Nadezhda Nikolayevna

NADEZHDA NIKOLAYEVNA 

I had long been wanting to start a diary. I have a special reason for taking up my pen. Some write their memoirs because they are of considerable historical interest; some because they wish to recapture the happy days of their youth; others for the sake of gossiping and blackening people long since dead and defending themselves against accusations long since forgotten. I have none of these reasons. I am still a young man, who has not made history nor seen it made; I have no reason to blacken people, and no reason whatever to defend myself. To recapture past happiness? It was so short-lived and the end so frightful, that the memory of it is anything but pleasant.

Why then does a secret voice whisper it into my ear, why, when I wake up in the night, do familiar scenes and visions pass before me in the darkness, and why, when one pale image rises before me, do my face flame and my hands clench, and terror and rage clutch at my throat, as they did that day when I stood face to face with my mortal enemy?

I cannot rid myself of these haunting memories, and an odd thought has occurred to me. Perhaps, if I put them down on paper, I shall be finished with them; perhaps they will haunt me no longer, and will let me die in peace. That is the special reason that makes me take up my pen. Perhaps someone will read this diary, perhaps not. It is immaterial to me. Therefore, I need not apologize to my future readers either for my choice of subject, which cannot have the slightest interest for people accustomed to dealing with social, if not world, problems, or for the form in which my writings are set forth. True, I should like these lines to be read by one person, but that person will not blame me. Everything that has to do with me is dear to her. That person is my cousin.

What is keeping her so long today? It is three months now since I came to myself after that day. The first face that I saw was Sonya's. Ever since then she has been spending every evening with me. It has become with her a kind of service. She sits at my bedside or near the great easy chair when I feel strong enough to sit in it, and talks to me, reads newspapers and books to me. It grieves her to see me so indifferent to the choice of reading matter, which I leave to her.

"Here is a new novel in the Vestnik Yevropy, Andrei."

"Very well, dear, let's have it. . . ."

"It's by a Mrs. Gay."

"All right___"

And she starts on a rambling tale about a Mr. Scripple and a Miss Gordon, and after the first two pages turns her big kind eyes upon me and says.

"It isn't long; this magazine always condenses its novels."

"All right. I'm listening."

She goes on reading the circumstantial story, invented by Mrs. Gay, while I gaze at her lowered face, my thoughts elsewhere. And sometimes, at those places in the book where Mrs. Gay wants you to laugh, I feel bitter tears choking my throat. My cousin lays the book aside, looks at me with a searching anxious glance, and puts her hand on my forehead.

"Oh, Andrei, darling, again. . . . Come, come. Don't cry. It will all pass, you will forget it," she says in the tone with which a mother comforts a child who has got a bump on its forehead from falling down. And although my bump will pass only with life itself, which-I feel-is slowly ebbing from my body, I am nevertheless comforted.

Ah, my dear, dear cousin! How I appreciate this womanly tenderness! God bless you, and may the dark pages of your life-pages upon which my name is written-give place to a joyous tale of happiness! Only I hope that tale will not resemble the tiresome narrative of Mrs. Gay.

The bell! At last! It is she; she will come and bring with her into my dark stuffy room the smell of freshness, she will break its silence with her low sweet voice and light it up with her loveliness. 

I do not remember my mother, but my father died when I was fourteen. My guardian, a distant relative, had me transferred to a high school in St. Petersburg, from which I graduated in four years. I was absolutely free; my guardian was a busy man occupied with his vast affairs, and his cares for me did not go beyond providing me with money, sufficient, in his opinion, to keep me out of poverty. It was not a large allowance, but quite enough to keep the wolf from the door and enable me to choose my own career.

difficulty whatever in entering the Academy of Arts.

Was I talented? Now that I shall never touch canvas again, I think I may look upon myself as an artist with an impartial eye. Yes, I was talented. I think so not because that was the opinion of my colleagues and experts, not because of the rapidity with which I finished the academy, but because of the peculiar feeling that stirred in me every time I sat down to begin work. No one who is not an artist can experience that sweet and painful emotion that grips you when you first approach a new canvas to limn your creation upon it. No one who is not an artist can experience that utter forgetfulness of everything around you, when your spirit is sunk in images. . . . Yes, I was talented, and would have made no ordinary painter.

There they are-my paintings, sketches and studies, my finished and unfinished pictures-hanging on the walls. And there she is. . . . I must ask my cousin to have it put away in another room. But no, I ought to have it hung up at the foot of my bed so that she can always look at me with that sad doom-haunted gaze of hers. In that blue dress and pretty white cap with the large tricoloured cockade at the side, and with those thick rebellious tresses of dark auburn hair escaping from under its white frills, she looked at me as if she were alive. Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte! Should I bless or should I curse the hour when the idea of painting you occurred to me?

Bessonov, mind you, had always been against it. When I had first mentioned it to him, he had shrugged his shoulders and smiled ironically.

"You Russian painters are a crazy lot," he said. "Haven't we enough subjects of our own! Charlotte Corday! What is she to you? How can you possibly envisage that period, that setting?"

Perhaps he was right. But the image of that French heroine had gripped my imagination so strongly that I could not help painting her. I planned to do her full length, standing all alone straight in front of the spectator, with eyes gazing out before her; she had already made up her mind to perform her heroic crime, and this decision was written only upon her face, for the hand that was to deal the fatal blow still hung nerveless, looking white and tender against the dark blue woollen dress; a lace pelerine tied crosswise set off the soft neck, upon which the morrow would trace a bloody line. . . . I remember how her image had arisen in my mind. I had read her story in a sentimental and, perhaps, misleading book by Lamartine. Through the false pathos of this garrulous and flamboyant Frenchman I had obtained a clear and distinct vision of the girl, the fanatic champion of good. I read everything about her that I could get hold of, saw several portraits of her, and decided to paint a picture.

A man's first picture, like his first love, takes full possession of his soul. I carried the now completed image of her within me, I had thought over all the minutest details, and finally reached a point when I could conjure up at will with closed eyes the complete Charlotte.

But, starting the picture as I did with tremulous joy and excitement, I was immediately confronted by an unexpected and almost insuperable obstacle: I had no model to pose for me.

Strictly speaking, of course, there were models. I selected what I thought to be the most suitable candidate out of several of those who followed this vocation in St. Petersburg, and fell eagerly to work. But, my God, how unlike the cherished vision that rose so vividly before my closed eyes was this Anna Ivanovna of mine! She was an excellent sitter, who did not stir for an hour on end; she earned her ruble conscientiously, and derived no little satisfaction from the fact that she was able to pose in her dress without exposing her body.

"Isn't it wonderful to pose in your dress! Some men stare at you so, search you all over with their eyes. . . ." she had told me with a sigh at our first sitting, a tinge of colour suffusing her face.

It was only a couple of months since she had become a model, and she still could not get used to her vocation. Russian girls, I think, never can.

I did her hands, and shoulders, and her figure, but when I started on her face I was in despair. The plump young face with its slightly turned-up nose, and kindly little grey eyes that looked out confidingly and rather pathetically from under perfectly round eyebrows, completely screened from me the image of my dreams. I could not transfer those small indeterminate features to that other face. I struggled with my model for three or four days, then finally left her alone. There was no other model, so I decided to do a thing I really should not have done: to paint the face in imagination, to "make it up." The reason I decided to do this was because I saw my heroine in my mind's eye as clearly as if she were sitting before me in the flesh. But when I started work, I flung my brushes away. Instead of a living face I achieved a blank sketchiness that lacked flesh and blood.

I took the canvas off the easel and put it in a corner facing the wall. The failure was a stunning blow to me. It seemed to me that after having conceived such a beautiful picture (it was really beautiful in my imagination) and not being able to paint it life was not worth living. I flung myself down on my bed and tried to drown my sorrow and vexation in sleep.

I remember a ring at the door just as I was dozing off. It was the postman with a letter from my cousin Sonya. She was delighted to hear that I was going to do a big and difficult work, and sorry that it was so hard to find a model. "Shall I be of any use when I have graduated from the institute? Wait another six months, Andrei," she wrote, "I'll join you in St. Petersburg and you will be able to paint ten Charlotte Cordays from me if you like. . . that is, if I bear the slightest resemblance to the one, who, as you write, now reigns in your heart."

Sonya is quite unlike Charlotte. She is incapable of inflicting wounds. She much prefers healing them, and does that wonderfully.

She would heal me, too... if that were only possible. 

In the evening I went to see Bessonov.

I found him bent over his writing-desk, which was littered with books, manuscripts and press cuttings. His hand moved swiftly over the paper: he wrote very fast, in a neat florid hand without any crossings out. He glanced up at me and went on writing; apparently he was deeply engrossed in some thought at the moment and did not want to tear himself away from his work until he had committed it to paper. I sat down on the low, wide and very shabby sofa (he slept on it) standing in the shadows, and looked at him for fully five minutes. His clear-cut cold profile was very familiar to me: I had often drawn it in my sketch-book, and once even painted a sketch of it. I haven't got that sketch: he sent it to his mother. That evening, however, perhaps because I was sitting in shadow and he was well lit up by the bright flame of the lamp under a green glass shade, or because my nerves were unstrung, his face looked oddly arresting. I looked at him and studied his head in detail, examining every tiny feature that had so far eluded me. It was, without a doubt, the head of a strong man. Perhaps a not very talented one, (but certainly a strong one.

A square skull, passing down at the back almost without a curve into a thick powerful neck; a high bulging forehead; eyebrows depressed in the middle and creasing the skin in a

"What are you looking at me like that for?" he suddenly asked me, laying his pen down and turning towards me.

"How did you know?"

"I felt it. I don't think it's imagination; I have often experienced things like that before."

"I was studying your face as a model. You have a very striking head, Sergei Vasilyevich."

"Is that so?" he said with a smile. "Nothing wrong with that, I hope."

"No, seriously. You remind me of someone. . . some famous person. . . ."

"Crook or murderer?" he said, interrupting me. "Anyway what's the matter? I can tell by your face that something has gone wrong. Is it the picture?"

"Well yes, I've chucked it up, chucked it up altogether..." I said despairingly.

"I thought so. You haven't got the model, I suppose?"

"No, no, and no. You know how hard I have been looking for one, Sergei Vasilyevich. But it isn't the thing. It's enough to drive a man mad. Especially this Anna Ivanovna; she has reduced me to the verge of distraction.

That flat face of hers has blotted everything out. Sometimes I even think the image itself is not so clear to my mind as it used to be."

"Was it clear?"

"Oh yes, perfectly! If one could paint with closed eyes one could ask for nothing better, really. With your eyes shut, she is right there in front of you."

I must have looked ludicrous with my eyes shut tight, because Bessonov burst out laughing.

"It's no laughing matter, I'm very upset," I said.

His laughter ceased abruptly.

"In that case I mustn't laugh. I can't make you out, though. Didn't I tell you to drop that subject?"

"I have dropped it."

"All that work and nervous strain for nothing, and now this worry on top of it! I knew it would be like that. Not because I foresaw that you wouldn't find a model, but because the subject is unsuitable. It has to be in your blood. You have to be a descendant of those people who lived through both Marat and Charlotte Corday, and the whole of those times. And what are you? The mildest of Russian intellectuals, weak as a lamb! You must be capable of such a deed yourself. And you? Could you throw away the brush if need be, and, to put it in high-flown language, take up the dagger? Why, you might as well try to make a journey to Jupiter. . . ."

"I have argued this point with you before, Bessonov, and neither of us, it seems, has been able to convince the other. If you call yourself an artist you've got to be able to put yourself in someone else's place. Did Raphael have to be the Virgin in order to paint his Madonna? Why, it's absurd, Bessonov. But I am contradicting myself: I don't want to argue with you, yet I'm the first to start arguing."

He wanted to say something, but waved his hand instead with a hopeless gesture.

"Have it your way!" he said, getting up and beginning to pace the room from corner to corner, treading softly in his felt slippers. "Don't let us argue. Don't let us turn the knife in the wounded heart, as someone said somewhere."

"I don't think anyone said it anywhere."

"You may be right. I am in the habit of misquoting poetry. What about the samovar for consolation? It's about time."

He went up to the door and bawled like an officer at company drill: "Tea!"

I do not like him for the way he treats the servants. We said nothing for a long time. I sat leaning back against the cushions of the sofa, while he went on pacing up and down. He seemed to be turning something over in his mind. At length he stopped in front of me and said in a business-like tone:

"If you had the model, would you try again?"

"Rather!" I said dejectedly. "But where can you get her?"

He took another turn about the room.

"You see, Lopatin. . . . There is a... a person I know. . . ."

