The shooting party E-Book

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Chekhov's works have probably never enjoyed such a degree of popularity in his own country as they do in England to-day. There is an ever increasing demand for his admirable short stories, and his plays, despite their gloomy and depressing character—so contrary to all that English audiences require when they go to the theatre—have attained great success and attracted large numbers of people to the little theatre at Barnes, as well as to the West End houses where they have been given.
Deeming that the time has now come when readers, who have shown so much admiration for his works, would like to have a deeper insight into the development of this remarkable genius, we are here offering, for the first time in English, a translation of one of his early works, which is perhaps his most ambitious effort—at least with regard to length and to complexity of plot. “The Shooting Party” was written in 1885, in the early and difficult period of Chekhov's life. While still a student at the University, he found himself obliged to support his family with his pen, and when he wrote this novel he was only beginning to make his way to the forefront of literature.

Leseprobe

The Shooting Party

by

Anton Chekhov

translated by

A. E. Chamot

© 2024 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385746834

Contents

Introduction

Prelude

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXX

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXXII

Postscript

Introduction

Chekhov's works have probably never enjoyed such a degree of popularity in his own country as they do in England to-day. There is an ever increasing demand for his admirable short stories, and his plays, despite their gloomy and depressing character—so contrary to all that English audiences require when they go to the theatre—have attained great success and attracted large numbers of people to the little theatre at Barnes, as well as to the West End houses where they have been given.

Deeming that the time has now come when readers, who have shown so much admiration for his works, would like to have a deeper insight into the development of this remarkable genius, we are here offering, for the first time in English, a translation of one of his early works, which is perhaps his most ambitious effort—at least with regard to length and to complexity of plot. “The Shooting Party” was written in 1885, in the early and difficult period of Chekhov's life. While still a student at the University, he found himself obliged to support his family with his pen, and when he wrote this novel he was only beginning to make his way to the forefront of literature.

Anton Chekhov was only sixteen years old when his father failed in the business he had carried on for many years in Taganrog, and was obliged to go to Moscow in search of employment. Shortly after his mother and his younger brother and sister joined the father, and Anton was left to complete his course of studies at the Taganrog Gymnasium. During the three years he remained in Taganrog Anton lived as tutor in the family of a Mr. Selivanov, who had bought the Chekhov's house at the auction of their property. In 1879, having gone through all the classes of the Gymnasium, Anton joined his family in Moscow, where he entered the University to study medicine. At that time his father had a small post in a merchant's office, and lived and was boarded in his employer's house. Two of Chekhov's elder brothers had left the home some years before, and Anton found himself at the head of the family, which was in great straits. In order to help in its support every one of the children did what they could. It was then that Anton Chekhov began writing his short stories for a number of provincial newspapers and magazines. These stories attracted general attention, and the editors of the Press of the two capitals soon asked him to contribute to their magazines also. The stories and sketches he wrote at that time appeared above the nom de plume of Antosha Tchekhonte, a nickname that had been given him at school. They are chiefly of a humorous character and mostly of an ephemeral nature, having been dashed off in haste as potboilers. There is a marked difference between these early works and the tales he wrote during the last fifteen years of his short life.

In the year 1885 the first collection of Chekhov's tales appeared in book form; it was followed by several other volumes of stories, and in 1899 Chekhov sold the copyright of all his works, that had already been published or that he might yet write, to the publishing firm of A. F. Marks. By the terms of the contract which he made with Marks he ceded to them the exclusive rights of publishing his works in book form, but he retained the right of first publishing in periodicals any stories he might write in the future. He was then at the height of his popularity, and all the best magazines and newspapers were eager to obtain contributions from his pen.

