away from him were heard the galloping, the neighing, the lively whinnying, the snorting, of the scattered herd.

The sun was now risen above the forest, and shone brightly on the grass and the winding river. The dew dried away and fell off in drops. Like smoke the last of the morning mist rolled up.

She made him suffer more than men did. But in neither case did he give way to wrath. He was indispensable to men, but why should these young horses torment him?

He was old, they were young; he was lean, they were fat; he was sad, they were happy.

So he was thoroughly strange, alien, an absolutely different creature; and it was impossible for them to have compassion on him. Horses have pity only on themselves, and rarely on those whose places they may easily come themselves to fill.

He was old, they were young; he was lean, they were fat; he was sad, they were happy. So he was thoroughly strange, alien, an absolutely different creature; and it was impossible for them to have compassion on him.

Horses have pity only on themselves, and rarely on those whose places they may easily come themselves to fill.

But, indeed, was not the piebald gelding himself to blame, that he was old and gaunt and crippled? …

Only long after, when I was separated from the other horses, I came to learn what it meant. At that time I could not understand at all that it meant that they considered me the property of a man.

To say my horse in reference to me, a live horse, seemed to me as strange as to say, my earth, my atmosphere, my water.

“But these words had a monstrous influence upon me. I pondered upon them ceaselessly; and only after long and varied relations with men did I come at last to comprehend the meaning that men find in these strange words.

“The meaning is this:

Men rule in life, not by deeds, but by words.

They love not so much the possibility of doing or not doing anything, as the possibility of talking about different objects in words agreed upon between them.

… widened the sphere of my experiences, I became convinced that the concept my, as applied not only to us horses, but to other things, has no other foundation than a low and animal, a human instinct, which they call the sentiment or right of property.

Man says, my house, and never lives in it, but is only cumbered with the building and maintenance of it.

The merchant says, my shop—my clothing-shop, for example—and he does not even wear clothes made of the best cloth in the shop.

“

There are people who call land theirs, and have never seen their land, and have never been on it.

There are men who call other people theirs, but have never seen these people; and the whole relationship of these owners, to these people, consists in doing them harm.

“There are men who call women theirs—their wives or mistresses; but these women live with other men.

And men struggle in life not to do what they consider good, but to be possessors of what they call their own.

“I am convinced now that herein lies the substantial difference between men and us.

“

I was threefold unhappy: I was piebald; I was a gelding; and men imagined that I did not belong to God and myself, as is the prerogative of every living thing, but that I belonged to the equerry.

“The consequences of their imagining this about me were many. The first was, that they kept me apart from the others, fed me better, led me more often, and harnessed me up earlier. They harnessed me first when I was in my third year.

“

It is impossible to help loving a human being.

”

that only then these are pleasures, as a present reward following the fulfilment of the will of God.

To wish to have pleasure without the labor of fulfilling the will of God, to separate pleasure from work, is the same as to tear off the stalks of flowers and plant them without seeds.

We have this belief, and therefore we cannot seek for deception in place of truth. Our faith consists in this:

but how can it be otherwise? You strive to have the most beautiful woman for a wife, to have the largest property—but have you, or has anyone else succeeded in doing this?

If the arrow does not hit the bull’s-eye, does the bowman any the less cease to aim at it, because he fails many times to hit it?

It is the same with us. Our well-being, according to the teaching of Christ, is in love. We search for our advantage, but each one in his own way falls more or less short of attaining it.”

“Know the Truth and you shall be free,” said Pamphilius. “

Christ gives full freedom instantly; earthly teaching never will give it.

Goodbye.”

His sons had grown up, and his second son, especially, began to lead a luxurious life.

He made holes in the bottom of the bucket in which the wealth was held, and in proportion as the wealth increased, increased also the rapidity of its escape through these holes.

Julius began to have just such a struggle with his sons as he had had with his father—wrath, hatred, jealousy.

“But I have no wisdom at all. I am wholly in error. My errors are ancient, but no wisdom has grown out of them.

Like water, however old and stale it is, it never becomes wine.

”

Nothing! To God’s work, as to God Himself, there are no limits and no end. God’s work is in you. Come to Him, and be not a laborer but a son, and you become a copartner with the infinite God and in His work.

With God there is neither small nor great, but there is straight and crooked.

Enter into the straight path of life and you will be with God, and your work will be neither small nor great, but it will be God’s work. Remember that in heaven there is more joy over one sinner, than over a hundred just men.

“Because he is a fool,” said the old man. “If he’d pulled her up properly from the first and not let her have way, she’d be living with him, no fear! It’s giving way at first that counts.

Don’t trust your horse in the field, or your wife in the house.

”

“

Preference for how long? A month, two days, or half an hour?

” said the grey-haired man and began to laugh.

“No sir, it can’t!” rejoined the other. “Just as it cannot be that in a cartload of peas, two marked peas will lie side by side. Besides, it is not merely this impossibility, but the inevitable satiety.

To love one person for a whole lifetime is like saying that one candle will burn a whole life

,” he said, greedily inhaling the smoke.

“

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm.

Another thing I prided myself on was that while others married intending to continue in future the same polygamous life they had lived before marriage, I was firmly resolved to be monogamous after marriage, and there was no limit to my pride on that score.

Yes, I was a dreadful pig and imagined myself to be an angel.

