Chapter XVII: Act V: SCENE 1. TWILIGHT. KULÍGIN (sitting on a bench), KABANÓV (2)

“I do,” said Levín incautiously, and immediately was conscious that he did not say what was in his mind. He felt that since he did acknowledge it, the proof would be forthcoming that he was talking senseless bosh. He did not know how that would be argued, but he was sure that the logical deduction was forthcoming, and he waited for that proof.

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

“If you acknowledge it to be beneficial,” said Sergyéy Ivánovich, “you, as an honest man, can’t help loving this thing and sympathising with it, and consequently you can’t help wishing to work for it.”

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

“What? You have just told me----”

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

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

“Well, granted,” said Levín, though he did not at all grant it, “granted, it is so; I still can’t see, why I should bother about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, since we have gotten so far in our discussion, explain it to me from the philosophical point of view,” said Levín.

“I don’t understand what need there is here of philosophy,” said Sergyéy Ivánovich, in a tone which sounded to Levín as if he did not acknowledge his brother’s right to discuss philosophy. This irritated Levín.

“It is this,” he said excitedly, “I think that the prime mover of all our actions is, after all, our personal happiness. I, as a nobleman, see at present nothing in the agrarian institutions by which my interests are advanced. The roads are no better, and they can’t be better; my horses take me just as easily over bad roads. I need no doctors and no medical centres. I don’t want a justice of the peace,--I have never had recourse to him, and I never will. I not only need no schools, but I find them injurious, as I have told you. For me the agrarian institutions mean only an obligation to pay eighteen kopeks per desyatína, to travel to town, in order to pass the nights with bedbugs, and to listen to all kinds of nonsense and commonplaces,--but my personal interest in no way incites me.”

“Wait a moment,” Sergyéy Ivánovich interrupted him, with a smile, “our personal interest did not incite us to work for the liberation of the peasants, yet we worked.”

“No!” Konstantín interrupted him, getting ever more excited. “The liberation of the peasants was an entirely different matter. There was a personal interest connected with it. We wanted to get rid of the yoke which was oppressing us, all the good people. But to be an alderman, to discuss how many cleaners of privies are needed, and how the pipes are to be laid in the town I am not living in,--to be a juryman and sit in judgment over a peasant who has stolen a ham, and for six hours to listen to all kinds of nonsense that is threshed out by the defence and by the procurators, and the presiding judge asking my old peasant, Aléshka the fool: ‘Do you, Mr. Defendant, plead guilty to misappropriating the ham, eh?’”

Konstantín Levín was getting away from the argument, and began to act the presiding judge and Aléshka the fool; it seemed to him that it all was pertinent to the discussion.

But Sergyéy Ivánovich shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, what is it you are up to?”

“I want to say that I will always, with all my might, defend the rights that touch me--my interest; that, when I was a student and the secret police made a raid on us and read our letters, I was ready with all my might to defend these rights, to defend my rights of culture and of liberty. I can understand military duties that touch the fate of my children, my brothers, and myself; I am ready to discuss what touches me; but I do not understand, and do not want to understand, why I should consider what to do with forty thousand roubles of the county money, or why I should sit in judgment over Aléshka the fool.”

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

“Suppose you will have a case at law to-morrow: well, would you prefer to be judged in the old criminal court?”

“I will not have a case in court. I will not cut anybody’s throat, and I have no need to do so. By the way!” he continued, again jumping over to an entirely irrelevant matter, “all our county institutions and such things are very much like the birch saplings that we stick up, as on Whitsun Monday, in order to make them look like a forest that has grown up of its own accord in Europe; but I have not the heart to water these birches, nor have I any faith in them.”

Sergyéy Ivánovich only shrugged his shoulders, expressing by this motion that he was at a loss to account for these birches in their discussion, though he immediately saw what his brother had intended to say by them.

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

But Konstantín Levín was anxious to put himself right in regard to his defect, of which he was conscious, that is, his indifference to the common good, and he continued:

“I think,” said Konstantín, “that no activity can be permanent if it is not based on personal interest. This is a universal truth, a philosophic truth,” said he, emphatically repeating the word “philosophic,” as if to show that he, too, had a right, like anybody else, to talk of philosophy.

Sergyéy Ivánovich smiled again. “He has a philosophy of his own to suit his inclinations,” thought he.

“Well, you had better leave philosophy alone,” said he. “The main problem of philosophy has been in all ages to discover the necessary connection that exists between personal and common interests. But that is not to the point; it behooves me to correct your comparison. The birch saplings were not stuck up, but some were set out, and some were planted, and one has to tend them carefully. Only those nations have a future, only those nations may be called historical, that have discernment in what is important and significant in their institutions, and that value them.”

Sergyéy Ivánovich transferred the question into the field of philosophical history, which was inaccessible to Konstantín Levín, and showed him the whole injustice of his view.

“But as to your having no love for it,--you must pardon me,--it is a case of our Russian indolence and mannerism, and I am convinced that it is only a temporary aberration which will pass.”