A re-issue of Chekhov's complete works was also contemplated, subject to the selection and revision of the author. This project was carried out by Marks in an edition that formed eleven volumes. This edition comprises all Chekhov's best works, selected by himself from the very voluminous contributions he had made to the periodical Press during the twenty years he had devoted his talents to literature, and this collection may be looked upon as representing the works by which Chekhov wished to be remembered. In the choice of the 240 novelettes and stories that are comprised in these volumes the author evidently applied very strict criticism, with the result that they are of an astonishingly high and even standard of merit. The task of selection was no easy one for the author, as his writings were so numerous, and were scattered in many periodicals and newspapers. But few of the early stories were included in these volumes. However, after his death in 1904, there was a general demand for a more complete edition of his works, and regrets were expressed that so many of his stories, written in early life, were hidden away in old periodicals inaccessible to his admirers. For this reason his publisher, A. F. Marks, decided to add several supplementary volumes containing all that could be found of the early writings of this popular author, to the already published collected works. In a prefatory notice the editor of these volumes says that the desire of having all that Chekhov had written was very natural, as everything that had come from his pen was dear to his friends, no matter at what time it had been written, nor however critically the author, in his maturer years, might have looked upon these works, as they show the development and the extraordinary growth of his fine and subtle talent and his outlook on the world at various periods of his life. Besides the desire to have everything Chekhov had written there were also just grounds for thinking that, if he had not been cut off so prematurely by death, he would himself have added the greater number of these stories and sketches to his collected works.

In the opinion of the critics Chekhov's early works are also “documents of Russian life collected by a great literary artist with rare knowledge and care illuminated with conscious discernment and thoughtful humour and exploring depths of human grief and suffering that touch the heart of the reader profoundly. Besides it must be added that in these forgotten tales there are many glimpses of the real Chekhov qualities, of his poetic imagination, his meditative sadness, his subtle spiritual nature and entirely truthful portrayal of actualities.”

Three hundred and fifty tales are published in these supplementary volumes. They vary in length from the novelette to mere sketches of barely a page and they were all written between the years 1880 and 1888. Many of them had been carefully collected by Chekhov himself with the assistance of his friends, the rest were unearthed by the assiduity of the publishers. They are arranged as much as possible chronologically and most of them are dated.

These youthful efforts of an author, who afterwards attained to such world-wide popularity, are interesting as showing the development and growth of his remarkable talents and the change of his method from the light sketches written, for provincial newspapers and humorous magazines to the stories he produced in his maturer years, and though not equal in power to the latter, many of them are well worth reading.

Among these works there are several of considerable length, and “The Shooting Party,” which we now offer to the English reader, has almost the dimensions of a novel and it is more in the style of the sensation novels of the time when it was written, than the episodic character of Chekhov's later works, and though we find in it occasional awkward blendings of conventional phraseology with snatches of brilliant impressionism—one of the peculiar features of this work,—it already shows many of the author's characteristics.

At that time Chekhov had been supplementing his slender income by reporting law cases for the Press, and the insight he obtained into the backwash of many a crime probably weighed on his mind until it found expression in the present work, which is perhaps the blackest indictment of the proceedings of Russian provincial Law Courts that has ever been written. Besides these descriptions he gives us graphic pictures of the looseness of provincial life in the heart of Russia which is sad and hopeless in the extreme. The story is written in the first person and the hero makes his confessions with a cynical frankness which rivals that of Jean Jacques Rousseau himself. He is supposed to be an examining magistrate, a functionary, who in Russia performs the combined duties of a coroner and a magistrate; he it is who is called upon to make the preliminary investigations of criminal cases, and who draws up the first reports. Chekhov himself plays the part of editor and offers his comments and reflections on the events and on the manner in which they are described in footnotes signed with his initials. The characters are drawn with much of the Chekhov touch and, as in so many of his works, they are all more or less failures or degenerates, and there is little of lighter elements to relieve the tragic gloom, however the dramatic interest is well sustained throughout and carries the reader on so that he is not likely to lay the book aside before he reaches the end.

In this novel one notices here and there signs of inexperience in the construction and the development of a plot, with all its intricacies, a fact of which Chekhov seemed well aware, as in many of his letters he mentions that he always felt difficulties assailing him when he arrived at the middle of a long story, and thought he was only fit to write short ones. It shows the development of his art, so unlike that of the old masters of literature, who employed a large canvas and filled in all the details in order to produce their effects, while his style resembles rather that of the impressionists, who with a few bold strokes bring out the salient points of what they wish to depict. We find already short word-pictures of nature, that give the necessary atmosphere, a few pregnant words, that denote the mood, while acts and deeds express character without lengthy analysis and long descriptions. The Shooting Party shows signs of the perfecting of his technique and an increase of his power and for that reason it will be a precious document for every student of Chekhov, one of the great masters whose works did so much towards the evolution of the modern short story.

