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Leonid Andreyev

SHORT-STORY MASTERPIECES

VOLUME IV—RUSSIAN

DONE INTO ENGLISH BY JOHN COURNOS

INTRODUCTIONS BY J. BERG ESENWEIN

Editor of Lippincott’s Magazine

The Home Correspondence School
Springfield, Massachusetts
1913

Copyright 1912 and 1913—J. B. Lippincott Company

Copyright 1913—The Home Correspondence School

CONTENTS

VOLUME IV

DOSTOEVSKI, APOSTLE TO THE LOWLY

It is really a hopeless task to view within small compass so prolific and so intense a novelist as Féodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski. Indeed, I long questioned the fitness of including him in this series of brief studies, for his little fictions are few; but Russian literature knows no more vigorous novelist than this inartistic though colossal figure, and any compendious treatment of Russian writers would seem inadequate which did not include the author of “Crime and Punishment.” Apart from a few little stories, Dostoevski’s short fictional creations are chiefly episodes in his long and mostly rambling novels—powerful and compact little digressions often almost unrelated to the main thread of the story, but worthy of existence separately as pieces of impressionism.

No finer tribute could be paid to a man than to recognize him as the apostle of humble folk—unless it were to add that this apostolate was free from the taint of demagoguery and solely the vocation of a tender spirit. Fifty years ago, in the Russia of the sixties, Dostoevski came to the full enduement of his ministry for man. What Jean François Millet saw in the French peasant, that the great Russian novelist felt in the muzhik—the pathos of those who suffer under burdens, the heart-break of hopeless toil, the unexpected beauty gleaming in the midst of ugliness, honey hidden in the carcass of the lion.

No man ever lived a selfless life of service but his reward followed him—though often enough too late to cheer the rigors of his way. So too Dostoevski came to his own at last, but not till after a life of suffering, banishment, disease, disappointment, poverty, and debt; and he died just when his voice was heard most impressively, leaving his master-novel unfinished, and its author wept by forty thousand mourners who followed his bier as delegates, so to call them, of the uncounted millions whose cries he had voiced.

We are all agreed that the function of literature is to portray life, but when we have said that, we have not begun at the beginning. What motive must be back of the portrayal? Or must there be no motive at all save that of picturing life faithfully? Here is where opinions divide, as well as upon that other question: Is all life proper subject-matter for literary portrayal?

Russian literature especially furnishes ground for such questionings, and the work of Dostoevski in particular; but to me it illustrates the view which seems to be the true one. The literary portrayal of life must have a motive beyond that of mere faithful delineation, for it is inevitable that the artist must foresee this truth: the effect which the contemplation of certain aspects of life had upon him will be the effect upon the reader after having read his transcription. So the desire to reproduce an effect—impressionism, they call it in art—is in itself a powerful motive, changing according to the greatness or littleness of the effect to be produced.

Thus we have the whole range of possible motives for the portrayal of life in literature—entertainment, teaching, arousement, propagandum, what-not. This variation of motive naturally leads us to the question: Who should read? Certainly not every one should read everything; hence many books not bad in themselves become bad influences when placed in wrong hands. It is worth while remembering this in forming our judgments.

The second question—Is all life proper subject-matter for literary portrayal?—lies close beside the former. If we could assume that certain literary delineations would be held as material sacred to the pathologist of soul, of mind, of body, of society, we could unhesitatingly say “Yes” to this question. But when we consider that the inevitable destiny of great writing is its free distribution in periodical or book form, we are certain that not all books are for all readers.

In discussing the work of Gorki in this series this question is touched upon. Here we face it also—Dostoevski is too true, too terrible, at times too revolting, for every one to read. Let no one read him who dreads to look upon scenes sad, terrible, funereal; who fears to enter hospitals, prisons, charnel houses, and the place of knout and execution. The message of this precursor of Bourget was not one of lyric sweetness, he never dwelt in ecstasy upon the beauties of forest and stream—man, not nature, was his theme. With a wildly passionate understanding—perhaps a diseased and certainly an abnormal understanding—he showed the furies of crime, the viciousness of those whom society has thrust out, the dull brutality of the under dog, the aborted egoism of those who haunt every dark way—but in all he found goodness, for his eye was full of pity, always full of pity. To him crime was a misfortune more than a mark of sheer evil. A dangerous view? Yes—and a gentle one.

No man can persistently look upon his fellow men without awakening his own real self. Now, see how this doctrine of expression works itself out when we give due value to the personal equation. Here is a man who was born October 30, 1821, in a charity hospital in Warsaw, as the second of seven children. His father, a poor army surgeon, was of excellent birth, though his family lived in but two rooms. Féodor went to boarding-school when thirteen, was graduated with honors from the Military School of Engineering in St. Petersburg, received a good appointment, but soon resigned to give himself to literature.

His first novel, “Poor People” (1846), won him the name of the “new Gogol,” but in 1849 he was unjustly arrested for inciting to insurrection, condemned to be shot, and reprieved after standing on the executioner’s platform for twenty minutes in freezing weather while almost naked. Four terrible years in a Siberian prison nearly completed the ruin which a sickly constitution, shattered nerves, and epileptic attacks had begun. Brückner puts it thus dramatically: “...for no single moment, or at most when he collapsed under his load of bricks, did he feel himself a man.” Yet, quite in the wonderful way that life often takes, this very prison era made the man and the novelist.

When at length he was released from prison, he served three years in the Siberian army, and finally was permitted to return home—to a period of struggle with his little magazine, its silly suppression by the censor, the ruin of his family, the death of his dear ones, the exhausting fight to bear the load of debt, the flight from the debtors’ prison into foreign countries, the ill-rewarded toil which forever harassed him, in short, to a cycle of suffering which might well have worn out the strongest. No wonder that he had the sensation of being flayed alive—that every breath of air held pains in store for him.

Now suppose that such a maddening plenitude of experience should clamor for expression, why should not the unfortunate epileptic indite with his pen the diseased, the abnormal, the despairing, sensations which piled upon him with terrific weight year after year? He saw all with sympathy, why should not his soul-cries rouse the world to pity for what he saw?

There is an immeasurable area lying between that morbid mind which loves to depict the purlieus of life and that brave heart which reaches down deep into the filthy and the sickening for the sake of dragging somewhat of value up to the light. Dostoevski conceived that Russia could never energize her arm for saving service without a wide knowledge of what existed in every place of nameless horror. As a great natural pathologist, he understood the vagaries of the diseased and the defective; in Siberia he perforce mingled with the lowest criminals—the results he embodied in a score of novels, four or five of them great novels, for those to read who dare look in the face the life of the shadowy alleys, for those to avoid who prefer the light and airy high-paths.

What is more, no pleasant bucolic pipe can rouse like a bugle-blast. Those who play the notes of beauty will exalt or pacify the soul, but those who would rouse the whole being must choose sturdy instruments and various. To shift the similitude, Russia needed no soothing unguents, her festering sores called for the heroic knife—first exact diagnosis, then the knife. And Dostoevski showed always the truth—the sordid, noisome, revolting, pitiful truth—and, as this serene prophet saw that she would, Russia herself is more and more bravely using the knife. Yet beauty and sweetness and upper air are in his stories, too, especially if one sees beneath the surface.

Russia’s greatest novelists are really three: Turgenev, the cosmopolitan, was an æsthete, an artist, a polished littérateur; Tolstoi, the mystic, was a brooding reformer, too self-centered to realize his humanitarian ideals, but a majestic figure in literature as in life; Dostoevski, the profoundly religious psychologist, was an unbalanced, fiery apostle, winging among the highest, stalking amidst the lowest, seeing visions not given to common men.

Dostoevski’s novels are great not by reason of their art, but from their artlessness, which is to say their explosive sincerity, like the incoherent violence of one who feels things too powerful for orderly utterance. In this they reflect his life only in that they reproduce what the seismograph of his spirit recorded. Outwardly, he was quiet, detached, even morose, his epileptic seizures doubtless sending him into the companionship of his own life; but his soul shook with the volcanic terrors which he perforce beheld, from his cradle in the charity hospital, through the turbulent years of Siberia, Russia, and the continent, down to the day of his too early taking-off at the age of fifty-nine.

Not all of his novels are worth general reading, even were they all available in English. He was too much preoccupied with his struggle with debt, his physical sufferings, his inner life, his passion of pity, his profound analyses of the characters about him, his tender religious faith, to allow him to study the graces of expression. In consequence, diffuseness and lack of compact, progressive plot—for he had no dramatic skill—characterize his work, and when he does rise to heights of beautiful utterance, which is not seldom, it is the outbursting of sheer feeling, the power of his theme, not the premeditated caperings of the self-conscious stylist. The man and his vehement message are far bigger than his technique.

Seven of his works must here be dismissed in as many paragraphs as they deserve chapters.

“Poor Folk,” strongly influenced by Gogol’s “The Cloak,” was written when Dostoevski was twenty-five. Though told in the handicapping form of letters, it made an immediate impression. Simplicity, human understanding, and compression—and the last was not one of his usual virtues—mark this spiritual history of two lives. It is an effective book, though not a great.

The years of Siberian torment yielded fruit in that remarkable example of criminal psychology, “Memories of a House of the Dead,” 1861-62. Not Dickens, and certainly not Oscar Wilde, approached this dispassionate record of a tremendously passionate and passion-inspiring theme, the inside of a terrible prison, which stirred Europe just when Hugo was issuing “Les Miserables.” “His calm account of their unblushing knavery is entirely free from either vindictive malice or superior contempt. He loved them because they were buried alive, he loved them because of their wretchedness, with a love as far removed from condescension as it was from secret admiration of their bold wickedness.” These words of Professor Phelps are singularly illuminating.