“Our engagement did not last long. I cannot now think of that time without shame! What nastiness! Love is supposed to be spiritual and not sensual.

“You mentioned my children. There again, what terrible lies are told about children!

Children a blessing from God, a joy! That is all a lie.

It was so once upon a time, but now it is not so at all. Children are a torment and nothing else. Most mothers feel this quite plainly, and sometimes inadvertently say so.

We did not then understand that this love and animosity were one and the same animal feeling only at opposite poles. To live like that would have been awful had we understood our position; but we neither understood nor saw it.

Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog himself so as not to see the misery of his position.

And this we did. She tried to forget herself in intense and always hurried occupation with household affairs, busying herself with the arrangements of the house, her own and the children’s clothes, their lessons, and their health; while I had my own occupations:

“

We were like two convicts hating each other and chained together, poisoning one another’s lives and trying not to see it.

I did not then know that ninety-nine percent of married people live in a similar hell to the one I was in and that it cannot be otherwise. I did not then know this either about others or about myself.

“Well, so we lived in town.

In town a man can live for a hundred years without noticing that he has long been dead and has rotted away.

He has no time to take account of himself, he is always occupied. Business affairs, social intercourse, health, art, the children’s health and their education. Now one has to receive so-and-so and so-and-so, go to see so-and-so and so-and-so;

She developed a provocative kind of beauty which made people restless. She was in the full vigour of a well fed and excited woman of thirty who is not bearing children. Her appearance disturbed people. When she passed men she attracted their notice.

She was like a fresh, well fed harnessed horse, whose bridle has been removed.

There was no bridle, as is the case with ninety-nine hundredths of our women. And I felt this—and was frightened.”

Yet everybody knows that it is by means of those very pursuits, especially of music, that the greater part of the adulteries in our society occur. I evidently confused them by the confusion I betrayed: for a long time I could not speak.

I was like a bottle held upside down from which the water does not flow because it is too full.

I wanted to abuse him and to turn him out, but again felt that I must treat him courteously and amiably. And I did so.

They say music exalts the soul. Nonsense, it is not true! It has an effect, an awful effect—I am speaking of myself—but not of an exalting kind. It has neither an exalting nor a debasing effect but it produces agitation. How can I put it?

Music makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me to some other position not my own.

Under the influence of music it seems to me that I feel what I do not really feel, that I understand what I do not understand, that I can do what I cannot do.

I turned towards her. She fell on the couch, and holding her hand to her bruised eyes, looked at me.

Her face showed fear and hatred of me, the enemy, as a rat’s does when one lifts the trap in which it has been caught.

At any rate I saw nothing in her expression but this fear and hatred of me. It was just the fear and hatred of me which would be evoked by love for another.

I felt that I was quite mad and that I must look frightful, and this delighted me. I swung my left arm with all my might, and my elbow hit her straight in the face. She cried out and let go my arm.

I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one’s wife’s lover in one’s socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible.

In spite of the fearful frenzy I was in, I was all the time aware of the impression I might produce on others, and was even partly guided by that impression. I turned towards her.

And the reply had to correspond to the temper to which I had brought myself, which continued to increase and had to go on increasing.

Fury, too, has its laws.

“ ‘Don’t lie, you wretch!’ I howled, and seized her arm with my left hand, but she wrenched herself away. Then, still without letting go of the dagger, I seized her by the throat with my left hand, threw her backwards, and began throttling her.

“

When people say they don’t remember what they do in a fit of fury, it is rubbish, falsehood.

I remembered everything and did not for a moment lose consciousness of what I was doing. The more frenzied I became the more brightly the light of consciousness burnt in me, so that I could not help knowing everything I did.

So he arranged matters and, having settled down with his mother in the big house, began managing the estate eagerly, yet cautiously.

It is generally supposed the Conservatives are usually old people, and that those in favour of change are the young. That is not quite correct.

Usually Conservatives are young people: those who want to live but who do not think about how to live, and have not time to think, and therefore take as a model for themselves a way of life that they have seen.

It is generally supposed the Conservatives are usually old people, and that those in favour of change are the young. That is not quite correct.

Usually Conservatives are young people: those who want to live but who do not think about how to live, and have not time to think, and therefore take as a model for themselves a way of life that they have seen.

Thus it was with Eugène. Having settled in the village, his aim and ideal was to restore the form of life that had existed, not in his father’s time—his father had been a bad manager—but in his grandfather’s.

But the chief reason was that his acquaintance with her began at the time when he was ripe for marriage.

He fell in love because he knew that he would marry.

Liza Ánnenskaya was at first merely pleasing to Eugène, but when he decided to make her his wife his feelings for her became much stronger. He felt that he was in love.

there was, there had been, and there could be, no question of any union between them.

It was not that he stifled the voice of conscience, no⁠—his conscience simply said nothing to him.

And he thought no more about her after the conversation with his mother and this meeting. Nor did he meet her again.

He knew how she feared both her confinement itself and the risk of not having a healthy child, and therefore he could not help being touched at seeing how ready she was to sacrifice everything for his sake.

All was so nice, so pleasant, so clean, in the house; and in his soul it was so dirty, despicable, and foul.

The whole evening Eugène was tormented by knowing that notwithstanding his sincere repulsion at his own weakness, notwithstanding his firm intention to break off—the same thing would happen again tomorrow.

