Chapter III

I flung along the strand, and my dark shadow flung after me, and when I stooped down to the water to find a bottom, the spectre of a fire-red form gazed at me from the black abyss, and in the distorted lineaments of its face, and in its dishevelled hair, which seemed as though it were lifted up upon the head by some terrific force, I failed to recognize myself.

“Ah! what is it? O Lord!” I prayed with outstretched hands.

But the tocsin kept calling. The bell no longer entreated, it shouted like a human being, and groaned and choked. The strokes had lost their regularity, and piled themselves one on the top of the other, rapidly and without echo; they died down, were reproduced and again died down. Once more I bent down to the water, and alongside of my own reflection I perceived another fiery spectre, tall and erect, and to my horror just like a human being.

“What’s that?” I screamed, looking round. Close to my shoulder stood a man looking at the conflagration in silence. His face was pale, his cheeks were covered with still moist blood, which gleamed as it reflected the fire. He was dressed simply, like a peasant. Possibly he had been already here when I ran up, and had been stopped like myself by the swamp, or possibly he may have arrived after me; but at all events I had not heard his approach, nor did I know who he was.

“It burns,” said he, without removing his eyes from the fire. The reflected fire leapt in them, and they seemed large and glassy.

“Who are you? Where do you come from?” I asked; “you are all bloody.” With long, thin fingers he touched my cheeks, looked at them, and again fixed his gaze upon the fire.

“It burns,” he repeated, without paying any attention to me. “Everything is burning.”

“Do you know how to get there?” I asked, drawing back. I guessed that this was one of the many maniacs, which this ill-omened summer had produced.

“It burns!” he replied; “ho! ho! don’t it burn!” he cried, laughing, and looked at me kindly, wagging his head. The hurried strokes of the tocsin suddenly stopped, and the flame crackled louder. It moved like a living thing, and with long arms, as though weary, dragged itself to the silent belfry, which now seemed near and tall, and clothed no longer in pink but in red. Above the dark loop-hole, where the bells were hung, there appeared a timid quiet tongue of fire, like the flame of a candle, and was reflected in pale rays on their metal surface. Once more the bell began to tremble, sending forth its last madly-despairing cries, and once more I flung myself along the shore, and my black shadow flung after me.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” I cried, as though in reply to some one calling me. But the tall man was quietly seated behind me, embracing his knees, and kept singing a loud secondo to the bell: “Boom! boom! boom!”

“Are you mad?” I shouted to him. But he only sang the louder and the merrier, “Boom! boom! boom!”

“Be quiet!” I entreated. But he smiled and sang on, wagging his head, and the fire flared up in his glassy eyes. He was more terrible than the fire, this maniac, and I turned round and took to flight along the shore. But I had scarcely gone a few steps, when his lanky figure appeared silently alongside of me, his shirt fluttering in the wind. He ran in silence, even as I did, with long untiring strides, and in silence our black shadows ran along the upturned field.

The bell was suffocating in its last death-struggle and cried out like a human being who, despairing of assistance, has lost all hope. And we ran on in silence aimlessly into the darkness, and close to us our black shadows leapt mockingly.

BARGAMOT AND GARASKA

It would be unjust to say that Nature had injured Ivan Akindinich Bargamotov, who in his official capacity was called “Constable No. 20,” and unofficially simply Bargamotov. The inhabitants of one of the outskirts of the provincial towns of Orel, who in their turn were nicknamed “gunners,” from the name of their abode (Gunner Street) and, from the moral side were characterized as “broken-headed gunners,” when they dubbed Ivan Akindinovich “Bargamot,” were without doubt not thinking of the qualities which belong to such a delicate and delicious fruit as the _bergamot._ By his exterior Bargamot reminded one rather of the mastodon, or of any of those engaging, but extinct creatures, which for want of room have long ago deserted a world already filling up with flaccid little humans. Tall, stout, strong, loud-voiced Bargamot loomed big on the police horizon, and certainly would long ago have attained notable rank, if only his soul, compressed within those stout walls, had not been sunk in an heroic sleep.

Outward impressions in passing to Bargamot’s soul by means of his little fat-encased eyes, lost all their sharpness and force, and arrived at their destination only in the form of feeble echoes and reflexions. A person of sublime requirements would have called him a lump of flesh; his superior officers called him a “stock,” but a useful one—while to the “gunners,” the persons most interested in this question, he was a staid, serious matter-of-fact man, one worthy of every respect and consideration. What Bargamot knew he knew well, were it only a policeman’s instructions, which he had assimilated some time or other with all the energy of his mighty frame, and which had sunk so deep into his sluggish brain, that it would have been impossible to rout them out again, even with vitriol. Nevertheless certain truths occupied a permanent position in his soul, truths acquired by way of life’s experience, and unconditionally dominating the situation.

Of that which Bargamot did not know he kept such an imperturbably stolid silence, that people who did know it became somehow or other somewhat ashamed of their knowledge. But the chief point was this that Bargamot was enormously powerful; and might was right in Gunner Street, a slum inhabited by shoemakers, tailors who worked at home, and the representatives of other “liberal” professions. Owning two public houses, uproarious on Sundays and Mondays, Gunner Street devoted all its leisure hours to Homeric fights, in which the women, bare-headed and dishevelled, took immediate part (as they separated their husbands), and also the little children, who gazed with delight on the daring of their papas.

All this rough wave of drunken “gunners” beat against the immovable Bargamot as against a stone breakwater, while he would deliberately seize with his mighty hands a pair of the most desperate rowdies and personally conduct them to the “lock-up,” and the rowdies would obediently submit their fate to the hands of Bargamot, protesting merely for the sake of appearances.

Such was Bargamot in the domain of international relations. In the sphere of home politics he held himself with no less dignity. The small tumble-down cottage, in which Bargamot lived with his wife and two young children, and which with difficulty afforded room for his mighty body, and trembled with craziness and with fear for its own existence whenever Bargamot turned round, might be at ease, if not with regard to its own wooden structure, at all events in respect of the family unity.

Domestic, careful, and fond of digging in his garden on free days, Bargamot was severe. He instructed his wife and children through the same medium of physical influence, not conforming so much to the actual requirement of science as to certain indefinite prescriptions on that score which existed in the ramifications of his big head. This did not prevent his wife Marya, who was still a young and handsome woman, on the one hand from respecting her husband as a steady, sober man, and on the other, in spite of all his massiveness, from twisting him round her finger with that ease and force of which only weak women are capable.