"If she's a person of importance, she won't agree to pose."

"She's not important, anything but that. But. . . there is a very important 'but' about it."

"But what 'buts' can there be, Bessonov? Unless you are joking?"

"I am joking, of course. It can't be done. . . ."

"Sergei Vasilyevich..." I began in a pleading tone.

"Listen what I'll tell you. Do you know what I appreciate in you?" he began, stopping in front of me. "You and I are about the same age-I am about two years your senior. But I have been through and experienced what it will probably take you another ten years to go through. I'm not a clean man, I am debauched" (he enunciated the word distinctly). "There are many men worse than I, but I consider myself more blameworthy. I hate myself for not being able to keep as clean as I should like to... as clean as you, for instance."

"What debauchery and cleanness are you talking about?" I asked.

"I call things by their real names. I often envy you your serenity and clear conscience; I envy what you have. . . . But, never mind that! It can't be done!" he interrupted himself angrily. "Let's drop the subject."

"At least, you can explain what it is or who it is I have?" I said.

"Nothing. . . . Nobody. . . . On second thoughts, though, I'll tell you: your cousin, Sophia Mikhailovna. She is not a near cousin of yours, is she?"

"She's a second cousin," I answered.

"Yes, a second cousin. She is your fiancee," he said in a positive tone.

"How do you know?" I exclaimed.

"I know. I guessed at first, but now I know. My mother told me, she wrote me about it recently. Somehow, she got to know her there. You know how it is in a provincial town, where everybody knows one another? It's true, isn't it? She is your fiancee?"

"What if she is?"

"And since childhood? Your parents arranged it?"

"They did. I thought it a joke at first, but now I see that it looks serious. I didn't want it to become known, but I'm not particularly sorry that you have found it out."

"I envy you your having a fiancee," he said in a low voice, staring before him and heaving a painful sigh.

"I never thought you could be so sentimental, Bessonov."

"Yes, I envy you your fiancee," he proceeded, ignoring my interruption. "I envy you your cleanness, your hopes, your future happiness, the unsquandered affection and love that have been growing from childhood."

He took my hand, made me get off the sofa and led me up to the looking-glass.

"Look at me and look at yourself," he said. "Why, you are  

Satyr-that's me. Yet I'm the stronger man: my frame is bigger, and my health is robust by nature. But just compare: do you see this?" (he lightly touched the thinning hair on his forehead). "Yes, sir, all this is 'the ardour of the soul wasted in the wilderness!' Ardour of the soul, be hanged! It's just swinishness."

"What about going back to where we were, Bessonov? Why don't you want to acquaint me with the model?"

"Because she has had a hand in this wasting of ardour. I told you she is an unimportant person and very much so. In fact she stands on the lowest rung of the human ladder. Below that lies an abyss into which she may soon fall. The abyss of utter ruin. She is utterly lost as it is."

"I think I understand you, Bessonov."

"I'm glad you do. Now you see what my 'but' was?"

"You can keep it to yourself. Why do you consider it your duty to keep watch and ward over me?"

"I have told you what I like you for. It's for being clean. Not you alone-the two of you. You are both such a rare phenomenon: a thing that breathes freshness and fragrance. I envy you, and am glad that I can at least take a detached view. And you want me to spoil the whole thing? No, there is nothing doing."

"Oh, come, this is a bit thick, Bessonov. You must have little faith in the cleanness you have found in me if you are afraid of the awful things a mere acquaintance with this woman will lead to."

"Look here. It's up to me to let you have her or not. I consult my own wishes in this matter. I don't want to let you have her. And I'm not going to. Dm."

Now he was sitting and I was pacing the carpet excitedly.

"You think she would be suitable?"

"Rather. On second thoughts, no, not very," he broke in sharply. "She's quite unsuitable. But enough of her."

I pleaded, lost my temper, tried to prove to him the absurdity of his self-imposed task of guarding my virtue, but achieved nothing. He flatly refused, and concluded by saying:

"I have never said dixi twice."

"I congratulate you on it," I answered with annoyance.

We talked a little over the tea and parted company. 

I did nothing for a whole fortnight. I only went to the academy to paint my programme work on the ghastly Biblical theme of Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt. I had it all finished-both Lot and his household-but the pillar simply baffled me. I couldn't think of anything. Was it to be something in the nature of a gravestone, or just a salt-built statue of Lot's wife?

Life ran its leisurely course. I received two letters from Sonya. After reading her sweet nothings about the goings on at the institute and the books that she was reading secretly from the Argus-eyed schoolmistress, I added them to the sheaf of previous letters, which were tied together with a pink ribbon. That ribbon had been acquired when I was fifteen, and so far I had not been able to screw up the courage to throw it away. Why should I? There was no harm in it, was there? But what would Bessonov have said had he seen this evidence of my sentimentality? Would he be touched by my "cleanness" or start mocking me?

He had upset me seriously, though. What was I to do? Drop the picture or start looking for a model again?

An unforeseen incident came to my aid. One day, while I was lying on the sofa with a silly French novel, feeling rather bemused by all those mortuaries, and detectives, and resurrecting heroes who had as many lives as twenty ordinary mortals, the door opened and Gelfreich walked in.

Imagine, if you can, a pair of skinny crooked legs, a huge body burdened with two humps, long thin arms, shoulders hunched up high as if expressing perpetual doubt, and a young, pale, slightly puffy but good-looking face on a well-poised head. He was an artist. Art lovers ore familiar with his pictures, painted for the most part on one and the same subject with slight variations. His subject was cats; drowsing cats, cats with little birds, cats with arching backs; he even had a tipsy cat with gay eyes sitting before a glass of wine. Gelfreich achieved in cats the peak of perfection, but he never attempted anything else. If the picture he was doing had any other accessories in it besides cats-some greenery, say, from behind which a pink little nose and golden eyes with narrow pupils were to peep out, or some drapery, or a basket to house a litter of kittens with huge transparent ears-he had recourse to me. Now as well he had come in with something wrapped up in blue paper. He gave me his white bony hand, then laid the package down on the table and began undoing it.

"Another cat?" I said.

"Yes. I need a bit of rug here. . . and a bit of sofa on the other one."

He unfolded the paper and showed me two small pictures about a foot square; the figures of the cats were quite finished, but they were painted against a background of white canvas.

"If not a sofa, then something else. . . anything you like."

"When will you drop these cats, Semyon?"

"I ought to, I know, they're a nuisance. But what can I do? Money! This rubbish, now, will bring me two hundred rubles."

Saying which, he stood with skinny legs apart, shrugged his hunched up shoulders, and spread his hands, as if to express astonishment at the fact that such rubbish could find a buyer.

His cats had made his reputation in two years. Neither before nor since (except, perhaps, in a picture by the late Huhn) had I seen such skill in the portrayal of cats of all ages, colours and positions. But in giving them his exclusive attention Gelfreich neglected everything else.

"Money, money," he repeated musingly. "What does a hunchbacked devil like me need so much money for? Yet I feel that it is becoming more and more difficult for me to get down to real work. I envy you, Andrei. I have been painting nothing but these creatures for two years. Of course, I'm very fond of them, especially the real ones. But I feel I'm being sucked under. Mind you, I am more talented than you are, Andrei, don't you think so?" he asked me in a tone of kindly tact.

"I don't think," I answered, smiling, "I am sure of it." "How's your Charlotte getting on?" I made a gesture of despair. "Bad?" he said. "Show me."

Seeing that I made no move and shook my head with a negative gesture, he went over to the stacks of old canvases standing in the corner and began to rummage among them himself. Then he put the reflector on the lamp, set my unfinished picture on the easel and turned the light on it. For a long time he said nothing.

"I understand you," he said at length. "It may make a good thing. But it's Anna Ivanovna nevertheless. Do you know what I have come for? Come along with me." "Where to?"

"Anywhere. Out in the street. I feel so bored, Andrei. I'm afraid I am going to backslide again." "Nonsense!" "No nonsense about it. I feel the demon thirst coming at me. 'Oh, could I but dream and forget,' " he suddenly sang out in a reedy tenor. "Really, I came to see you so as not to be alone-once I get started, you know, I'll be good for a fortnight. Then I'll be ill. Besides, it's very bad for the health. . . especially with a torso like mine."

He turned twice on his heels to show me his two humps.

"I tell you what," I suggested, "move over here and stay with me. I'll keep you off it."

"That would be fine. I'll think it over. And now, let's go."

I dressed and we went out.

We tramped through the St. Petersburg slush for a long time. It was autumn. A stiff wind was blowing from the sea. The water was rising. We stood on the Palace Embankment watching the infuriated river lashing the granite parapets with foaming waves. From the black abyss that engulfed the opposite bank there came an occasional flash as of lightning, followed in fifteen seconds by a heavy thud: they were firing guns at the fort. The water was rising.

"I wish it would rise still more. I have never seen a flood-it must be interesting," said Gelfreich.

We lingered on the embankment, peering in silence into the raging darkness.

"It won't rise any more," Gelfreich said at length. "The wind is dropping, I believe. What a pity! I have never seen a flood. . . . Let's go."

"Where?"

"Just anywhere. Come with me. I'll take you to a place I know. Nature in this mood frightens me with her trashy tricks. Let us rather go and see some human trash."

"Where is that, Semyon?"

"Leave that to me. Cab!" he shouted.

We got in and drove off. In the Fontanka, Gelfreich stopped the cab outside a wooden gate decorated with carvings and gaudily painted designs.

We passed through a muddy yard between two long two-storeyed buildings of old construction. Two powerful reflectors threw a flood of brilliant light into our faces; they hung on either side of an old porch, which was gaudily decorated with painted carvings in the so-called Russian style. People preceded us, going in the same direction as we were-men in fur coats, and women in long "diplomats" and "Palmerstons" made of a material that laid claim to expensive luxury: silk flowers on a velveteen field, with a boa round the neck and a white silk shawl on the head; all these people went through the entrance, and ascending a few steps, took off their outer garments, revealing for the most part cheap-luxury toilets, where cotton did service for silk, brass for gold, polished glass for diamonds, and ceruse, carmine, and sienna for a fresh complexion and sparkling eyes.

We bought tickets at the booking office and entered a suite of rooms set with small tables. A stuffy atmosphere surcharged with odd exhalations assailed me. Tobacco smoke, mingled with the smell of beer and cheap pomade, drifted over the heads of the noisy crowd. Some wandered about aimlessly, others sat at the tables over bottles; there were women here as well as men, and the expression of their faces was strange. All pretended to be gay, and talked about something-God only knows what! We sat down at one of the tables. Gelfreich ordered tea. I sat stirring mine with a spoon, listening to a plump little brunette with a Gypsy cast of countenance, who sat at a near-by table, answering her partner, who had asked her whether she came here often. She spoke with slow dignity in a voice that had a strong German accent and a shade of something like pride in it.

"I come here once a week. I cannot come often because I have to be in another place. Let me see, the day before yesterday I was at the German Club, yesterday at the Orphenm, today here, tomorrow at the Bolshoi Theatre, the day after tomorrow at the Prikazchik Club, then the Operetta, then the Chateau-de-fleur. . . . Yes, I go somewhere every day: and so die game Woche."

And she looked at her companion proudly. He visibly shrank on hearing such an elaborate programme of entertainments. A fairish man of about twenty-five with a low forehead over which hung a mop of hair, and wearing a brass watch-chain, he stared in awe at his gorgeous companion and sighed. Alas, it was not for him, a humble Apraksin shop assistant, to go gallivanting with this lady around the clubs and cafe chantants day in day out!

We got up and sauntered through the rooms. At the end of the suite a wide door led into a dance hall. Yellow silk curtains on the windows, a brightly painted ceiling, rows of bentwood chairs against the walls, in a corner of the hall a large white niche in the form of a shell, in which sat an orchestra of fifteen men. The women for the most part walked about in pairs with their arms round each other; the men sat against the walls, watching them. The musicians were tuning their instruments. The face of the leading violinist seemed rather familiar to me.

"Is that you, Fyodor Karlovich?" I asked, touching his shoulder.

Fyodor Karlovich looked round. My God, how fat and flabby he had grown, and grey too!

"Yes, I'm Fyodor Karlovich," he said.

"Don't you remember the Gymnasium? You used to come to our dance lesson with your violin."

"Ah! I still sit there on a little stool in the corner of the hall. I remember you now. You used to waltz very well."

"Have you been here long?"

"Over two years now."

"Do you remember how once you came early and played Ernst's Elegy in the empty hall? I was listening."

A gleam came into the musician's lacklustre eyes.