“There now, talking of breaking off when I wish to,” he said to himself. “Yes, and that is having a clean healthy woman for one’s health sake! No, it seems one can’t play with her like that.

I thought I had taken her, but it was she who took me; took me and does not let me go.

Why, I thought I was free, but I was not free and was deceiving myself when I married. It was all nonsense—fraud. From the time I had her I experienced a new feeling, the real feeling of a husband.

They were quite unable to accept this, for they knew he was saner than hundreds of their acquaintances.

And indeed if Eugène Irténev was mentally deranged everyone is in the same case; the most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves.

“To kill, yes. There are only two ways out: to kill my wife, or to kill her.

“

Ah! I see so many of them⁠—these men. They all look alike to me now!

”

“Why trouble about that?” said the girl. “

One only has to work more and sleep less, and one can clothe and feed oneself anywhere.

”

“

When you see something men obey more than father or mother, that is it.

Seize that, and take it to the King. When you bring it to the King, he will say it is not right, and you must answer:

A married man cannot restrain his wife and children, but must live the ungodlike life, in the old way. The old men cannot begin, they are not accustomed to it; and besides this, they may not live two days longer.

So the upshot is that it is impossible for anyone to live well, but only to talk about it.

”

The sun does not shine for some one mountain, or for some one island, or for some one sea, nor even for one earth alone, but for other planets as well as our earth.

If you would only look up at the heavens, instead of at the ground beneath your own feet, you might all understand this, and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines for you, or for your country alone.

”

As with the sun, so it is with God. Each man wants to have a special God of his own, or at least a special God for his native land.

Each nation wishes to confine in its own temples Him, whom the world cannot contain.

“Can any temple compare with that which God Himself has built to unite all men in one faith and one religion?

such lamps as the sun, moon, and stars; or any figures to be compared with living, loving, mutually-helpful men? Where are there any records of God’s goodness so easy to understand as the blessings which God has strewn abroad for man’s happiness?

Where is there any book of the law so clear to each man as that written in his heart?

What sacrifices equal the self-denials which loving men and women make for one another? And what altar can be compared with the heart of a good man, on which God Himself accepts the sacrifice?

Close to the door, the foul smell that stifled him was stronger, and the young Tsar hesitated to go nearer, but the hand pushed him on. He leaned forward, put his eye close to the opening, and suddenly ceased to perceive the odour.

The sight he saw deadened his sense of smell.

In a large room, about ten yards long and six yards wide, there walked unceasingly from one end to the other, six men in long grey coats, some in felt boots, some barefoot.

He opened his eyes—his wife was awakening him.

Which of the three courses the young Tsar chose, will be told in fifty years.

And so in fact it was. Having driven through the snow they came out into a street. At the end house of the village some frozen clothes hanging on a line—shirts, one red and one white, trousers, leg-bands, and a petticoat—fluttered wildly in the wind.

The white shirt in particular struggled desperately, waving its sleeves about.

“There now, either a lazy woman or a dead one has not taken her clothes down before the holiday,” remarked Nikíta, looking at the fluttering shirts.

At the end house of the village some frozen clothes hanging on a line—shirts, one red and one white, trousers, leg-bands, and a petticoat—fluttered wildly in the wind. The white shirt in particular struggled desperately, waving its sleeves about.

“There now, either a lazy woman or a dead one has not taken her clothes down before the holiday,” remarked Nikíta, looking at the fluttering shirts.

At the entrance to the street the wind still raged and the road was thickly covered with snow, but well within the village it was calm, warm, and cheerful.

then again Nikíta, this time lying under that box, then the peasants, customers and traders, and the white walls of his house with its iron roof with Nikíta lying underneath, presented themselves to his imagination. Afterwards all these impressions blended into one nothingness.

As the colours of the rainbow unite into one white light, so all these different impressions mingled into one, and he fell asleep.

For a long time he slept without dreaming, but just before dawn the visions recommenced. It seemed to him that he was standing by the box of tapers and that Tíkhon’s wife was asking for a five kopeck taper for the Church fête.

He tried to get up but could not, tried to move his arm and could not, to move his leg and also could not, to turn his head and could not. He was surprised but not at all disturbed by this.

He understood that this was death, and was not at all disturbed by that either.

He remembered that Nikíta was lying under him and that he had got warm and was alive, and it seemed to him that he was Nikíta and Nikíta was he, and that his life was not in himself but in Nikíta.

He was surprised but not at all disturbed by this. He understood that this was death, and was not at all disturbed by that either.

He remembered that Nikíta was lying under him and that he had got warm and was alive, and it seemed to him that he was Nikíta and Nikíta was he, and that his life was not in himself but in Nikíta.

He strained his ears and heard Nikíta breathing and even slightly snoring. “Nikíta is alive, so I too am alive!” he said to himself triumphantly.

… relieving his son and daughter-in-law of the burden of having to feed him, and that he was now really passing from this life of which he was weary into that other life which every year and every hour grew clearer and more desirable to him.

Whether he is better or worse off there where he awoke after his death, whether he was disappointed or found there what he expected, we shall all soon learn.

So now everyone who wants to gamble goes to Monaco. Whether they win or lose, the King gains by it.