Konstantín was silent. He felt that he had been demolished all around, but he felt at the same time that his brother did not understand what he had intended to convey. But he did not know why he was not understood: because he did not express clearly his thoughts, or because his brother did not wish to understand him, or because he could not. However, he did not pursue this thought any longer; he did not answer his brother, and fell to musing about something different, some personal matter of his.

Sergyéy Ivánovich fastened his last fishing-rod, untied the horse, and they drove away.

The waggon-load was full. Iván jumped down and led the gentle, well-fed horse by the bridle. The woman threw her rake on the waggon, and, swinging her arms, went with a rapid step to the other women who were walking together. When Iván drove into the road, he joined a whole procession of other waggons. The women were walking behind the waggons, with their rakes over their shoulders, adorned with bright flowers and prating away with their sonorous, merry voices. A coarse, low, woman’s voice started a song and sang it out to the refrain; then half a hundred of low and high healthy voices caught the refrain and sang the song again from the beginning.

The singing women were approaching Levín, and it appeared to him as though a cloud, discharging peals of joy, were passing over him. The cloud came nearer, and overwhelmed him, and the stack on which he was lying, and all the other stacks, and the waggons, and the whole meadow with the distant field,--all moved and rocked with the rhythmical measure of this wild, hilarious song, with its exclamations, its whistling and shouting. Levín envied them their healthy merriment, and he wished to take part in the expression of this joy of life. But he could do nothing, and he was obliged to lie, and look and listen. When the people disappeared with their song from the eye and the ear, a heavy feeling of melancholy, on account of his loneliness, his physical inactivity, his hostility to this world, took possession of Levín.

Some of the very peasants who had more than anybody else been disputing with him on account of the hay, those whom he had offended, or those who had wished to cheat him,--those very peasants merrily bowed to him and evidently had no evil thought of him, nor could they have any; they had not only no repentance but even no recollection of their having wished to cheat him. Everything was drowned in the sea of the merry mass work. God has given the day, God has given the strength to work. And the day and the strength are devoted to work, and in it is its own reward. For whom is this work? What will be the fruits of this work? These are secondary, unimportant considerations.

Levín often admired this life, often experienced the feeling of envy towards the people that lived this life, but it was to-day for the first time, especially under the influence of what he had seen of the relations of Iván Parménov to his young wife, that Levín was possessed of the idea that it depended upon him to change the burdensome, empty, artificial, and personal life which he was living for this busy, pure, social, charming life.

The old man who had been sitting by his side had long ago gone home; the people had all disappeared. Those who lived near by had gone home, and those that were from a distance were preparing their supper and their camp in the meadow. Unnoticed by the people, Levín remained lying on the stack, in order to see, listen, and think. Those who had stayed for the night in the field hardly closed their eyes in the short summer night. At first one could hear a universal merry conversation and laughter during the supper, and then again songs and laughter.

The whole long work-day had left no other trace in them but merriment. Before the morning dawn everything grew quiet. One could hear only the nocturnal sounds of the unsilenced frogs in the swamp, and of the horses that neighed in the meadow in the mist that rose before morning. Awakening from his revery, Levín climbed down from the stack and, looking at the stars, he knew that night had passed.

“Well, what am I going to do? How am I going to do it?” said he to himself, trying to formulate for himself all that he had thought out and that he had felt in that short night. All that he had thought and felt was divided into three different mental processes. One was the renunciation of his old life, of his useless education. This renunciation caused him pleasure, and it was easy and simple for him. Other thoughts and ideas touched upon the life which he now wanted to live. He clearly felt the simplicity, purity, and legality of this life, and he was convinced that he would find in it that satisfaction, that rest and dignity, the absence of which had caused him such painful sensations. But the third series of thoughts circled about the question how to make that transition from the old life to the new. But here he could see nothing clearly. “To have a wife. Have work and the necessity for work. Should I leave Pokróvskoe? Should I buy land? Join society? Marry a peasant woman? How am I to do it?” he asked himself again and found no answer. “However, I have not slept the whole night, and I have no clear ideas,” said he to himself. “I will think it out later. One thing is certain, this night has decided my fate. All my former ideas of family life are bosh,” said he to himself. “This is much simpler and better----”

“How beautiful!” thought he, as he looked at a strange, mother-of-pearl shell of white cirrus clouds that stopped over his head in the middle of the sky. “How superb everything is in this superb night! When has this shell been formed? It is only a moment ago I was looking at the sky, and there was nothing there but two white streaks. Yes, just so imperceptibly have my views of life been changed!”

FROM “WAR AND PEACE”

NAPOLEON’S ENTRY INTO MOSCOW

On the night of the thirteenth of September was given Kutúzov’s order for the Russian army to retreat beyond the Moskvá on the Ryazán road.

The first divisions started in the night. As long as it was dark, they were in no hurry and moved slowly and in good order. But when the moving army reached the Dorogomílov bridge at daybreak, they could see ahead of them the endless masses of the army, pressing and hurrying over the bridge, and emerging on the other side, and stopping up the streets and byways, and behind them followed similar endless masses. An unnecessary haste and alarm took possession of the army. They all pushed forward to the bridge, over the bridge, to the fords, and into the boats. Kutúzov had himself taken by back streets beyond the Moskvá.

