They were broken in upon by a heavy knocking that came from the common room, from which my room was separated by a deal partition. This sound was accompanied by an intermittent metallic jingle, like the clank of chains, and a coarse male voice boomed out suddenly: 'The blessing of God on all within this house. The blessing of God! the blessing of God! Amen, amen! Scatter His enemies!' repeated the voice, with a sort of incongruous and savage drawl on the last syllable of each word.... A noisy sigh was heard, and a ponderous body sank on to the bench with the same jingling sound. 'Akulina! servant of God, come here!' the voice began again: 'Behold! Clothed in rags and blessed! ... Ha-ha-ha! Tfoo! Merciful God, merciful God, merciful God!' the voice droned like a deacon in the choir. 'Merciful God, Creator of my body, behold my iniquity.... O-ho-ho! Ha-ha! ... Tfoo! And all abundance be to this house in the seventh hour!'

'Who's that?' I asked the hospitable landlady, who came in with the samovar.

'That, your honour,' she answered me in a hurried whisper, 'is a blessed, holy man. He's not long come into our parts; and here he's graciously pleased to visit us. In such weather! The wet's simply trickling from him, poor dear man, in streams! And you should see the chains on him—such a lot!'

'The blessing of God! the blessing of God!' the voice was heard again. 'Akulina! Hey, Akulina! Akulinushka—friend! where is our paradise? Our fair paradise of bliss? In the wilderness is our paradise, ... para-dise.... And to this house, from beginning of time, great happiness, ... o ... o ... o ...' The voice muttered something inarticulate, and again, after a protracted yawn, there came the hoarse laugh. This laugh broke out every time, as it were, involuntarily, and every time it was followed by vigorous spitting.

'Ah, me! Stepanitch isn't here! That's the worst of it!' the landlady said, as it were to herself, as she stood with every sign of the profoundest attention at the door. 'He will say some word of salvation, and I, foolish woman, may not catch it!'

She went out quickly.

* * * * *

In the partition there was a chink; I applied my eye to it. The crazy pilgrim was sitting on a bench with his back to me; I saw nothing but his shaggy head, as huge as a beer-can, and a broad bent back in a patched and soaking shirt. Before him, on the earth floor, knelt a frail-looking woman in a jacket, such as are worn by women of the artisan class—old and wet through—and with a dark kerchief pulled down almost over her eyes. She was trying to pull the holy man's boots off; her fingers slid off the greasy, slippery leather. The landlady was standing near her, with her arms folded across her bosom, gazing reverently at the 'man of God.' He was, as before, mumbling some inarticulate words.

At last the woman succeeded in tugging off the boots. She almost fell backwards, but recovered herself, and began unwinding the strips of rag which were wrapped round the vagrant's legs. On the sole of his foot there was a wound.... I turned away.

'A cup of tea wouldn't you bid me get you, my dear?' I heard the hostess saying in an obsequious voice.

'What a notion!' responded the holy man. 'To indulge the sinful body.... O-ho-ho! Break all the bones in it ... but she talks of tea! Oh, oh, worthy old woman, Satan is strong within us.... Fight him with hunger, fight him with cold, with the sluice-gates of heaven, the pouring, penetrating rain, and he takes no harm—he is alive still! Remember the day of the Intercession of the Mother of God! You will receive, you will receive in abundance!'

The landlady could not resist uttering a faint groan of admiration.

'Only listen to me! Give all thou hast, give thy head, give thy shirt! If they ask not of thee, yet give! For God is all-seeing! Is it hard for Him to destroy your roof? He has given thee bread in His mercy, and do thou bake it in the oven! He seeth all! Se ... e ... eth! Whose eye is in the triangle? Say, whose?'

The landlady stealthily crossed herself under her neckerchief.

'The old enemy is adamant! A ... da ... mant! A ... da ... mant!' the religious maniac repeated several times, gnashing his teeth. 'The old serpent! But God will arise! Yes, God will arise and scatter His enemies! I will call up all the dead! I will go against His enemy.... Ha-ha-ha! Tfoo!'