"Were you? Were you really? I thought nobody heard me. Yes, I played sometimes. . . . Now I can't. I play here now; at Shrovetide, Easter-in the daytime at the fairs, in the evening here. . . ." He paused. "I have four sons and a daughter," he murmured. "And one of the boys is finishing the this year and is entering the university. I can't play Ernst's Elegy."

The conductor waved his bow several times, and the tinny orchestra struck up a raucous polka. After beating time with his bow for three or four bars, the conductor joined his squeaky fiddle to the general chorus. The couples whirled in the dance, the orchestra made a hideous noise.

"Let's go away, Semyon," I said. "This is a frightful bore. Let's go home and have some tea, and talk about something decent."

"Decent?" he queried with a smile. "All right, let's go."

We began to edge our way towards the exit. All of a sudden Gelfreich stopped.

"Look," he said. "Bessonov."

I looked round and saw Bessonov. He was sitting at a marble-topped table on which stood a bottle of wine, glasses and plates. Bending low, his eyes gleaming, he was whispering animatedly to a woman in a black silk dress who was sitting at the same table. I could not see her face, but I noticed that she had a slender figure, slim hands and neck, and black hair combed smoothly upwards from the neck.

"Thank fate," Gelfreich said to me. "Do you know who that is? Rejoice, it is she, your Charlotte Corday."

"She? Here?" 

Holding a glass of wine in his hand, Bessonov looked up at me with bloodshot animated eyes, and his face expressed obvious annoyance.

He got up and came over to us.

"You here?"

"We came to have a look at you," I answered, smiling. "And I am not sorry, because. . . ."

He intercepted my glance as it glided over his companion, and interrupted me sharply.

"Put that out of your head. Gelfreich here must have told you already. But it won't work. I won't have it. I'll take her away. . . . "

And going up to her quickly, he said in a loud voice:

"Nadezhda Nikolayevna, let us be going."

She turned her head, and I saw for the first time her surprised face.

Yes, I saw her for the first time in that den. She was sitting there with this man, who descended sometimes to debauchery from the lofty eminence of an egotistically active life; she was sitting over an empty bottle of wine; her eyes were slightly inflamed, her pale face jaded, her costume careless and defiant. Around us was a jostling throng of idle revellers-merchants who had given up hope of ever being able to live sober, wretched shop assistants who spent their drab lives behind counters and found consolation in dens like this, fallen women and girls whose lips had touched the vile cup, all kinds of modistes, shop girls. I saw that she was already falling into the abyss which Bessonov had spoken to me about, if she had not already done so.

"Come along, Nadezhda Nikolayevna, let us go!" Bessonov hurried her.

She got up, looked at him in surprise, and said:

"What for? Where?"

"I don't want to stay here. . . . "

"You can go then. This is your acquaintance and Gelfreich, I believe?"

"Listen, Nadya.. ." Bessonov said sharply.

She frowned and threw him an angry look.

"What right have you to address me like that? Hullo, Semyon, how do you do, my dear!"

Semyon caught her hands and squeezed them.

"I say, Bessonov," he said, "stop fooling. You can go home, if you like, or remain here, but Nadezhda Nikolayevna is going to stay with us. We want to talk to her, and it's something very important. Nadezhda Nikolayevna, let me introduce to you my friend and his (pointing to the scowling Bessonov)-Lopatin, artist."

"She is so fond of pictures, Andrei!" he suddenly said to me in a joyful tone. "Last year I showed her over the exhibition. She saw your sketches, too. Do you remember?"

"I do," she answered.

"Nadezhda Nikolayevna!" Bessonov said once more.

"Leave me alone. Go wherever you like. I am staying here with Semyon and, er. . . Monsieur Lopatin. I want to relieve my mind... of you!" she suddenly cried, seeing that Bessonov was about to say something. "I am tired of you. Go away and leave me alone."

He turned away sharply and went out without saying good-bye to anyone.

"That's better... without him. . . ." Nadezhda Nikolayevna said with a painful sigh.

"What are you sighing for, Nadezhda Nikolayevna?" asked Semyon.

"I am sighing because he ought not to take the liberties which all these maimed creatures take" (she indicated the surging crowd around us with a motion of her head). "I am sick of it all. Worse than sick. I can't find words for it. Let us have something to drink, Semyon."

Semyon glanced at me ruefully.

"Well, you see, Nadezhda Nikolayevna, I really wouldn't mind, only he. . . ."

"What about him? He'll drink with us, too."

"He doesn't drink."

"Then you will."

"He won't let me."

"That's bad. Who can prevent you?"

"I promised to do what he tells me."

Nadezhda Nikolayevna looked at me with interest.

"Is that so!" she said. "Ah well, our wills are free. If you don't want to, don't. I'll drink by myself."

"Nadezhda Nikolayevna," I began, "forgive me for taking such a liberty on our first acquaintance. . . . "

I felt a hot flush mounting my cheeks. She looked at me, smiling.

"Well, what is it?"

"On our very first acquaintance I would ask you please not to... not to do this, not to behave the way you are doing. . . . I wanted to ask you a favour, too."

A look of sadness crossed her face.

"Not to behave the way I am doing?" she said. "I am afraid I can no longer behave in any other way. I have got out of the habit. Very well then, I'll try it, to please you. What is the favour?"

Stammering and stumbling over my words, I told her what it was about. She listened attentively, her grey eyes full upon my face. The strained attention with which she was following me-or perhaps it was something else-gave to her glance a severe and somewhat harsh expression.

"Very well," she said at length. "I understand what you want. I can make the face you need too."

"That's not necessary really, Nadezhda Nikolayevna, so long as it's your face."

"All right. When do I have to be at your place?"

"Tomorrow at eleven, if you can."

"So early? In that case, I'll have to go to bed. Will you see me home, Semyon?"

"Nadezhda Nikolayevna," I said, "there is another thing we haven't arranged yet. This is not done for nothing, you know."

"You mean you are going to pay me?" she said, and I caught a proud offended ring in her voice.

"Yes, otherwise I won't have it," I said firmly.

She gave me a haughty almost defiant look, but the next moment her face assumed a thoughtful expression. We were silent. I felt awkward. A tinge of colour suffused her cheeks and her eyes brightened.

"Very well," she said, "you may pay me. As much as you pay other models. What will I get for Charlotte, Semyon?"

"About sixty rubles, I should think," he answered.

"And how long will you paint her?"

"A month."

"Good, very good!" she said animatedly. "I'll try and take money from you. Thank you."

She gave me her slim hand and squeezed mine hard.

"Does he sleep at your place?" she asked, turning to me.

"Yes."

"I shan't keep him long. He'll only see me home."

Within half an hour I was at home, and five minutes after me Gelfreich returned. We undressed, went to bed and blew out the candles. I was beginning to fall asleep.

"Are you sleeping, Lopatin?" Semyon's voice suddenly came out of the darkness.

"No, why?"

"I say, I would let my left hand be chopped off this very minute to make that woman feel happy and clean," he said in a voice deep with emotion.

"Why not the right hand?" I said sleepily.

"Silly! What will I paint with?" Semyon said seriously. 

When I awoke the next day, grey morning was looking into the window.

on the other side and went to sleep again with the light sleep of early morning.

"Lopatin!" a voice sounded.

I heard it through my sleep. It coincided with my dreams, and I did not wake up, although someone was touching my shoulder.

"Lopatin, wake up," the voice said.

I sprang to my feet and saw Bessonov.

"Is that you, Bessonov?"

"Yes. You didn't expect me so early?" he said in a low voice. "Speak quietly, I should not like to wake the hunchback."

"What do you want?"

"Dress and wash yourself; I'll tell you. Come into the other room. Let him sleep."

I took my clothes and boots under my arm and went into the studio to dress. Bessonov was very pale.

"You look as if you haven't slept all night," I said.

"Yes, I did. I got up very early and did some work. Let us have some tea, and we shall talk. By the way, show me your picture."

"Not now, Bessonov. I'll finish it soon, and then you'll see it in a new and better version. Perhaps you are not pleased that I have gone against your wishes, but you wouldn't believe how glad I am that I shall finish it now, that things have turned out the way they have. I could never have hoped for anything better than Nadezhda Nikolayevna."

"I will not have you paint her," he said in a low suppressed voice.

"You haven't come here to quarrel with me, surely?"

"I won't have her coming here every day and spending hours with you. I won't let her."

"Have you the power? How can you prevent her? How can you prevent me?" I demanded with a sense of growing irritation.

"Power. . . power. . . . Just a word or two will suffice. I'll remind her what she is. I'll tell her what you are. I'll tell her about your cousin, Sophia Mikhailovna."

"Please leave my cousin out of it. If you have any claims on that woman-even if what you have told me about her is true, even if she is a fallen woman and dozens of men have similar claims on her-you may have claims on her but not on my cousin. I forbid you to tell her anything about my cousin! Do you hear?"

"Oh, so you are showing your claws! I didn't know you had them. Very well, you are right-I have no claims whatever on Sophia Mikhailovna. I will not dare to utter her name in vain. But this. . . this. . . . "

He paced the room excitedly several times from corner to corner. I could see that he was deeply agitated. I could not make out what was the matter with him. During our last conversation his words and tone had expressed such undisguised contempt for the woman, yet now. . . . I wonder?

"I say, Bessonov, you love her!"

He halted, threw me an odd glance, and said curtly, "I do not."

"Then what are you worrying about? Why make such a fuss? You don't expect me to believe that your sole concern is to save my soul from the fell clutches of this imaginary demon."

"That's my business," he said. "But remember this-by hook or by crook I'll prevent you. I won't have it! Do you hear?" he shouted defiantly.

I felt the blood rush to my head. In the corner where I happened to be standing lay all kinds of lumber, such as canvases, brushes, a broken easel. Among it stood a stick with a sharp iron point to which a large sunshade was screwed during outdoor work in the summer. I had casually picked up that spike, and when Bessonov uttered his "I won't have it," I drove the iron point into the floor with all my might. It sank into the boards an inch deep.

I did not say a word, but Bessonov glanced at me astonished, and with even, as I thought, a startled look in his eyes.

"Good-bye," he said. "I am going. You are much too worked up."

I had calmed down meanwhile.

"Wait, don't go away," I said.

"Sorry, but I have to be going. Good-bye."

And he went. I pulled the spike out of the floor with an effort, and remember touching the slightly warmed polished metal with my finger. It occurred to me for the first time that this was a terrible weapon, which could kill a man on the spot.

Gelfreich went to the academy, and I sat waiting for my model not without a certain nervousness. I had put up an entirely new canvas and got everything ready.

a fallen woman, who had instantly won all my sympathy, the odd behaviour of Bessonov. . . . What did he want of me? Was it true that he did not love her? Then why that contemptuous attitude towards her? Could he not save her if he wanted?

With these thoughts in my mind, my hand with the carbon moved over the canvas, making sketches of the pose in which I wanted to paint Nadezhda Nikolayevna, and rubbing them out one after the other.

Punctually at eleven the door bell tinkled, and a minute later she appeared for the first time on the threshold of my room. Oh, how well I remember her pale face as she stood agitated and embarrassed (yes, embarrassment had now replaced the expression of the day before) in the doorway! It was as if she did not dare to come into the room, a room in which she afterwards found happiness, the only bright moments in her life, and. .. her end. Not the end which Bessonov had spoken of. I cannot write about it, I must wait till I have calmed down. 

Sonya does not know that I am writing these bitter pages. She still comes every day to sit at my bedside or in the armchair. My friend, my poor hunchback, comes to see me very often too. He has grown very thin and haggard, and hardly speaks. Sonya says that he is working hard. I wish him luck and success!

She came, as she had promised, punctually at eleven. She walked in timidly, answered my greeting shyly and sat down in silence in the armchair that stood in a corner of the studio.

"You are very punctual, Nadezhda Nikolayevna," I said, as I began laying the paint on the palette.

She looked at me and did not answer.

"I don't know how to thank you for having consented," I went on, feeling myself blushing with embarrassment. These were not the words I wanted to say to her. "I have been looking for a model so long that I wanted to drop the picture altogether."

"Haven't you any models at the academy?" she asked.

"We have, but they're no good for me. Look at this face."

"Yes, that's not what you want," she said. "That's not Charlotte Corday."

"You know the story of Charlotte Corday?' I asked.

She glanced at me with an odd look of mingled surprise and pain.

"Why should I not know it?" she said. "I have been to school. I have forgotten a good deal now, leading this life, but I still remember something. One never forgets things like these."

"What school did you go to, Nadezhda Nikolayevna?"

"Why do you want to know? If you don't mind, let us begin."

Her tone had suddenly changed. She uttered the words curtly and sullenly, the way she had spoken to Bessonov the day before.