“Crime and Punishment,” the best known to English readers of the author’s works, is by many considered his masterpiece. Notwithstanding many waste places of digression, this book is a lofty peak. No one could picture in a few words the tremendous story of that other Eugene Aram—Raskolnikov—the philosophical student of crime, his double murder, his confession to the courtesan Sonia, her great-hearted reception of the news, her counsel that he confess his crime, their life in Siberia, and the gradual regeneration of both souls through the ministry of service.

Then, there are “The Gambler,” in which Dostoevski’s own passion for the green table is evidently recorded; and “The Idiot,” a prince whose unworldly sweetness is notable, even under the stress of epilepsy, and whose influence over the lives of all about him is a genuine creation; and “Possessed by Demons,” a portrayal of Nihilism, largely written as a fling at Turgenev, whom Dostoevski never loved; and finally that gigantic conception, “The Karamazov Brothers,” which he did not live to complete—a terrible yet sublime work that promised to be as soul-shaking as interminable.

The business of grown-up life is too serious to allow much space in Russian literature for that most really serious subject, child-life. Dostoevski is an exception. Though he has very few strong and beautiful women characters, his tender heart felt for every child, as witness the penetrating anecdotal sketch which here follows. Note its characteristic humor, tinged with satire; see the pity of it—a pity of situation, not of overwrought description; feel the essential right-mindedness of it, written at a period when the modern view of girlhood’s right to her own self was yet unpreached. This one powerful plea—without a word of homily, as it is—forms big enough foundation for the building of this man’s name for great-heartedness and ranks him in this respect with Charles Dickens, whom he loved.

THE TREE AND THE WEDDING

By Féodor Dostoevski

A few days ago I saw a wedding.... But no! I had better tell you about a Christmas tree. The wedding was fine in its way, and it pleased me immensely; but the other episode was more interesting. It is difficult to say why, at the sight of the wedding, I recalled the tree. This is how it happened.

Exactly five years ago, on New Year’s Eve, I had been invited to a children’s party. The personage who invited me was a well-known man of affairs, with many connections, a wide acquaintance, involved in intrigue; so it was quite natural to suppose that this children’s party served as a mere pretext for the parents to crowd together and to discuss other interesting matters in what seemed like an innocent, accidental, and unpremeditated manner.

I was an outsider; I had little to talk about, and I therefore passed the evening quite independently. There was another gentleman present, who was apparently of no particular importance, and who, like myself, had stumbled upon this domestic happiness. He, above all others, attracted my attention. He was a tall, spare figure, quite serious in aspect and very neat in dress. But it was evident that he was beyond joyousness and domestic happiness. Once he betook himself to a corner, he immediately ceased to smile, but frowned with his dense, black brows. Except for the host, he was unacquainted with a single soul at the party. It was apparent that he was terribly bored, and that he sustained bravely until the end the rôle of a totally diverted and happy individual. I learned later that this gentleman was from the provinces, and had a very important head-splitting affair to settle in the capital; that he had a letter of recommendation to our host, who was not at all disposed to treat its bearer con amore, and had invited him to the children’s party merely out of politeness. He was not asked to join in a game of cards, nor to help himself to a cigar; and no one thought to enter into conversation with him. It was possible that the species of bird was recognized from a distance by its feathers. At any rate, our gentleman, at a loss what to do with his hands, found it necessary to stroke his side-whiskers. The side-whiskers were indeed very good ones, but he stroked them with such assiduity that to look at him it was quite natural to presume that the side-whiskers came into the world first, and that the gentleman was attached to them afterwards that he might stroke them.

Aside from this figure, participating after the manner described in the domestic happiness of the host—who had five well-fed boy youngsters—there was another gentleman who diverted me. He, however, was of a totally different character. In fact, a real personage. They called him Julian Mastakovich. The very first glance could have told you that he was a respected guest, and that his relation to the host was similar to the host’s relation to the man who stroked his side-whiskers. The host and the hostess showered compliments upon him, waited upon him, flattered him, conducted their guests into his presence for introduction, while him they did not conduct to any one else. I observed how a tear glistened in the host’s eyes when Julian Mastakovich said that seldom had he spent so pleasant an evening.

I experienced a disagreeable feeling before this person, and so after admiring the children I went into the small drawing-room, which was almost empty, and sat down in a kind of flowery arbor belonging to the hostess, and occupying almost half of the room.

The children were incredibly charming, and seemed determined not to resemble their elders, notwithstanding all the efforts of their mothers and governesses. In a twinkling they bared the tree to its last bonbon, and had managed to break half of the playthings before they knew for whom they were designated. Especially fine to look at was a dark-eyed, curly-haired lad, who aimed at me continuously with his wooden gun. But, above all, my attention was attracted by his sister, a girl of eleven years, as lovely as Cupid, quiet, pensive, pale, with large, musing eyes, slightly projecting out of their circles. The other children had somehow offended her; for that reason, she came into the very room where I sat, and, betaking herself into a corner, was soon occupied with her doll. The guests looked with great deference in the direction of her father, a wealthy proprietor, and some one mentioned in a half-whisper that a dowry of three hundred thousand rubles had already been laid aside for her.

I turned around to glance at those interested in this circumstance, and my gaze fell upon Julian Mastakovich, who, having thrust his hands behind him and inclined his head a trifle to the side, was listening with a marked intentness to the chatter of these folk.

Afterward I could not help but feel astonished at the sageness of the hosts in distributing the children’s gifts. The little girl who already had a dowry of three hundred thousand rubles received the most expensive doll. Then followed the other gifts, growing lower in value in proportion to the lower standing of the parents of these happy children. The last youngster, a boy of ten years, meagre, diminutive, freckled, and red-haired, received only a small volume of tales dealing with the bountifulness of nature, the joy of tears, and the like; the book contained no pictures, not even a decoration. He was the son of a poor widow, the governess of the host’s children, and had a haunted, suppressed look. He was dressed in a wretched cotton jacket. Having received his book, he hovered for a long time around the toys. He had the most intense longing to play with the other children, but dared not. It was evident that he already felt and understood his position.

It is a favorite occupation of mine to observe children. It is highly interesting to mark in them certain early and free inclinations of their natures. I noted how the red-haired boy was tempted by the expensive playthings of the other children—and especially by a toy theatre, in which he showed a most eager desire to play some rôle—to such a degree that he adopted an ingratiating manner to attain his end. He smiled and joined the other children in their play, gave up his apple to one puffed-up youngster who already had a whole handkerchiefful of gifts tied to his body, and even offered to carry another boy on his back, if only they would not drive him away from the theatre. Soon, however, a bully in the party gave him a sound drubbing. The boy did not dare to cry out. Presently the governess, his mother, appeared, and ordered him not to interfere with the other children’s play. The boy came into the room where the little girl was. She permitted him to join her, and the two of them were at once absorbed very earnestly in the rich doll.

I had been sitting in the ivy bower a half-hour and had almost dozed off, while listening to the small chatter of the red-haired boy and the beauty with three hundred thousand rubles’ dowry, solicitous over the doll, when suddenly Julian Mastakovich walked into the room. He took advantage of a particularly disgraceful quarrel among the children to steal out of the reception-room. I had noticed that only a few moments before he was discussing very fervently with the father of the future rich bride, whose acquaintance he had only just made, the preëminence of one kind of service over another. At this instant he stood as if lost in thought, and seemed to be making a calculation of some sort upon his fingers.

“Three hundred ... three hundred,” he whispered. “Eleven ... twelve ... thirteen ... sixteen ... five years! Say, at four per cent—five times twelve equal sixty; at compound interest ... well, let us suppose in five years it ought to reach four hundred. Yes, that’s it.... But the rascal surely has it salted away at more than four per cent. Eight or ten is more likely. Well, let’s say five hundred—five hundred thousand at the very least; not counting a few extra for rags ... h’m ...”

Having ended his calculation, he sneezed vigorously and moved to leave the room, when suddenly, his eye alighting upon the little girl, he stopped. He did not see me behind the vases of flowers. He seemed to me to be violently agitated. Either his calculation had upset him, or something else; but he did not know what to do with his hands, and was unable to remain on one spot. His agitation increased— ne plus ultra—when he stopped and threw another determined glance at the future bride. He was about to move forward, but first looked around. Then he approached the child on his tiptoes, as if conscious of guilt. Smiling, he bent over her and kissed her head; while she, not expecting this onslaught, cried out from fright.

“What are you doing here, sweet child?” he asked in a whisper, glancing around him, and pinching the little girl’s cheek.

“We are playing....”

“Ah! With him?” Julian Mastakovich looked askew at the boy. “Go into the next room, like a nice little boy,” he said to him.

The boy was silent and gazed at him with perturbed eyes. Julian Mastakovich looked around once more and bent over the little girl.

“And what have you, sweet child, a doll?” he asked.

“Yes, a doll,” answered the little girl, frowning, and quailing visibly.

“A doll.... And do you know, sweet child, what the doll is made of?”

“I don’t know,” answered the little girl in a whisper, lowering her head.

“Of rags, my darling.... And you, my boy, you had better go into the other room to your fellows,” said Julian Mastakovich, as he looked severely at the youngster. The girl and the boy frowned and caught hold of each other. They did not wish to part.

“And do you know why they gave you this doll?” asked Julian Mastakovich, lowering his voice more and more.

“I don’t know.”

“Because you have been a lovely and well-behaved child the entire week.”