At about ten o’clock on a warm spring evening Bargamot stood at his usual post at the corner of Gunner Street and the 3rd Garden Street. He was in a bad humour. To-morrow was Easter Day, and soon people would be going to church, while he would have to stand on duty till 3 o’clock in the morning, and would only get home in time for the conclusion of the fast. Bargamot did not feel any need of prayer, but the bright holiday air which permeated the unusually peaceful and quiet street affected even him.

He did not like the spot on which he had stood still every day for a matter of ten years. He felt a desire to do something of a holiday character such as others were doing. And in view of these uneasy feelings there arose within him a certain discontent and impatience. Moreover he was hungry. His wife had given him no dinner at all that day, and so he had had to put up with a few sups of _kvass_ and bread. His great stomach was insistently demanding food; and how long it was still to the conclusion of the fast!

Ptu!—spat Bargamot, as he made a cigarette and began reluctantly to suck at it. At home he had some good cigarettes, presented to him by a local shop-keeper, but he was reserving them till the conclusion of the fast.

Soon the “gunners” drew along towards the church, clean and respectable in jackets and waistcoats over red and blue flannel shirts, and in long boots with innumerable creases, and high pointed heels. To-morrow all this splendour was destined to disappear behind the counter of the “pub,” or to be torn in pieces in a friendly struggle for harmony.

But for to-day the “gunners” were resplendent. Each one carefully carried a parcel of paschal cakes. None took any notice of Bargamot, neither did he look with especial love on his “god-children,” and uneasily prognosticated how many times he would have to make a journey to-morrow to the police station.

In fact, he was jealous that they were free and could go where it was bright, noisy and cheerful, while he was stuck there like a penitent.

“Here I have to stand because of you, drunkards,” muttered he, summing up his thoughts, and spat once more—he felt a hollow in the pit of his stomach.

The street was becoming empty. The Eucharistic bell had ceased. Then the joyful changes of the treble peal, so cheerful after the melancholy tolling of the Lenten bells, spread over the world the joyful news of Christ’s resurrection. Bargamot took off his hat and crossed himself. Soon he would be going home. He became more cheerful as he imagined to himself the table laid with a clean cloth, the paschal cakes and the eggs. He would without hurry give to all the Easter salutation. They would wake up Jack and bring him in, and he would at once demand the coloured egg, about which he had held circumstantial conversations the whole week through with his more experienced little sister. Oh, how he’ll open wide his mouth when his father brings him, not the bright dyed egg, but the real marble one, which the same obliging shop-keeper had presented to Bargamot!

“Dear little chap!” said Bargamot with a smile, feeling a sort of paternal tenderness welling up from the depths of his soul.

But Bargamot’s placidity was broken in on in the most abject manner. Round the corner were heard uneven footsteps and low mutterings.

“Who the devil is coming here?” thought Bargamot, looking round the corner and feeling injured in his very soul.

“Garaska! Yes, drunk as usual! Well, that’s a finisher!”

It was a mystery to Bargamot how Garaska could have managed to get drunk before daylight, but of the fact of his drunkenness there was no doubt. His behaviour, mysterious as it would have been to an outsider, was perfectly clear to Bargamot, who was well acquainted with the “Gunner” soul in general, and with the low nature of Garaska in particular. Attracted by an irresistible force from the middle of the street, in which he had the habit of walking, he was pressed close to the hoarding. Supporting himself with both hands, and contemplating the wall with a concentrated air of inquiry, Garaska staggered, while he gathered up his strength for a fresh struggle with any unexpected impediments he might meet with.

After a short but intense meditation he pushed himself energetically from the wall, and staggered backwards into the middle of the street, made a deliberate turn, and set out with long strides into space, which turned out to be not quite so endless as it has been said to be, but was in fact bounded by a mass of lamps.

With the first of these, Garaska came into the closest relations, and clasped it in the firm embrace of friendship.

“A lamp! Stop!” said he curtly, as he established the accomplished fact. Quite unusually, of course, Garaska was in an excessively good humour. Instead of heaping well-deserved objurgations upon the lamp-post he turned to it with mild reproaches, which contained some touches of familiarity.

“Stand still, you silly ass, where are you going to?” he muttered as he staggered away from the lamp-post, and again fell with his whole chest upon it, almost flattening his nose against its cold damp surface.

“That’s right! eh?” and by clinging with half his length along the post he managed to hold on, and sank into a reverie.

Bargamot contemptuously compressed his lips, as he looked down on Garaska from his superior height. Nobody annoyed him so much in the whole of Gunner Street as this wretched toper. To look at him—one would not have thought there was any strength in him, and yet he was the greatest scandal in the whole neighbourhood.

He’s not a man, but an ulcer! A “gunner” gets drunk, makes a disturbance, spends the night in the lock-up, and he gets over all this like a gentleman—but Garaska always does it stealthily, and of malice prepense. He may be beaten half to death or nearly starved at the police station, still they can never break him of bad language, of his most offensively foul tongue.

He will stand under the windows of any of the most respectable people in Gunner Street, and begin to swear without rhyme or reason. The shopmen seize Garaska and beat him—the crowd laughs and advises them to give it him hot. Garaska would revile even Bargamot himself in such fantastically realistic language, that without understanding all the subtleties of his wit, he felt himself more insulted, than if he had been whipped.

How Garaska got his living, remained to the “gunners” one of those mysteries which enveloped his whole existence. Certainly no one had ever seen him sober. He lived, or rather camped about in the orchards, or the river-bank, or under shrubs. In winter he disappeared to somewhere or other, and with the first breath of spring he reappeared. What attracted him to Gunner Street, where it was every one’s business to beat him, was again a profound mystery of Garaska’s soul, but get rid of him they could not. They strongly suspected, and that not without reason, that he was a thief, but they could not take him in the act, so he was beaten on merely circumstantial evidence.

On this occasion Garaska had evidently a difficult path to negotiate. The rags, which made a pretence of seriously covering his emaciated body, were all over still undried mud.

His face, with its big, bulbous red nose, which was incontestably one of the causes of his unstable equilibrium, was covered with an irregularly distributed watery growth, and gave substantial evidence of its close relations with alcohol and a neighbour’s fist. On his cheek near the eye was a scratch of evidently recent origin.

He succeeded at last in parting company with the lamp-post, and when he observed the dignified silent figure of Bargamot he was overjoyed.