I fell silent. I got out of the wardrobe the dark-blue dress, cap and all the other accessories of Charlotte's costume which I had had sewn, and asked her to go into the next room and change. I had barely had time to prepare what I needed for my work when she reappeared.

Confronting me stood my picture.

"Oh, my God, my God!" I exclaimed with delight. "Isn't it wonderful! Tell me, Nadezhda Nikolayevna, have we never met before? There is no other way to account for it. I have always imagined my picture exactly as you are now. I think I have seen you somewhere. Your face must have subconsciously impressed itself upon my memory. Tell me, where have I seen you?"

"Where could you have seen me?" she reiterated. "I don't know. I never met you until yesterday. Will you please begin. Show me how I am to stand, and begin painting."

I asked her to take up her position, adjusted the folds of her dress, touched her hands slightly to give them that nerveless look which I had in mind, and went back to my easel.

She stood before me. She stands before me now, right here, on this canvas. She looks at me as if she were real.

She has the same wistful expression, the same shadow of death upon her pale face that she had worn that day.

and it was not until an hour later that, happening to look up at my model's face, I perceived that she was ready to drop from fatigue.

"Oh, I am so sorry!" I said, helping her down from the dais on which she had been standing and seating her in an armchair. "I have tired you out."

"That's all right," she answered, pale but smiling. "If I am going to earn my bread I must suffer a bit. I am glad that you are so enthusiastic about it. May I look at it?" she said, with a motion of her head towards the picture, the face of which she could not see.

"Why, of course!"

"Oh, what a smear!" she cried. "I have never seen the beginning of an artist's work. It's so interesting! And do you know, I can see what this smear is going to be. You have conceived a very good picture, Andrei Nikolayevich. I shall try my best to make it a success... as far as it depends on me."

"What can you do?"

"As I said yesterday. . . . I will give you the expression you want. It will make it easier for you."

She quickly took up her position, threw her head back and dropped her arms, while her face expressed all that I had dreamt of for my picture. It depicted determination and anguish, pride and fear, love and hatred.

"Is it all right?" she asked. "If it is, I will stand like this as long as you like."

"I could ask for nothing better, Nadezhda Nikolayevna; but it will be difficult for you to hold that expression for long. Thank you. We shall see. It's a long way off yet. You will have lunch with me, I hope?"

Agafya Alexeyevna, who looked after all my needs, served us lunch; we sat down at the table together for the first time. How many times this happened afterwards! Nadezhda Nikolayevna ate little without speaking; she was apparently shy. I poured her out a glass of wine, which she drank off almost at once. The colour kindled in her pale cheeks.

"Tell me," she said suddenly, "have you known Bessonov long?"

The question caught me unawares. Remembering what had taken place between me and Bessonov because of her, I was taken aback.

"Why do you blush? But never mind, just answer my question."

"Yes, a long time. Since childhood."

"Is he a good man?"

"Yes, I suppose he is. He is honest, he works hard. He is a very talented man. He treats his mother well."

"He has a mother? Where is she?"

I named the place, adding: "She has a little house there. He sends her money and visits her sometimes. I have never seen a more doting mother."

"Then why doesn't he bring her out here?"

"I don't think she wants to come. I don't know, really. She has a house there, and is used to the place."

"That isn't true," Nadezhda Nikolayevna said musingly. "He doesn't send for his mother because he thinks she will be in his way here. I don't know it, but that's what I think. She will embarrass him. She is a provincial lady, the widow of some petty government clerk. She will shock him."

She gave the word "shock" a sarcastic emphasis.

"I don't like the man, Andrei Nikolayevich," she said.

"Why? He's a good fellow, really."

"I don't like him. I am afraid of him. . . . But there, let us get on with the work."

She took her place. The short autumn day was drawing to a close.

I worked till dusk, giving Nadezhda Nikolayevna an occasional breathing space, and it was not until the colours became blurred and the figure standing on the dais in front of me became wrapped in shadow that I laid down my brushes. Nadezhda Nikolayevna changed and went away. 

That evening I helped Semyon to move over to my rooms. He lived in Sadovaya, in a great building packed from top to bottom with tenants. The more aristocratic part of the house facing Sadovaya was occupied by furnished apartments kept by a retired captain named Grum-Skrzebicki who let his fairly large and untidy rooms to young artists, students and musicians, who formed the bulk of his tenants. The stern captain, himself a model of discretion, strictly observed the proprieties of what he called his "hotel."

corridor someone was pounding on a piano. I knocked at the door of Gelfreich's room.

"Come in!" he cried in his high-pitched voice.

He was sitting on the floor, putting his belongings into a huge box. A strapped portmanteau lay near by. Semyon was packing without any system whatever. At the bottom of the box he had put a pillow, and on top of that the unscrewed parts of a table lamp wrapped up in paper, then a small leather mattress, boots, a batch of sketches, a box of paints, books and various odds and ends. Near the box sat a big tawny cat, gazing into its master's face. This cat, according to Gelfreich, had a permanent job with him.

"I am ready. Andrei," said Gelfreich. "I am very glad that you are taking me to live with you. Did you have a sitting today? Did she come?"

"Yes, Semyon, she came," I said, inwardly exulting. "Do you remember that phrase you said last night. . . about giving your left hand?"

"Well?" he asked, sitting down on the box, smiling.

"I am beginning to understand you, Semyon."

"There, you see! Ah, Andrei, Andrei, drag her out of it! I can't do it. I'm a stupid hunchbacked devil. You know only too well that I won't be able to drag my own weight through life, all through a long life, without someone's assistance-yours, for instance-leave alone supporting someone else! I need someone myself to save me from drunkenness, to take me -under his wing, make me work, keep my money for me, paint my baskets, sofas and all the rest of the furniture for my cats. Ah, Andrei, what would I do without you!"

On a sudden affectionate impulse, Semyon jumped off the box, ran up to me, flung his arms round me and pressed his head to my breast. His soft silky hair touched my lips. Then, as quickly, he ran away into a corner of the room (I have a strong suspicion that he brushed away a tear in doing so) and seated himself in an armchair standing there in the shadows.

"There, see how weak I am! But you. . . you are different, Andrei. Get her out of it, Andrei!"

I said nothing.

"There was another man who could have done it," Semyon continued, "but he did not want to."

"Bessonov?" I said.

"Yes, Bessonov."

"Has he known her long, Semyon?"

"Yes; before me. That man's head is all drawers and compartments; he pulls one out, takes out a ticket, reads what is written on it, then acts accordingly. Here was this opportunity. Sees a fallen girl. He goes at once to the compartments in his head (they are all arranged there alphabetically), pulls out a ticket, and reads: There is no return for them."

Semyon became silent. With his chin propped in his hand he gazed at me thoughtfully.

"Tell me, how did they get acquainted? What are these strange relations between them?"

"Some other time, Andrei. Not now. She may tell you herself, perhaps. I shouldn't have said 'perhaps'-she is sure to tell you. You are that kind, you know. . . . " Semyon said, smiling. "Let's go, I must settle up with the captain."

"Have you any money?"

"Yes. The cats see to that."

He went out into the corridor and shouted something to the servant. A minute later the captain himself appeared. He was a sturdy thickset old man with a very fresh, clean-shaven face. On coming into the room he scraped a foot with a swaggering flourish, shook hands with Gelfreich and acknowledged my presence with a silent bow.

"What does the pan " he asked politely.

"I am leaving you, Captain."

"As you please," the latter said, shrugging his shoulders. "I was perfectly satisfied with you, sir. I am glad to have such excellent and educated people living in my hotel. Is the gentleman an artist too?" he added, turning to me with another elegant bow. "Allow me to introduce myself: Captain Grum-Skrzebicki, an old soldier."

I shook hands and gave my name.

"Pan Lopatin?" exclaimed the captain, his face expressing respectful surprise. "That is a well-known name. I have heard it from all pupils of the academy. Very happy to have met you, sir. I wish you the fame of Semiradski and Matejko. Where are you moving to?" the captain asked Gelfreich.

"To his place," the latter answered with an embarrassed smile.

"Although you rob me of an excellent tenant, I am not annoyed. The right of friendship comes first. . . . " the captain said with another bow. "I will bring my book in a minute."

He went out with his head high in the air. There was something martial in his step.

"Where did he serve?" I asked Semyon.

"I don't know. All I know is that he is not a Russian captain. I have seen his passport, it simply says nobleman Ksawery Grum-Skrzebicki. He tells everyone confidentially that he was in the insurrection. He still has a fowling-piece hanging on his wall."

of the month. Semyon paid him and we parted company in a most friendly manner. When the things had been carried out, Semyon took the tawny cat under his arm (evidently the sight of the desolate room had disturbed it, for it had been rubbing itself anxiously against his legs, and miaowing from time to time, its tail standing up like a little stick) and we rode off. 

There were three or four more sittings. Nadezhda Nikolayevna came at ten or eleven and stayed till dusk. I often asked her to stay and have dinner with us, but she always retired hastily to the next room as soon as the sitting was over, changed the blue dress for her black one and took her leave at once.

Her face had altered considerably during those few days. There was an air of brooding misery in the lines of her mouth and the hollows of her grey eyes. She seldom spoke to me, and was slightly more animated only when Gelfreich was sitting in the studio at his easel. Despite my advice to take up something more serious, he continued to paint his cats one after another. In addition to the tawny model, some five or six cats of varied age, sex and colour had made their appearance in our rooms, and Agafya dutifully fed them, although she waged ceaseless war against them. These hostilities mainly took the form of gathering the cats up under her arms and throwing them out on the backstairs. But the cats cried so piteously at the door that our soft-hearted housekeeper relented. The door was opened and the cats were given the run of the place once more.

How vividly I recollect those long quiet sittings! The picture was nearing completion, and a vague oppressive feeling gradually crept into my heart. I felt that when I had no further need of Nadezhda Nikolayevna as a model, we would part. I recalled my conversation with Gelfreich the day he had moved over; often, when gazing "Ah, Andrei, Andrei, help her out!"

Help her out! I hardly knew anything about her. I did not even know where she lived. She had left her old lodgings where Gelfreich had seen her home on the evening when we had first met, and Semyon could not get her to tell him where she had moved to. Neither he nor I knew her surname.

I remember asking her about it at one of our sittings when Gelfreich was not there. He had gone to the academy that morning (I made him attend the sketching class once in a while) and we had spent the whole day together. Nadezhda Nikolayevna was a bit more cheerful than usual, and somewhat more talkative. Encouraged by this, I made bold to say: "Nadezhda Nikolayevna, I don't know your surname all this time."

She did not seem to hear my question. A faint shadow crossed her face, and shutting her lips for a moment as if something had startled her, she went on speaking. She spoke about Gelfreich, and I could see that she was trying to lead me away from the subject I had touched on. At last she fell silent.

"Nadezhda Nikolayevna," I said, "tell me, why don't you trust me? Have I ever given you cause. . . ."

"Please don't," she said sadly. "I don't trust you? Nonsense. . . . Why shouldn't I? What harm can you do me?"

"Then why do you. . . ."

"Because it is better so. Get on with your painting, hurry up, it will be dark soon," she said, trying to sound cheerful. "Gelfreich will soon be here, too; what will you show him? You have not done anything today. We spend all the time talking."

"There's plenty of time. . . I'm tired. . . . If you like you can come down and rest a bit."

She came down and sat in a chair standing in the corner. I sat down at the other end of the room. I was dying to have a talk with her, to ask her all about herself, but I felt this getting more and more difficult from one sitting to another. I looked at her sitting there hunched up, her hands clasping her knees, and her eyes staring fixedly at the floor. One of Semyon's cats was rubbing against her dress and looking up into her face in a friendly manner while it crooned its good-natured little song. She seemed to have frozen in that attitude. What was going on in that proud unhappy heart?

as others live, she would have been an interesting young lady "with enigmatic eyes," then she would have married and become submerged in a sea of aimless existence at the side of a husband absorbed in extremely important affairs in some high post. She would dress herself up, entertain, bring up her children ("a son at the Gymnasium, a daughter at the institute")/ dabble in charities, and, upon reaching the end of her allotted span, give her husband occasion to announce his "deep sorrow" in the Novoye Vremya the next day. But she had been knocked out of the saddle. What had made her leave the beaten path of "respectability"? I did not know, and tried in vain to read it in her face. It was inscrutable, and her eyes were still fixed upon the floor.

"I feel rested, Andrei Nikolayevich," she suddenly said, looking up.