At this juncture, Julian Mastakovich, agitated to the utmost, looked round and, lowering his tone to a whisper, asked finally in an almost inaudible voice, dying away more and more from agitation and impatience:

“And will you love me, sweet girlie, when I shall come as a guest to your papa and mamma?”

Having said this, Julian Mastakovich made one more effort to kiss the lovely child; but the red-haired boy, quick to see that she was at the point of tears, seized her hands and, out of deep sympathy for her, began to whimper. Julian Mastakovich became quite angry.

“Begone, begone from here, begone!” he said to the boy. “Begone into the other room! Begone to your own fellows!”

“No, don’t go! Don’t go! You had better go,” said the young girl, “but leave him alone, leave him alone!” She was almost in tears.

Presently there was a commotion just within the door. Julian Mastakovich immediately rose to his feet, somewhat frightened. The red-haired boy was even more frightened. He left his companion and stole out silently, with his hands brushing the wall, into the dining-room. To hide his confusion, Julian Mastakovich followed him. He was as red as a lobster, and when he looked in the glass he seemed appalled as his own image. Perhaps he was annoyed at his rage and impatience. Perhaps the calculation he made earlier on his fingers had so affected him, tempting and inflaming him, that, notwithstanding his position and dignity, he was impelled to act like a young boy to attain his object, despite the fact that the object in any case could be attained only five years hence. I followed the esteemed gentleman into the dining-room and witnessed a strange scene. Julian Mastakovich, his face all red from irritation and malice, was pursuing the red-haired boy, who, retreating farther and farther from him, did not know what to do with himself in his fright.

“Begone with you! What are you doing here? Begone, you good-for-nothing! Begone! Stealing fruit, are you? Stealing fruit? Begone, good-for-nothing! Begone, unclean one! Begone, begone to the likes of yourself!”

The frightened boy, driven to desperate measures, tried to get under the table. Then his pursuer, enraged to the last degree, drew out his long batiste handkerchief and lashed it out at the cowering boy.

It is necessary to mention that Julian Mastakovich was a trifle fat. He was a satiated, red-cheeked, stoutish person, large at the waist and with fat legs; he was as round as a nut. He began to perspire, to pant, and to grow fearfully red. His fury knew no bounds, so great was his feeling of malice and—who knows?—perhaps jealousy. I laughed out loud. Julian Mastakovich turned around, and in spite of his importance was covered with most abject confusion. At this instant the host entered by the opposite door. The boy climbed out from under the table and wiped his knees and elbows. Julian Mastakovich made haste to put his handkerchief, which he held by one corner, to his nose.

The host, not without perplexity, surveyed the three of us; but, like a man who understood life and looked at it with a serious eye, availed himself of the opportunity to speak to his guest alone.

“This is the youngster,” said he, pointing at the red-haired boy, “whom I had the pleasure of mentioning to you....”

“Ah?” answered Julian Mastakovich, not yet fully recovered from his discomfiture.

“He is the son of the governess of my children,” continued the host in an appealing voice. “She is a poor woman, a widow, the wife of an honest official; and it is for this reason that ... Julian Mastakovich, is it possible to....”

“Oh, no, no!” Julian Mastakovich made haste to exclaim. “No, Philip Alekseievich; I am sorry, but it is utterly impossible. There is no vacancy, and even if there were, there would be ten candidates for the place, each having a greater right to it than he.... It is a great pity, a great pity....”

“Yes, a pity,” repeated the host. “He is such a modest, quiet lad....”

“And quite a scamp, I should say,” added Julian Mastakovich, his mouth hysterically athwart. “Begone, boy! Why are you standing there? Go to your equals!”

At this point he could not restrain himself any longer, and looked at me with one eye. I too could not resist, and laughed straight in his face. Julian Mastakovich turned away immediately, and with sufficient distinctness for me to hear asked the host the identity of “that strange young man.” They exchanged whispers and left the room. I observed afterward how Julian Mastakovich, listening to the host, shook his head incredulously.

Having laughed to my heart’s content, I returned to the reception-room. There the great man, surrounded by the fathers and the mothers of families, the host and the hostess, was speaking with great warmth to a lady to whom he had just been introduced. The lady held by her hand the little girl with whom only ten minutes before he had made the scene. Now he was lavish in his praises and raptures over the beauty, talents, manners, and breeding of the lovely child. He was plainly playing the wheedler before the mother. She listened to him, almost with tears of joy in her eyes. The father’s lips smiled. The prevailing spirit of good-will rejoiced the heart of the host. Even all the guests lent a sympathetic hand, and made the children stop their games in order not to interfere with the conversation. The entire atmosphere was saturated with devotion. I heard later how the mother of the interesting little girl, touched to the very depths of her heart, begged Julian Mastakovich, in most effusive language, to do her the great honor of conferring on the house more often his precious presence; I heard with what undisguised joy Julian Mastakovich accepted the invitation, and how the guests, dispersing afterward in various directions as propriety demanded, exchanged with one another complimentary salutations regarding the host, the hostess, the little girl, and in particular Julian Mastakovich.

“Is this gentleman married?” I asked almost aloud of an acquaintance who stood nearest to Julian Mastakovich.

Julian Mastakovich threw at me a searching and malicious glance.

“No!” answered my acquaintance, mortified deeply at the awkwardness which I committed purposely....

Not long ago I was passing the—— Church, and I was astonished at the tremendous crowd that had gathered there. Every one talked about a wedding. It was a bleak day in late autumn. I made my way through the crowd and caught a glimpse of the bridegroom. He was a round, satiated, pot-bellied little person, very much adorned. He ran hither and thither, fussed, and gave orders. At last a murmur went through the crowd, announcing the arrival of the bride. I squeezed through the crowd and saw an astoundingly beautiful girl, who had hardly experienced the first bloom of spring. But the beautiful girl was pale and sad. She looked bewildered; and it seemed to me that her eyes were red from newly-shed tears. The classic rigidity of her features imparted to her beauty a kind of dignity and strength. But through all this rigidity and dignity, through all this sadness, there penetrated the first aspect of childhood’s innocence; it suggested something naïve, fragile, and juvenile to the last degree; and though the look bespoke resignation, it also seemed to utter a silent prayer for mercy.

It was said in the crowd that she had just passed her sixteenth birthday. An intent scrutiny of the bridegroom suddenly revealed him to me as Julian Mastakovich, whom I had not seen for exactly five years. I looked at her.... My God! I quickly made haste to leave the church. In the crowd they were telling each other how rich the bride was, that she had a dowry of five hundred thousand rubles ... and so much besides in rags....

“At any rate, his calculation was a good one!” I reflected, as I jostled my way into the street.

KOROLENKO THE EXILE

No intelligent outlander, I suppose, but marvels at the patience with which the Russian people endure the exile system that has so long brewed hell-broth for the nation to drink. When some violent offense is answered by such punishment, we do not demur, but when trivialities are magnified, and the police stupidly blunder, our blood boils with protest.

So many times has Vladimir Korolenko been banished, that exile must seem to him almost a normal condition, and freedom from police surveillance a happy freak of fortune. And yet, more than any other distinguished Russian writer, he is free from pessimism—his writings are filled with passages of lyric sweetness.

Sixty years ago—in July, 1853—Vladimir was born at Jitomir, in the government of Volynia. His father, of Cossack blood, was a district judge in the cities of Dubno and Rovno, having previously served as district attorney, and also as a minor judge. He was an honest man, since he forbore to enrich himself with bribes, but made his modest salary suffice. This course—eccentric in those days—left his wife in straitened circumstances when he died. Vladimir was about fifteen at the time, and still in the Gymnasium at Rovno, but his mother, the daughter of a Polish landed proprietor, was enabled to keep him in school and also maintain her other children, three boys and two girls.

The future author entered the Institute of Technology at St. Petersburg in due course, and for two years fought off the extremes of nakedness and hunger by coloring maps in the intervals of study, for he had come to the great capital with only seventeen rubles in his purse. The third year found him in Moscow, in the Petrovsk (St. Peter’s) Agricultural Academy, and here, in the third year of his new course (1875), he got his first taste of exile. His unforgivable crime was to participate in a joint address of the students to the Faculty! For this he was banished to the government of Vologda, but the sentence was not completely carried out, for some one relented and before he reached the place he was bidden to return to his home at Kronstadt. Here for one year he was kept under police surveillance.

At the end of the year he was allowed to remove with his family to St. Petersburg, where he worked in peace as a proof-reader, until February, 1879. But he was soon to learn that Government never forgets, for twice during that month was his home officially searched, and at length he, together with his brother, his brother-in-law, and his cousin, was banished to Glazof, in the government of Vyatka, and presently still further north, to Vyshne Volotsk, where he was confined in a political prison—and all without a trial, the reading of charges, or any semblance of human justice.

The whole term of his exile was spent without a single gleam of light to make clear his offense. But after his release in 1880, he learned that his exile was due to his having attempted to break prison—an offense which was alleged against him before he had ever been in prison!

The circumstances of his release were fortunate. Prince Imeritinsky had been deputized to investigate the condition of the political prisons and to report on the causes of incarceration. Among other prisons, he visited that at Vyshne Volotsk, and Korolenko was already on the way to Yakutsk, Siberia, when the message came ordering his release—probably as a result of the investigation.

Even then entire freedom was not granted him, for he was “allowed” to settle at Perm; and here he began his active work as a writer, though he had written successfully as early as 1879.