“You can’t earn stone palaces by honest labour,” as the proverb says; and the Kinglet of Monaco knows it is a dirty business, but what is he to do?

He has to live; and to draw a revenue from drink and from tobacco is also not a nice thing. So he lives and reigns, and rakes in the money, and holds his court with all the ceremony of a real king.

“You knew it, and used me to shield them! If you weren’t a woman … !” he cried, lifting his enormous fist, and turning aside he ran away.

Had his fiancée’s lover been a private person he would have killed him, but it was his beloved Tsar.

Next day he applied both for furlough and his discharge, and professing to be ill, so as to see no one, he went away to the country.

The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And they are all satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die. But I can’t. It bores me.

I want something that would upset it all and turn it upside down.

Suppose it happened to us as to those people—at Sarátov was it?—who kept on driving and froze to death. … What would our people do? How would they behave? Basely, for certain. Each for himself. And I too should act badly.

Having read the precepts he took up the Gospels, opened the book, and happened on a passage he often repeated and knew by heart: “Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief!”—and he put away all the doubts that had arisen.

As one replaces an object of insecure equilibrium, so he carefully replaced his belief on its shaky pedestal and carefully stepped back from it so as not to shake or upset it.

The blinkers were adjusted again and he felt tranquillized, and repeating his childhood’s prayer: “Lord, receive me, receive me!” he felt not merely at ease, but thrilled and joyful.

He felt his own weakness, and that he might be lost at any moment. That was why he prayed unceasingly.

He felt rather as the hero in the fairytale must have felt when he had to go on and on without looking round.

So Sergius heard and felt that danger and destruction were there, hovering above and around him, and that he could only save himself by not looking in that direction for an instant. But suddenly the desire to look seized him.

That position had begun after the recovery of the fourteen-year-old boy. From that time, with each month, week, and day that passed, Sergius felt his own inner life wasting away and being replaced by external life.

It was as if he had been turned inside out.

Sergius saw that he was a means of attracting visitors and contributions to the monastery, and that therefore the authorities arranged matters in such a way as to make as much use of him as possible.

She saw that it was impossible for her son-in-law, a weak creature, to be other than he was, and realized that his wife’s reproaches could do no good—so she used all her efforts to soften those reproaches and to avoid recrimination and anger.

Unkindly relations between people caused her actual physical suffering.

It was so clear to her that bitter feelings do not make anything better, but only make everything worse. She did not in fact think about this:

But after all was there not some share of sincere desire to serve God?” he asked himself, and the answer was: “Yes, there was, but it was all soiled and overgrown by desire for human praise.

Yes, there is no God for the man who lives, as I did, for human praise.

I will now seek Him!”

“So that is what my dream meant! Páshenka is what I ought to have been but failed to be.

I lived for men on the pretext of living for God, while she lived for God imagining that she lives for men.

Yes, one good deed—a cup of water given without thought of reward—is worth more than any benefit I imagined I was bestowing on people. But after all was there not some share of sincere desire to serve God?” he asked himself, and the answer was:

He rejoiced particularly at this meeting, because he had disregarded the opinion of men and had done the simplest, easiest thing—humbly accepted twenty kopecks and given them to his comrade, a blind beggar.

The less importance he attached to the opinion of men the more did he feel the presence of God within him.

For eight months Kasátsky tramped on in this manner, and in the ninth month he was arrested for not having a passport. This happened at a night-refuge in a provincial town where he had passed the night with some pilgrims.

“How have you transformed it?”

“So that men do not believe in his teaching but in mine, which they call by his name.”

“How didst thou do this?” asked Beelzebub.

“How didst thou do this?” asked Beelzebub.

“It was done of itself. I only helped.”

“Tell me about it quickly,” said Beelzebub.

Evident as it is that miracles cannot prove the truth of a teaching, yet they so desired to be in the right that they believed me, and I arranged miracles for them. It was not difficult to do this.

They believed anything which supported their desire to prove that they only held the truth.

“Some said that tongues of fire descended upon them; others said that they had seen the risen body of the Master himself, and much else.

They believed me, and the disputes became more obdurate. On both sides they began to be angry, and then I proceeded to instil into each of them that they might prove the truth of their teaching by miracles.

Evident as it is that miracles cannot prove the truth of a teaching, yet they so desired to be in the right that they believed me, and I arranged miracles for them.

It was not difficult to do this. They believed anything which supported their desire to prove that they only held the truth.

“Matters were going on well, but as I was afraid they might discern the too-evident trick, I invented the ‘Church.’

Once they believed in ‘the Church,’ I was at peace. I recognised that we were saved, and that Hell was restored.

”

So he was the most important man, and what you did for him was your most important business. Remember then: there is only one time that is important—Now!

It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.

The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with anyone else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!”

So he was the most important man, and what you did for him was your most important business. Remember then: there is only one time that is important—Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.

The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with anyone else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!

”

Ivan Vasilievich thought a little, and shook his head.

“My whole life,” he said, “was changed in one night, or, rather, morning.”

“Why, what happened?” one of us asked.

“

As the contents of a bottle flow readily when the first drop has been poured, so my love for Varinka seemed to set free the whole force of loving within me. In surrounding her it embraced the world.

I loved the hostess with her diadem and her shoulders like Elizabeth, and her husband and her guests and her footmen, and even the engineer Anisimov who felt peevish towards me.