“Our best respects to you, Bargamot Bargamotich—we hope we see you well!” said he with a polite wave of his hand, but he staggered, and was fain to prop himself up with his back against the lamp-post.

“Where are you going to?” growled Bargamot saturninely.

“We’re orl righ’!”

“On the old lay, eh? Or do you want a doss in the cells. You wretch, I’ll run you in at once.”

“No, you don’t!”

Garaska was just going to make a gesture of defiance, when he wisely restrained himself, spat and rubbed his foot about on the ground, as though to rub out the spittle.

“You can talk when you get to the police station! March!”

Bargamot’s mighty hand stretched out to Garaska’s collar, so greasy in fact that it was evident that Bargamot was not his first guide on the thorny path of well-doing. Giving the drunken man a slight shake, and propelling his body in the required direction, and at the same time giving it a certain stability, Bargamot dragged him towards the above-mentioned gaol, just as a strong hawser might tow after it a very light schooner, which had met with an accident outside the harbour. He considered himself deeply injured, instead of enjoying his well-earned rest, to have to drag himself with this drunkard to the station.

Ugh! Bargamot’s hands itched—but the consciousness that on such a high festival it would be unseemly to let them have their way, restrained him. Garaska strode on bravely, mingling in a remarkable manner self-confidence, and even insolence, with meekness. He evidently harboured some thought of his own, which he began to approach by the Socratic method.

“Tell me, Mr. Policeman, what is to-day?”

“Won’t you shut up!” Bargamot replied in contempt. “Drunk before daylight!”

“Has the bell at Michael the Archangel’s rung yet?”

“Yes, what’s that to you?”

“Then Christ is risen!”

“Well, He is risen.”

“Then allow me——” Garaska was carrying on this conversation half twisted towards Bargamot, and with his face resolutely turned to him. Bargamot, interested by the strange questions, mechanically let go the greasy collar. Garaska, losing his support, staggered and fell before he could show to Bargamot an object which he had just taken out of his pocket. Raising his great shoulders, as he supported himself on his hands, Garaska looked on the ground, then fell face downwards, and began to wail, as a peasant woman wails for the dead.

Garaska howling! Bargamot was surprised, but deciding that it must be some new joke of his, he still felt interested as to developments. The development was that Garaska continued howling without words, just like a dog.

“What’s up now? Off your nut, eh?” said Bargamot as he gave him a shove with his foot. He went on howling. Bargamot was in a dilemma.

“What’s got yer, eh?”

“The eg—g.”

“Well?”

Garaska went on howling, but less noisily, he sat down and lifted up his hand. The hand was covered with something sticky, to which adhered pieces of coloured egg-shell. Bargamot, still in doubt, began to have an inkling that something untoward had taken place.

“I——like a gentleman——to present——Easter egg——but you——” blubbered Garaska disconnectedly; but Bargamot understood.

It was evident what had been Garaska’s intention. He wished to present him with an Easter egg according to Christian usage, and Bargamot was for taking him to gaol. Perhaps he had brought the egg a long way, and now it was broken—and he was crying. Bargamot imagined to himself that the marble egg he was keeping for Jack was broken, and how sorry it made him.

“”Ere’s a go!” said Bargamot shaking his head, as he looked at the wallowing drunkard, and pitied him as intensely as he would have pitied a man cruelly wronged by his own brother.

“He was going to present——” “He is also a living soul,” muttered the policeman, striving albeit clumsily to render the state of affairs clear to himself, and feeling a mixture of shame and pity, which became more and more oppressive.

“And you would have run him in! Shame on you!”

Sighing heavily as he bent down he knocked his short sword against a stone, and sat down on his heels near to Garaska.

“Well,” he muttered in confusion, “perhaps it is not broken.”

“Not broken! Why yer was ready to break my snout for me. Brute!”

“But what did you shove for!”

“What for——” mimicked Garaska. “I was going——like a gentleman to——and him to——the lock up. Think that’s my last egg? Yer lump!”

Bargamot sniffed. He did not feel in the least hurt by Garaska’s abuse; through his whole ill-organized interior he felt a sort of half pity, half shame, while in the remotest depths of his stout body something kept tiresomely wimbling and torturing.

“Can one help giving you a thrashing?” said Bargamot, more to himself than to Garaska.

“Not you, you garden scarecrow! Now look ”ere.”

Garaska was evidently falling into his usual groove. In his somewhat clearing brain he was picturing to himself a whole perspective of the most compromising terms of abuse, and most insulting epithets, when Bargamot cleared his throat with a sound which left not the slightest doubt as to the firmness of his determination and declared:

“We’ll go to my house, and break the fast.”

“What! go to your house, you tubby devil!”

“Let’s go, I say.”

Garaska’s surprise was boundless. Quite passively he allowed himself to be lifted up and led by the hand, and he went—but whither? Not to the lock-up, but to the house of Bargamot himself—actually to eat his Easter breakfast there! A seductive thought came into his head—to give Bargamot the slip, but though his head had become cleared by the very unusualness of the situation his feet still remained in such evil case, that they seemed sworn to perpetually cling to one another, and to prevent each other from walking.

Then, too, Bargamot was such a wonder that Garaska, truth to tell, did not want to get away.

Bargamot, twisting his tongue, and searching for words and stuttering, now propounded to him the instructions for a policeman, and now reverting to the special question of thrashing, and the lock-up, deciding in his own mind in the positive, and at the same time in the negative.

“You say truly, Ivan Akindinich, we must be beaten,” acknowledged Garaska, feeling even a sort of awkwardness. Bargamot was a sore wonder!

“No, I don’t mean to do that,” mumbled Bargamot, evidently understanding, even less than Garaska, what his woolly tongue was babbling.

They arrived at last at Bargamot’s house—and Garaska had already ceased to wonder.

Marya at first opened her eyes wide at the sight of the unwonted couple, but she guessed from her husband’s perturbed look, that there was no room for objections, and in her womanly kindheartedness quickly understood what she was expected to do.

Quieted and confused, Garaska sat down at the decorated table. He felt ashamed enough to sink into the ground. Ashamed of his rags, of his dirty hands, ashamed of his whole self, torn, drunken, disgusting as he was. Scalding himself with the deuced hot soup, swimming with fat, he spilt it on the table-cloth, and although the hostess with delicacy pretended not to have noticed it, he grew confused and spilt still more; so unbearably did those shrivelled fingers tremble with those great dirty nails, which Garaska now noticed for the first time.