I stood up, looked at her and then at the canvas, and said, "I can't do any more today, Nadezhda Nikolayevna."

sadness flooded my soul. A vague expectancy of something unknown and awesome, an overmastering impulse to do something-I knew not what-and a tenderness towards that unhappy creature combined with that odd sense of timidity which her presence always inspired me with-all these mingled in a single overpowering feeling I could find no name for. I do not know how long I sat there, sunk almost in complete oblivion.

When I came to myself she was standing before me dressed for going out.

"Good-bye," she said.

I got up and gave her my hand.

"Wait a minute... I want to tell you something."

"What is it?" she asked anxiously.

"A lot, Nadezhda Nikolayevna, a whole lot. Can't you sit for once not as a model?"

"Not as a model? But what else can I be to you? May God help me from being anything else to you-from being what I was.. . what I am," she corrected herself quickly. "Good-bye. Shall you soon be finished with the picture, Andrei Nikolayevich?" she asked when she reached the door.

"I don't know. I think I'll have to ask you to come here for another two weeks or three."

She was silent, as if she could not bring herself to say what she wanted.

"Is there anything you need, Nadezhda Nikolayevna?"

"Do any of your... er. .. artist friends need a. . . . " she stammered.

"A model," I broke in. "I'll try to arrange that for you, Nadezhda Nikolayevna, I certainly will."

"Thank you. Good-bye."

Before I could give her my hand the bell rang. She paled and sank into a chair. Bessonov came in. 

had last seen him, but the next moment that impression vanished. He greeted me cheerfully, bowed to Nadezhda Nikolayevna, who continued to sit in her chair, and began speaking animatedly.

"I've dropped in to have a look at your work. It interests me very much. I want to know whether you really can do anything now that you have such a model, better than which you could hardly desire."

He glanced at Nadezhda Nikolayevna. She was still sitting. I expected her to get up and go away, I wanted her to, but she remained as if chained to her chair, her gaze fixed upon Bessonov's face in utter silence.

"That's true," I said. "I could ask for nothing better. I am very grateful to Nadezhda Nikolayevna for consenting to sit for me."

"There you are!" I said.

He fastened his eyes upon the picture. Obviously he was deeply impressed, and I felt rather flattered.

Nadezhda Nikolayevna suddenly got up.

"Good-bye," she said in a low voice.

"Oh, don't go away, Nadezhda Nikolayevna! I haven't seen you for so long, and now that I have met you here almost by accident, you want to run away from me. Wait a little, if only five minutes; we'll go together, I'll see you home. I couldn't find you anywhere. They told me at your old lodgings that you had left town; I knew it wasn't true. I made inquiries at the Address Bureau, but they didn't have your address there yet. I intended to inquire again tomorrow in the hope that they would have your address by that time; but now, of course, it is unnecessary; you will tell me yourself where you live; I shall see you home."

He spoke rapidly and with a touch of tenderness that I had never heard from him before. His present tone was so unlike that in which he had spoken to Nadezhda Nikolayevna that evening when Gelfreich and I had run into them both!

"There's no need to, Sergei Vasilyevich, thank you," Nadezhda Nikolayevna answered. "I will go home by myself. I need no one to see me home, and. . . . " she finished quietly, "I have nothing to talk to you about."

He made a gesture, wanted to say something, but only a single odd sound escaped from his throat. I could see that he was trying to control himself. He took a turn about the room, then said to her in a low voice:

"Go then. . . . If you have no need of me, then all the better for both of us... perhaps for the three of us. . . . "

She went away with a gentle pressure of my hand; we were left alone. Presently Gelfreich came in; I invited Bessonov to stay and have dinner with us. In a fit of abstraction, he did not answer me at once, then suddenly caught himself and said:

"Dinner? I don't mind. I haven't been here for a long lime. I'd like to have a good talk today."

And so he did. At the beginning of the meal he hardly said anything beyond throwing out a few curt responses to Semyon, who spoke about his cats without a stop, saying he had definitely made up his mind to drop them. It was about time he really took up something serious. Eventually, under the influence, perhaps, of two glasses of wine, Gelfreich's animation communicated itself to him, and I must say that I had never seen him so lively and eloquent as he was at dinner that evening. Towards the end he quite monopolized the conversation and read us quite a lecture on domestic and foreign politics; two years' experience in writing leading articles on all kinds of questions enabled him to speak quite freely about these things, of which Gelfreich and I, occupied as we were with our sketches, knew very little.

"Look here, Semyon," I said when Bessonov had gone, "I'm sure that Bessonov knows Nadezhda Nikolayevna's surname."

"What makes you think so?" asked Gelfreich.

I described to him the scene that had been enacted here before he came.

"Then why didn't you ask him? I understand you, though; I'll find it out myself."

Why, indeed, had I not asked Bessonov? I cannot answer that question even now. I knew nothing about the relations between him and Nadezhda Nikolayevna at that time, but I was already haunted by a vague presentiment that something was going to happen between those two people, something strange and mysterious. I had wanted to check Bessonov's fervid speech on opportunism, interrupt his exposition of the dispute at to whether capitalism was or was not developing in Russia, but the words had stuck in my throat every time.

I told Gelfreich about it. I told him in the following words:

"I don't know myself what it is that prevents me from speaking about her simply. There is something between them. I don't know what it is."

Semyon, who was pacing the room in silence, crossed over to the dark window, looked out into the darkness, and answered:

"But I do. He despised her, and now he is beginning to love her. Because he sees. . . . Oh, what a hardened, egotistical heart, what an envious heart, that man has, Andrei!" he exclaimed, turning to me and shaking both hands in the air. "Beware of him, Andrei!"

An envious heart? Envious. . . . What can it envy? 

From Bessonov's diary. every day, sit together for hours, and I know what it will lead to.

In vain do I try to solve the question as to why I take such a warm interest in this matter. What difference does it make to me? Admittedly, I have known Lopatin for many years, and I believe I sincerely sympathize with that talented youth. I do not wish him ill, but intimacy with a fallen woman, who has been through fire and water, is an evil, especially for such an untainted nature as his. I have known this woman for a fairly long time. I got to know her when she was already what she is. There was a time, I must confess, when I yielded to weakness, and, attracted by her rather uncommon looks and what I believed to be remarkable personality, I thought more about her than I should have done. But I soon mastered myself. Knowing by long experience that it were easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a woman who had tasted that poison to return to a normal honest life, and after watching her closely, I became convinced that she had none of the saving virtues that would have made her an exception to the general rule, and it was with an aching heart that I decided to leave her to her fate. Nevertheless I continued to meet her.

I shall never forgive myself the mistake I made that evening when Lopatin came to me complaining about his failure. I gave myself away by telling him that I had the very person he wanted for a model. I cannot make out why Gelfreich had not told him of it before; he knows her as long as I do, if not longer.

My indiscretion and quick temper have ruined everything today. I should have been more careful; but instead I made that soft-hearted man lose his temper. He seized some spear or other and drove it into the floor with such force that the window-panes rattled. Seeing what a passion he was in I was obliged to withdraw.

I have not seen Lopatin for some days. I met Gelfreich in the street yesterday and discretely turned the talk on his friend.

Lopatin is very pleased at having found such a model; he cheered up considerably at first, but now he broods a bit.

"I don't know why you are so interested in all this, Bessonov," the hunchback said to me in conclusion. "You never took any interest in that woman. Yet there was a time when you could easily have saved her. It's too late now, of course. . . too late for you, I mean."

Too late for you! Too late for you! What did he mean? That if it was too late for me it was not too late for his friend? What fools!

What! And this Gelfreich too! He considers himself his friend, knows better than I do what his relations to his betrothed cousin are-yet he does not understand the evil they are working! They will never save that woman; Lopatin will break his heart and the heart of the girl who loves him. . . .

I feel that I must, it's my duty to do something. I will go and see Lopatin tomorrow during the day and see for myself how far things have gone. I will go and see her today.

janitors could help me to trace her. I am going to see Lopatin tomorrow.

I must abandon my former line of action. I was mistaken in Lopatin; I thought, judging by his mild nature, that one could speak to him in a peremptory tone; I must say that our previous relations to a certain extent justified that view. The thing is to work on that woman without touching him. There was a time when I thought she was interested in me a bit. I believe that with a slight effort I shall be able to separate them. Perhaps I shall awaken the old feeling in her and she will return to me.

To pay court to Nadezhda Nikolayevna! The idea is crazy, yet I find myself dwelling upon it. I feel that I have no right to allow Lopatin to ruin himself and his whole life.

That woman is mocking me! I spoke to her with all the tenderness of which I am capable, even used a tone that was humiliating to me, but she went away, after uttering a few offensive and scornful words.

She has changed amazingly. That pale face of hers has acquired a stamp of dignity quite out of keeping with her social position. She is at once modest and seemingly proud. What can she be proud of? I scrutinized Lopatin's face, hoping to read there the history of his relations with her. Nothing much: he is rather excited, but that is mainly due to his picture. It is going to be a splendid thing. She stands out on the canvas as if she were alive.

which I am at present working on.

But what am I to do? Let things take their own course? I promised Lopatin once not to mix his cousin Sophia up in these affairs. I must keep my promise, of course. But can't I write to my mother? She sees Sophia, if only rarely, and may tell her. I shall not be breaking my promise, and at the same time. . . .

No, a thing like this should not be left to take its own course. I have no right to do that. As for that woman, I'll make her give up her prey by hook or by crook. The thing is to find out where she lives. Then I can have it out with her. And now I must drop all this and take up my work. In this empty and aimless hurly-burly that we call life there is only one genuine absolute joy: the satisfaction of a man, who, immersed in his labours, forgets all the trivialities of life, and afterwards, when his labour is completed, can say to himself with pride: yes, today I have done good. 

Lopatin's notes. Six days have passed since the meeting with Bessonov, but Nadezhda Nikolayevna has not come to see me. She merely sent me a note asking me to excuse her as she was busy.

he nor I knew her name. It was no use asking Bessonov. I was in despair, but Semyon promised to find her if he had "to search the bottom of the sea" to do it. Getting up early the next morning, he dressed with a preoccupied determined air, as if he were going out on a dangerous expedition, and disappeared for the rest of the day.

Left by myself, I tried to do some work, but I could not. I took a book down from the shelf and started to read. The words and thoughts passed through my mind without registering. I tried hard to concentrate, but could not get through more than several pages.

I shut the book-a good clever book, which only a few days ago I had read with the eagerness and pleasure which one always derives from good reading-and went out to roam about the town.

A slender half-conscious hope of meeting if not Nadezhda Nikolayevna herself, then someone who could enlighten me, did not leave me all the time, and I peered at the passers-by and often crossed the road on seeing a woman who in any way resembled the familiar image. But I met no one except Captain Grum-Skrzebicki. It was some time past three (it was the end of December and getting already dark) and he was taking a stroll down Nevsky Prospekt with a grand air of dignity. It was very warm, and the captain's smart fur coat, unbuttoned at the neck, revealed a coloured silk tie with a brilliant tie-pin; the captain's hat shone as if it were polished, and his hand, sheathed in a fashionable yellow glove with thick black seams, rested on a walking-stick with a large bone knob.

Seeing me, he smiled an affable lofty smile, made an affable gesture with his hand, and came up to me.

"I am delighted to see Monsieur Lopatin," he said. "This is a very pleasant meeting."

He shook my hand, and in reply to my question about his health, continued:

"Thank you. Are you taking a stroll, or are you in a hurry to go somewhere? If the former is the case, do you mind taking a walk with me? I would gladly go your way, but it's a habit of mine, Monsieur Lopatin, to take my daily walk along Nevsky twice in each direction. I never break that rule."

I was going to turn back in any case, so I joined the captain. He sustained the conversation with dignity.

"This is my second pleasant meeting today," he said. "I have also met Mr. Bessonov and learned that he too is a friend of yours."

"So you know Bessonov, too, Captain?"

"Ask me whom I do not know!" the captain said with a shrug of his shoulders. "Mr. Bessonov lived in my hotel, too, when he was a student. We were good friends, sir. The people who lived in my hotel-you'd be surprised, Monsieur Lopatin. The captain knows many an engineer, lawyer and writer who are now famous. Yes, quite a lot of celebrated people know me."

In the course of this speech the captain bowed politely to a gentleman with a preoccupied and intelligent face who passed by swiftly. The gentleman looked puzzled, then smiled and nodded to the captain in a friendly way.

"He does not forget old friends, although he has risen to high rank, that gentleman has, Monsieur Lopatin. Well-known Engineer Petrishchev. Lived at my hotel as a student too."

"And Bessonov?" I asked.

"Bessonov is a fine gentleman, too. Rather weak as regards the lovely eyes of the gentle sex, I should say," the captain added, bending over towards my ear.