A. E. C.

Prelude

On an April day of the year 1880 the doorkeeper Andrey came into my private room and told me in a mysterious whisper that a gentleman had come to the editorial office and demanded insistently to see the editor.

“He appears to be a chinovnik,”1 Andrey added. “He has a cockade.…”

“Ask him to come another time,” I said, “I am busy to-day. Tell him the editor only receives on Saturdays.”

“He was here the day before yesterday and asked for you. He says his business is urgent. He begs, almost with tears in his eyes, to see you. He says he is not free on Saturday.… Will you receive him?”

I sighed, laid down my pen, and settled myself in my chair to receive the gentleman with the cockade. Young authors, and in general everybody who is not initiated into the secrets of the profession, are generally so overcome by holy awe at the words “editorial office” that they make you wait a considerable time for them. After the editor's “Show him in,” they cough and blow their noses for a long time, open the door very slowly, come into the room still more slowly, and thus rob you of no little time. The gentleman with the cockade did not make me wait. The door had scarcely had time to close after Andrey before I saw in my office a tall, broad-shouldered man holding a paper parcel in one hand and a cap with a cockade in the other.

This man, who had succeeded in obtaining an interview with me, plays a very prominent part in my story. It is necessary to describe his appearance.

He was, as I have already said, tall and broad-shouldered and as vigorous as a fine cart horse. His whole body seemed to exhale health and strength. His face was rosy, his hands large, his chest broad and as muscular as a strong boy's. He was over forty. He was dressed with taste, according to the last fashion, in a new tweed suit, evidently just come from the tailor's. A thick gold watch-chain with breloques hung across his chest, and on his little finger a diamond ring sparkled with brilliant tiny stars. But, what is most important, and so essential to the hero of a novel or story, with the slightest pretension to respectability, is that he was extremely handsome. I am neither a woman nor an artist. I have but little understanding of manly beauty, but the appearance of the gentleman with the cockade made an impression on me. His large muscular face remained for ever impressed on my memory. On that face you could see a real Greek nose with a slight hook, thin lips and nice blue eyes from which shone goodness and something else, for which it is difficult to find an appropriate name. That “something” can be seen in the eyes of little animals when they are sad or ill. Something imploring, childish, resignedly suffering.… Cunning or very clever people never have such eyes.

His whole face seemed to breathe candour, a broad, simple nature, and truth.… If it be not a falsehood that the face is the mirror of the soul, I could have sworn from the very first day of my acquaintance with the gentleman with the cockade that he was unable to lie. I might even have betted that he could not lie. Whether I should have lost my bet or not, the reader will see further on.

His chestnut hair and beard were thick and soft as silk. It is often said that soft hair is the sign of a sweet, sensitive, “silken” soul. Criminals and wicked obstinate characters have, in most cases, harsh hair. If this be true or not the reader will also see further on. Neither the expression of his face, nor the softness of his beard was as soft and delicate in this gentleman with the cockade as the movements of his huge form. These movements seemed to denote education, lightness, grace, and if you will forgive the expression, something womanly. It would cause my hero but a slight effort to bend a horseshoe or to flatten out a tin sardine box, with his fist and at the same time not one of his movements showed his physical strength. He took hold of the door handle or of his hat, as if they were butterflies—delicately, carefully, hardly touching them with his fingers. He walked noiselessly, he pressed my hand feebly. When looking at him you forgot that he was as strong as Goliath, and that he could lift with one hand weights that five men like our office servant Andrey could not have moved. Looking at his light movements, it was impossible to believe that he was strong and heavy. Spencer might have called him a model of grace.

When he entered my office he became confused. His delicate, sensitive nature was probably shocked by my frowning, dissatisfied face.

“For God's sake forgive me!” he began in a soft, mellow baritone voice. “I have broken in upon you not at the appointed time, and I have forced you to make an exception for me. You are very busy! But, Mr. Editor, you see, this is how the case stands. To-morrow I must start for Odessa on very important business.… If I had been able to put off this journey till Saturday, I can assure you I would not have asked you to make this exception for me. I submit to rules because I love order.…”

“How much he talks!” I thought as I stretched out my hand towards the pen, showing by this movement I was pressed for time. (I was terribly bored by visitors just then.)