By ten o’clock on the morning of September 14th there were left at large in the Dorogomílov suburb only the battalions of the rear-guard. The army was already beyond the Moskvá and out of sight of Moscow.

At just that time, at ten o’clock on the morning of September 14th, Napoleon stood among his soldiers on the Poklónnaya Hill, and surveyed the spectacle before him. Beginning with September 7th and up to September 14th, from the battle at Borodinó up to the enemy’s entry into Moscow, during all the days of that alarming and memorable week, there was that unusual autumn weather, which always puzzles people, when the low sun is warmer than in spring, when everything gleams in the pure, rarified air, so as to hurt the eyes, when the breast grows stronger and fresher as it inhales the fragrant autumn air, when even the nights are warm, and when in these dark and warm nights golden stars shower down from the heavens, causing continual fear and joy.

It was just such weather on September 14th, at ten o’clock in the morning. The morning shone with a magic glow. Moscow spread far and wide from the Poklónnaya Hill, with its river, its gardens and churches, and seemed to be living its own life, its cupolas sparkling like stars in the sunbeams.

At the sight of the strange city with its unfamiliar forms of unusual architecture, Napoleon experienced that somewhat envious and restless curiosity which people generally experience at the sight of forms of a strange life that knows nothing of them. Evidently the city was living with all the manifestations of its life. By those indefinable signs, by which a living body is unfailingly distinguished at a great distance from a dead one, Napoleon saw from the Poklónnaya Hill the palpitation of life in the city, and, as it were, felt the breath of that great and beautiful body. Looking at Moscow, every Russian feels that she is a mother; every stranger, who looks at her and does not know her maternal meaning, must perceive the feminine character of this city, and Napoleon felt it too.

“There it is, at last, that famous Asiatic city with its innumerable churches,--that holy Moscow! I ought to have seen it long ago!” said Napoleon and, dismounting his horse, ordered to unfold before him the map of that Moscow and called up the translator, Lelorme d’Ideville.

“A city that is taken by the enemy is like a girl who has lost her innocence,” thought he (he had said so to Tuchkóv in Smolénsk). And from this point of view he surveyed the Eastern beauty that lay before him and that he had not yet seen. It appeared strange to him that at last his old wish, which had seemed to him to be impossible, was fulfilled. In the clear morning light he looked, now at the city, now at the map, studying the details of the city, and the confidence of possessing it agitated and frightened him.

“But could it have been otherwise?” thought he. “There is the capital: it lies at my feet, expecting its fate. Where is Alexander now, and what is he thinking about? Strange, beautiful, majestic city! And this is a strange and majestic moment! In what light do I appear to them?” thought he of his army. “Here is the reward for all these men of little faith,” thought he, as he looked at those who surrounded him and at the battalions that were defiled before him. “One word of mine, one motion of my hand, and this ancient city of the Tsars is in ruins. But my mercy is ever ready to be shown to the conquered. I must be magnanimous and truly great. But no, it is not true that I am in Moscow,” it suddenly occurred to him. “Still, there it lies at my feet, playing and trembling with its golden cupolas and crosses in the rays of the sun. But I will spare it. On the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will write great words of justice and mercy---- Alexander will feel that more painfully than anything else, I know him.” It seemed to Napoleon that the chief meaning of what was happening consisted in his personal contest with Alexander. “From the summit of the Kremlin--yes, that is the Kremlin, yes--will I give them laws of justice, will I show them the true meaning of civilisation: I will cause generations of boyárs to mention with love the name of their conqueror. I will tell the deputation that I did not wish and do not now wish war; that I have made war only on the false politics of their Court, that I love and respect Alexander, and that I will accept in Moscow the conditions of peace, such as is worthy of me and of my nations. I will not make use of the fortune of war in order to lower their respected Tsar. ‘Boyárs,’ will I say to them, ‘I want no war, I want the peace and well-being of all my subjects----’ Indeed, I know their presence will inspire me, and I shall speak as I always do,--clearly, majestically, and grandly. But is it really true that I am in Moscow? Yes, there it is!”

“Bring the boyárs to me,” he said to his suite. A general at once galloped away with a brilliant suite to fetch the boyárs.

Two hours passed. Napoleon had his breakfast, and again stood in the same place upon Poklónnaya Hill, waiting for the deputation. His speech to the boyárs was already clearly formed in his imagination. That speech was full of dignity and grandeur, as Napoleon understood them.

That mood of magnanimity which Napoleon intended to exercise in Moscow carried him away. In his imagination he appointed days of assembly in the palace of the Tsars, where the Russian dignitaries were to meet the dignitaries of the French Emperor. He mentally appointed a governor who would be able to gain the love of the populace. Having heard that there were many charitable institutions in Moscow, he decided in his imagination to shower his favours on all these establishments. He thought that, as it was necessary in Africa to sit in the mosque in a burnous, so one must in Moscow be as charitable as the Tsars. And in order to touch most deeply the hearts of the Russians, he, like every Frenchman, who cannot imagine anything touching without the memory of his dear, his tender, his poor mother, decided to have written in large letters over these institutions: “Establishment dedicated to my dear mother.” No, simply: “House of my mother,” he concluded with himself. “But am I really in Moscow? Yes, there it is, before me; but why is the deputation so late in making its appearance?” thought he.