In 1881 Alexander III became Emperor of Russia, and all his subjects were required to take oath of allegiance. But Korolenko refused, because in addition the government officers demanded that he betray his friends by giving details of any revolutionary enterprises in which he knew them to be engaged. Rather than become a party to such villainy, the young man chose further exile, and for the succeeding three years lived miserably in Yakutsk, in East Siberia. At length he returned to the ancient Tartar city of Nijni Novgorod, on the Volga, where he now lives with his family.

All this period of maddening oppression was aggravated by the fact that his mother needed his help. When in 1879 Korolenko began to contribute literary sketches to such Russian periodicals as Russian Thought, The Northern Messenger, and Annals of the Fatherland, the meagre honorariums were indeed a blessing to his loved ones.

The thing that “goes without saying” often needs to be said just the same. That a writer is likely to reproduce his life-experiences in his writings is one of these truisms, yet it will always remain an interesting occupation to trace connection between life and literary product in the work of an author of individuality.

Korolenko came from “Little Russia,” and began to find his subjects in the towns and villages of the west country in which he was born, but naturally he turned at length to depicting the life of the extreme Siberian east.

That Korolenko has been formed in opinion and moulded to iron fortitude of heart by his severe experiences in exile is shown by his remarkable story, “The Wondrous Maid,” in which the Nihilist is depicted as a simple gendarme, whose manhood transfigures his Nihilism and his work as an officer. Again, our author proved his independence in a letter to the St. Petersburg Academy, in which, as did Chekhov before him, he courteously declined membership because the Academy had struck the name of Gorki from its list of members.

It was in 1885, while in exile in Yakutsk, that he wrote his famous “Makár’s Dream.” It is an odd fantasy, this story of the Yakut who, having gotten half frozen in the wood, dreams that he is dragged before the tribunal of the great Lord Toyon—a nondescript judge who is neither of heaven nor of earth. Before a great scale, whose one end is a small golden platter and whose other a huge wooden bowl, the peasant is summoned to explain the acts of his life. At length, when his cheatings and stealings are found to have outweighed all of the deeds of service and faithfulness in his life, he suddenly breaks into an unwonted eloquence of protest. He is unwilling to bear the penalty of being turned into a beast of burden by becoming the horse of a church official, not because the horse is badly treated, for it is well fed—better fed, indeed, than he, the peasant, has ever been—but he protests because the penalty is unjust. This appeal to justice seems to move the great Toyon, and he ends by saying to the dejected Makár, “Have patience, poor soul, thou art no longer on earth: here will be found justice, even for thee!” And as he speaks the scales begin to tremble, and the wooden bowl, filled with his evil deeds, rises higher and higher, as though weighed down by his good acts.

Surely, the great meed of injustice suffered by The Exile himself gave inspiration for the message of mercy at the end of this fantastic tale.

What may be called Korolenko’s Siberian era is further illustrated in his sketches of a Siberian tourist, nine of which cover about one hundred pages of ordinary size. All the sketches are remarkable for local color and fine understanding of character. The one unfortunate tendency is toward unfinished situation, for the sense of coming to an adequate close is inseparable from good story-telling. It is but fair to observe, however, that this trait of incompleteness is characteristic of the sketch as a fictional form.

Throughout this series I have frequently asserted the obvious fact that Russian themes have largely reflected the Russian temperament, as is shown by the realistically direct and often terrible pictures which fill the pages of their literature. Altogether apart from our interest in the literate expressions of a great and alien people, we must feel a sort of gruesome fascination as we are thrilled to the point of horror in reading these simple yet titanic records of gloom.

All this raises the question of what is the difference between fascination and charm—for charm, from the Anglo-American viewpoint, is almost an unknown element in Russian literature. Fascination they all possess; but charm is fascination plus delight. In Korolenko we do have a writer of charm; and, besides, a charm that is not the reflex of literatures other than his own—it evidently springs from the sweetness of a spirit which all of the bitterness of banishment could not defile. Here is a high and final test of native fineness.

As compared with the stories of Garshin, with their “terrible, incoherent cries of woe,” Korolenko’s tales are idyllic. A rhythmical, lyrical measure beats enchantingly in his nature passages, whose intimacy with the life of the woods inevitably recalls the French Theuriet. “The Forest Whispers,” one of his longer short-stories, is simply redolent of tree-fragrance. We feel the wandering airs of the glades; we hear the never-ceasing swish of majestic boughs; we stand rapt in the cathedral silences of the green-shadowy aisles. The peasant tale is the thread on which these pearls are strung, but the pearls hide the string.

Listen to this passage. What Loti has evoked from the inscrutable sea, Korolenko has charmed from the forest with his enchanter’s wand.

In the forest there was always a murmur, regular, continuous, like the faint echo of a distant peal of bells; soft and indistinct, like a song without words, or like the confused recollection of bygone days. The murmur never ceased by day or night, for it was an old dense forest of pines that had never been touched by woodman’s saw or axe. Lofty pines, a hundred years old, with their red, sturdy trunks, stood in close array, waving, in response to each breath of wind, their high-tufted tops. Below, all was quiet; the air was filled with an odor of tar; through the thick layer of pine-cones, with which the ground was strewn, pushed gay ferns, in all the luxury of their rich fringes, and standing motionless, their leaves unstirred by the breeze. In damp nooks green grasses rose up on their high stalks; and the white clover bent its heavy head, overcome, as it were, with dreamy lassitude. And above flowed the murmur of the forest, the mingling sighs of the old pine-wood.

Besides “The Forest Whispers,” two stories belong especially to Korolenko’s Little-Russian group—“Iom-Kipour” (the Jewish Day of Expiation) and “The Blind Musician.” The former relates how a Little-Russian miller, good Christian though he is, narrowly escapes being carried away by the Devil, in the place of the Jewish tavern-keeper Iankiel, because, like him, he has tried to make money out of the poor peasants—the same tendency to penetrate to the inner life which we discover in other of Korolenko’s work, for he rose above the realistic school, with its pathological records.

“The Blind Musician” is a remarkable psychological story—about forty thousand words in length—in which all the sensations of the blind are portrayed with sympathy and intelligence. The author has not attempted to build up a meretricious interest by surrounding his blind characters with the usual accompaniments to be found in fiction—poverty and physical distress. Disallowing all such devices, he wonderfully pictures the life of a child born blind in the home of a wealthy family, his advance to boyhood, his love-life, and finally his manhood’s experiences as a brilliant musician, “who attempts to reproduce the sensations of sight by means of sounds.”

The following passage is typical:

The boy imaged to himself depth in the form of the soft murmur of the stream as it flowed at the foot of the precipice, or of the frightened splash of pebbles thrown from its top. Distance sounded in his ears like the confused notes of a dying song. At times, in the sultry noonday, when over the whole of nature there reigns a quiet so profound that we can only divine the uninterrupted noiseless course of life, the face of the blind boy would light up with a strange expression. It seemed as if, under the influence of the silence that prevailed around, there rose from the depth of his soul sounds audible only to himself, to which he was listening with rapt attention. It was easy to believe that at such moments a vague but productive train of thought was awakening in his soul, like to the imperfectly caught melody of an unknown song.

Two prose poems, of harmonious diction and fine human feeling, I have space only to mention—“Easter Night,” and “The Old Bell-Ringer,” which Korolenko calls “A Spring Idyl.” The latter is reproduced herewith in a new translation for this series, and from it the tone of the former may well be inferred.

Though not a great novelist—if he can be classed as a novelist at all—Korolenko is the exponent of normality. He is more like Turgenev than is any other living writer, though comparison with the Greatest must not be taken to imply equality. The anarchistic, anti-Christian Artsybashev, whose big-fisted novel, “Sanin,” forms an iconoclastic type of its own, cannot approach Korolenko in lucid attractiveness. Tolstoi, Korolenko followed, but at a distance, for he was of the romantic school and little inclined to Tolstoi’s ultra-idealism, particularly that of the last period.

One more refreshing characteristic of our author I venture to name—human sympathy. True, he does not always temper his pity for the “unfortunates” with the sound judgment of the moralist. Whether they suffer deservedly or not, he does not deeply inquire—it is enough for him that they suffer.

Well, I love him for that very trait of all-embracing sympathy. When a man lets his heart go unleashed by the eternal judgment as to whether the victim has sinned and may be suffering a righteous punishment, he rises to utmost humanity—which is to say, the divine spirit of the Great Master whose heart was Pity.

THE OLD BELL-RINGER

By Vladimir Korolenko

It had grown dark.

The tiny village, resting on the ledge of a remote stream, in a pine forest, had become enveloped in that twilight which is peculiar to starry spring nights, when the thin mist, rising from the earth, deepens the shadows of the woods and fills the open spaces with a silvery blue vapor.... How still was everything, and pensive and sad!

The village was quietly dreaming.

The dark outlines of the wretched huts were but vaguely visible; here and there lights were aglimmer; now and then you could hear a gate creak; a dog’s bark would start suddenly and die away; occasionally out of the dark woods the figure of a pedestrian would emerge, or that of a horseman; or a cart would pass by with a jolting noise. These were the inhabitants of lone forest settlements, gathering to their church to greet the great spring holiday.

The church stood on a little hill, in the very middle of the village. Its windows were all alight. Its belfry—an old, tall, and dark structure—pierced the blue sky.

The steps of the staircase creaked as the old bell-ringer ascended the belfry, and soon his little lantern looked like a star suddenly sprung into space.

It was hard for the old man to mount the steep staircase. His old legs had already served their time, and his eyesight had grown dim.... It was time an old man had rest, but God seemed slow in sending deliverance. The old bell-ringer had buried sons and grandsons; he had escorted both young and old to their final resting-place; but he himself was still alive. It was hard!... So many times had he greeted Easter that he had lost count—he could not even remember how many times he had awaited here his last hour. And now once more God had willed that he should be here.