“I will only take up a moment of your time,” my hero continued in an apologetic tone. “But first allow me to introduce myself.… Ivan Petrovich Kamyshev, Bachelor of Law and former examining magistrate. I have not the honour of belonging to the fellowship of authors, nevertheless I appear before you from motives that are purely those of a writer. Notwithstanding his forty years, you have before you a man who wishes to be a beginner.… Better late than never!”

“Very pleased.… What can I do for you?”

The man wishing to be a beginner sat down and continued, looking at the floor with his imploring eyes:

“I have brought you a short story which I would like to see published in your journal. Mr. Editor, I will tell you quite candidly I have not written this story to attain an author's celebrity, nor for the sake of sweet-sounding words. I am too old for these good things. I venture on the writer's path from purely commercial motives.… I want to earn something.… At the present moment I have absolutely no occupation. I was a magistrate in the S—— district for more than five years, but I did not make a fortune, nor did I keep my innocence either.…”

Kamyshev glanced at me with his kind eyes and laughed gently.

“Service is tiresome.… I served and served till I was quite fed up, and chucked it. I have no occupation now, sometimes I have nothing to eat.… If, despite its unworthiness, you will publish my story, you will do me more than a great favour.… You will help me.… A journal is not an alms-house, nor an old-age asylum.… I know that, but … won't you be so kind.…”

“He is lying,” I thought.

The breloques and the diamond ring on his little finger belied his having written for the sake of a piece of bread. Besides, a slight cloud passed over Kamyshev's face such as only an experienced eye can trace on the faces of people who seldom lie.

“What is the subject of your story?” I asked.

“The subject? What can I tell you? The subject is not new.… Love and murder.… But read it, you will see.… ‘From the Notes of an Examining Magistrate.’ …”

I probably frowned, for Kamyshev looked confused, his eyes began to blink, he started and continued speaking rapidly:

“My story is written in the conventional style of former examining magistrates, but … you will find in it facts, the truth.… All that is written, from beginning to end, happened before my eyes.… Indeed, I was not only a witness but one of the actors.”

“The truth does not matter.… It is not absolutely necessary to see a thing to describe it. That is unimportant. The fact is our poor readers have long been fed up with Gaboriau and Shklyarevsky.2 They are tired of all those mysterious murders, those artful devices of the detectives, and the extraordinary resourcefulness of the examining magistrate. The reading public, of course, varies, but I am talking of the public that reads our newspaper. What is the title of your story?”

“The Shooting Party.”

“Hm!… That's not serious, you know.… And, to be quite frank with you, I have such an amount of copy on hand that it is quite impossible to accept new things, even if they are of undoubted merit.”

“Pray accept my work,… You say it is not serious, but … it is difficult to give a title to a thing before you have seen it.… Besides, is it possible you cannot admit that an examining magistrate can write serious works?”

All this Kamyshev said stammeringly, twisting a pencil about between his fingers and looking at his feet. He finished by blinking his eyes and becoming exceedingly confused. I was sorry for him.

“All right, leave it,” I said. “But I can't promise that your story will be read very soon. You will have to wait.…”

“How long?”

“I don't know. Look in … in about two to three months.…”

“That's pretty long.… But I dare not insist.… Let it be as you say.…”

Kamyshev rose and took up his cap.

“Thank you for the audience,” he said. “I will now go home and dwell in hope. Three months of hope! However, I am boring you. I have the honour to bid you good-bye!”

“One word more, please,” I said as I turned over the pages of his thick copy-book, which were written in a very small handwriting. “You write here in the first person.… You therefore mean the examining magistrate to be yourself?”

“Yes, but under another name. The part I play in this story is somewhat scandalous.… It would have been awkward to give my own name.… In three months, then?”

“Yes, not earlier, please.… Good-bye!”

The former examining magistrate bowed gallantly, turned the door handle gingerly, and disappeared, leaving his work on my writing table. I took up the copy-book and put it away in the table drawer.