In the meanwhile an agitated consultation took place between the Imperial generals and marshals in the back of his suite. Those who had been sent out to fetch the deputation returned with the news that Moscow was deserted, that everybody had left the city. The faces of the consulting men were pale and agitated. Not the fact that Moscow had been abandoned by its inhabitants, however important that incident may have appeared, frightened them, but how they were to announce it to the Emperor, and how to avoid placing his Majesty into that terrible position which the French call ridiculous, when they would inform him that he had in vain been waiting so long for the boyárs, that there were left crowds of drunken men, but no one else. Some said that it was by all means necessary to get together some kind of a deputation; other rejected that opinion and insisted that it behooved them carefully and cleverly to prepare the Emperor, and to tell him the truth.

“But we must tell him by all means,” said the gentlemen of the suite. “But, gentlemen--” The situation was the more difficult since the Emperor, in considering his plans of magnanimity, was patiently walking up and down, in front of the map, now and then shielding his eyes, in order to look down the road to Moscow, and smiling happily and proudly. “But it is awkward--impossible!” said the gentlemen of the suite, shrugging their shoulders, and not venturing to pronounce the suppressed terrible word, _le ridicule_.

In the meanwhile the Emperor, tiring of his vain expectation and feeling with his histrionic sentiment that the majestic moment was lasting too long and, consequently, was beginning to lose its majesticalness, gave a sign with his hand. A single shot of the signalling cannon was heard, and the troops that were besieging Moscow from various sides moved upon the city, through the Tver, Kalúga, and Dorogomílov toll-gates. The troops moved faster and faster, outrunning each other, in a rapid march and a gallop, disappearing in the clouds of dust which they raised, and filling the air with their deafening voices. Carried away by the movement of the troops, Napoleon rode with the army to the Dorogomílov toll-gate, but there he stopped again and, dismounting his horse, walked up and down by the Kammer-Kolleg rampart, awaiting the deputation----

All this time Moscow was deserted. There were still some people in it, there was still left one fiftieth part of all its former inhabitants, but it was deserted. It was as deserted as is a queenless beehive in its last moments.

In the queenless hive there is no life, but at a superficial glance it appears as full of life as others. The bees swarm in the warm rays of an afternoon sun just as merrily about the queenless hive, as around the other live hives; from a distance it is just as fragrant with honey, and bees fly in and out of it as before. But one has only to look more closely at it, to discover that there is no life left within. The bees do not fly here as in the live hives; not the same odour and not the same sound strike the bee-keeper. To the bee-keeper’s tap on the wall of the great beehive there is no longer the former immediate, unison answer and humming of tens of thousands of bees that threateningly lower their backs and by the swift motion of their wings produce that aërial life sound, but some discordant buzzing is heard in various places of the empty beehive. From the entrance does not proceed, as formerly, a fragrant alcoholic odour of honey and pollen, nor does it exhale a warm breath of fulness, but with the odour of honey is mingled an odour of emptiness and decay.

At the entrance are no longer found the watch-bees, ready to defend the hive to the last extremity, with their backs raised up and trumpeting the alarm. There is no longer that even and soft sound, that palpitation of work, resembling the sound of boiling, but one hears the incoherent, discordant noise of disorder. Black, slender, honey-covered plunderer-bees fly timidly and stealthily out of one hive into another; they do not sting, but avoid danger. Formerly bees flew in with burdens and out again without anything; now they fly off laden with booty.

The bee-keeper opens the lower part of the hive and looks at its bottom. Instead of the black rows of well-fed bees that, pacified by their work, hung down to the very bottom, holding each other by the legs, and with a continuous murmur of labour drawing out the wax, now sleepy, dried-up bees wander about distractedly over the bottom and over the walls of the hive. Instead of the floor being pasted even with glue, and swept clean by the fanning wings, it is covered with bits of wax, with excrements of the bees, and with half-dead bees that barely move their feet, and with entirely dead bees that have not been removed.

The bee-keeper opens the upper part of the hive, and inspects the top. Instead of serried ranks of bees that have filled up all the interstices in the honeycomb and that are warming their young brood, he sees only the artistic, complicated work of the comb, but no longer in its previous virgin purity. Everything is neglected and obstructed: the black plunderer-bees race rapidly and stealthily over the structure; while his own bees, dried up, wizened, and flaccid as if from age, loiter slowly, without disturbing anyone, wishing nothing, and having lost the consciousness of life. Drones, wasps, humble-bees, and moths in their flight aimlessly beat against the walls of the hive. Here and there, between the wax with the dead brood and the honey, is at times heard from various sides an angry buzzing: two bees, from old habit, are somewhere cleaning a nest of the hive, and carefully, above their strength, dragging away a bee or humble-bee, not knowing themselves why they are doing it. In another corner, two old bees are quarrelling, or cleaning, or feeding each other, without thinking whether they are doing it out of friendship or enmity. In a third place a crowd of bees press against each other, and, attacking some victim, beat and choke it. And the weakened or killed bee slowly, softly, like down, falls from above upon the heap of corpses.