'Have you any oil?' said another voice, hardly audible; 'let me put some on the wound.... I have got a clean rag.'

I peeped through the chink again; the woman in the jacket was still busied with the vagrant's sore foot.... 'A Magdalen!' I thought.

'I'll get it directly, my dear,' said the woman, and, coming into my room, she took a spoonful of oil from the lamp burning before the holy picture.

'Who's that waiting on him?' I asked.

'We don't know, sir, who it is; she too, I suppose, is seeking salvation, atoning for her sins. But what a saintly man he is!'

'Akulinushka, my sweet child, my dear daughter,' the crazy pilgrim was repeating meanwhile, and he suddenly burst into tears.

The woman kneeling before him lifted her eyes to him.... Heavens! where had I seen those eyes?

The landlady went up to her with the spoonful of oil. She finished her operation, and, getting up from the floor, asked if there were a clean loft and a little hay.... 'Vassily Nikititch likes to sleep on hay,' she added.

'To be sure there is, come this way,' answered the woman; 'come this way, my dear,' she turned to the holy man, 'and dry yourself and rest.' The man coughed, slowly got up from the bench—his chains clanked again—and turning round with his face to me, looked for the holy pictures, and began crossing himself with a wide movement.

I recognised him instantly: it was the very artisan Vassily, who had once shown me my dead tutor!

His features were little changed; only their expression had become still more unusual, still more terrible.... The lower part of his swollen face was overgrown with unkempt beard. Tattered, filthy, wild-looking, he inspired in me more repugnance than horror. He left off crossing himself, but still his eyes wandered senselessly about the corners of the room, about the floor, as though he were waiting for something....

'Vassily Nikititch, please come,' said the woman in the jacket with a bow. He suddenly threw up his head and turned round, but stumbled and tottered.... His companion flew to him at once, and supported him under the arm. Judging by her voice and figure, she seemed still young; her face it was almost impossible to see.

'Akulinushka, friend!' the vagrant repeated once more in a shaking voice, and opening his mouth wide, and smiting himself on the breast with his fist, he uttered a deep groan, that seemed to come from the bottom of his heart. Both followed the landlady out of the room.

I lay down on my hard sofa and mused a long while on what I had seen. My mesmeriser had become a regular religious maniac. This was what he had been brought to by the power which one could not but recognise in him!

* * * * *

The next morning I was preparing to go on my way. The rain was falling as fast as the day before, but I could not delay any longer. My servant, as he gave me water to wash, wore a special smile on his face, a smile of restrained irony. I knew that smile well; it indicated that my servant had heard something discreditable or even shocking about gentlefolks. He was obviously burning with impatience to communicate it to me.

'Well, what is it?' I asked at last.

'Did your honour see the crazy pilgrim yesterday?' my man began at once.

'Yes; what then?'

'And did you see his companion too?'

'Yes, I saw her.'

'She's a young lady, of noble family.'

'What?'

'It's the truth I'm telling you; some merchants arrived here this morning from T——; they recognised her. They did tell me her name, but I've forgotten it.'

It was like a flash of enlightenment. 'Is the pilgrim still here?' I asked.

'I fancy he's not gone yet. He's been ever so long at the gate, and making such a wonderful wise to-do, that there's no getting by. He's amusing himself with this tomfoolery; he finds it pay, no doubt.'

My man belonged to the same class of educated servants as Ardalion.

'And is the lady with him?'

'Yes. She's in attendance on him.'

* * * * *

I went out on to the steps, and got a view of the crazy pilgrim. He was sitting on a bench at the gate, and, bent down with both his open hands pressed on it, he was shaking his drooping head from right to left, for all the world like a wild beast in a cage. The thick mane of curly hair covered his eyes, and shook from side to side, and so did his pendulous lips.... A strange, almost unhuman muttering came from them. His companion had only just finished washing from a pitcher that was hanging on a pole, and without having yet replaced her kerchief on her head, was making her way back to the gate along a narrow plank laid across the dark puddles of the filthy yard. I glanced at her head, which was now entirely uncovered, and positively threw up my hands with astonishment: before me stood Sophie B.!