Handsome Kamyshev's story reposed in my table drawer for two months. One day, when leaving my office to go to the country, I remembered it and took it with me.

When I was seated in the railway coach I opened the copy-book and began to read from the middle. The middle interested me. That same evening, notwithstanding my want of leisure, I read the whole story from the beginning to the words “The End,” which were written with a great flourish. That night I read the whole story through again, and at sunrise I was walking about the terrace from corner to corner, rubbing my temples as if I wanted to rub out of my head some new and painful thoughts that had suddenly entered my mind.… The thoughts were really painful, unbearably sharp. It appeared to me that I, neither an examining magistrate nor even a psychological juryman, had discovered the terrible secret of a man, a secret that did not concern me in the slightest degree. I paced the terrace and tried to persuade myself not to believe in my discovery.…

Kamyshev's story did not appear in my newspaper for reasons that I will explain at the end of my talk with the reader. I shall meet the reader once again. Now, when I am leaving him for a long time, I offer Kamyshev's story for his perusal.

This story is not remarkable in any way. It has many lengthy passages and many inequalities.… The author is too fond of effects and strong expressions.… It is evident that he is writing for the first time, his hand is unaccustomed, uneducated. Nevertheless his narrative reads easily. There is a plot, a meaning, too, and what is most important, it is original, very characteristic and what may be called sui generis. It also possesses certain literary qualities. It is worth reading. Here it is.

The Shooting Party

From the Notebook of an Examining Magistrate

I

“The husband killed his wife! Oh, how stupid you are! Give me some sugar!”

These cries awoke me. I stretched myself, feeling indisposition and heaviness in every limb. One can lie upon one's legs or arms until they are numb, but now it seemed to me that my whole body, from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, was benumbed. An afternoon snooze in a sultry, dry atmosphere amid the buzzing and humming of flies and mosquitoes does not act in an invigorating manner but has an enervating effect. Broken and bathed in perspiration, I rose and went to the window. The sun was still high and baked with the same ardour it had done three hours before. Many hours still remained until sunset and the coolness of evening.

“The husband killed his wife!”

“Stop lying, Ivan Dem'yanych!” I said as I gave a slight tap to Ivan Dem'yanych's nose. “Husbands kill their wives only in novels and in the tropics, where African passions boil over, my dear. For us such horrors as thefts and burglaries or people living on false passports are quite enough.”

“Thefts and burglaries!” Ivan Dem'yanych murmured through his hooked nose. “Oh, how stupid you are!”

“What's to be done, my dear? In what way are we mortals to blame for our brain having its limits? Besides, Ivan Dem'yanych, it is no sin to be a fool in such a temperature. You're my clever darling, but doubtless your brain, too, gets addled and stupid in such heat.”

My parrot is not called Polly or by any other of the names given to birds, but he is called Ivan Dem'yanych. He got this name quite by chance. One day, when my man Polycarp was cleaning the cage, he suddenly made a discovery without which my noble bird would still have been called Polly. My lazy servant was suddenly blessed with the idea that my parrot's beak was very like the nose of our village shopkeeper, Ivan Dem'yanych, and from that time the name and patronymic of our long-nosed shopkeeper stuck to my parrot. From that day Polycarp and the whole village christened my extraordinary bird “Ivan Dem'yanych.” By Polycarp's will the bird became a personage, and the shopkeeper lost his own name, and to the end of his days he will be known among the villagers under the nickname of the “magistrate's parrot.”

I had bought Ivan Dem'yanych from the mother of my predecessor, the examining magistrate, Pospelov, who had died shortly before my appointment. I bought him together with some old oak furniture, various rubbishy kitchen utensils, and in general the whole of the household goods that remained after the deceased. My walls are still decorated with photographs of his relatives, and the portrait of the former occupant is still hanging above my bed. The departed, a lean, muscular man with a red moustache and a thick under-lip, sits looking at me with staring eyes from his faded nutwood frame all the time I am lying on his bed.… I had not taken down a single photograph, I had left the house just as I found it. I am too lazy to think of my own comfort, and I don't prevent either corpses or living men from hanging on my walls if the latter wish to do so.3

Ivan Dem'yanych found it as sultry as I did. He fluffed out his feathers, spread his wings, and shrieked out the phrases he had been taught by my predecessor, Pospelov, and by Polycarp. To occupy in some way my after-dinner leisure, I sat down in front of the cage and began to watch the movements of my parrot, who was industriously trying, but without success, to escape from the torments he suffered from the suffocating heat and the insects that dwelt among his feathers.… The poor thing seemed very unhappy.…

“At what time does he awake?” was borne to me in a bass voice from the lobby.