The bee-keeper unscrews the two middle combs, in order to see the nest. In place of the thick, black rows of thousands of bees, sitting back to back, and guarding the highest secrets of birth, he sees hundreds of drowsy, barely living skeletons of bees. They have died, nearly all of them, before they knew it, sitting on the sanctum which they have guarded, and which is no more. They exhale an odour of decay and death. Only a few of them are stirring: they rise, lazily fly up and alight on the hand of the enemy, whom they sting, not being able to die, while the other, the dead bees fall down like scales of fishes. The bee-keeper closes the hive and marks it with a piece of chalk, and in proper time breaks it open and burns it out.

Just so empty was Moscow when Napoleon, tired, restless, and frowning, walked up and down the Kammer-Kolleg rampart, waiting for the external, but, according to his ideas, necessary preservation of proprieties,--the deputation.

Some people were still moving about senselessly in various corners of Moscow, preserving the old habits, but not understanding what they were doing.

When, with proper caution, it was announced to Napoleon that Moscow was deserted, he angrily looked at him who reported it and, turning away, continued to walk in silence.

“Bring the carriage,” said he. He seated himself in the carriage with an adjutant of the day, and drove into the suburb.

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

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

The finale of the theatrical performance was not a success!

Glyeb Ivánovich Uspénski. (1840-1902.)

Uspénski was born in the city of Túla, where his father was a
government official. He attended the Gymnasia at Túla and Chernígov,
devoting much of his time to the reading of the Russian classics. He
then studied at the universities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, leaving
them in 1863 without graduating. His literary career began in 1866
with a series of sketches under the general title of _Customs of
Perdition Street_, in which he described the proletariat that eke out
their existence in small provincial towns, struggling with hunger and
cold, and drowning in liquor the cheerless monotony of their lives. He
next gave, in _Observations of a Lazy Fellow_ and other stories, a
series of types from the proletariat of intelligence in the same
provincial towns. In 1871 he went abroad, and wrote his _Letters from
Servia_. Upon his return he determined to turn his attention to the
“source,” that is, to the peasant. He settled for that purpose in the
country, in the Government of Samára, but his experience was
disappointing: he saw the peasant in his crude and savage nakedness.
His _Drudgery_, which is the result of his study of peasant morality,
was a revelation to Russia. Heretofore the peasant had been either
idealised or detracted, according to the literary camp to which the
writer belonged, but now he was for the first time painted from
nature, without reserve or bias. His greatest production is _The Power
of the Land_, based on another study in the Government of Nóvgorod, in
which he comes to the conclusion that the peasant can be saved only
when he is returned to his land.

In English translation: _The Steam Chicken_ and _A Trifling Defect in
the Mechanism_, in _The Humour of Russia_, by E. L. Voynich, London
and New York, 1895.

FROM “THE POWER OF THE LAND”

IVÁN PETRÓV

Iván Petróv belongs to that useless, incomprehensible, disgraceful class of village people (certainly disgraceful to such a country as Russia) that has grown up in the last twenty years and that one can’t help calling by any other name than “village proletariat.” This new-born proletariat could absolutely have been avoided, if millions of measures that are directed for the good of the masses paid at least as much attention to the people’s conception of the world as they do to their taxable qualities.

A peasant is frequently led to turn his back on his land and to prefer the tavern to his house by some such inconsistency in the peasant “rights” by which he may one day be a foreman of a jury or a judge who, by pronouncing the life-giving words “not guilty!” magnanimously saves some unfortunate man, and the next day after this manifestation of his great “right” may be beaten black and blue by the village official because while intoxicated he had insulted his elder with the words: “O you stub-nosed bunny!” One would have to discard all morality, all spiritual life, all ability to live according to one’s own ideas, if one wanted to move silently and without murmuring between these two poles of the peasant “rights.” But this example is only a drop in the sea of that radical disorder that undermines the most radical foundations of the popular world conception and that evolves a man “without any prospects,” “without a to-morrow,” and tries to make a labourer and slave of a man who, by the very essence of his nature, cannot exist otherwise than with the consciousness that he is a “master.”