“Ivan Akindinich, what surprise have you for Jacky?” asked Marya.

“Never mind——later on,” hurriedly replied Bargamot. He was scalding himself with the soup, blew on his spoon, and stolidly wiped his moustache—but through all this solidity the same amazement was apparent, as in the case of Garaska.

Marya hospitably pressed her guest to eat.

“Garasim,” she said, “how are you called after your father’s name?”

“Andreich.”

“Welcome, Garasim Andreich.”

Garaska, in endeavouring to swallow, choked, and throwing down his spoon, dropped his head on the table, right on the greasy spot which he had just made. From his breast there escaped again that rough, piteous howl, which had before so disturbed Bargamot.

The children, who had almost left off taking any notice of the guest, dropped their spoons and joined their treble to his tenor. Bargamot looked at his wife with a troubled and woeful expression.

“Now, what’s the matter with you, Garasim Andreich. Leave off,” said she, trying to quiet the perturbed guest.

“By my father’s name! Since I was born no one ever called me so!”

“MEN MAY RISE ON STEPPING-STONES OF THEIR DEAD SELVES TO HIGHER THINGS”

Have you ever happened to walk in a burial-ground?

Those little walled-in, quiet corners, overgrown with luscious grass, so small, and yet so ravenous, possess a peculiar dolorous poetry all their own.

Day after day thither are borne new corpses, a whole, immense, living, noisy city has been already borne thither one by one, and lo! the new city which has grown in its place is awaiting its turn—and the little corners remain ever the same, small, still, ravenous.

The peculiar air in them, the peculiar silence, and the lisping of the trees different there to anywhere else, are all mournful, pensive, tender. It is as though those white birches could not forget all those weeping eyes, which have sought the sky betwixt their green branches, and as though it were no wind, but deep sighs which keep swaying the air and the fresh leaves.

You, too, wander about the graveyard silent and pensive. Your ear is conscious of the gentle echoes of deep groans and tears, while your eyes rest on rich monuments, and modest wooden crosses; and the unmarked tombs of strangers, covering their dead, who were strangers when living, unmarked, unobserved. And you read the inscriptions on the monuments, and all these people who have disappeared from the world rise up in your imagination. You see them young, laughing, loving; you see them hale, loquacious, insolently confident in the endlessness of life.

And they are dead.

* * * * * * * * *

But is it necessary to go out of one’s house to visit a burial ground? Is it not sufficient for this purpose, that the darkness of night should envelop you, and have swallowed up all the sounds of day?

How many rich and sumptuous monuments! How many unmarked graves of strangers!

But is night needful in order to visit a graveyard? Is not daytime enough—restless, noisy day, sufficient unto which is the evil thereof?

Look into your own soul, and then, be it day or night, you will find there a burial ground. Small greedy, having devoured so much! And a gentle, sorrowful, whisper will ye hear, an echo of bygone heavy groans when the dead was dear, whom ye left in the tomb, and could not forget nor cease to love. And monuments ye will see, and inscriptions half blotted out with tears; and still, obscure, little tombs; small and ominous mounds, under which is hidden something which once was living, although ye knew not its life, nor remarked its death. But, maybe, it was the very best in your soul——

But why talk about it? Look for yourselves. And have you not indeed thus looked into your burial-ground every day, every single day of the long, weary year? Maybe as late as yesterday you recalled the dear departed, and wept over them. Maybe only yesterday you buried some one who had long been seriously ill, and had been forgotten even in life.

Lo! under the heavy marble surrounded by iron rails rests Love of mankind, and her sister Faith in them. How beautiful were they, and wondrous kind—these sisters. What bright light burned in their eyes, what strange power was wielded by their tender, white hands!

With what a caress did those white hands bring the cold drink to lips burning with thirst, and did feed the hungry. With what gentle care did they touch the sores of the sick, and healed them!

And they are dead, these sisters. They died of cold, as is said on the monument. They could not bear the icy wind in which life enveloped them.

And there, further on, a slanting cross marks the place where a Talent is buried in the earth. How bold it was, how noisy, how happy! It undertook anything, wished to do everything, and was confident that it could conquer the world.

And it is dead—died but lately, quietly, and unnoticed. One day it went among men, for long it was lost there, and it came back defeated, sad. Long it wept, long it strove to say something, and then without having said it—died.

And here is a long row of little sunken mounds. Who lies here?

Ah! yes. These are children. Little, keen, sportive Hopes. There were so many of them, they were so merry, and the soul was peopled with them. But one by one they died. They were so many, and they made such merriment in the soul.

It is quiet in the resting-place, and the leaves of the white birches rustle sadly.

* * * * * * * * *

But let the dead arise! Ye grim tombs ope wide, crumble to dust ye heavy monuments, ye iron bars give place!

Be it but for one day, for one moment, give freedom to those whom ye are smothering with your weight, and darkness!

Ye think they are dead! Oh, no! they live! They are silent, but they live.

They live!

Let them see the shining of the blue, cloudless sky, let them breathe the pure air of spring, let them be intoxicated with warmth and love.

Come to me my Talent that fell asleep. Why dost so drolly rub thine eyes. Does the sun blind thee? Does it not shine bright indeed? Thou laughest? Oh laugh, laugh on—there is so little of laughter among mankind. I too will laugh with thee. Look! there flies a swallow—let us fly after it! Has the tomb made thee too heavy? And what is that strange horror I see in thine eyes—like a reflection of the darkness of the tomb? No, no, don’t! Don’t cry. Don’t cry, I say!

So glorious, indeed, is life for the risen!

And ye my dear little Hopes! What charming laughing faces are yours! Who art thou, stout, funny little cherub? I know thee not. And wherefore laughest thou? Has the tomb itself been unable to affright thee? Gently, my children, gently! Why dost insult it—see’st not how little, pale and weak it is become? Live ye in the world—and do not worry me. Do ye not see that I, too, have been in the tomb, and now my head is giddy with the sun, and the air, and gladness.

Ah! how glorious is life for the risen!

Come to me, ye lovely, majestic Sisters. Let me kiss your gentle white hands. What do I see? Is it bread ye are carrying? Did not the darkness of the tomb terrify you—so tender, womanly and weak; under the whelming mass did ye still think of bread for the hungry? Let me kiss your feet. I know where they will soon be going, your light, swift little feet. And I know that wherever they pass by flowers will spring up—wondrous, sweet-smelling flowers. Ye call. We will come, then.