I felt my heart begin to beat faster. It seemed to me that the captain ought to know something about Nadezhda Nikolayevna too.

The captain bowed again to some passing acquaintance and resumed:

"Yes, if he were not such a fine young gentleman I would have quarrelled with him, pan Lopatin. But I remember my own youth, and besides, an old soldier can still appreciate a pair of lovely eyes. . . ."

"I am very glad you know Bessonov, Captain," I began. "I did not know it."

"Yes, he lived at my hotel for a very short time."

"Was he acquainted with. . . ."

Suddenly I felt horribly ashamed of myself. My tongue was checked in the very act of pronouncing the name of Nadezhda Nikolayevna. I glanced at the captain, who was staring hard at me with a suddenly changed expression. He now looked like a hawk.

"But, pardon me, I don't suppose you would know," I ended up lamely.

He looked at me, assumed an air of complete unconcern and flourished his stick.

"Yes, an old soldier has lots to remember," he went on as though I had asked him nothing. "The shady side of fifty," he added with a sorrowful shake of the head. "I must say I envy you, Monsieur Lopatin, but I envy only your youth."

"Where did you serve, Captain?" I asked, recollecting Gelfreich's words.

The captain's expression underwent a sudden change once more. He became grave, looked right, then left, then over his shoulder, and bent close to my face, his moustache almost touching my ear.

"Between you and me, as between honest gentlemen! The man before you, Monsieur Lopatin, is a soldier of Mekhov and Opatov!"

He stepped back a pace and regarded me with a look that seemed to invite astonishment. I made an effort to give my face the expression suitable to the occasion.

"It is a secret which I confide only to a few very near friends," the captain whispered again, leaning towards me, then recoiling again, and eyeing me with a triumphant air. It remained for me to express my gratitude for the confidence and to take leave of him, as we were already approaching Politseisky Bridge.

I was annoyed with myself; I had very nearly mentioned the name of Nadezhda Nikolayevna to a man in whom 1 did not feel the slightest confidence.

When I "our cat-lover" had not arrived yet. She served me my dinner and stood by the door with a face that expressed extreme regret on account of my poor appetite.

"Why doesn't that lady of yours come any more, Andrei Nikolayevich?" she said.

"I suppose she is ill, Agafya."

She shook her head, and, drawing a deep sigh, went out into the kitchen to fetch me my tea. It was a long time since I had dined without Gelfreich, and I felt very miserable. 

I have never concealed anything from her. When I die - and that will happen soon, as death is not creeping up to me, but approaching with a firm tread, the sound of which I hear clearly in the sleepless nights when I feel worse and when both my illness and visions of the revived past torment me more than ever-when I die, and she reads these notes, let her know that I had never lied to her, never. I wrote her everything that I thought and felt, and if I omitted anything in my long letters, it was something the existence of which in my own heart I had never suspected, or would not admit to myself, although I had vaguely felt it.

But she knew me. Although she was only nineteen, she understood with that sensitive and loving heart of hers what I had not dared admit to myself, what had never taken shape in my mind in definite words.

"You love her, Andrei. I wish you happiness. . . ."

I could not read further. A torrent of emotion swept over me and through me. I leaned back in the armchair with the letter in my hands, and sat there motionless for a long time with closed eyes, while the torrent surged and stormed within my breast.

with her. If anyone had told me that I could fall in love with another woman I would not have believed him. It had seemed to me that my destiny had been settled. "Here is thy wife," said the Lord to me, "and thou shalt have no other"-of that I was firmly convinced; I was certain of my future, confident of my choice. To love any other woman seemed to me a needless and unworthy whim.

And then had come that strange unhappy creature with a ruined life and anguish in her eyes; at first pity had gripped my heart; anger against the man who had treated her with such disdain had made me take her part all the stronger, and then. . . . Then, I don't know how it happened. . . . But Sonya was right: I loved her agonizingly and passionately, with the first love of a man who had not known love until the age of twenty-five. I wanted to tear her out of the hell of misery in which she was plunged, to carry her away in my arms, somewhere far far away, to lull her upon my breast so that she would forget, to see that lifeless face brighten with a happy smile. And Sonya had told me all that in a single line.

"Do not think about me. I do not want to say that you should forget me altogether, but merely that you should not think about causing me any pain. I shall not complain of a broken heart, and shall I tell you why? Because it is not broken at all. I have got used to regarding you both as a brother and a fiance: the former was real, but the latter, I believe, people invented and forced upon us. I love you better than anyone else in the world; I need hardly have written that, because you know it yourself; but when I read your last letter and told myself the truth about you and Nadezhda Nikolayevna-believe me, my dear, not a drop of bitterness mingled with my feeling. I understood that I am a sister to you, not a wife; I understood it from the joy which I felt at your happiness-joy mixed with fear for you. I do not conceal this fear; but may God help you to save her, and be happy, and make her happy.

"From what you have written me about Nadezhda Nikolayevna, I think that she is worthy of your love. . . . "

A new joyous feeling gradually took possession of me as I read those lines. I did not share Sonya's fears; what did I have to fear? When and how it happened I do not know, but I believed in Nadezhda Nikolayevna. All her past life, of which I knew nothing, and her fall-the only thing in her life that I did know-seemed to me something accidental, unreal, an error of fate, in which Nadezhda Nikolayevna was not to blame. Something had rushed upon her, spun her round, knocked her off her feet, and flung her into the mud, but I would lift her out of it, press her to my heart and assuage the anguish of that bruised life.

and Semyon, seizing my hands, hopped about on one spot, shouting in a shrill happy voice: "I've brought her, Andrei, I've brought her!"

Behind him stood a dark figure. I rushed up to her, seized her trembling hands and began to kiss them, scarcely hearing what she was saying to me in a voice that was deep with emotion and suppressed tears. 

The three of us sat together for a long time on that memorable evening. We talked, and joked, and laughed; Nadezhda Nikolayevna was calm and seemingly even cheerful. I did not ask Gelfreich where and how he had found her, and he himself did not say a word about it. Between me and her nothing was said to hint at all that I had been thinking over and feeling before her arrival. It was hardly modesty or indecision that restrained me; it was simply that I considered it needless, superfluous; I was afraid to turn the knife in her wounded soul. I was as talkative and cheerful as ever; Gelfreich expressed his delight with boisterous gayety; he beamed, talked without a stop and sometimes made Nadezhda Nikolayevna smile at his antics. Agafya laid the table and brought in the samovar. When everything was arranged to her satisfaction, she stood by the door, cheek in hand, surveying us all for several minutes and watching Nadezhda Nikolayevna brewing the tea and acting the hostess.

"Is there anything you need, Agafya?" I asked.

"I need nothing, my dear, I'm just looking at you. Can't an old woman look without giving offence!" she said. "I'm just looking at the young lady there doing the honours. It does me good to see it."

Nadezhda Nikolayevna hung her head.

"It does make a nice change, after seeing the men doing everything for themselves-pouring out the tea, and all that. Excusing the liberty, Andrei Nikolayevich, but I'm beginning to find things a bit dull here too without a mistress about the house."

She turned away and shuffled off down the passage. Our gayety vanished. Nadezhda Nikolayevna got up and began pacing the room.

My painting stood in a corner. I had not gone up to it for some days, and the paint on it had dried. Nadezhda Nikolayevna looked at her picture for a long time, then turned to me and said with a smile:

"We shall soon be finished now. I will not make any more breaks like that. It will be ready in good time for the exhibition."

"How you resemble it!" Semyon interposed.

She broke off abruptly, as if a sudden thought prevented her from speaking, and moved away from the picture with a frowning face.

"What's the matter, Nadezhda Nikolayevna? Frowning again!" I said.

"Nothing much, Andrei Nikolayevich. I really do resemble that picture very much. It occurred to me that many people know me, too many. . . . I can imagine what is going to happen. . . ."

"I was thinking of all the talk, all the questions you would have to listen to!" she resumed. "'Who is she? Where did you find her?' And the people to ask will be those who know who I am and where I was to be found. . . ."

"Nadezhda Nikolayevna. . . . "

"You did not shun me, Andrei Nikolayevich, you and dear Semyon; I was a human being to you. It is the first time this has happened to me in three years. I did not believe in myself. . . . Do you know why I left you? I thought (forgive me for it!), I thought you were like the rest of them. I thought-there, I, my face, my body have come in useful for something, and so I came to you. The picture was nearing completion, you were polite and tactful towards me; I was not used to being treated like that and did not believe in myself. I did not want to experience a certain kind of blow, because such a blow would have hurt me very very much. . . . "

She sat down in the deep armchair and dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief.

"Forgive me," she continued. "I did not believe you, and it was with horror that I awaited the moment when you would at last look at me with the eyes I had grown so used to during these last three years, because no one during those three years has looked at me in any other way-----"

She stopped; her face was distorted with pain, and her lips quivered. She looked into the far corner of the room as if she saw something there.

"There was one man, only one, who did not look at me like all the rest... or like you. But I. . . . "

Gelfreich and I listened to her with bated breath.

"But I killed him. . . . " she breathed in a barely audible voice.

From Bessonov's diary. I am waiting for something to happen. I went there recently and saw them together. All the will power that I possess was insufficient to enable me to go on wearing the mask of indifference and politeness that I have put on; I felt that if I stayed another quarter of an hour I would cast it off and show my real face.

The woman is unrecognizable. I have known her for three years, and have grown accustomed to taking her for what she was during those years. Now I see the change that has taken place in her, and I don't understand her; I don't know whether that change is genuine, or whether it is merely a role skilfully played by a wretched creature who is accustomed to deceive herself and others.

I could not make out anything about their relations. I do not even know whether she has become his mistress or not. Somehow I do not think she has. If so, she is cleverer than I thought. What is she aiming at? To become his wife?

On re-reading these few lines I find that everything written in them is untrue, except the fact that she has changed. I myself, three years ago, noticed something about her that one seldom meets with among women in her position. I myself very nearly adopted the role of saviour, which Lopatin is now playing with such magnanimity. But I was then more experienced than he is now: I knew that nothing would come of it, so I gave it up without even trying to do anything. In addition to the usual obstacles that exist in this respect, her nature presented one particular obstacle-a kind of sheer obstinacy and defiance. I saw that she had given everything up as hopeless, and would resist my very first attempt. And I did not make that attempt.

that saviour of hers out of it, goes to his rooms to sit for him, and does sewing besides. She lives very poorly. She is like a drunkard who has taken the pledge not to drink. Will she keep it? Will that sentimental artist, who does not know life and understands nothing about it, help her to do it?

Yesterday I wrote my mother a detailed letter. She will probably do exactly what I want her to do-women love to meddle in such affairs-and pass it all on to Sophia Mikhailovna. Perhaps that will save him.

Save him! Why do I worry about his salvation? I have never taken such an interest in other people's affairs in all my life. What is it to me whether Lopatin takes up with that woman or not, whether he drags her out of the mud or is pulled down in it himself, and ruins his life and neglects his talent in wasted efforts? I am not given to reflecting and rummaging about in my soul; and now, for the first time in my life I am obliged to probe and analyse my feelings. I cannot make out what is going on within me and why I take on as I do. I thought (and I still think) that it is only a selfless desire to avert disaster for a man towards whom I am well disposed. But on closer examination of my thoughts, I see that it is not quite so. Why, if I am desirous of saving him, do I think more about her; why does her face, once so provocative and full of mirth, and now so wistful and gentle, rise to my mind every minute of the day; why is it she, and not he, who fills my soul with such a strange and baffling emotion in which ill will is predominant? Yes, perhaps it is true that I am not so much concerned in doing him good as doing her. . . .

Lopatin's place!

I must see her today. This whole affair gives me no peace. I can't work, I can't do anything. My work is going slow, and I have not done half as much these last two weeks as I used to do in two days. This question must be settled somehow. I must have it out, make it clear to myself, and then. . . then what?

Give it up? Never! My whole pride rises up at the mere suggestion. I found her. I could have saved, but I didn't want to. Now I do. 

Lopatin's notes. Gelfreich ran for the doctor who lived on the same staircase; I brought some water, and soon the hysterical fit was over. Nadezhda Nikolayevna was sitting in a corner of the sofa, to which Gelfreich and I had carried her, a stifled sob escaping her every now and then. I was afraid to disturb her, and went into the next room.

She got up to go away, and Semyon offered to see her home. She pressed my hand and looked me straight in the face with tear-filled eyes, an expression of timid gratitude on her face.

A week went by, then a fortnight, a month. Our sittings continued. Truth to tell, I endeavoured to drag them out; I do not know whether she understood that I was doing this on purpose, but she often hurried me. She was calmer, and sometimes-although not very often-cheerful.