Look at this Iván Petróv, nicknamed Bosýkh: he is a man of great physical power, and an agile and skilful workman; his wife is strong, clever, and skilful, and was once a beauty; he can have all the land he wants. In addition to being a husbandman, he is also a good village joiner and a shoemaker; and even as a common day labourer--chopping wood, or pressing hay--he could, by receiving seventy kopeks a day and his board, live without any care. Instead, he has given up his farm, he beats his wife, and she is continually weeping and complaining against him; his three children loiter for days at a time in dirty rags in the streets and without being cared for, and nobody knows whether they are being fed. Though his hut is one of a row of new peasant huts where one may see print curtains, Vienna furniture, clocks under glass globes, etc., it is the acme of disorder: it is nearly all in ruins; instead of window panes there are only rags; and yet one may see by the structure of the cabin and outhouses that it was once a “rich” house, and that the barns extended some two hundred feet in length; the posts are all of oak, nearly six feet in circumference----

And the “master” himself? Ask about him the village people of standing, and they will all give bad reports of him: he has sold the same hay to three different parties, and the money he has spent in drinks; he has taken on credit, “against the calf,” in three different shops, but he has not paid anywhere, while he has sold the calf to somebody else and, as usual, has spent the money in liquor. He has been several times flogged in the village office for using abusive language to the authorities, for unpaid taxes, and for beating his wife, whom, upon returning from his punishment, he beat again mercilessly in the field.

“Don’t give him any money, for the Lord’s sake, don’t advance him any!” is the advice a wary villager gives you.

“Don’t trust him a hair’s breadth!” says another villager who has been cheated by Iván.

And yet, let Iván “come to” for a week or two, what a splendid, what a good and clever, man he is! How much humour there is in him, how much observation, tenderness, magnanimity, self-detraction, and how much youthful freshness of soul! What is it then that sends him in an intoxicated state into the wet and dirty gutter, without boots, without garments, his swollen face downward, and his broad shoulders beaten by the rains and the wind? The whole village remembers his family, and all say that the Bosýkhs were at one time among the first farmers, that Iván used to live peaceably with his wife, that they had been “first-class” workers; all are convinced that let him only awaken and he will be priceless, that he has “golden hands”; and they wonder why he has turned his back to everything, why he cheats, causes disturbances, and like a tramp does an occasional day’s work only to spend his wages in the tavern.

Now, Iván’s intoxication has changed into a disease. The people characterise this disease that oppresses not only Iván, but whole masses of the village proletariat like him, by the name of “weakness.” Physically Iván is, like hundreds of similar “weak” peasants, not only healthy and strong, but even powerful, consequently his weakness did not spring from physical but some other causes. I have had frequent conversations with Iván in regard to these “weaknesses”; for a long time they led to no satisfactory results, and often they were only confusing, especially to the writer of these lines, that is, to a man who has been in the habit of explaining the wretched state of the masses almost exclusively as springing from material want, misery, taxes, and so forth. I shall here relate one of these conversations as an example.

“Do tell me, Iván, why are you drinking so much?” I ask Iván in one of those clear moments when he “comes to,” repents his dreadful actions, and ponders over his bitter fate.

Iván draws a deep sigh and speaks with contrition, almost in a whisper:

“I have humoured myself too much---- I don’t know what to think---- We had better not speak of it!---- When I think it over, I wish I were dead, I swear I wish I were!”

“But why? Do tell me!”

“Why? Well, it ’s all--on account of--freedom! That ’s why! On account of too much freedom!”

As this answer perplexes me, and I am absolutely unable to see how “freedom” should ruin a man, Iván tries to dispel my perplexity, and he gives me a more detailed explanation:

“On account of a free life, that ’s what it is!”

“But what does that mean?” I ask him, still perplexed.

“It means this: when I was living at the railroad station, I received thirty-five roubles a month, and I had about ten men under my charge, and I had an additional income of a rouble in silver for every waggon,--now figure out how many waggons we sent out in a winter? Well, it was there that I humoured myself----”

The word “humour” does not at all fit a strapping, forty years old, bearded man, and it is hard to understand how in the explanation of his conduct he can use an expression that is proper only for a baby. But Iván cannot find a more exact word.

“Well, so I began to humour myself. When father was alive, I never took a drop. He would have killed me, if I had, yes, he would have killed me dead with his own hands. After father died, and I got married and had my own household, I allowed myself a drink only when I was treated to it, on a holiday, or once in a while a glass when I felt blue---- I was careful, and I watched myself as long as I could. But when I had my freedom at the railroad station, that is, my full liberty, then I began, well, in a word, to be short, I let myself loose---- I kept it up for days at a time, and I never could get enough---- I remember how it all began, as though it were but yesterday: roadmaster Iván Rodiónych’s name day fell on John of the Lent---- Well, he poured me out a glass of the grape juice, they call it port---- I liked it, as I swallowed it--so I took some more--and then gin, lemonade---- Since then that plague has stayed with me. And why? It ’s all on account of freedom!---- Not being used to it---- Making an easy living---- That ’s what it is from!---- I used to have my pockets full of money---- Well, since then I have been a regular pig----”

So it appears that “freedom,” “liberty, easy living, plenty of money,” that is, that which is necessary for a man to establish himself, causes his whole disorder, until he becomes “a regular pig.”

“Why did you spend your money not on your house but on drinking?” I ask him.

“That ’s the trouble, I was not used to it! Life was too free to think of house and farm---- Do anything you please, and nobody interferes with you---- In short, there is a good chance to humour yourself----”

Seeing that his explanation explains nothing and that I am unable to understand why an easy life makes a pig of a man, Iván tries to make his idea clearer by an example, such as peasants are in the habit of having recourse to in their conversations. I shall here give his example, though I know that the reader will hardly be much enlightened by it.