“That’s not true,” replied the King. “Lailie is Lailie, and I am I.”

“You and Lailie are one,” said the old man. “You only imagine you are not Lailie, and that Lailie is not you.”

“What do you mean by that?” said the King. “Here am I, lying on a soft bed; around me are obedient men-slaves and women-slaves, and tomorrow I shall feast with my friends as I did today;

Life knows neither time nor space. The life of a moment, and the life of a thousand years: your life, and the life of all the visible and invisible beings in the world, are equal.

To destroy life, or to alter it, is impossible; for life is the one thing that exists. All else, but seems to us to be.

”

“Do you now understand,” continued the old man, “that Lailie is you, and the warriors you put to death were you also? And not the warriors only, but the animals which you slew when hunting and ate at your feasts, were also you.

You thought life dwelt in you alone, but I have drawn aside the veil of delusion, and have let you see that by doing evil to others you have done it to yourself also.

Life is one in them all, and yours is but a portion of this same common life. And only in that one part of life that is yours, can you make life better or worse—increasing or decreasing it.

Alyosha was not talkative; when he spoke at all, he spoke abruptly, with his head turned away. When told to do anything, or asked if he could do it, he would say yes without the smallest hesitation, and set to work at once.

Alyosha did not know any prayer; and had forgotten what his mother had taught him. But he prayed just the same, every morning and every evening, prayed with his hands, crossing himself.

He lived like this for about a year and a half, and towards the end of the second year a most startling thing happened to him.

P. Lastly, in spite of his great piety, the old man never went to confession. When the bishop, during his visit, tried to induce him to fulfil this duty which was enjoined by the Church, Kusmich said,

“If I refrained from telling the truth about myself in confession, I should astonish all in heaven; if I disclosed who I was, I should astonish all on earth.”

All these doubts and conjectures were cleared up by the discovery of the old man’s diary, which begins as follows:—

I thought that an unpleasant, sickly-looking woman was pressing herself close against me and I was not afraid of her, nor of the sin, but afraid that my wife should see us. I did not want to hear her reproaches again.

I am seventy-two years old and am not yet free.

In a waking state it is possible to deceive yourself, but in dreams you get a true estimate of the plane that you have reached. I had a second dream which gave me another proof of my low moral condition.

I did not want to hear her reproaches again. I am seventy-two years old and am not yet free.

In a waking state it is possible to deceive yourself, but in dreams you get a true estimate of the plane that you have reached.

I had a second dream which gave me another proof of my low moral condition. I thought that someone had brought me some sweets wrapped up in green moss. We unpacked them and divided them between us, leaving a few over.

She had brought me pancakes, lenten oil, and apples. She had come to consult me about her daughter, whom a rich widower wished to marry, and wanted to know if she was to give her consent.

Their tremendous opinion of my wisdom is extremely annoying to me. All my protestations to the contrary they invariably put down to my humility.

I repeated to her what I had said many times before, that chastity is higher than marriage, but that the Apostle Paul says it is better to marry than be the slave of passion.

People came running in and we were taken away. The next day we heard that she was dead. I cried very much, felt very miserable, and would not be comforted. They all thought that I was grieved about Sophia Ivanovna, but that was not true.

I cried at the thought that people should have to die; that there should be such a thing as death in the world.

I could not comprehend, could not believe, that it was the inevitable fate of all men. I remember how, in my five-year-old soul, there rose up questions about the meaning of death and the meaning of life that ends in death.

He was a little man, with an enormous head and a stupid-looking countenance, on which there was a constant grimace. Constantine used to imitate it beautifully. This change necessitated parting with my dear Praskovia Ivanovna, my old nurse.

Those who have not had the misfortune of being born in a royal house can hardly imagine the distorted view we have of people, nor our false attitude towards them.

Instead of being instilled with a sense of dependence on our elders natural to children, or with a sense of gratitude for all the good we enjoyed, we were made to believe that we were some kind of superior beings whose every wish must be …

Nicolai Ivanovich kept on saying, “A droite.” As we passed the guardhouse the sentinels came running out to have a look at us. I always liked to see them. From my earliest childhood I had a passion for soldiers and military manoeuvres.

It was always instilled into us, particularly by our grandmother, who believed it least of all, that we must always bear in mind that all men are equal.

But I knew somehow that those who talked about equality did not believe in it.

Before that, you were glad when he, all red and not yet separated from you, cried pitifully, filling his lungs with air. Earlier yet, a year before, where was he—when he did not exist?

You all think you are standing still, and that you and those you love ought always to remain what you now are.

But you do not really remain the same for a single minute … you all flow like a river; and as a stone drops downwards, you are all hastening towards death, which sooner or later awaits every one of you.

Matters went from bad to worse. He could not live without drink, and could no longer get employment as a clerk, but only as a cattle-drover. At last no one would take him even for that.

The more wretched his own plight became, the more he blamed her, and the fiercer his anger against her burnt within him.

The last time Kornéy found a place as a drover was with a stranger. The cattle fell ill. It was not Kornéy’s fault, but his master got angry, and dismissed both him and the clerk over him.

Kornéy could no longer restrain his tears; and, wiping his eyes, nose, and grey beard on the skirt of his coat, turned away and went out into the porch.