Hither! my risen Talent—why stand gazing at the fleeting clouds. Hither! my little sportive Hopes.

Stop!

I hear music. Don’t shout so, cherub. Whence these wondrous sounds? Gentle, melodious, madly joyful, and sad, they speak of life eternal——

Nay, be ye not afraid. This will soon pass away. I weep, indeed, for joy!

Ah! how glorious is life for the risen!

THE SPY

A young little student girl—almost a child. Her nose was thin, beautiful, with a slight upward tilt; and from her full lips there seemed to come the scent of chocolates and red caramels. And her fine hair, which covered her head like a heavy and caressing wave, was so generously rich that a glance at it gave rise to thoughts of all that is best and brightest on earth: of a golden morning upon a blue sea, of Autumn larks, of lilies of the valley and of fragrant and full-grown lilacs—a cloudless sky and lilacs, large, endless lilac bushes, and larks soaring over them.

And her eyes were young, bright, naïvely indifferent. But when you looked closely at her you could see upon her face the fine shades of fatigue, of lack of food, of sleepless nights spent in conversation in smoke-filled little rooms, by the exhausting lamp-light. Perhaps there had also been tears upon those eyes—big, not childish, venomous tears; all her bearing was full of restrained alarm; her face was cheerful, her lips smiled slightly, and her foot, in a little, mud-bespattered rubber shoe, stamped on the floor impatiently, as though to hurry the slow car and to drive it ahead faster, faster.

All this was noticed by the observing Mitrofan Krilov while the car slowly passed a small station. He stood on the platform, opposite the girl, and to while his time away he scrutinized her, somewhat fastidiously and inimically, as a very simple and familiar algebraic formula written in chalk upon the blackboard, which stared at him persistently. At first he felt cheerful, like everyone else who looked at the girl, but this feeling did not last long—there were causes which killed all cheerfulness in him.

“She must have come recently from some provincial town,” he remarked to himself sternly. “And why the deuce do they come here? I would gladly have run away from here to the most deserted spot, to the end of the world. I suppose she is occupied with all sorts of serious discussions and convictions, and, of course, cannot sew a ribbon around her skirt. She doesn’t bother with such things. What hurts me most is that such a good looking girl should be like that.”

The girl noticed his cross look and became confused, more confused than is usual under such circumstances; the smile vanished from her eyes, an expression of childish fear and perplexity appeared on her face, and her left hand quickly moved up to her chest and stopped there, clutching something.

“See!” Mitrofan wondered, looking aside, and his face assumed an apathetic expression. “She was frightened by my blue eyeglasses. She thinks that I am a detective; she is carrying some papers under her waist. There was a time when they used to carry love letters on their breasts—now they carry bulletins. And what an absurd name—bulletins.”

He cast another furtive glance at her in order to verify his expression, then he turned aside. The student girl gazed at him continuously, as though bewitched, and she pressed her hand firmly against her left side. Krilov grew angry.

“What a fool! Since I wear blue eyeglasses I must be, according to her ideas, a spy. But she does not understand that a man’s eyes may be sore from hard work. How naive she is. Just think of it! And these people undertake to do work to save the fatherland. What she needs is a milk bottle and not a fatherland. No, we are not ripe yet. Lasalle, for instance—his was a great mind! But here every beetle is trying to do things! She can’t solve a simple mathematical problem, and yet she is bothering about finance, politics, documents. You deserve to be scared properly—then you will know what you are about!”

Mitrofan Krilov drew his head into his shoulders with a sharp gesture, his face assumed a cunning and mean expression which, in his opinion, was peculiar to real spies, and he cast a sinister look at the girl which almost turned his eyes out. And he was satisfied with his work: the girl shuddered and quivered with fear, and her eyes began to wander alarmedly.

“There is no escape!” Mitrofan Krilov interpreted her restlessness. “You may jump, you may jump, my dove, and I’ll make it still stronger.”

And growing ever more and more inspired, forgetting his hunger, and the nasty weather, elated with his creative power, he began to simulate a spy as cleverly as if he were a real actor or as if he actually served in the secret police department. His body wriggled in fine serpentine twists and turns, his eyes beamed with treachery, and his right hand, lowered in his pocket, clutched the torn car ticket energetically, as if it were not a piece of paper, but a revolver loaded with six bullets, or a spy’s notebook. And now he attracted the attention of other people as well as that of the girl. A stout, red-haired merchant, who occupied one-third of the platform, suddenly contracted his body imperceptibly, as though he had grown thin at once, and turned aside. A tall fellow, with a cape over his top coat, blinked his rabbit-like eyes as he stared at Krilov, and suddenly, pushing the girl aside, jumped off the car and disappeared among the carriages.

“Excellent!” Mitrofan Krilov praised himself, overjoyed with the hidden and spiteful delight of a choleric man. In renouncing his individuality, in the fact that he pretended he was such an odious creature as a spy, and that people feared and despised him—in all this there was something keen, something pleasantly alarming, something intensely interesting. In the grey shroud of everyday life some dark, dreadful vistas opened, full of noiselessly moving shadows.

“Indeed, the occupation of a spy must be very interesting. A spy risks a great deal, and how he risks! One spy was even killed! He was slaughtered like a hog!”

For a moment he was frightened, and wanted to cease being a spy, but the teacher’s skin into which he was to return was so meagre, dull, and repulsive that he inwardly renounced it, and his face assumed as forbidding an expression as it could. The student girl no longer looked at him, but her whole youthful figure, the tip of her pink ear which peeped from under her heavy hair, her body bent slightly forward, and her chest working slowly and deeply, betrayed her terrible agitation and her one thought of escape. She must have been dreaming of wings, of wings. Twice she made an irresolute step, and slightly turned her head toward Mitrofan, but her flushed cheek felt his penetrating gaze, and she became as petrified. Her hand remained on the platform rail, and her black glove, torn at the middle finger, quivered slightly. She felt ashamed that everybody saw her tom glove and the protruding finger, her tiny, orphan-like, and timid finger—and yet she was powerless to take off her hand.

“Ah!” thought Mitrofan Krilov. “There you are! There is no escape for you. That’s a good lesson for you; you’ll know how to do such things. At first you acted as though you were going to a ball; that wouldn’t do, you mustn’t think of pleasures only. Now jump a bit, jump a bit!”

He pictured to himself the life of the girl he pursued, and it appeared to him to be just as interesting, just as full and as varied as the life of a spy. There was also something in it that the life of a spy lacked—a certain offended pride, a certain harmony of strife, mystery, quick terror, and quick, courageous joy. People were pursuing her.