Having reached the top, he leaned his elbow on the railing.

Below, around the church, he could discern the wretchedly kept graves of the village burial-place; as if to protect, old crosses stood over them with outstretched arms. Here and there a young birch-tree inclined over them its branches, as yet leafless.... The aromatic odor of young buds ascended from below towards Mikheyich, and with it came a feeling of the sad tranquillity of eternal sleep.

And what would he be doing a year hence? Would he once more climb this height, under this bronze bell, to arouse with a resounding peal the lightly-slumbering night, or would he be resting ... down there, in some dark corner of the graveyard, under a cross? God knows!... He was ready, but in the meantime the Lord called him once more to greet the holiday.

“All glory be to God!” whispered his lips, accustomed to the old formula. Mikheyich raised his eyes towards the sky, dense with millions of stars, and crossed himself.

“Mikheyich, Mikheyich!” a trembling voice, also that of an old man, suddenly called him from below. The aged sexton looked up towards the belfry, even fixed his palm over his blinking, tear-wet eyes, and still could not see Mikheyich.

“What do you want? I am here,” answered the bell-ringer, leaning out from the belfry. “Can’t you see me?”

“No, I can’t see. Isn’t it time to strike? What do you think?”

Both of them glanced at the stars. Thousands of God’s lights twinkled on high. The fiery “Wagoner” was already far above the horizon. Mikheyich pondered.

“No, not yet; wait just a little longer.... I know when to ...”

He knew. He had no need of a timepiece. God’s stars always told him when the time came. The earth and the sky, the white cloud floating silently across the expanse of blue, the indistinct murmur of dark pines below, and the rippling of the stream concealed by the dark—all were familiar to him, near to him.... Not in vain had he spent his life here.

For the moment his entire long past unrolled before him.... He recalled how he ascended the belfry with his father for the first time.... Good Lord! how long ago it was!—and what a short time it seemed!... He saw himself once more a fair-haired lad; his eyes were kindled; the wind—not the sort that raises the dust of the street, but rather a more rare wind, flapping, as it were, its noiseless wings high above the earth—played with his hair.... There below, so far, so far away, he saw some sort of little people; and the houses of the village also seemed small, and the forest receded into the distance, and the round-shaped meadow, upon which stood the village, seemed immense, almost boundless.

“Well, here it is, all here!” smiled the old man, glancing at the small spot of earth.

“So life, too, is like that,” he reflected. “When one is young, one sees neither its end nor its edge.” ... And yet here it was, as if in the palm of one’s hand, from the very beginning to the very grave he had just been contemplating in the corner of the burial-ground.... What of that? Glory be to the Lord!—It was time for rest. It was a hard road, and he had traversed it an honest man; and the damp earth was his mother.... Soon—if only soon!...

Well, the time had come. Mikheyich glanced once more at the stars, removed his cap, crossed himself, and began to gather up the ropes of the bells.... A few more moments, and the nocturnal air trembled from the resounding stroke.... Another, a third, a fourth ... one after the other, filling the lightly-slumbering pre-festal night with an outpouring of powerful, lingering, resonant, singing tones.

The bell grew silent. The service in church had begun. It was the habit of Mikheyich in former years to go down and to stop in a corner near the door in order to pray and listen to the chanting. This time, however, he remained in the tower. It was difficult for him; aside from that, he felt intensely fatigued. He sat down on a little bench, and as he listened to the dying tones of the agitated bronze he grew deeply pensive. What were his thoughts? He himself could hardly have answered the question.... The bell-tower was but dimly lighted by his lantern. The still vibrating bells were lost in the darkness; faint murmurs of the chant reached him occasionally from below, and the nocturnal wind stirred the ropes fastened to the iron hearts of the bells.

The old fellow let fall his gray head upon his breast. His mind was in a state of delirious fancy. “Now they are singing a hymn,” he thought, and he imagined himself among the others in church. He heard an outpouring of children’s voices in a choir; he saw the figure of the long-since-departed priest Nahum exhorting the congregation to prayer; he saw hundreds of peasants’ heads, like ripe corn before the wind, bend low and stand erect again.... The peasants were crossing themselves.... Familiar faces, all of them, and all faces of the dead. Here was the stern face of his father; here, beside his father, his older brother, crossing himself and sighing. And he himself stood here, in the bloom of health and strength and full of the unconscious yearning for happiness and the joy of life.... Where, oh, where, was this happiness?... The old man’s mind flared up for a moment, like a dying flame, flashing with a bright, quick movement and illuminating for the moment all the passages of his past life.... Hard work, sorrow, care.... Oh, where was this happiness? A hard fate can bring furrows to a young face, give a stoop to a strong back, and cause one to sigh like an older man.

There, on the left, among the women of the village, humbly inclining her head, stood his sweetheart. A good woman, hers be the Kingdom of God! How much had she not suffered, that fine soul!... Constant need and labor and the inevitable womanly sorrow will cause a handsome woman to wither; her eyes will lose their sparkle; and the expression of perpetual, dull-like fright before each unawaited blow of life will change the most superbly beautiful creature.... Yes, and where was her happiness?... One son remained to them, their one hope and joy, and he fell a victim to human weakness.

And he too was here, his rich enemy, bending low time and again, seeking to pray away the bitter tears of orphans he had wronged; repeatedly he was performing upon himself the sign of the cross, falling on his knees and touching the ground with his forehead.... And Mikheyich’s heart boiled over within him, while the dark faces of the ikons looked down severely from their walls upon human sorrow and human iniquity.

All that was past, all that behind him.... Now the entire world seemed to him like a dark bell-tower, where the wind blew in the dusk, stirring the bell-ropes.... “Let the Lord judge you!” whispered the old man, shaking his gray head, while tears silently ran down his cheeks.

“Mikheyich! Mikheyich!... You haven’t fallen asleep?” someone shouted up to him from below.

“Eh?” returned the old man, and quickly jumped to his feet. “Lord! Have I in truth fallen asleep? That never happened before!”

With an accustomed hand, Mikheyich quickly caught the ropes. Below him moved the peasant throng, a veritable ant-hill; the holy banners aglimmer with gold brocade fluttered in the wind.... The procession made a circuit of the church, and presently Mikheyich heard the joyous cry, “Christ has risen from the dead!”

Coming like a mighty wave, the cry whelmed the old man’s heart.... And it seemed to Mikheyich that brighter flared the lights of the waxen candles, and that stronger grew the agitation of the people; the holy banners seemed to become more alive; and the suddenly awakened wind caught up the waves of sound and with broad sweeps lifted them high, where they became one with the loud triumphant music of the bell.

Never before had old Mikheyich rung so well!

It was as if the old man’s brimming-over heart had passed into the inanimate bronze; and it seemed as if the reverberations at the same time sang and throbbed, laughed and wept, and, uniting in a rare harmony, rose higher and higher unto the starry sky. The stars themselves seemed to him to take on a new sparkle, to burst into flame, while the sounds trembled and flowed, and again came down to earth with a loving embrace.

A powerful bass loudly proclaimed: “Christ has risen!”

While two tenor voices, constantly atremble from the repeated blows of the iron hearts, mingled with the bass joyously and resonantly: “Christ has risen!”

And, again, two most slender soprano voices, seemingly in haste not to be left behind, stole in among the more powerful ones, little children, as it were, and sang in emulation: “Christ has risen!”

The entire belfry seemed to tremble and to shake; and the wind blowing in the face of the bell-ringer appeared to flap its mighty wings and to repeat: “Christ has risen!”

The old heart forgot about life, full of cares and wrongs. The old bell-ringer forgot that life for him had become a thing shut up in a melancholy and crowded tower; he forgot that he was alone in the world—like an old stump, weather-beaten and broken.... He intercepted these singing and weeping sounds, fleeting higher towards the skies and falling again to the poor earth, and it seemed to him that he was surrounded by his sons and his grandsons; that these joyous voices, of old and young, had flowed together into one great chorus, and that they sang to him of happiness and joyousness, which he had not tasted in his life.... And the old man continued to tug at the ropes, while tears ran down his face, and his heart beat tremulously with the illusion of happiness.

And below the people were listening and saying to each other that never had old Mikheyich rung so marvellously.

Then all of a sudden the large bell trembled violently and grew silent.... The smaller ones, as if confused, rang an unfinished tone; and then too stopped, as if to drink in the prolonged, sadly droning note, which trembled and flowed and wept, gradually dying away in the air....

The old bell-ringer fell back exhausted on the bench, and his last two tears trickled silently down his pale face.

“Quick! Send a substitute! The old bell-ringer has rung his last stroke.”

GARSHIN THE MELANCHOLIAC

“There is still something around us and within that baffles and surprises us. Events happen which are as mysterious after our glib explanations as they were before. Changes for good or ill take place in the heart of man for which his intellect gives no reason.”

These words of Dr. Henry Van Dyke, written among others to preface his latest collected short fictions, apply right well to our attempts at literary criticism. Mathematics differ from life in this: after a proposition in number or in form-theory is demonstrated the last word has been said; the height of finality is reached; for any one to argue the point might amaze, though it would not interest us. But with life, who can name a fixed and infallible answer to its problems? Here is ever the unknown quantity, irreducible to precise terms, and varying in all sorts of perplexing ratios.

Is it not exactly because literature is the literate expression of life that we approach its subtler problems with the same sense of futility as the issues of life arouse in us? Yet the eternal challenge to discover the why, born, as it is, with our own babyhood, dies not with our manhood’s strength, but still calls us to try our “literary discernment” once more, and yet once more, to see if we may not by some magic of penetration find the true causes which move back among the shadows.