He was overcome by a strange feeling of tenderness, elation, humility and meekness towards all men: to her, to his son, to everybody; and this feeling rent his soul with pain and joy.

Martha looked out of the window, and breathed freely only when she saw the old man disappear behind the corner of the house.

“I cannot admit that the Russian people …” the visitor was saying, “ought to develop on different lines. Before all things liberty is wanted—political liberty—that liberty … as all know well, is the greatest liberty … without infringing the rights of others.”

He felt that he was getting a little mixed, and that that was not the right way to put it; but he could not quite remember how it should be put.

“That is so,” answered Nicholas Semyónovitch, anxious to express his own thought, with which he was particularly pleased, and not listening to the visitor—“that is so, but it must be reached by other means—not by a majority of votes, but by common consent.

His father sat by him, keeping an eye on the horse—which he had taken out of the plough, and which was now grazing near the border of his neighbour’s land—for fear it might stray among the oats or into the neighbour’s meadow.

In Nicholas Semyónovitch’s family everything was pursuing its usual course. All was well. The three-course lunch was ready, and the flies were eating it because nobody felt inclined for food.

Nicholas Semyónovitch was pleased with the justice of his arguments, proved by what the papers said that morning. Marie was quiet because Gógo’s digestion was all right again. The doctor was satisfied because his medicine had been successful;

The Migoúrskis were happy in their love.

Directing all their power of love to one another, among strangers they felt like two people who, having lost their way in winter, are in danger of being frozen, and warm one another.

The devotion of the old nurse, Ludwíka, good-naturedly grumbling, comical, always falling in love with every man she met, but slavishly and self-sacrificingly attached to her young mistress, contributed to the Migoúrskis’ happiness. They were also happy in their children.

“Ah! Here’s the little lady herself!” said the Police Master. “Come here, please. … The coffins of your infants, eh?” he added, winking towards Migoúrski. Albína did not answer, but clutching at her breast, stared open-mouthed and horror-stricken at her husband.

As happens at the moment of death, and in general at the decisive moments of life, a crowd of feelings and thoughts passed through her mind in a single instant, before she had yet realized or quite believed in her misfortune.

The first feeling was one already long familiar to her—a feeling of offended pride at seeing her hero-husband humiliated by these coarse, savage people who now had him in their power. “How dare they hold him—the best of all men—in their power?”

At the same time another feeling—the consciousness of misfortune—seized her. This consciousness of her misfortune awoke the memory of the greatest misfortune of her life—her children’s death. And at once the question arose: “Why—why were the children taken?” And this question suggested another: “

Why is he now perishing and being tormented⁠—he, my beloved, my husband, the best of men?

” And then she remembered the shameful punishment awaiting him, and that it was all her doing.

Svetlogoúb submitted to this man’s influence, and with the same energy with which he had worked among the people, now gave himself up to terrorist activity.

That activity was dangerous, but the danger more than anything else attracted Svetlogoúb.

He said to himself: “Victory or martyrdom … and if it is to be martyrdom it will still be victory in the future!”

“I am crying, not with grief or fear, but with deep emotion before the most solemn moment of my life, and because I love you. Do not reproach my friends, but love them—especially Próhorof, because he was the cause of my death.

It is so joyful to love one who is not exactly guilty, but whom one might reproach and hate!

To learn to love a man of that kind—an enemy—is such happiness! Tell Natásha that her love was my comfort and joy. I did not fully realize it, but was conscious of it in the depths of my soul.

… not realize the importance of what was being said, so now he could not comprehend the full meaning of the moment that awaited him, and looked on with wonder at the hangman, who was fulfilling his terrible task hurriedly, deftly, and in a preoccupied manner.

The hangman had a most ordinary Russian workman’s face; not cruel, but engrossed, like that of a man trying to do a necessary and complicated job as accurately as possible.

“Move a bit nearer here …” he muttered in a hoarse voice, pushing Svetlogoúb towards the gallows. Svetlogoúb moved closer.

In an hour’s time the body was taken down from the gallows, and removed to the unconsecrated cemetery. The executioner had done what he wished and what he had undertaken to do. But it had not been an easy task to fulfil. Svetlogoúb’s words, “

And are you not sorry for me?

” would not leave his head. He was a murderer and a convict, and the post of hangman gave him comparative freedom and luxury;

“Into Thy hands I commit my spirit,” thought Svetlogoúb, recalling the words of the Gospels.

His spirit did not struggle against death, but his strong young body would not accept it, would not submit, and wanted to rebel.

He wished to shout and to tear himself away, but at that very moment he felt a push, lost his equilibrium, felt animal terror and choking, and a noise in his head, and then everything vanished.

He tried to tap, but was not answered, and his tapping was followed only by the same soft footsteps, and the calm voice of a man threatening him with the punishment cell.

Only sleep brought rest and relief; but the awakening was all the more dreadful.

In his dreams he always saw himself free, and generally absorbed in actions he considered incompatible with Revolutionary activity.

The pleasantest time was when he was asleep; but the longer he was in prison, the less he slept.

He waited for sleep as for the greatest happiness: he longed for it, and the more he longed, the wider awake he became.

He needed only to ask himself, “Am I falling asleep?” for his drowsiness to vanish.