She told me her whole story. I debated with myself for a long time whether to put that story down in my diary or not. I decided not to. Who knows what hands this notebook might fall into. Even if I knew for certain that no one but Sonya and Gelfreich would read it, I would never mention Nadezhda Nikolayevna's past there: they both know it well. As before, I concealed nothing from my cousin, and gave her the whole long and bitter story of Nadezhda Nikolayevna in the letters I wrote her at the time. Gelfreich got it from her own mouth. Consequently, there was no need for them to read the story in my diary. As for others... I do not want others to judge her! I learned the whole story of her life, and was her judge, and I forgave her everything that, in the opinion of the world, calls for forgiveness. I was made the recipient of her painful confession and the story of her misfortunes, the most terrible misfortunes that could ever befall a woman, and it was not censure that stirred in my breast, but a feeling of shame, the humiliating feeling of a man who considers himself to blame for the evil he is told about. The final episode of her history filled me with horror and compassion; the words which she had spoken that evening when Gelfreich had brought her and she had had that fit of hysterics, had not been empty words. She had really killed a man without knowing it. He wanted to save her, but he could not. His weak hands were powerless to keep her on the brink, and having failed, he went over it himself. He shot himself. She had told me the dreadful story with a sort of dry-eyed toneless determination, and I could not get it out of my mind for a long time. Could a broken heart be mended, could such frightful wounds be healed?

But the wounds seemed to have healed. She grew steadily calmer, and the smile returned to her face more often. She came to me every day and stayed with us for dinner. After dinner we all three sat on for a long time, and what we only talked about, Gelfreich and I, during those quiet hours! Nadezhda Nikolayevna put a word in once in a while.

a picture, which he would paint "perhaps in five, perhaps in ten years' time."

"Why so long, Semyon?" I asked, barely able to suppress a smile at the solemn air of gravity with which he made known his intentions.

"Because it is a serious thing. It's a life work, Andrei. You think that only tall people with straight backs and straight chests can plan serious things? Oh, you conceited longlegs! Believe me," he proceeded with affected solemnity, "great feelings may lie hidden between these humps, and great thoughts may be hatched in this long box" (he tapped the side of his head).

"Is that great thought a secret?" asked Nadezhda Nikolayevna.

"No, it is not. I will tell you. The idea occurred to me a long time ago. Listen. Prince Vladimir the Bright Sun was once wroth with Ilya of Murom for his bold speeches, and commanded him to be seized, and locked up in a deep dungeon and immured in it. The old Cossack was led away to his death. But, as it always happens, the Princess Yevpraksinia 'in those days was quick-witted: she found a secret passage to Ilya and sent him a wafer every day with water and wax tapers to read the Bible by. And a Bible, too, she sent him."

Semyon paused reflectively, and was silent for so long that I was moved at last to ask, "Well, Semyon?"

"That's all," he said. "Of course, the Prince, before long, had need of the old Cossack: the Tatars had come and there was no one to deliver Kiev in her hour of sore need. Vladimir then deeply repented of what he had done. But Yevpraksinia forthwith bade men go into the dungeons deep and lead Ilya forth by his lily-white hands. Ilya bore no malice, he mounted his good steed, and so on and so forth. He put all the Tatars to the sword. That's all."

"But where does the picture come in?"

"An artist! An artist, he calls himself! And of all men Lopatin, Andrei Lopatin! Why, there are thirty, three hundred, three thousand pictures here, if you want to know, but I will choose only one and paint it; I'll paint it or die in the attempt! Can't you see him sitting in the dungeon? Does it not present itself to you as if it were real? Just imagine: a cave, a cellar, any dark hole like the caves of Kiev. Narrow passages, a small niche in the wall. Dust, cobwebs, mould-something weird and sinister, made still more weird by the light of a wax taper. And Ilya sits upon the step, in front of him a lectern, and on the lectern a great holy book with thick leaves of parchment yellow and warped with age, and with the characters on them in red and black. The old Cossack sits there in his shirt, reading attentively and turning over the stiff leaves of the book with big rough hands, the hands of a peasant used to the bridle, the spear and the sword, or simply the club. They are toil-worn, too, those hands, and a lifetime of hard work has made them shaky, so that they turn over the leaves of the holy book with difficulty.

"Ah, my dear chap," Gelfreich suddenly broke off, "the trouble is there were no spectacles in those days. If there had been, Yevpraksinia would surely have sent him a pair-big, round, silver-rimmed spectacles. Life in the steppe must have made him far-sighted, don't you think so?"

We both burst out laughing. Gelfreich looked at us perplexedly, then, as it dawned on him what we were laughing at, he smiled himself. But he dropped back into the solemn vein of his narrative, and proceeded:

"I leave you to imagine what eyes he had; they are the most difficult to describe. The eyes mean everything to me. Eyes and lips. Well then, he sits there, reading. The Sermon on the Mount. And he reads there that whosoever shall be smitten upon the right cheek shall turn the other also. And he reads that passage and understands it not. Ilya had toiled hard all his life; a multitude of Pechenegs, Tatars and robbers had he slain; many a foul fiend, fire-breathing serpent, warlock, and wicked giant had he vanquished; deeds of valour had he performed all his life, guarding the precincts of Christian Rus against the heathen; he had believed in Christ, and prayed to him, and thought he was fulfilling his behests. He had not known what stood written in the book. And now he sits and thinks: 'Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. ' How is that, Lord God? I can understand if someone smites me, but what if a woman is wronged, or a child ill-treated, or the heathens come to rob and slay Thy servants, O Lord? Not touch them? Leave them to plunder and kill? Nay, Lord, I cannot obey Thee! I shall mount my good steed, take my spear in my hand, and go forth to do battle in Thy name, for I understand not Thy wisdom; Thou hast given my soul a voice, and I listen to that and not to Thee!' And his hand quivers, and the yellow leaf of the book with the red and black characters in it quivers too. The candle burns with a feeble flame; a thin black wisp of smoke curls upwards and disappears in the darkness. And only Ilya and the book are illumined by that light, just the two. . . ."

"Yes," I said after a long silence, "that is a good picture, Semyon. Only it sounds better than it will look in paint and canvas. How are you going to express it?"

"I will do it for certain, I will!" Semyon exclaimed earnestly. "I will do it! I will put that question mark-Ilya and the Bible. What is there in common between them? For that book there is no greater sin than killing, and Ilya had been killing all his life long. The horse he rides on is all hung about with instruments of execution-not death, but execution, for he executes. And when that arsenal runs low or is not at hand, he fills his helmet with sand and lays about him with that. And yet he is a saint. I saw him in Kiev. He lies with all the rest of them. And rightly so. . . ."

"That is quite right, Semyon, but it's not what I meant. Paint will not be able to express it."

"Nonsense! Even if it doesn't express it fully, there is no harm. The question will have been put. . . . Wait a minute!" Semyon cried excitedly, seeing that I was about to interrupt him. "You will say the question has already been put? So it has. But it is not enough. It has to be put every day, every hour, every minute. It must give people no peace. And if I think I can paint a picture that will convey even a tenth of what I want it to convey, then I must do it. I have been wanting to do it for a long time, only these have been putting me off."

He bent down, picked up the tawny cat, which had been sitting on the rug as if listening attentively to his speech, and placed it on his knees.

"You're doing the same thing, aren't you?" Semyon went on. "Doesn't your picture express the same question? How do you know whether that woman acted rightly? You make people think, that's all. And apart from the aesthetic feeling that every picture arouses in us, and which, in itself, is not really worth much, is it not that which gives meaning to what we are doing?"

"Gelfreich, my dear Semyon," Nadezhda Nikolayevna said suddenly, "I have never seen you like this. I always knew you had a noble heart, but. . . ."

"But you thought I was a silly little hunchback? Do you remember calling me that once?"

"Forgive me for bringing this up. Those years should be wiped out of our memory. Everything will go well. It will, Andrei, won't it?"

I nodded. I was very happy then: I saw that Nadezhda Nikolayevna was gradually quieting down, and-who knows? - perhaps the last three years of her life would come to be a mere far-away memory instead of an actual experience, a bad hazy dream from which one awakens to find the night quiet and peaceful, the room unchanged, and one is glad that it was only a dream. 

Winter was passing. The sun kept rising higher, warming St. Petersburg's streets and roofs. The drain pipes everywhere were noisy with thawing water and falling icicles. Wheeled cabs appeared, rumbling over the thawed patches of cobble-stone roadway with a revived sound that was new to the ear.

I had finished my picture. After several more sittings I could take it to the academy and submit it to the exhibition experts for their judgement. Gelfreich congratulated me on my success in advance. Nadezhda Nikolayevna looked at the picture with pleasure, and I often caught an expression of quiet contentment on her face that I had not seen there before. At times she was even gay and jocular, mostly at Semyon's expense. The latter was completely engrossed in reading a multitude of books, which, he said, were necessary for the picture he was going to paint, and examining albums with all kinds of antiquities and studying the Bible. His cats had run away, all except the permanent tawny favourite, who now lived in retirement, and was hardly ever bothered by his master to discharge the duties of a model. Since our last talk about Ilya of Murom, Semyon had painted only one picture, which he had sold for a hundred and fifty rubles; this money, he said, would last him a long time, all the more that, to my great surprise, he was not in the least embarrassed by his long sojourn at my place, where life cost him nothing.

Russia was to derive a tremendous benefit within the very near future-and she copied it out in a fine large hand. Since this great benefit to Russia required rather intensive brainwork, the project was amended and supplemented without end, and has not, I believe, reached completion to this day. I wonder who is copying it out now, after Nadezhda Nikolayevna?

In any case she was not needy. The money that she earned by copying and sitting for me sufficed for a living. She lodged in the same little room where she had moved to when going into hiding. It was a low narrow room with a single window overlooking a blank wall; a bed, a chest of drawers, two chairs and a card-table, which served both for writing and meals, comprised the appointments of the place. Whenever I went there with Semyon, he would go into the kitchen and ask the landlady for a stool. These visits, however, were rare; the room was very uninviting and cheerless, yet Nadezhda Nikolayevna would not hear of leaving it. For the most part we gathered at my apartment, where the rooms were bright and spacious.

Not once had I spoken to her about what was taking place in my heart. I was contented and happy in the present; I understood that an incautious touch might reopen wounds that were perhaps still raw. I might lose her for ever were I now to insist upon the fulfilment of my most cherished thought, desire, and hope. I would not have been able perhaps to keep so calm and self-restrained for so long had that hope not been so strong. I firmly believed that in another six months, or a year, or even two years (time did not frighten me), when she would have become her old self again, restored in mind and body, she would see beside her a firm support upon which she could lean, and would become mine for a lifetime. It was more than hope really, I knew for certain that she would be my wife.

I do not know whether Bessonov understood this. His occasional visits were disturbing to our tranquillity and introduced an element of embarrassment into our conversation. Outwardly he was calm and looked at Nadezhda Nikolayevna with equanimity. She never spoke to him unless it was to answer his questions, and listened to his discourses on a variety of subjects. He was extremely well-read and spoke well. Oddly enough, this smooth loquacity of his struck me as being a mask to hide from us something that was preying on his mind. Afterwards I learned that this was so, that his apparent calmness concealed a festering sore that was killing him, like that saintly French divine who was said to be invulnerable and wore a red cloak during battle in order to conceal the blood that flowed from his wounds. But I learned that when it was already too late.

For some reason he had moved back to the captain's "hotel." I went there once. This room, like his old one, was littered with books, periodicals, and papers, but I thought they were lying about in great disorder and were covered with dust, as if no one had done any work in this room for a long time. At home he behaved differently, not as he did at our place in the presence of Nadezhda Nikolayevna; he spoke very little and paced up and down the room gloomily, smoking a cigarette. I felt that I was unwelcome and decided not to go there any more. I asked him, by the way, whether he knew anything about the captain and whether it was true that he had been a "soldier of Mekhov and Opatov."

"He has made it up," Bessonov said. "He isn't even a real Pole. He adopted the Greek Orthodox religion a long time ago, and I think he is just trying to impress the young people when he reveals his supposed secret to them."

Two incidents after that visit to Bessonov opened my eyes to his behaviour.

First of all, Sonya sent me a letter describing a conversation that had taken place between herself and Bessonov's mother. The old lady sometimes paid her a visit at the institute for old times' sake: she never forgot the interest Sonya's mother had always taken in her and her son. According to my cousin, she called this time looking excited and mysterious, and after several awkward and rambling introductions, revealed the purpose of her visit. Her son Sergei had written her in detail about everything that had happened to us. The picture he had painted was as black as he could make it. He did not ask his mother to convey the contents of the letter to Sonya, but the old lady, out of gratitude, decided herself to go and tell her everything in order to warn her that she should do something about it while I could still be saved. She was astonished to hear that my cousin already knew all about it. She was upset. She fell-ashamed, an old woman like her, telling a girl such things, but what could she do? Poor Andrei had to be saved at all cost. If she were in Sonya's place she would leave the institute and go at once to St. Petersburg to open my eyes.