So, with some degree of assurance we lay our fingers upon the causes in a given literary career which seem to us to be calculable—parentage, birth, early environment, education, chosen occupation, and all the rest. Yet a considerable proportion of the results must remain unaccountable, because the actuating forces are, after all, imponderable. We find motives and standards of conduct, or ideals, clearly expressed in the man’s own words; but did he understand himself? Here we find one acknowledged fact, here a second, and here a third. But by what law of causation may we say that three-times-one is three and not six, or sixty, or even six myriads?

No, in seeking to estimate the weight of the inner things we are calculating the incalculable; it is like trying to clothe in cumbersome workaday garb a being that is too subtle for material restrictions.

Especially, then, in seeking to enter the penetralia of a man of Garshin’s varying moods and tenses, let us confess anew to ourselves how tentative must be our guesses at truth. His mind—like that of not a few other literary artists—fluttered between normality and abnormality. However, only the literal, prosaic, practical, uninventive mind is sane, and that is but a shorter way of spelling uninteresting. There is still a strong argument to be made for the essential seer-quality—perhaps the “second sight,” perhaps the inner light—of many a one whom the sober world has adjudged as of unsound mind. But this again brings us up facing another great and tantalizing x of life.

Wsewolod Michailovich Garshin was born in February, 1855, of good family. His south-of-Russia parentage marked his physique. He was good-looking, almost dark, fiery of eye, and in temperament sweet, impressionable, and sympathetic—a combination rare enough in a man to make it noteworthy.

Like Pushkin, he spent his very early life on the family estates, his father having retired from the army when the boy was three years old. At nine, however, the child was placed at school in the inevitable St. Petersburg, with the object of his preparing for the study of medicine. But the parental ambitions were not realized, for the lad was so abnormally nervous that he became subject to vagaries and hallucinations, so that while yet but seventeen years of age, and already writing remarkable bits of realistic self-revelation, it was found best to place him under restraint. The effects of this clouded period are to be traced in much of his later work.

Happily, in about a year he recovered his balance, took up study anew, and finished his preparatory course with credit, entering the Institute of Mining Engineers in 1874, at the age of nineteen—for in everything Garshin was precocious.

From this point on, Garshin’s career may plainly be read in his writings. He wrote only about twenty-five stories in all, and practically without exception they are autobiographical. The two great dominant motifs grew out of his two great life-experiences: war—but war from a special viewpoint—and what I may call the border consciousness, experiences of the mind when its poise is either uncertain or completely upset.

I have said that Garshin viewed war in an unusual way. This is true not alone of his fiction but of his life. In 1876 the Russo-Turkish war broke out, and Garshin considered it his sacred duty to go. The horrors of war had always deeply affected his sensitive nature. The intoxicating blare, the thrill of glory, the call of the spectacle, all meant nothing to him, except revulsion. But duty was a word of serious meaning, and it won from him a serious response. This pupil of Tolstoi could detest and denounce an institution to whose claims he felt bound to bow in time of national need.

It is always interesting to observe how two artists, especially contemporary artists, interpret the same theme. Guy de Maupassant, incomparably the greater literator, but destined to the same sad end as met Garshin, has worked out a motive in “A Coward” similar to the Russian author’s “Coward,” though the stories themselves could not be more dissimilar.

Maupassant simply unclothes a human soul face to face with the idea of suicide. Relentlessly he strips shred after shred of illusion from the introspective thinker who is meditating upon his own cowardice. But when the end does come the reader is half in doubt as to how to judge the wretch.

Garshin’s impressionistic sketch is tremendously cumulative. In soliloquy the Person of the story weighs the war, its appeals, its repulsions, the motives that lead men to go, the awful casualties, and finally tells how that he is considered a coward for his inaction.

Am I a coward or not?

To-day I was told that I am a coward. Certainly it was a very shallow-minded person who said so when I declared in her presence my unwillingness to go to the war, and expressed a fear that they will call me up to serve. Her opinion did not distress me, but raised the question, Am I really a coward? Perhaps all my aversion against what every one else considers a great matter arises only from fear of my skin! Is it really worth while to worry about any one unimportant life in view of a great matter? And am I capable of subjecting my life to danger generally for the sake of any matter?

At length—just as it was with Garshin, who joined a regiment at Kishinev-of-terrible-memory—the “coward” goes to war, and after a story-within-a-story is told, his act of heroism closes the picture.

Ever since I was old enough to attempt just thinking, I have always had much sympathy for a coward—I suppose because I have been afraid so often myself at moments when heroes are said to feel no trepidation. And do we not all feel keenly with Garshin?—for a man of his temperament, and one finding nothing admirable in war, it must have required genuine courage to go, even while he was repelled and afraid. But this was only one more phase of a contradictory character—as all characters are in whom the inner life and the outer do not coördinate.

In “The Signal,” we have a perfectly-wrought short-story with as dramatic a surprise as ever capped a climax.

While serving in the army, as servant to an officer, the health of Simon Ivanoff had broken down, and all that was left to him was a minor post as linesman on the railway. One day, while walking the tracks, he met for the first time his neighboring linesman, whom he found to be quite repellent in his manner. The simple-minded Simon, however, eventually pressed an acquaintance upon both the linesman, Vassili Stepanich Spiridoff, and his young wife, and found that Vassili had been much embittered by reflecting upon the inequalities of life, and especially those of his own hard position.

One day, the traffic inspector came along and forced Vassili to tear up his little garden, merely because he had planted it without permission; and, besides, he reported him for his technical irregularity. Shortly after this, the district chief arrived and showed animosity, evidently founded upon the report against Vassili, and when the man protested, the chief struck him brutally.

The next day Simon met Vassili, stick and bundle over his shoulder, and his cheek bound up in a handkerchief.

“Where are you off to, Neighbor?” cried Simon.

Vassili came close, but was quite pale, white as chalk, and his eyes had a wild look.

Almost choking, he muttered, “To the town—to Moscow—to the Head Office.”

“Head Office? Ah, you are going, I suppose, to complain. Give it up, Vassili Stepanich. Forget it.”

“No, Mate, I will not forget. It is too late. See! He struck me in the face—drew blood. So long as I live, I will not forget.”

Simon vainly attempted to dissuade him, and the man at length passed on.

On the day following, Simon left his wife at home to meet the six o’clock train, and, taking his knife, started off to the forest to get some reeds out of which to make flutes, which he used to sell for two copecks apiece. As he walked along, he fancied that he heard the clang of iron striking iron. Since there were no repairs going on, he wondered, but as he came out on the fringe of the wood he saw a man squatting on the roadbed, busily engaged in loosening a rail.

A mist came before Simon’s eyes; he wanted to cry out, but he could not. It was Vassili!... Simon scrambled up the bank as Vassili, with crowbar and wrench, slid headlong down the other side.

“Vassili Stepanich! For the love ... Old friend! Come back! Give me the crowbar. We will put the rail back; no one will know. Come back! Save your soul from this sin!”

Vassili did not look back, but disappeared into the wood.

Simon stood before the rail which had been torn up. He threw down his bundle of sticks. A train was due; not a goods train, but a passenger train. And he had nothing with which to stop it, no flag. He could not replace the rail, and could not drive in the spikes with his bare hands. It was necessary to run to the hut for some tools. “God help me,” he murmured.

He ran toward his hut, faltering every now and then in his eagerness, but he soon realized that he would be too late. What should he do! In desperation, he turned back to the spot where the rail threatened disaster to the on-coming train. As he reached it, he heard the even tremor of the rails.

Then an idea came into his head, literally like a ray of light. Pulling off his cap, he took out of it a cotton scarf, drew his knife out of the upper part of his boot, and crossed himself, muttering, “God bless me!”

He buried the knife into his left arm above the elbow; the blood spurted out, flowing in a hot stream. In this he soaked his scarf, smoothed it out, tied it to the stick, and hung out his red flag.

He stood waving his flag. The train was already in sight. The driver will not see him—will come close up, and a heavy train cannot be pulled up in a hundred sajenes.

And the blood kept on flowing. Simon kept pressing the sides of the wound together, wanting to close it, but the blood did not diminish. Evidently he had cut his arm very deeply. His head commenced to swim, black spots began to dance before his eyes, and then it became dark. There was a ringing in his ears. He could not see the train or hear the noise. Only one thought possessed him: “I shall not be able to keep standing up. I shall fall and drop the flag; the train will pass over me.... Help me, O Lord!...”

All became quite black before him, his mind became a blank, and he dropped the flag; but the blood-stained banner did not fall to the ground. A hand seized it and held it high to meet the approaching train. The engine-driver saw it, shut the regulator, and reversed steam. The train came to a standstill.

People jumped out of the carriages and collected in a crowd. Looking, they saw a man lying senseless on the footway, drenched in blood, and another man standing beside him with a blood-stained rag on a stick.

Vassili looked around at all; then, lowering his head, said, “Bind me; I have pulled up a rail!”

In “Four Days,” which follows in an original translation for this series, we have another autobiographical story of singular penetration. It must be remembered that Garshin’s convictions of duty led him to unusual length—he enlisted as a private, when his family connections would have warranted something better. So he writes from close to the people—in this respect differing from Tolstoi, with whose memorable Sevastopol sketches Garshin’s “Four Days” has been seriously compared by critics. It was at the engagement of Aislar that Garshin received his incapacitating bullet-wound, after real gallantry in action, and Aislar is the battle of the story.