I have felt this for a long time, and as the years have passed by the feeling has grown and grown, until recently it reached its climax.

Although I feel all this so vividly, I still live on amid the depravity and sins of rich society; and I cannot leave it, because I have neither the knowledge nor the strength to do so.

I cannot. I do not know how to change my life so that my physical needs—food, sleep, clothing, my going to and fro—may be satisfied without a sense of shame and wrongdoing in the position which I fill.

I don’t understand why they must be separate from the rest. Wouldn’t it be better if they all kept together?

To keep together is all right when you play games. But this is no game: it is a very serious matter.

You will when you grow up.

You will when you grow up.

Then I don’t want to grow up.

Such a tiny girl, and obstinate already, just like all of them.

The Tsar will look after that when the money comes in.

He’s not poor, is he? We are the poor people. The Tsar is rich. Why does he want us to give him money?

He does not take it for himself. He spends it on us, fools that we are. It all goes to supply our needs—to pay the authorities, the army, the schools. It is for our own good that we pay taxes.

I will not repeat all your nonsense to her. You can do whatever you and the Tsar want. And we shall mind our own business.

What a devil of a girl she will be when she grows up!

Mitia, a boy of ten

They both are.

Whoever calls another person a fool is a fool himself.

And you have called them both fools. Then you are one also.

I don’t care.

We must always be kind. Then the whole world will be happy.

Misha stopped playing with his sister, went to the nursery, tore a page out of a copybook, wrote a line on it, and put it in his pocket. On that page was written: We Must Be Kind.

Undoubtedly. Just wait till you are grown up. Then you will understand.

And what if I don’t grow up?

Then we may ask Prohor to mend the sledge?

How would you do that?

I would just see that everybody was given what he needed, that nobody was wronged by anybody else, and that they were all happy.

Three cheers for the queen! But how would you manage that?

Of course not. Those who tramp about like that man there and have no desire to work, are always poor. It’s only those who work, who get rich.

Why are we rich, then, when we don’t work?

Laughing. How do you know father doesn’t work?

How stupid! Just like the fool you’ve always been.

I don’t mind being a fool. I only know now what to do, so as to feel happy all the time.

A regular fool! Do you really feel happy, doing so?

I don’t think there’s any use writing so much.

Because if what they write is true, then why say the same thing over and over again? If it isn’t, then why say what is not true?

Why do they write such an awful lot?

Just like a woman: perfectly senseless in every conclusion!

I only mean that when there is so much written it is impossible to know anything really.

But everybody has brains given him to find out where the truth is.

Nurse has forgiven me. I know she is kind and good.

But me, I am a wicked boy, and that’s what makes me cry.

Footman

I think it is all nonsense. People spend money like that because they have such an easy time.

If they had to bend their backs as we do to make a living, there wouldn’t be all these singing and dancing girls.

They ain’t worth anything—but what is the use of saying so?

Why not? They might.

How to be good, Volodia and Petrusha, is not taught in schools.

Well, if that is not taught, it is no use going to school.

When we are grown up we will not learn useless things.

As for the right way to live, we’ll do that better than you.

Laughing. Oh, the wisdom of that conclusion!

Then I’ll go to the Supreme Court.

I’ll sell my last cow before I’ll give in to that fat hound.

I’ll teach him a lesson.

God will also punish him who stole the corn from the loft.

Then why not leave it to God to punish those who are guilty? He will not judge wrong.

It’s clear that that is not possible.

How so? If you are able to work for us?

I can work all right for you, but not for myself.

Why? I can’t understand. Please explain.

That’s the worst of it.

Your mother is worried by having too much wood, and I’m worried by having none at all.

But here I am gabbling with you and forgetting my work. And the likes of us don’t get made much of for doing that. Resumes his work.

When I grow up I shall arrange to have just the same as everybody else, so that all of us are equal.

Mind you grow up quickly, that I may still be alive.

Then, mind you, don’t forget. … Where have I put my plane?

To her son.

Yes, truth flows from the lips of children.

What she says is a great truth. If people would understand how serious marriage is, instead of regarding it as amusement—if they would marry not for their own sake, but for the sake of the children—then all these horrors would not exist.

I tell you, I cannot and I will not learn.

Why should I take care? Why do you torture me? Don’t you see you do!

I forbid you to speak like that. How dare you! Go away! You will see—

“But, father,

I do not want to look at the people; I want to be with them.

I want to see how they feel towards the young Tsar. Surely for once …”

“

Mine? What does my name matter?

”

He was obviously wretched when he could find no opportunity to deny himself something for the sake of others, and it must be something that could only be relinquished with suffering and difficulty. Then he was really happy.

He was as innocent as a child and as tender as a woman.

There may be some doubt as to whether she loved him; but there could be absolutely no doubt that she was his only love, his idol, for anyone who ever saw him in her presence.

and never for a moment did he think of passion between him and his wife as a possibility. But I am inclined to believe that she did love him. His death was not only a deep grief, but a bereavement.

Certain sides of her nature, the best, the fundamental, the most essential, withered away after his death.

So we talked about him, and about his opinions on life; how he had believed that the highest morality lay in taking from others as little as possible, and in giving to others as much as possible of oneself, of one’s soul;

They deal with the same things, but on a much lower plane. But, above all, he taught one not so much by precept as by practice. And how did he do it?