“That depends!” Polycarp's voice answered. “Sometimes he wakes at five o'clock, and sometimes he sleeps like a log till morning.… Everybody knows he has nothing to do.”

“You're his valet, I suppose?”

“His servant. Now don't bother me; hold your tongue. Don't you see I'm reading?”

I peeped into the lobby. My Polycarp was there, lolling on the large red trunk, and, as usual, reading a book. With his sleepy, unblinking eyes fixed attentively on his book, he was moving his lips and frowning. He was evidently irritated by the presence of the stranger, a tall, bearded muzhik, who was standing near the trunk persistently trying to inveigle him into conversation. At my appearance the muzhik took a step away from the trunk and drew himself up at attention. Polycarp looked dissatisfied, and without removing his eyes from the book he rose slightly.

“What do you want?” I asked the muzhik.

“I have come from the Count, your honour. The Count sends you his greetings, and begs you to come to him at once.…”

“Has the Count arrived?” I asked, much astonished.

“Just so, your honour.… He arrived last night.… Here's a letter, sir.…”

“What the devil has brought him back!” my Polycarp grumbled. “Two summers we've lived peacefully without him, and this year he'll again make a pigsty of the district. We'll again not escape without shame.”

“Hold your tongue, your opinion is not asked!”

“I need not be asked.… I'll speak unasked. You'll again come home from him in drunken disorder and bathe in the lake just as you are, in all your clothes.… I've to clean them afterwards! They cannot be cleaned in three days!”

“What's the Count doing now?” I asked the muzhik.

“He was just sitting down to dinner when he sent me to you.… Before dinner he fished from the bathing house, sir.… What answer is there?”

I opened the letter and read the following:

“My Dear Lecoq,—If you are still alive, well, and have not forgotten your ever-drunken friend, do not delay a moment. Array yourself in your clothing and fly to me. I only arrived last night and am already dying from ennui. The impatience I feel to see you knows no bounds. I myself wanted to drive over to see you and carry you off to my den, but the heat has fettered all my limbs. I am sitting on one spot fanning myself. Well, how are you? How is your clever Ivan Dem'yanych? Are you still at war with your pedant, Polycarp? Come quickly and tell me everything.—Your A. K.”

It was not necessary to look at the signature to recognize the drunken, sprawling, ugly handwriting of my friend, Count Alexey Karnéev. The shortness of the letter, its pretension to a certain playfulness and vivacity proved that my friend, with his limited capacities, must have torn up much notepaper before he was able to compose this epistle.

The pronoun “which” was absent from this letter, and adverbs were carefully avoided—both being grammatical forms that were seldom achieved by the Count at a single sitting.

“What answer is there, sir?” the muzhik repeated.

At first I did not reply to this question, and every clean-minded man in my place would have hesitated too. The Count was fond of me, and quite sincerely obtruded his friendship on me. I, on my part, felt nothing like friendship for the Count; I even disliked him. It would therefore have been more honest to reject his friendship once for all than to go to him and dissimulate. Besides, to go to the Count's meant to plunge once more into the life my Polycarp had characterized as a “pigsty,” which two years before during the Count's residence on his estate and until he left for Petersburg had injured my good health and had dried up my brain. That loose, unaccustomed life so full of show and drunken madness, had not had time to shatter my constitution, but it had made me notorious in the whole Government … I was popular.…

My reason told me the whole truth, a blush of shame for the not distant past suffused my face, my heart sank with fear that I would not possess sufficient manliness to refuse to go to the Count's, but I did not hesitate long. The struggle lasted not more than a minute.