After recovering from his wound, our author became desperately absorbed in trying to save one of his friends from execution for having attempted the life of Loris Melikov, but Garshin failed, and soon afterward it again became necessary to confine him in an asylum.

From this seizure he recovered, and married a young lady who devoted her life to a beautiful service—that of healing his mind and preventing a recurrence of his malady; but, sadly enough, without success. He never shook off the boding pall of the madhouse. One needs only to read his “Red Flower” to feel the haunting presence of that pathetic colony of abnormal minds and spirits coming to sit with him in hours when he sought happiness in forgetfulness. Half-memories of days of half-self-possession are indeed shapes that haunt the dusk! To quote Waliszewski’s vivid summary: “The story describes a demented person, half-conscious of his condition, who wears himself out in superhuman efforts to gain possession of a red-poppy—reddened, as he imagines, by the blood of all the martyrdoms of the human race. If the flower were only destroyed, he thinks, humanity would be saved.”

In 1887, in physical and mental suffering too combinedly torturing to be borne, Garshin eluded the watchers by his bedside and flung himself down a stone staircase, sustaining injuries from which he never recovered. The consciousness of his act caused him to brood still more painfully over his state, and he died in a hospital the next year, 1888, at the age of only thirty-three.

If one may venture to be analytical, there are three kinds of stories: those told of life as it exists apart from the narrator; those dealing with events intimately associated with the narrator; and those that are purely evoked from the inner life of the story-teller himself.

These last-named—spun of gossamer thread, intangible as the dawn, airy, floating, subtle—are the highest type. To this height Garshin did not perfectly attain. His stories were rather of the second sort, drawn from his own experiences. That they were touched with mysterious moods and vague, unnamable potencies must have been due to the author’s pitiful journeys into that shadowy, distraught land which we so confidently call the Insane.

Garshin’s realism grew out of his need for writing his own experiences. Though some of his descriptions of the dead Turk, in the following sketch, “Four Days,” are so revoltingly real as to justify the excisions made in the magazine version, I have retained them here, for Garshin’s realism, as a rule, lacks disgusting detail. But it is as faithful to fact as a canvas by Verestchagin, whose paintings, indeed, might be said to exhibit the same method which Garshin applied to literature.

Garshin is a pessimist—of course, one is almost forced to add. His heroes are not idealized, even in the hour of their victory. But there is nobility—that priceless tone in literature!—in much of his work, and the body takes its true place in life, as an expression of spirit, and not as the master of the house.

All in all, Garshin was a great writer, doing pitifully wonderful things under such stress as makes us love him for his brave, losing fight against black foes within and without.

FOUR DAYS

By Wsewolod Garshin

I remember how we ran through the wood, how the bullets whizzed past us, how the twigs that were hit by them snapped and fell, how we scrambled through the bushes. The firing grew heavier. Looking through to the outer edge, I could see little flashes of red here and there. Sidorov, a young private of Company I—“How did he come to fall into our line?” was the thought that flashed through my head—suddenly sat down on the ground and silently looked at me with open, terrified eyes. A stream of blood trickled from his mouth. Yes, that too I remember well. I also remember how when almost on the edge of the wood I first saw ... him in the thick bushes. He was an enormous, corpulent Turk, but I ran straight at him, although I am weak and small. Something burst, something huge seemed to fly past me; there was a ringing in my ears. “He has shot me,” was my thought. But he, with a cry of terror, pressed his back against the dense foliage. He could have gone around it without difficulty, but in his fright he lost his presence of mind completely, and he tried to crawl through the prickly bushes.

With a blow, I knocked the gun out of his hand; I followed this by a thrust with my bayonet. There was an outcry: a roar that died into a moan. I ran on farther. Our soldiers cried, “Hurrah!” fell low, and discharged their guns. I remember that I too fired several times after we had left the wood and were in the field. Suddenly the cry of “Hurrah!” grew louder, and we all in a body moved forward. That is, not we, but my comrades; I remained behind. That seemed strange to me. Still stranger was the fact that suddenly everything vanished; all the cries and firing died away. I could hear nothing, but saw only something blue, which I concluded was the sky. Afterwards, that too passed out of my senses.

Never before have I found myself in such a strange situation. I am lying, it seems, on my stomach, and I see before me only a small clod of earth. A few blades of grass, an ant climbing down one of these head downwards, bits of litter from last year’s grass—that is my whole world. And I can see with only one eye, because the other is obstructed by some hard substance, perhaps a twig upon which my head rests. I feel terribly uncomfortable, and I wish to stir; it is incomprehensible to me why I cannot. So the time passes. I hear the noise of the grasshoppers and the humming of bees. Nothing more. At last I make an effort, and, extracting my right arm from under me, I press both my hands against the earth and try to rise to my knees.

Something sharp and rapid like lightning shoots across my entire body from the knees to my chest and head, and I collapse to the ground. Again darkness, again nothingness.

I am awake once more. Why do I see stars, which shine so brightly in the dark-blue Bulgarian sky? Am I in my tent? Why have I crawled out of it? I make a movement, and feel an agonizing pain in my legs.

Yes, I have been wounded in battle. Dangerously or not? I catch hold of my legs, there where the pain is. And both the right and the left legs are covered with clotted blood. When I touch them with my hands, the pain becomes even more intense. It is like a protracted toothache, gnawing at the very soul. There is a ringing in the ears, an oppressiveness in the head. I vaguely understand that I have been wounded in both legs. But it is all incomprehensible. Why have I not been picked up? Have the Turks really beaten us? I try to recall what has happened to me; at the beginning things seem a bit confused, but they gradually become clearer, and I come to the conclusion that we have not been beaten. And simply because I fell on the little field on top of the slope. In any case, how it all happened is difficult for me to remember; but I do recall how they all rushed forward, and that I alone could not run; and that only something blue remained before my eyes. Somewhat earlier our captain pointed towards this hillock. “Boys, we will get there!” he cried in his sonorous voice. And we got there; it is clear we have not been beaten.... Why, then, was I not picked up? This is such an open spot, and everything is visible. There must be others lying here. The shots came so thick. I must turn my head to look. It is easier to do this now, because when I first came to consciousness and I saw the grass, and the ant crawling head downwards, I tried to rise, and I fell back, not into my former position, but turned over on my spine. That explains why I see the stars.

I try to rise to a sitting position. This is very difficult, when both legs are wounded. After several attempts I begin to despair; at last, however, with tears in my eyes, forced out by the pain, I manage it.

Overhead I see a spot of dark-blue sky, in which are visible a large star and a number of small ones; and around me something dark and tall—the bushes. I am in the bushes—that is why I have not been found!

I feel a stirring at the roots of my hair.

How, then, did I get into the bushes, if I were shot in the open field? It is likely that I crawled here when I was wounded and the pain obliterated the memory of it. It is singular, however, that I should not be able to move now, and that I had been able to drag myself then towards these bushes. It is possible that I got my second wound while lying here, which may explain the matter.

I now see pale-rose stains around me. The large star has lost its brilliancy; some of the small ones have disappeared. It is because the moon has begun to rise. How good it must be at home!...

I hear strange sounds somewhere.... As if some one were moaning. Yes, it is a moan. Is it another unfortunate lying near me, forgotten like myself, with broken legs—or with a bullet in his stomach? No, the moans sound so near, and yet it seems there is no one here.... Oh, God, but it is—myself! Low, piteous moans; am I actually in such agony? I must be. Only, I don’t understand this pain; because there is a fog in my head that weighs me down like lead. It is better that I should lie down again and go to sleep—and sleep and sleep.... Shall I ever wake again? It does not really matter.

At the instant that I am gathering strength to lie down, a broad, pale strip of moonlight strikes the spot where I am sitting, revealing something dark and large lying only a few feet away. Here and there upon it little gleams are visible in the moonlight. Is it buttons or bullets? Is it a corpse, or is it some one wounded?

Well, I will lie down....

No, it is impossible. Our soldiers have not departed. They are here, they have beaten the Turks and have remained here. Why do I not hear voices and the crackle of bonfires? I must be too weak to hear. They are surely here.

“Help! Help!”

Wild, incoherent, and hoarse cries burst from my bosom, and they receive no answer. Loudly they scatter in the nocturnal air. Everything else is silent. Only the crickets chirrup on ceaselessly as before. The round moon looks compassionately down on me.

If he were only wounded, my cries surely would have roused him. It is a corpse. Is it one of us or a Turk? Oh, God! as if it really mattered.... And I feel sleep descending upon my inflamed eyes.

I am lying with closed eyes, though I have been awake for some time. I do not wish to open my eyes, because I feel through the shut eyelids the blaze of the sun; if I open them, they will begin to smart. Perhaps I had better not even stir.... It was yesterday—yes, it must have been yesterday—that I was wounded; a day has now passed, and other days will pass, and I shall die. It does not matter. It is better not to stir. I will keep my body motionless. If I could only stop the working of the brain! Nothing will stop that. Thoughts, memories, crowd upon me. In any case, it will not be for long; the end must come soon. The newspapers will publish just a few lines to say that our losses have been insignificant: so many have been wounded; among those killed is Ivanov, a private in the volunteers’ ranks. No, even my name will not be mentioned; they will simply say, “One killed.” One soldier in the ranks—like some little dog.

The entire picture now comes to mind. It happened long ago; in fact, everything, all my life, that life, before I lay here with wounded legs, seems to have been such a long time ago.... I remember strolling along the street. Seeing a crowd of people, I stopped. The crowd stood and silently looked upon something white, bloody, piteously whining. It was a handsome little dog which had been run over by a tram-car. It was dying, as I am now. A house-porter made his way through the crowd, picked the dog up by the collar, and carried it away. The crowd dispersed.