“Because,” says he, “our peasant nature is n’t used to it---- We are by nature a working lot---- Let me tell you an example---- There was living in our neighbourhood a gentleman, by the name of Podsólnukhov, and he was farming---- So he farmed and farmed, and seeing that there was no profit in farming, he got it into his head to go into the dairy business. He had no use for our breed of cattle, and it ’s so, our cows are rather thin and coarse-haired---- ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I ’ll get a cow from abroad.’ He sent for one. A telegram came, the cow was on her way, and a learned German was bringing her---- There they were leading her, why, almost in chains,--such a monster, some seven feet in height, ten feet in length---- Her horns, her eyes, and such things,--God’s wonder,--a regular giant, an Eruslán Lázarevich[25]---- They cleaned out the cattle yard for her, spread some straw over it, and the moment she came, she lay down on her side upon it. And the German asked for a lamp to be used in the night. Very well. And the cow remained lying on her side and eating in that posture. All the women did was to put the feed within reach of her mouth. She kept on eating, but of milk there was not a trace.

“‘What is the matter,’ says I to the German, ‘she is not giving any milk?’

“‘Well,’ says he, ‘she is resting; it ’s so and so,’ says he. ‘She has been travelling a long distance, and in the car, and so she is tired, and is taking it easy----’

“‘How long,’ says I, ‘will she be taking it easy?’

“‘Maybe a month.’

“All right. We thought we would let her while away her time with our village bull,--but that was a dreadful blunder. No sooner did he lay his eyes on her majestic form, when he got frightened like a rabbit, for he saw at once that he, with his country snout, had no business in her presence,--and so he picked himself up and off he went, and it was only twelve versts away that some peasants succeeded in catching him. But she was resting herself all the time. She ate, and yawned, and ate again---- At last she evidently felt conscience-stricken and gave a whole pail of milk. So our master said:

“‘Do you see, Iván?’ says he,--‘there is no comparison with our sickly little cows!’

“‘Well, no, sir,’ says I; ‘considering what she has eaten up, our cattle are worth more.’

“‘How so?’

“‘It ’s like this: figure out, how much she has eaten up, and compare it with the milk she is giving. It ’s so, she does give a pailful, but that pailful costs too much. If you were to give her feed to ten of our cows, they would give you ten times the amount this monster is giving you.’

“Says the German: ‘She is not the kind of a breed,’ says he, ‘that ’s just good for the milk; she is considering herself too; she is eating for her own benefit--just look what firm flesh she has.’

“After these words says I to my master: ‘Do you see, sir,’ says I, ‘it ’s just it: our cows suit our case much better. We do not care about their flesh, and they do not live for their benefit, but for work; they give back what they eat up, and they do not consider themselves. Our cows are born for work, and for work they live all their lives,--that ’s their purpose.’

“And so there are all kinds of men. And we peasants are just the same. We work the year round, and all our lives, without stopping. I tried to get away from my peasant’s life, and I have almost killed myself with drinking---- There are some who like that which is easy, and who want to do nothing---- Some get rich by saving their money, but when I turned my back on the village and ran away from a peasant’s work, and began to live freely,--my money flew like chips. All I was interested in was how to get rid of it, and I could think of no other place to spend it in but the tavern. What? Well, I ’ll make a clean breast of it,” Iván spoke in a whisper, “I had three mamzelles! I forgot the Law! I am speaking before the Lord---- Freedom! liberty! I was only thinking how to do wrong, pshaw! I so far forgot myself that I began to oppress my own kind, my fellow-peasants! Why did I do it? I had simply lost my conscience---- Some cold day they would be looking for me and having found me in a saloon, they would bow and say:

“‘Let us have our hay; we have been here two days and spending our money, but we can’t get at it.’

“It seems, it was not much for me to say to my assistant: ‘Mikháylo! Go and get them the car!’ but Satan himself began to urge me on; so I sat over my bottle, looking important, and said: ‘You have to do the best you can.’

“‘But, friend, how are we to find it? We have walked all over the yards, among whistling engines and no end of smoke, and we are afraid we shall get killed yet, and we are worn out besides.’

“‘Look for it! Find the fellow you need!’

“‘But you, our protector----’

“And I would keep them off until someone of those present would say to them:

“‘Stick three roubles into his mug,--that ’s what you want to do!’

“And it was only thus that I did them any favours---- If my wife came my way, I used to scold her roundly. As long as I stayed in the village I had use for her, but here where I had my freedom, I had others to pass my time with, and what was I to do with her, a common peasant woman? That ’s the kind of lawlessness I came to. I drank more and more, and the authorities heard of it, and the superintendent of the division came and mauled me all up (his face shone as he was telling this), and the superintendent of traffic gave me a few mighty blows (a childish joy was spread over his face), and they took me to the round-house, and laid it on to me,--so I made the sign of the cross and, just as if I had risen from the grave, I jumped up, and started on a run home, without my hat, right through the cold! Over fields, over snowdrifts, by back roads, I flew like a bird, not stopping for twenty-five versts, until I was back to my farm. There I was, in my yard, without a thing to my name, everything in ruins, but I felt as happy as if I had been resurrected. Praised be the Lord! Praised be the Queen of Heaven! I am again a man, I have found myself! I fell to my wife’s feet.