"Bessonov," wrote Sonya, "is playing a peculiar role in all this affair. I do not believe that he has written all that to his mother without knowing that she would be sure to pass it on to me, and, I should say more, without wishing her to do so.

"I will come up to St. Petersburg, but not until after the examinations. If you agree, we can spend the summer somewhere in the country, and I will study up a bit to make it easier for me at the courses."

This letter upset me, but another letter immediately following it, a long anonymous letter, filled the cup.

The unknown author, in highflown florid language, warned me against the fate that awaited all young men who abandoned themselves to their passions and were blind to the shortcomings of the creature with whom they intended to unite in wedlock, "the ties of which, at first light and unnoticeable, eventually become a heavy chain like that which wretched convicts drag about with them." Such were the terms in which the unknown author expressed himself. "Take the honest word of an experienced old man, Mr. Lopatin, that inequality in marriage is a very terrible thing. It is a thing that has robbed the world of many a great talent; please remember that, Mr. Lopatin." Then followed a regular indictment against Nadezhda Nikolayevna, whose soul was called "the prey of hell" (here I definitely recognized the hand of the captain). She was accused of a long life of lust and vice, which she could have abandoned had she wished, "because she has relatives of her family, though very distant ones, who-I am sure-would raise the fallen woman from her present social position, but owing to a natural depravity, that woman has chosen to wallow in the mud from which you are vainly attempting to save her, in which attempt, without a doubt, you will ruin your own life and your wonderful talent." She was accused of having killed a man, "and a very respectable gentleman he was too, not endowed with such gifts as you, but none the less an excellent man who received a salary of fifty rubles a month and had expectations of increasing it, sufficiently for the two of them to make a comfortable living on, for what more could such a creature as that wretch reckon on, but she chose to reject that young gentleman, Mr. Nikitin, in order to continue in her wicked ways. . . ."

It was a very long letter, and I threw it into the burning stove without finishing it. That Bessonov had had a hand in this I was almost certain. Why should the captain worry about saving my soul? The blood rushed to my head, and my first impulse was to run and see Bessonov. I don't know what I would have done to him. The captain was furthest from my thoughts; that renegade, who concealed his desertion, had been persuaded, made drunk perhaps, or intimidated in some way. I snatched up my hat and was already at the door when I collected myself. I had better calm down a bit before deciding what to do.

danced about over the canvas and my eyes could not distinguish the colours. I dressed with the intention of going out and getting some fresh air; opening the door, I saw Nadezhda Nikolayevna standing before it pale and breathless, with a look of terror in her dilated eyes. 

From Bessonov's diary. What agony of mind! The yearning! It gives me no peace, no matter where I am, no matter what I do to forget it, to deaden it somehow. My eyes have been opened at last; it is a month since I have written anything in this diary, and that month has decided everything. What has happened to that belauded philosophic calm of mine? Where are my sleepless nights spent at work? I, who prided myself on having character in these characterless times, have been crushed and destroyed by the burst of a storm. What storm? Is that a storm? I despise myself, despise myself for my former pride, which did not prevent me from bending to an idle passion; despise myself for having allowed this demon in the image of a woman to take possession of my soul. Yes, if I believed in the supernatural, I could not account for what has happened otherwise than as a diabolical possession.

I have re-read these lines. . . . What humiliating, pitiful complaints! Oh, where is my pride, where my strength of will that enabled me to keep my grip on life and live it the way I wanted? I demeaned myself to petty intrigue by writing a letter to my mother, who no doubt passed it all on to his cousin, as I had intended, but nothing came of it; in my impatience I made an old illiterate fool write a letter to Lopatin-and nothing will come of that, either, I know it. He will throw the letter in the fire, or, still worse, show it to her, his mistress, and they will read it together and laugh at the illiterate effusions of the captain's soul and make fun of me, for they will understand that no one but I could have instigated the captain to such a vulgar action.

His mistress! But is she? The word dropped from my pen, but I don't know to this day whether it is true or not. And if it is not? What if there is still hope for me? What makes me think that he is in love with her except vague suspicions, excited by mad jealousy?

have been saved. All I had to do was to bend down and pick her up. I did not want to bend down. I did not realize this till now, when my heart aches for love of her. Love! No, this is not love, this is a mad passion, a consuming fire. How to extinguish it?

I will go and have a talk with her. I will summon all my forces and speak calmly. Let her choose between me and him. I will tell her nothing but the truth, I will tell her that she cannot rely on that impressionable man, who thinks of her today, but tomorrow will be absorbed in something else and forget about her. I am going! This must be put an end to one way or another. I can't stand the torture any longer.

The same day.

I have seen her. I am now going to see him.

These are the last lines that will be written in this diary. Nothing can restrain me. I have lost control of myself. . . .  

What is the sense in dragging out these notes? Had I not better leave my reminiscences at this?

No, I will finish them. All the same, if I throw up my pen and this notebook, I will relive that terrible day for the thousandth time; for the thousandth time I will experience the horror, the pangs of remorse, the agony of loss; for the thousandth time the scene which I am now about to describe will pass before my eyes in all its details, and every one of those details will shatter my heart with the force of terrible new blows. I shall continue till the end.

I conducted Nadezhda Nikolayevna into the room; she could scarcely stand on her legs and was trembling as with fever. She looked at me with the same terrified glance and for the first minute could not utter a word. I made her sit down and gave her some water.

"Andrei Nikolayevich, beware. Lock the door... do not let anyone in. He is coming."

"Who, Bessonov?"

"Lock the door," she whispered.

Anger welled up in me. Anonymous letters were not enough, he threatened violence.

"What has he done to you? Where did you see him? Calm yourself. Have some more water and tell me about it. Where did you see him?"

"He came to my room. . . . "

"For the first time?"

"No. He came twice before. I did not want to tell you so as not to make you angry. I asked him to stop coming; I told him that I couldn't bear to see him. He went away without saying a word, and kept away for three weeks. Today he came early and waited till I had dressed."

She paused. It was difficult for her to continue.

"Well?"

"I never saw him like that before. He spoke calmly at first. It was about you. He said nothing bad about you, he only said that you were an impressionable man who was apt to be carried away, and that I could not rely upon you. He simply said that you would drop me, because you would soon get tired of it all. . . ."

I said that I loved her and would love her as long as I lived, that she must be my wife, that she saw and knew that Bessonov was wrong. I told her a thousand absurd words, happy words, for the most part meaningless, but she understood them. I saw her sweet face, radiant with joy, upon my breast; it was quite a new, somewhat unfamiliar face, not the face with that secret anguish in its features which I had been accustomed to seeing.

She smiled, and cried, and kissed my hands, and snuggled up to me. At that moment there was not a soul in all the world except us two. She said something about how happy she was, how she had come to love me from the very first days of our acquaintance, and how she had run away because that love had frightened her; she said that she was not worthy of me, that it terrified her to think of my fate being linked with hers; and again she embraced me, again she cried with tears of joy. Presently she caught herself.

"What about Bessonov?" she suddenly said.

"Let him come," I answered. "Who cares about Bessonov."

"Wait, let me finish what I began to say about him. Yes, he spoke about you. Then about himself. He said that he was a much more reliable support than you were. He reminded me that three years ago I had loved him and would have married him. And when I said that he was deceiving himself, all his pride rose up, and he lost his temper to such an extent that he rushed at me. . . . Wait a minute," Nadezhda Nikolayevna said, seizing my hand when she saw me leap to my feet. "He did not touch me. I am sorry for him, Andrei Nikolayevich... he fell at my feet, that proud man did! You should have seen it!"

"What did you tell him?"

"What was there to tell? I was silent. All I said was that I did not love him. And when he asked whether it was because I love you, I told him the truth. Something dreadful came over him then-I don't know what it was. He threw himself upon me, embraced me, whispered 'farewell, farewell!' and made for the door. I never saw such a terrible face before. I sank into a chair, weak and trembling. He turned round at the door with a queer laugh and said: 'I shall be seeing you two again, though. ' And his face looked awful. . . ."

She broke off abruptly, deathly pale, and stared at the door of the studio. I looked round. Bessonov was standing in the doorway.

"Didn't expect me?" he said, stuttering. "I came by the backstairs so as not to trouble you."

said nothing; his thin quivering lips whispered something. I suddenly felt sorry for him.

"What have you come here for, Sergei Vasilyevich? If you want to talk to me, go and calm yourself first."

"I am calm, Lopatin. . . . I am ill, but calm. I have settled everything, and there is nothing for me to be excited about."

"What have you come for?"

"To tell you a few words. You think you will be happy with her?"- he pointed to Nadezhda Nikolayevna. "You will not! I will not let you."

"Go away," I said, making a violent effort to speak calmly. "Go and lie down. You said yourself you were ill."

"That is my business. You listen to what I am telling you. I was mistaken. It is my fault. I love her. Give her to me."

He has gone mad!-the thought struck me.

"I cannot live without her," he continued in a hoarse strangled voice. "I will not let you out until you have said 'yes'!"

"Sergei Vasilyevich!"

"And you will either tell me 'yes' or. . . . "

I took him by the shoulders and turned him towards the door. He went obediently, but on reaching it, turned the key in the lock, pushed me away roughly, and took up a threatening attitude. Nadezhda Nikolayevna screamed.

I saw him transfer the key to his left hand, while he lowered his right into his pocket. When he drew it out again a gleaming object lay in it which I scarcely found a name for at the time. The sight of it horrified me. Beside myself, I seized the spike standing in the corner, and when he levelled the revolver at Nadezhda Nikolayevna, I flung myself upon him with a wild cry. The world crashed into darkness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Then began the torture.

I do not know how long I lay unconscious. When I came to myself I remembered nothing. The fact that I was lying on the floor, looking up at the ceiling through a queer bluish haze with a feeling in the chest that prevented me from stirring or uttering a word, did not surprise me. It all seemed to be right, needful for something or other-for what, I simply could not remember.

spoke about.

I make a movement and feel a sharp pain. That is as it should be, of course.

Utter silence. A revived fly drones in the air and beats against the window-pane. The inner winter frames have not been taken out yet, but the gay rattle of the droshkies can be heard through them. The mist, the queer bluish haze, clears from my eyes and I distinctly see the crude moulding around the hook in the middle of the ceiling. It seems to me a very odd ornament; I had never noticed it before. And something touches my hand; I turn my head and see a hand, a small, soft white hand lying on the floor. I cannot reach it, and feel very sorry that I can't, because it is the hand of Nadezhda Nikolayevna whom I love more than anything in the world. . . .

And suddenly a bright ray of consciousness bursts upon me, and I recollect everything that happened. He had killed her.

It cannot be! It cannot be! She is alive. She is only wounded. Help! Help! I shout, but not a sound comes. Only a stifled choking sound in my breast and a pink foam on my lips. He has killed me too.

her face with kisses. A face that but half an hour ago had been pressed to my bosom, a face full of life and happiness. Now it was still and set; the tiny wound over the eye was no longer bleeding. She was dead.

When the door was broken down and Semyon rushed up to me I felt my strength to be at its last ebb. I was lifted up and laid upon the sofa. I saw them take her and carry her out, and I wanted to cry out, ask them, beg them not to do it, and to leave her here next to me. But I could not cry out; all I could do was to whisper soundlessly while the doctor examined the wound in my chest through which the bullet had passed.

He, too, was carried out. He lay with a stern ghastly face covered with blood that poured from a deadly wound in his head.

I am finishing. What more can I add?

Called out by Semyon's telegram, Sonya arrived immediately. I have been nursed long and carefully, and am still being nursed. Sonya and Gelfreich are positive that I will live. They want to take me abroad and think that the journey will work wonders.

it. Never for a moment do I forget Nadezhda Nikolayevna and Bessonov; the ghastly details of that last day stand perpetually before my mind's eye, and a voice whispers ceaselessly into my ear that I have murdered a man.

I was not tried. The "case" was dismissed on the grounds that I had killed in self-defence.

The human conscience, however, knows no written laws, no theory of irresponsibility, and I am suffering the punishment of my crime. I have not much longer to bear it. Soon the Lord will pardon me, and we three shall meet there, where our passions and sufferings will seem insignificant and all will be submerged in the light of eternal love.

1885