Will some one carry me away? No, you lie here and die. But how good it is to live!... Upon that particular day—when the little dog met misfortune—I was happy. I was walking along in a kind of intoxication; and there was good cause. Oh, my memories, don’t torture me, leave me! My past was happiness; my present is agony.... If only my sufferings alone remained, and my memories ceased to torture me—for they compel comparisons. Ah, longings, longings! You are wounded worse.

It is becoming hot. The sun is scorching me. I open my eyes, see the same bushes, the same sky—only, in the light of day. And here, too, is my neighbor. Yes, it is the Turk—his body. What a huge fellow! I recognize him—it is the very same one.

Before my eyes lies a man I have killed. Why have I killed him?

He lies here dead, blood-stained. What fate brought him here? Who is he? Perhaps, like myself, he has an old mother. Long will she sit evenings at the door of her wretched hut, looking ever towards the north: is he coming home, he, her beloved son, her protector and provider?...

And I? Yes, I also.... I would even change places with him. How happy he is! He hears nothing; neither does he feel pain from wounds, nor terrible longing, nor thirst.... The bayonet entered his very heart.... There is a large black hole in his uniform, and blood all around it. That is my work.

I did not wish to do it. I did not wish to harm any one when I volunteered. The thought that I too should have to kill somehow escaped me. I only imagined how I would expose my own breast to bullets. And I did expose it.

Well, and what has it come to? Fool, fool! This unfortunate fellah, in Egyptian uniform, he is even less to blame than you are. Before he and others were packed, like herrings in a barrel, into a steamer and brought to Constantinople, he had not even heard of Russia or of Bulgaria. He was commanded to go, and he went. Had he refused to go, he would have been beaten with sticks, and perhaps some Pasha or other would have fired a bullet into him. It was a long, difficult march for him from Stamboul to Rustchuk. We attacked, he defended himself. Seeing, however, that we were a fearless people, and that, unafraid of his English carbine, we rushed forward and still moved forward, he was seized with terror. Just as he was trying to get away, some sort of little man, whom he could have killed with one blow of his dark fist, ran forward and plunged a bayonet into his heart.

Of what had he been guilty?

And of what am I guilty, even though I have killed him? Of what am I guilty? Why am I tortured by thirst? Thirst! Who knows the meaning of this word? Even during the days when we marched through Roumania, fifty versts at a stretch, through unbearable heat, I did not feel what I feel now. If only some one came along this way!

Oh, God! But there must be water in that big flask of his! Only to reach it! Come what may, I will get it.

I begin to crawl. I drag my legs slowly; my exhausted arms barely stir the passive body from its place. The spot is hardly more than fifteen feet away, but it seems like ten versts. Nevertheless, I must crawl on. My throat is aflame with a terrible fire. To be sure, without water, I could die the more quickly. All the same, perhaps....

And so I crawl. My legs drag on the ground, and every movement calls forth most excruciating pain. I cry out again and again, with tears in my eyes, and still I crawl on. At last! The flask is in my hand.... There’s water in it—and quite a deal! It seems more than half full. Ah, it will last me some time ... until I die!

It is you, my victim, who will save me! I begin to undo the flask, propping myself up on one elbow; and suddenly, losing my balance, I fall downward across the breast of my deliverer. Decay having set in, a strong stench comes from his body.

I have slaked my thirst. The water is warm, but not spoilt; and there is a great deal of it. I can live a few more days. I remember having read somewhere that one could exist without food for over a week, provided one had water. Yes, and I recall also the story of the man who committed suicide by starvation, but who lived a long time because he drank water.

Well, and what’s to be the end of it? And if I do live five or six days longer, what of that? Our troops have gone, the Bulgarians have dispersed. I am far from a road. Death—there is no way out of it. I have but prolonged my three-day agony with a seven-day one. Perhaps I had better end it all. At my neighbor’s side lies his gun, an excellent English mechanism. I have only to stretch out my hand; then—one little moment, and an end. There is quite a lot of cartridges here, too. He hadn’t had time to dispose of them all.

Shall I end it all—or wait? Wait for what? Deliverance? Death? Or shall I wait until the Turks come here and tear the skin from my wounded legs? Far better that I should put an end to it myself.

No; there is no need to lose courage. I will struggle to the end, to my last resource. There is still hope of being found. It is possible my bones are not affected; and I may return to health. I shall again see my native land, my mother, and Masha....

Oh, Lord, save them from knowing the whole truth! Let them think I was killed outright. What if they should learn that I had suffered slow torture for two, three, or four days!

My head is in a whirl. My journey to my neighbor has completely exhausted me. What a terrible stench! He has grown black ... and what will he be like to-morrow or the day after? And now I am lying here only because I haven’t sufficient strength to drag myself away. I will rest awhile, and will then crawl back to my old place; and, besides, the breeze blows from that direction and will drive the smell away.

I am lying now in complete exhaustion. The sun is scorching my face and hands. There is nothing to cover oneself with. If only night would come! I think this will be the second night.

My thoughts wander, and I am losing consciousness.

I must have slept a long time, because when I awoke it was already night. As before, the wounds ache, and my neighbor lies beside me—the same huge, motionless figure.

I cannot help thinking of him. Have I really left behind me all that is pleasant and dear to me, and marched here at the speed of four versts an hour, hungered, froze, suffered from the heat, only to undergo this final torture—for no other reason than that this unfortunate should cease to live? And have I really accomplished anything useful for my country except this murder?

This is murder—and I am a murderer.

When I first got the idea into my head to go and fight, Mother and Masha did not try to dissuade me, although they both wept much. Blinded by my idea, I did not understand those tears. Only now I understand what I have done to those so near to me.

Why recall all this? There is no returning to the past.

And what a singular attitude my acquaintances assumed towards my action! “What a madman! He is meddling without knowing why!” How could they say that? How could they reconcile their words with their ideas of heroism, love of mother country, and other such things? Surely I earned their admiration for living up to these virtues. Yet I am a “madman.”

Presently I am on my way to Kishinev; I am supplied with a knapsack and all the other military accoutrements. I go with thousands of others; among them a few, like myself, are volunteers. The rest would have preferred to remain at home, if they were permitted. Nevertheless, they go along just like we “conscious ones,” march thousands of versts, and fight as well as ourselves, or even better. They fulfil their obligations notwithstanding the fact that they would on the instant drop everything and go home if permission were given them.

A fresh early morning breeze has begun to blow. There is a stirring among the bushes; I can hear the flutter of a bird’s wings. The stars are no longer visible. The dark blue sky has turned gray, and stretching across it are gentle, fleecy cloudlets; a gray mist is rising from the earth. It is the beginning of the third day of my ... what can I call it? Life? Agony?

The third day.... How many more are left to me? At any rate, only a few. I have grown terribly weak, and I fear that I am unable to move away from the corpse. Only a little while longer, and I will stretch out by his side, and we shall not be unpleasant to each other.

I must have a drink. I will drink three times a day—in the morning, at noon, and in the evening.

The sun has risen. Its enormous disk, broken and intersected by the dark branches of the bushes, is red like blood. It looks as if it will be a hot day. My neighbor—what will become of you? Even now you are quite terrible.

Yes, he is terrible. His hair has begun to fall out. His skin, dark by nature, has grown a pale yellow; his bloated face has become so tightly stretched that the skin burst just behind one ear. The worms have begun to swarm there. The lower limbs, encased in gaiters, have swollen, and huge blisters have showed themselves from between the hooks of the gaiters. What will the sun make of him to-day?

It is unendurable to be so near him. I must get away, at all costs. Can I do it? I am still able to lift my hand, open the flask, and drink; but to move my passive, cumbersome body is quite another matter. Still, I will make an effort, even if it should take me an hour to move a few inches.

The entire morning passes in this attempt to shift. The pain is intense, but what does it matter? I no longer remember; I cannot imagine to myself the perception of a normal man. I have gotten used to the pain. I have managed to shift about fifteen feet, and am now in my old place. Not for long, however, have I enjoyed the fresh breeze, as far as it can be fresh with a rotting corpse only a few steps away. The breeze too has shifted and has brought the stench upon me anew to the point of nausea. The empty stomach contracts painfully and convulsively; all the internals groan. But the ill-smelling, infected air continues to pour upon me.

I weep in my desperation.

Broken in body and spirit and half insane, I was beginning to lose consciousness. Suddenly ... or is it only a delusion of a distressed imagination? Yes, I think I hear voices. The clatter of horses’ hoofs—and human voices. I almost came near shouting, but restrained myself. Suppose they should be Turks? They, of course—as if I already hadn’t suffered enough—will subject me to terrible torture, such as makes your hair stand on end just to read about in the newspapers. They’ll peel my skin off, and they’ll apply a fire to my wounded legs ... or they might invent some new torture. Is it not better to end my life at their hands than die here? Who can tell?—they may be my countrymen! Oh, accursed bushes! Why have you fenced yourselves so thickly around me? There is no opening except one aperture in the foliage, that opens like a window upon a hollow visible in the distance. There, I think, is a brook from which we drank before the battle. I can see, too, the huge flat stone across the stream, put there to serve as a bridge. They will surely cross it. The voices are dying away. I cannot make out the language they speak; my hearing too has grown weak. Oh, Lord! what if they are my countrymen!... I will shout. They will hear me even from the brook. That is better than falling into the hands of the Bashi-Bazouks. What has become of them? I don’t see them. I am being consumed with impatience; I no longer even notice the smell of the corpse, although it has not grown any less.