Mitrofan Krilov looked askance, with aversion, at his outworn coat, rubbed out at the sleeves; he recalled the button below, which was torn out together with a piece of cloth, pictured to himself his own yellow, sour face, which he hid; his blue spectacles; and with venomous joy he discovered that he really resembled a spy. Particularly that button. Spies have nobody that would sew on their buttons for them.

Now he looked at everything with the same eyes that the girl did, and all was new to him. He had never before in all his life given any thought as to what evening and night meant—mysterious, voiceless night, which brings forth darkness, which hides people. Now he saw its silent advent, wondered at the lanterns that were lit, saw something in the struggle between light and darkness, and was amazed at the calm of the crowd walking on the sidewalks. Was it possible that they did not see the light? The girl looked greedily at the passing black spaces of the still dark side streets and he looked at them with the same eyes as she did, and the corridors, luring into the darkness, were eloquent. She looked mournfully at the dull houses which were fenced off from the streets by rocks, and at the shelterless people—and these massive, angry fortresses seemed new to her.

Availing herself of the teacher’s distractedness, the student girl lifted her hand in the torn glove from the platform rail—this made her braver—and she jumped off at the corner of a large street. At this point people got off and many others boarded the car, and a thin woman with a huge bundle obstructed the way, so that Mitrofan Krilov could not leave the car. He said “Please,” and tried to force himself out, but he got stuck in the doorway and ran to the other side of the car. But there the way was obstructed by the conductor and the red merchant.

“Let me pass,” Mitrofan Krilov shouted. “Conductor, what disgraceful business is this? I’ll make a complaint against you!”

“They didn’t hear you,” the conductor defended himself timidly. “Please, let him pass.”

Out of breath, he finally freed himself, jumped off so awkwardly that he almost fell down and he threatened the departing red light of the car with his fist.

Mitrofan overtook the girl in a small deserted street, into which he turned by intuition. She walked briskly and kept looking around, and when she noticed her pursuer she started to run, thus naïvely betraying her helplessness. Mitrofan also started to run after her, and now in the dark, unfamiliar, side street, where there were no other people but they, he and the girl, running, he was seized with a strange feeling; he felt that he was too much of a spy, and he even became frightened.

“I must end this matter at once,” he thought, running quickly, out of breath, but, for some reason, not daring to run at full speed.

At the entrance of a many storied house the student girl stopped, and while she was tugging at the knob of the heavy door Mitrofan Krilov overtook her and looked at her face with a generous smile in order to show her that the joke was ended, and that all was well. But breathing with difficulty, she passed into the half opened door, hurling at his smiling face:

“Scoundrel!”

And she disappeared. Through the glass her silhouette flashed—and then she disappeared completely. Still smiling generously, Mitrofan touched the cold knob of the door, made an attempt to open it, but in the hallway, under the staircase, he saw the porter’s galoons, and he walked away slowly. He stopped a few steps away and for about two minutes stood shrugging his shoulders. He adjusted his spectacles with dignity, threw his head back and thought:

“How stupid. She did not allow me to say a word, but scolded me at once. The nasty girl could not understand that it was all a joke. I was doing it all for her own sake, while she—As if I needed her with her papers. Break your neck as much as you please. I suppose she is sitting now and telling all sorts of students, all sorts of long-haired students, how a spy was pursuing her. And they are sighing. The idiots! I am a university graduate myself, and am no worse than you are.”

He felt warm after his brisk walk, and he unbuttoned his coat, but he recalled that he might catch a cold, so he buttoned his coat again, tugging with aversion at the loose, dangling button.

He stood in the same spot for a time, cast a helpless glance at the rows of lighted and dark windows and went on thinking:

“And the shaggy students are no doubt happy, and they believe her. Fools! I myself was a shaggy student—my hair was so long! I would not have cut my hair even now if it weren’t falling out. It is falling out rapidly. I’ll soon be bald. And I can’t wear a wig like—a spy.”

He lit a cigarette and felt that it was too much for him—the smoke was so bitter and unpleasant.

“Shall I go up and say to them: “Ladies and gentlemen, it was all a joke, just a joke’? But they will not believe me. They may even give me a thrashing.”

Mitrofan walked away about twenty steps and paused. It was growing cold.

He felt his light coat and the newspaper in his side pocket—and he was seized with a sense of bitterness. He felt so offended that he was on the point of crying. He could have gone home, had his dinner, drunk his tea and read his news-paper—and his soul would have been calm, cloudless; the copy books had already been corrected, and to-morrow, Saturday, there would be a whist party at the inspector’s house. And there, in her little room, his deaf grandmother was sitting and knitting socks—the dear, kind, devoted grandmother had already finished two pairs of socks for him. And the little oil lamp must be burning in her room—and he recalled that he had been scolding her for using too much oil. Where was he now? In some kind of a side street. In front of some house—in which there were shaggy students.

Two students came out of the lighted entrance of the house, slamming the door loudly, and turned in the direction of Mitrofan.

He came to himself somewhere on the boulevard and for a long time was unable to recognise the neighbourhood. It was quiet and deserted. A rain was falling. The students were not there. He smoked two cigarettes, one after another, and his hands were trembling when he lit the cigarettes....

“I must compose myself and look at the affair soberly,” he thought. “It isn’t so bad, after all. The deuce take that girl. She thinks that I am a spy; well, let her think what she pleases. But she does not know me. And the students didn’t see me either. I am no fool—I raised the collar of my coat!”

He laughed for joy, and even opened his mouth—but suddenly he stood still as though petrified by a terrible thought.

“My God! But she saw me! I demonstrated my face to her for a whole hour. She may meet me somewhere—”

And a long series of possibilities occurred to Mitrofan Krilov; he was an intelligent man, fond of science and art; he frequented theatres, attended various meetings and lectures, and he might meet that girl at any of those places. She never goes alone to such places, he thought; such girls never go alone, but with a whole crowd of student girls and audacious students—and he was terrified at the thought of what might happen when she pointed her finger at him and said: “Here’s a spy!”

“I must take off my spectacles, shave off my beard,” thought Mitrofan. “Never mind the eyes—it may be that the doctor was lying about them. But will my face be changed any if I remove my beard? Is this a beard?”

He touched his thin little beard with his fingers and felt his face.

“Even my beard does not grow properly!” He thought with sorrow and aversion.