She turned quickly round and fixed upon me her blue eyes, immovable as ever. She was much thinner, her skin looked coarser and had the yellowish-ruddy tinge of sunburn, her nose was sharper, and her lips were harder in their lines. But she was not less good-looking; only besides her old expression of dreamy amazement there was now a different look—resolute, almost bold, intense and exalted. There was not a trace of childishness left in the face now.

I went up to her. 'Sophia Vladimirovna,' I cried, 'can it be you? In such a dress ... in such company....'

She started, looked still more intently at me, as though anxious to find out who was speaking to her, and, without saying a word to me, fairly rushed to her companion.

'Akulinushka,' he faltered, with a heavy sigh, 'our sins, sins ...'

'Vassily Nikititch, let us go at once! Do you hear, at once, at once,' she said, pulling her kerchief on to her forehead with one hand, while with the other she supported the pilgrim under the elbow; 'let us go, Vassily Nikititch: there is danger here.'

'I'm coming, my good girl, I'm coming,' the crazy pilgrim responded obediently, and, bending his whole body forward, he got up from the seat. 'Here's only this chain to fasten....'

I once more approached Sophia, and told her my name. I began beseeching her to listen to me, to say one word to me. I pointed to the rain, which was coming down in bucketsful. I begged her to have some care for her health, the health of her companion. I mentioned her father.... But she seemed possessed by a sort of wrathful, a sort of vindictive excitement: without paying the slightest attention to me, setting her teeth and breathing hard, she urged on the distracted vagrant in an undertone, in soft insistent words, girt him up, fastened on his chains, pulled on to his hair a child's cloth cap with a broken peak, stuck his staff in his hand, slung a wallet on her own shoulder, and went with him out at the gate into the street.... To stop her actually I had not the right, and it would have been of no use; and at my last despairing call she did not even turn round. Supporting the 'man of God' under his arm, she stepped rapidly over the black mud of the street; and in a few moments, across the dim dusk of the foggy morning, through the thick network of falling raindrops, I saw the last glimpse of the two figures, the crazy pilgrim and Sophie.... They turned the corner of a projecting hut, and vanished for ever.

* * * * *

I went back to my room. I fell to pondering. I could not understand it; I could not understand how such a girl, well brought up, young, and wealthy, could throw up everything and every one, her own home, her family, her friends, break with all her habits, with all the comforts of life, and for what? To follow a half-insane vagrant, to become his servant! I could not for an instant entertain the idea that the explanation of such a step was to be found in any prompting, however depraved, of the heart, in love or passion.... One had but to glance at the repulsive figure of the 'man of God' to dismiss such a notion entirely! No, Sophie had remained pure; and to her all things were pure; I could not understand what Sophie had done; but I did not blame her, as, later on, I have not blamed other girls who too have sacrificed everything for what they thought the truth, for what they held to be their vocation. I could not help regretting that Sophie had chosen just that path; but also I could not refuse her admiration, respect even. In good earnest she had talked of self-sacrifice, of abasement ... in her, words were not opposed to acts. She had sought a leader, a guide, and had found him, ... and, my God, what a guide!

Yes, she had lain down to be trampled, trodden under foot.... In the process of time, a rumour reached me that her family had succeeded at last in finding out the lost sheep, and bringing her home. But at home she did not live long, and died, like a 'Sister of Silence,' without having spoken a word to any one.

Peace to your heart, poor, enigmatic creature! Vassily Nikititch is probably on his crazy wanderings still; the iron health of such people is truly marvellous. Perhaps, though, his epilepsy may have done for him.

BADEN-BADEN, 1869.



PUNIN AND BABURIN

PIOTR PETROVITCH'S STORY

... I am old and ill now, and my thoughts brood oftenest upon death, every day coming nearer; rarely I think of the past, rarely I turn the eyes of my soul behind me. Only from time to time—in winter, as I sit motionless before the glowing fire, in summer, as I pace with slow tread along the shady avenue—I recall past years, events, faces; but it is not on my mature years nor on my youth that my thoughts rest at such times. They either carry me back to my earliest childhood, or to the first years of boyhood. Now, for instance, I see myself in the country with my stern and wrathful grandmother—I was only twelve—and two figures rise up before my imagination....