“Give my compliments to the Count,” I said to his messenger, “and thank him for thinking of me.… Tell him I am busy, and that.… Tell him that I …”

And at the very moment my tongue was about to pronounce a decisive “No,” I was suddenly overpowered by a feeling of dullness.… The young man, full of life, strength and desires, who by the decrees of fate had been cast into this forest village, was seized by a sensation of ennui, of loneliness.…

I remembered the Count's gardens with the exuberant vegetation of their cool conservatories, and the semi-darkness of the narrow, neglected avenues.… Those avenues protected from the sun by arches of the entwined branches of old limes know me well; they also know the women who sought my love and semi-darkness.… I remembered the luxurious drawing-room with the sweet indolence of its velvet sofas, heavy curtains and thick carpets, soft as down, with the laziness so loved by young healthy animals.… There recurred to my mind my drunken audacity that knew no limits to its boundless satanic pride, and contempt of life. My large body wearied by sleep again longed for movement.…

“Tell him I'll come!”

The muzhik bowed and retired.

“If I'd known, I wouldn't have let that devil in!” Polycarp grumbled, quickly turning over the pages of his book in an objectless manner.

“Put that book away and go and saddle Zorka,” I said. “Look sharp!”

“Look sharp! Oh, of course, certainly.… I'm just going to rush off.… It would be all right to go on business, but he'll go to break the devil's horns!”

This was said in an undertone, but loud enough for me to hear it. Having whispered this impertinence, my servant drew himself up before me and waited for me to flare up in reply, but I pretended not to have heard his words. My silence was the best and sharpest arms I could use in my contests with Polycarp. This contemptuous manner of allowing his venomous words to pass unheeded disarmed him and cut the ground away from under his feet. As a punishment it acted better than a box on the ear or a flood of vituperation.… When Polycarp had gone into the yard to saddle Zorka, I peeped into the book which he had been prevented from reading. It was The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas' terrible romance.… My civilized fool read everything, beginning with the signboards of the public houses and finishing with Auguste Comte, which was lying in my trunk together with other neglected books that I did not read; but of the whole mass of written and printed matter he only approved of terrible, strongly exciting novels with “celebrated personages,” poison and subterranean passages; all the rest he dubbed “nonsense.” I shall have again to recur to his reading, now I had to ride off. A quarter of an hour later the hoofs of my Zorka were raising the dust on the road from the village to the Count's estate. The sun was near setting, but the heat and the sultriness were still felt. The hot air was dry and motionless, although my road led along the banks of an enormous lake.… On my right I saw the great expanse of water, on the left my sight was caressed by the young vernal foliage of an oak forest; nevertheless, my cheeks suffered the dryness of Sahara. “If there could only be a storm!” I thought, dreaming of a good cool downpour.

The lake slept peacefully. It did not greet with a single sound the flight of my Zorka, and it was only the piping of a young snipe that broke the grave-like silence of the motionless giant. The sun looked at itself in it as in a huge mirror, and shed a blinding light on the whole of its breadth that extended from my road to the opposite distant banks. And it seemed to my blinded eyes that nature received light from the lake and not from the sun.

The sultriness impelled to slumber the whole of that life in which the lake and its green banks so richly abounded. The birds had hidden themselves, the fish did not splash in the water, the field crickets and the grasshoppers waited in silence for coolness to set in. All around was a waste. From time to time my Zorka bore me into a thick cloud of littoral mosquitoes, and far away on the lake, scarcely moving, I could see the three black boats belonging to old Mikhey, our fisherman, who leased the fishing rights of the whole lake.

II

I did not ride in a straight line as I had to make a circuit along the road that skirted the round lake. It was only possible to go in a straight line by boat, while those who went by the road had to make a large round and the distance was almost eight versts farther. All the way, when looking at the lake, I could see beyond it the opposite clayey banks, on which the bright strip of a blossoming cherry orchard gleamed white, while farther still I could see the roofs of the Count's barns dotted all over with many coloured pigeons, and rising still higher the small white belfry of the Count's chapel. At the foot of the clayey banks was the bathing house with sailcloth nailed on the sides and sheets hanging to dry on its railings. I saw all this, and it appeared to me as if only a verst separated me from my friend the Count, while in order to reach his estate I had to ride about sixteen versts.