“‘Forgive me, my dear wife! Let me work, look after the farm! I shall give up all my foolishness, I will be a man again!’

“And I went at it with a vim! I loved it all,--my field, my plough and harrow, the sheds, the calf, the barn that was beginning to lean to one side, and the fence, and the woodpile---- They were all my dear friends, my nearest ones. It was just terrible to look at the desolation, but it only gave me more courage. The more work I saw, the more work there was ahead, the greater was my desire to do it, and the greater my strength---- That ’s what our peasant nature is! But there where I had been there was no work, but all kinds of distractions,--and money; but that had almost deprived me of my senses, and I dragged my soul through the mud, as a swine drags her belly. And what from? Freedom!----”

Iván would always begin and end his conversations with me by this incomprehensible correlation of “freedom” and “moral fall,” but you see, he not only did not make my misgivings clearer, but considerably increased them.

[25] Giant of Russian fairy tales.

Aleksándr Ivánovich Levítov. (1842-1877.)

Levítov was the son of a village priest in the Government of Tambóv.
His early youth was passed at home in sordid peasant surroundings,
where he learned just enough from his father to be able to read
religious books. A seminarist having provided him with some of the
Russian classics, he acquired a taste for literature and entered a
Seminary. He was a brilliant student, but had to suffer much insult
from his brutal companions for his physical weakness. Scenes from the
Seminary later formed the main subject of his stories. He then entered
the Moscow University, but soon afterwards transferred himself to the
Medico-Surgical Institute at St. Petersburg. Having taken part in some
political agitation, he was exiled to the north-east. Here he
associated entirely with the lower classes, confirmed himself in his
vicious habit of drinking, and in his sober moments composed his
excellent _Steppe Sketches_, that abound in poetical descriptions of
southern nature and in detailed pictures of the inhabitants of the
steppe. Then began his roving life from town to town, from one capital
to another, living all the time in the purlieus of the cities, and in
cellars, garrets, and outhouses. This, combined with his chronic state
of intoxication, led to consumption, and he finally died in a clinic.
Levítov has given a series of pictures from the life of the most
degraded townspeople with whom he came in contact, under the name of
_The Misery of Country, Roads, and Towns_. They are a reflex of his
own experiences and make painful reading, though, but for some
discursiveness, they are artistic in conception and execution.

SHOEMAKER COCK-OF-THE-BOOTS

I

There was in our village a good fellow,--a shoemaker. We just called him Cock-of-the-Boots, because he deserved the name. Early in the morning and late at night you might have seen him staggering through the village streets, and yelling, in his drunken fit, and repeating the same phrase:

“Come out, you village wiseacre, if there is such a one among you! Come out,” he shouted, “and I will have a chat with you.”

But no one dared to come out, being sure to get the worst of it.

He had come to us from down Usmán way. He was such a thick-set, homely-looking fellow, with thick, monstrous moustaches, and he wore a blue coat. His wife was as stubby and homely as he, and all in wrinkles, but she had on a chintz dress that was good enough for a shopkeeper’s wife and a red shawl over her shoulders. You would think that the moment he drove into the village he would make for the inn? The Lord bless you, he made plump for the tavern. That is, he and his wife went into the tavern, but the cart was left in charge of six good-looking young fellows, all of them in extensible boots, caps, and blue nankeen coats. They stood around the cart. People began to come up to them, and somebody asked them:

“Say, what kind of people are you, honourable gentlemen? Whence do you come and whither do you tend?”

“Step aside,” they replied to us, “step aside as far as you can, before dad comes back from the tavern, or there will be trouble!”

We all had to laugh, seeing that these strapping fellows were trying to frighten us with their “dad.”

We looked around: there he was coming out of the tavern with a bretzel in his hands, his cap poised way back on his head, while his wife carried a quart of brandy in her hand, in order to treat her sons.

“Go ahead,” he said, “and drink, and then find some quarters, for I am sleepy.”

Right near the tavern there was living in a hut a crazy old woman. We had nicknamed her the Blue Rig. She had no relatives of any sort, and managed to live somehow by charity. While he was cooling himself off in the tavern, his youngsters found out that she was helpless, and so they immediately reported to him:

“Dad, there is hereabouts a destitute old woman. They call her Blue Rig, and we might stop at her hut.”

They settled there, and before long they smoked the old woman out of her house. The township chief sent some hundred-men to oust Cock-of-the-Boots, but he gave the hundred-men a mighty drubbing, and told them that it was his house, and that the chief had better attend to his own business.

The chief marvelled at the fellow, and himself came down upon him with a posse. The whole village went to see the fun.

Cock-of-the-Boots took up a daring attitude in front of the chief, his hands akimbo; then he stroked his moustache and said:

“What made you, sir, come to me when I did not invite you? You had better wait for an invitation.”

“How dare you?” began the chief.