“But it is all nonsense. Even if she recognised me it wouldn’t matter. Such a thing must be proven. It must be proven calmly and logically, even as a theorem must be proven.”

He pictured to himself a meeting of the shaggy students, before whom he was defending himself firmly and calmly.

Mitrofan Krilov adjusted his spectacles sternly, with dignity, and smiled contemptuously. Then he began to prove to them—but he convinced himself, to his horror, that all logic and theorem are one thing, while his life was quite another thing, and there were no logic, no proofs in his life to show that Mitrofan Krilov was not a spy. If some one, even that girl, accused him of being a spy, would he find anything definite, clear, convincing in his life by which he could offset this base accusation? Now it seemed to him she looked at him naïvely, with fearless eyes and called him “spy”—and from that straightforward look, and from that cruel word, all the false phantoms of convictions and decency melted away as from fire. Emptiness everywhere. Mitrofan was silent, but his soul was filled with a cry of despair and horror. What did all this mean? Where had it all disappeared? What would he lean upon in order to save himself from falling into that dark and terrible abyss?

“My convictions,” he muttered. “My convictions. Everybody knows them, my convictions. For instance—”

He searched his mind. He was grasping in his memory at fragments of conversations, he was looking for something clear, strong, convincing; he found nothing. He recalled absurd phrases such as this: “Ivanov, I am convinced that you have copied the problem from Sirotkin.” But is this a conviction? Fragments of newspaper articles passed before him, other people’s speeches, quite convincing—but where was that which he had said himself, which he himself had thought? He spoke as everyone else spoke, and thought as everybody else did, and it was just as impossible to find an unmarked grain in a heap of grain. Some people are religious, some are not religious, while he—

“Wait,” he said to himself. “Is there a God, or is there not? I don’t know. I don’t know anything. And who am I—a teacher? Do I exist, I wonder?”

Mitrofan Krilov”s hands and feet grew cold.

“Nonsense! Nonsense!” he consoled himself. “My nerves are simply upset. What are convictions after all? Words. A man reads words in a book, and there are his convictions. Acts, these are things that count chiefly. A fine spy who—”

But there were no acts of which he could think. There were school affairs, family affairs, other affairs, but there were no acts to speak of. Some one was persistently demanding of him: “Tell me, what have you done?” and he was searching his mind, desperately, sorrowfully—he was passing over the years he had lived as over the keyboard of a piano, and each year struck the same empty, wooden sound—“bya,” without meaning, without significance.

“Ivanov, I am convinced that you copied the problem from Sirotkin.” No, no, that is not the proper thing.

“Listen, madam, listen to me,” he muttered, lowering his head, gesticulating calmly and properly. “How absurd it is to think that I am a spy. I—a spy? What nonsense! Please, let me convince you. Now, you see—”

Emptiness. Where had everything disappeared? He knew that he had done something, but what? All his kin and his acquaintances regarded him as a sensible, kind and just man—and they must have reasons for their opinion. Yes, he had bought goods for a dress for grandmother, and his wife even said to him: “You are too kind, Mitrofan!” But, then, spies may also love their grandmothers, and they may also buy goods for their grandmothers—perhaps even the same black goods with little dots. What else? But, no, no. That is all nonsense!

Unconsciously Mitrofan came back from the boulevard to the house where the student girl disappeared, but he did not notice it. He felt that it was late, that he was tired, and that he was on the point of crying.

Mitrofan stopped in front of the many storied house and looked at it with a sense of unpleasant perplexity.

“What a repulsive house! Oh, yes, it is the same house.”

He walked away from the house quickly as though from a bomb, then he paused and reflected.

“The best thing for me to do is to write to her—to consider the matter calmly and write to her. Of course, I will not mention my name. Simply: that ‘the man whom you mistook for a spy’—Point by point I will analyse it. She’ll be a fool if she will not believe me.”

After a time, Mitrofan touched the cold knob several times, opened the heavy door, and entered with a stern look. The porter appeared in the doorway of the little room under the staircase, and his face bespoke his willingness to be of service.

“Listen, friend, a student girl passed here a little while ago—what is the number of her room?”

“What do you want to know it for?”

Mitrofan Krilov stared at him abruptly through his spectacles, in silence, and the porter understood: he shook his head strangely and extended his hand to him.

“Come in to my room,” called the porter.

“What for? I simply—” But the porter had already turned into his little room, and Mitrofan, gnashing his teeth, followed him meekly.

“He believed me—he believed me at once! The scoundrel!” he thought.

The little room was narrow; there was but one chair, and the porter occupied it calmly.

“Are you single?” asked Mitrofan good naturedly.

But the porter did not think it necessary to reply. Surveying the teacher from head to foot with an audacious glance, he maintained silence, and after a time, asked:

“One of you was here the day before yesterday. A light-haired fellow, with moustaches. Do you know him?”

“Of course I do. He is light-haired—”

“I suppose there are lots of you people roaming about nowadays,” the porter remarked indifferently.

“Look here,” Mitrofan said, growing indignant, “I haven’t come here—I simply want to—”

But the porter paid no attention to his words, and continued:

“Do you get a large salary? The light-haired fellow said he was getting fifty. Too little.”

“Two hundred,” lied Mitrofan Krilov, and noticed an expression of delight on the porter’s face.

“Really? Two hundred! I can understand that. Won’t you have a cigarette?”

Mitrofan took a cigarette from the porter’s fingers with thanks, and recalled sadly his own Japanese cigarette case, his study, his dear blue copy books. It was nauseating. The tobacco was strong, foul odoured—tobacco for spies. It was nauseating.

“Do you often get a drubbing?”

“Look here—”

“The light-haired fellow told me that he had never been thrashed yet. I suppose he lied. How is it possible that you people shouldn’t get any thrashing,” the porter smiled good-naturedly.

“I must find out—”

“One must have ability and a suitable face. I have seen a spy whose face was crooked and one eye was missing. What is a man like that good for? His face was crooked, and in place of an eye there was a hole. You, for instance—”

“Look here!” Mitrofan exclaimed softly. “I have no time. I have other things to attend to.” Unwillingly dropping this interesting theme, the porter questioned Mitrofan about the girl, what she looked like, and said:

“I know her. She comes here often. No. 7, Ivanova. Why do you throw the cigarette on the floor? There is a stove. All I have to do is to sweep here after you.”

“Blockhead!” Mitrofan replied quietly, and walked out into the side street, looking for an izvozchik.