Why, his whole life was a flame, and it consumed him.

Do you remember when Mitia and Vera had scarlatina—you were staying with us—do you remember how he sat up at night with them, but insisted upon going on with his lessons with the older children during the day? He regarded it as a sacred duty.

But an uncle wanted him to be his aide-de-camp in Kiev. A cousin offered him a post at Constantinople. His ex-chief asked him to go back to his former post. He had plenty of friends and relatives, and they were all fond of him.

They were not quite fond enough of him to miss him when he was not there, but they were fond enough to say when he appeared (at least most of them), “Ah, Alexis! how jolly!”

He was never in anyone’s way, and most people liked to have him about, though for very different reasons. He could tell stories, and sing or play the guitar in first-rate fashion. But, above all, he never gave himself any airs.

They were not quite fond enough of him to miss him when he was not there, but they were fond enough to say when he appeared (at least most of them), “Ah, Alexis! how jolly!”

He was never in anyone’s way, and most people liked to have him about, though for very different reasons.

He could tell stories, and sing or play the guitar in first-rate fashion. But, above all, he never gave himself any airs. He was clever, good-looking, good-natured, and sympathetic.

A month later the wedding took place. In the autumn Lutkovsky got a post in the Civil Service, and they went to St. Petersburg. In September they discovered that she was going to be a mother, and in March her first son was born.

The accouchement, as is usually the case, was unexpected, and confusion ensued just because everyone had wanted to foresee everything, and things actually turned out quite different.

Was that man a thief, because he got back one of the many horses stolen from him? And is it not the same with the trees, the grass, the hay, and all the rest of the things you say the peasants have stolen from you?

The earth is the Lord’s, and common to all; and if the peasants have taken what was grown on the common land of which they have been deprived, they have not stolen, but have only resumed possession of a small part of what has been stolen from them.

“I know you consider land to be the property of the landlord, and therefore call the restoration to themselves of its produce by the peasants—robbery; but, you know, that is not true! The land never was, and never can be, anyone’s property.

“I know you consider land to be the property of the landlord, and therefore call the restoration to themselves of its produce by the peasants—robbery; but, you know, that is not true! The land never was, and never can be, anyone’s property.

If a man has more of it than he requires, while others have none, then he who possesses the surplus land possesses not land but men; and men cannot be the property of other men.

“Because a dozen mischievous lads have burnt some cherry tree sheds, and have cut down some trees, you say the peasants are thieves, and the most immoral class! …

Realise that they alone live, while you, with your doumas, ministries, synods, academies, universities, conservatoires, law courts, armies, and all such stupidities and nastinesses, are but playing at life, and spoiling it for yourselves and others. They, the people, are alive.

They are the tree, and you are harmful growths⁠—fungi on the plant.

Realise, then, all your insignificance and their grandeur! Understand your sin, and try to repent, and at all costs set the people free. …”

“He is clever, the rascal!” said one of the peasants.

“ ‘Sorrow weeps, and sorrow sings!’ ”

replied another.

His face was puckered, and his jaw trembled.

“He’s mine!” he muttered, and, turning away and hiding his face in his hand, began to whimper like a child.

And only then, after the two words, “He’s mine!” spoken by Prokófey, did I realise, not only in my mind but in my whole being, the horror of what was taking place before my eyes that memorable misty morning.

All the disjointed, incomprehensible, strange things I had seen suddenly acquired a simple, clear, and terrible significance.

I became painfully ashamed of having looked on as at an interesting spectacle.

I stopped, conscious of having acted ill, and I turned to go home.

There’s land, right enough, but it’s not ours.

Your elbow’s not far from your mouth, but just you try to bite it!

Not yours! Whose is it, then?

we do not accept God’s Law; we judge others; call one fat-paunched and another long-maned; but if anyone offers us money, we are ready to do anything for it: go as watchmen, policemen, or soldiers, to help ruin others, and to kill our own brothers.

We ourselves live like devils, and yet we complain of others!

That’s so! But it is hard, oh, how hard! Sometimes it’s more than one can bear.

“I don’t know, friend; we are strangers here.”

Not “I am a stranger,” but “we are strangers.” A Russian is hardly ever alone.

If he is doing something wrong, he may perhaps say “I”; otherwise it is always “we” the family, “we” the artél, “we” the Commune.

“You are right, daddy! You say truly. To think of the soul is the great thing.

The soul’s the chief thing.

…” He paused. “Thank you, daddy, it is quite true”; and he pointed to his pipe. “What is it? … Good-for-nothing rubbish! The soul’s the chief thing!” repeated he. “What you say is true,” and his face grew still kindlier and more serious.

“Well, yes or no?” asked Mahin, taking the pen and smoothing the coupon with the fingers of his left hand.

“Nonsense, indeed,” thought Mitia, and again his father’s hard words came back to his memory. “Scoundrel! As you called me that, I might as well be it.”

He looked into Mahin’s face. Mahin looked at him, smiling with perfect ease.

The whole thing seemed to have ended well for Eugene Mihailovich and the yard-porter Vassily. But only in appearance.

Something had happened which was not noticed by anyone, but which was much more important than all that had been exposed to view.

Vassily had left his village and settled in town over two years ago. As time went on he sent less and less money to his father, and he did not ask his wife, who remained at home, to join him.