“Home, I must go home at once! My God. Why didn’t I think of it before. I was so absent-minded.” He recalled that he had a diary, in which he had written long ago, when he was still a student, during his first term, something liberal, very strong, free and even beautiful. He recalled clearly that evening, and his room, and the tobacco that lay scattered on the table, and the feeling of pride, enthusiasm, and delight with which he wrote down those energetic, firm lines. He would tear out those pages and send them to her—and that would settle it. She would see, she would understand—she was a sensible and noble girl. How fine! and how hungry he was!

In the hallway Mitrofan was met by his alarmed wife.

“Where were you? What happened to you? Why do you look so upset?”

And throwing off his coat quickly, he shouted:

“With you I might be still more upset! The house is full of people and yet there is nobody to sew a button on my coat. The devil knows what you are doing here. I have told you a hundred times. Sew on this button. It’s disgraceful, disgraceful!”

And he walked away to his study.

“And how about dinner?”

“Later. Don’t bother me! Don’t follow me!”

There were many books there, many copy books, but the diary was not there. Sitting on the floor, he threw out of the lower drawer of the closet various papers, books, copy-books, sighing and despairing, angry at his cold, stiff fingers—until at last! There was the blue, slightly grease-stained cover, his careful hand-writing, dried flowers, the stale, sourish odour of perfume—how young he had been at that time!

Mitrofan seated himself at the table and for a long time turned the leaves of the diary, but the desired place was not to be found. And he recalled that five years ago, when the police had searched Anton’s house, he became so frightened that he tore out of his diary all the pages that might compromise him, and he burned them. It was useless to look for them—they were no more—they had been burned.

With lowered head, his face covered with his hands, he sat for a long time, motionless, before the desolate diary. But one candle was burning—it was unusually dark in the room, and from the black, formless chairs came the breath of cold, desolate loneliness. Far away in those rooms children were playing, shouting, laughing; in the dining-room tea was being served; people were walking, talking—while here all was silent as in a graveyard. If an artist had peeped into the room, felt this cold, gloomy darkness and noticed the heap of scattered papers and books, the dark figure of the man with his covered face, bent over the table in helpless grief—he would have painted a picture and would have called it “The Suicide.”

“But I can recall that passage,” thought Mitrofan. “I can recall it. Even if the paper was burned, the sentiments remained somewhere; they existed. I must recall them.”

But he recalled only that which was unimportant—the size of the paper, the hand-writing, even the commas and the periods, but the essential part, the dear, beloved, bright part that could clear him—that was dead forever. It had lived and died, even as human beings die, as everything dies. If he knelt, cried, prayed that it come to life again—if he threatened, gnashed his teeth—the enormous emptiness would have remained silent, for it will never give up that which has fallen into its hands. Did ever tears or sobs bring a dead man back to life? There is no forgiveness, no mercy, no return—such is the law of cruel death.

It was dead. It had been killed. Base murderer! He himself had burned with his own hands the best flowers that had perhaps once in his life blossomed in his fruitless, beggarly soul! Poor perished flowers! Perhaps they were not bright, perhaps they had no power or beauty of creative thought, but they were the best that his soul had brought forth, and now they were no more and they will never blossom again. There is no forgiveness, no mercy, no return—such is the law of cruel death.

“What’s this? Wait,” he muttered to himself. “I have convinced myself that you, Ivanov, copied the problem—nonsense! I must speak to my wife. Masha! Masha!”

Maria entered. Her face was round, kind natured; her hair was thin and colourless. In her hands she held some work—a child’s dress.

“Well, Mitrosha, will you have dinner now?”

“No. Wait. I want to speak to you.”

Maria put her work aside with alarm and gazed into her husband’s face. Mitrofan turned away and said:

“Sit down.”

Maria sat down, adjusted her dress, folded her arms, and prepared to listen to him.

“I am listening,” she said, adjusting her dress once more.

“Do you know, Masha—I am a spy!” he said in a whisper, his voice quivering.

“What?”

“A spy, do you understand?”

Maria wrung her hands quietly and exclaimed:

“I knew it, unfortunate woman that I am—my God! my God!”

Jumping over to his wife, Mitrofan waved his fist at her very face, restrained himself with difficulty from striking her, and shouted so loudly that all became quiet in the house.

“Fool! Blockhead! You knew it. My God! How could you know it? My wife—my friend, all my thoughts—my money, everything—”

He stationed himself at the stove and began to cry.

Mitrofan turned furiously to her and asked:

“Am I a spy? Well! Speak! Am I a spy, or am I not?”

“How do I know? Perhaps you are a spy.”

Avoiding certain details, Mitrofan confusedly told his wife the story of the student girl and of that meeting.

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Maria carelessly. “I thought there was really something seriously wrong. Is it worth bothering about this? Just shave yourself, take off your spectacles, and there’s the end of it. And at school, during the lesson, you may even wear your spectacles.”

“Do you think so? Is this what you call a beard?”

“Never mind it. Say what you like, you leave the beard alone. I have always said that your beard was all right, and I will say so now, too.”

Mitrofan recalled that the students called him “goat,” and he was very glad now. If his beard were not a good one they would never have nicknamed him “goat.” And in this joy he kissed his wife and, jestingly, even tickled her ear with his beard.

At about twelve o’clock at night, when all grew quiet in the house, and his wife had gone to sleep, Mitrofan brought a mirror, warm water, and soap into his study and sat down to shave himself. In addition to the lamp, he had to light two candles, and he felt somewhat ashamed and restless because of the bright light, and he looked only at the side of the face he was shaving.

He shaved his cheek; then he thought awhile, lathered his moustaches, and shaved them off. He looked at his face again. To-morrow people would laugh at that face.

Pressing his razor resolutely, Mitrofan threw his head back and carefully passed the dull side of the knife across his neck.

“It would be good to kill myself,” he thought, “but how could I?”

“Coward! Scoundrel!” he said aloud, indifferently.

To-morrow people would laugh at him—his comrades, his pupils. And his wife would also laugh at him.

He longed to be sunk in despair, to cry, to strike the mirror, to do something, but his soul was empty and dead, and he was sleepy.

“Perhaps that is due to the fact that I was out long in the fresh air,” he thought, yawning.

He removed his shaving cup, put out the light of the lamp and candles, and scraping with his slippers he went to his bedroom. He soon fell asleep, having pushed into the pillow his shaven face, at which everybody would laugh to-morrow: his friends, his wife—and he himself.

THE END