But I will begin my story consecutively, and in proper order.



I

1830

The old footman Filippitch came in, on tiptoe, as usual, with a cravat tied up in a rosette, with tightly compressed lips, 'lest his breath should be smelt,' with a grey tuft of hair standing up in the very middle of his forehead. He came in, bowed, and handed my grandmother on an iron tray a large letter with an heraldic seal. My grandmother put on her spectacles, read the letter through....

'Is he here?' she asked.

'What is my lady pleased ...' Filippitch began timidly.

'Imbecile! The man who brought the letter—is he here?'

'He is here, to be sure he is.... He is sitting in the counting-house.'

My grandmother rattled her amber rosary beads....

'Tell him to come to me.... And you, sir,' she turned to me, 'sit still.'

As it was, I was sitting perfectly still in my corner, on the stool assigned to me.

My grandmother kept me well in hand!

* * * * *

Five minutes later there came into the room a man of five-and-thirty, black-haired and swarthy, with broad cheek-bones, a face marked with smallpox, a hook nose, and thick eyebrows, from under which the small grey eyes looked out with mournful composure. The colour of the eyes and their expression were out of keeping with the Oriental cast of the rest of the face. The man was dressed in a decent, long-skirted coat. He stopped in the doorway, and bowed—only with his head.

'So your name's Baburin?' queried my grandmother, and she added to herself: 'Il a l'air d'un armenien.'

'Yes, it is,' the man answered in a deep and even voice. At the first brusque sound of my grandmother's voice his eyebrows faintly quivered. Surely he had not expected her to address him as an equal?

'Are you a Russian? orthodox?'

'Yes.'

My grandmother took off her spectacles, and scanned Baburin from head to foot deliberately. He did not drop his eyes, he merely folded his hands behind his back. What particularly struck my fancy was his beard; it was very smoothly shaven, but such blue cheeks and chin I had never seen in my life!

'Yakov Petrovitch,' began my grandmother, 'recommends you strongly in his letter as sober and industrious; why, then, did you leave his service?'

'He needs a different sort of person to manage his estate, madam.'

'A different ... sort? That I don't quite understand.'

My grandmother rattled her beads again. 'Yakov Petrovitch writes to me that there are two peculiarities about you. What peculiarities?'

Baburin shrugged his shoulders slightly.

'I can't tell what he sees fit to call peculiarities. Possibly that I ... don't allow corporal punishment.'

My grandmother was surprised. 'Do you mean to say Yakov Petrovitch wanted to flog you?'

Baburin's swarthy face grew red to the roots of his hair.

'You have not understood me right, madam. I make it a rule not to employ corporal punishment ... with the peasants.'

My grandmother was more surprised than ever; she positively threw up her hands.

'Ah!' she pronounced at last, and putting her head a little on one side, once more she scrutinised Baburin attentively. 'So that's your rule, is it? Well, that's of no consequence whatever to me; I don't want an overseer, but a counting-house clerk, a secretary. What sort of a hand do you write?'

'I write well, without mistakes in spelling.'

'That too is of no consequence to me. The great thing for me is for it to be clear, and without any of those new copybook letters with tails, that I don't like. And what's your other peculiarity?'

Baburin moved uneasily, coughed....

'Perhaps ... the gentleman has referred to the fact that I am not alone.'

'You are married?'

'Oh no ... but ...'

My grandmother knit her brows.

'There is a person living with me ... of the male sex ... a comrade, a poor friend, from whom I have never parted ... for ... let me see ... ten years now.'

'A relation of yours?'

'No, not a relation—a friend. As to work, there can be no possible hindrance occasioned by him,' Baburin made haste to add, as though foreseeing objections. 'He lives at my cost, occupies the same room with me; he is more likely to be of use, as he is well educated—speaking without flattery, extremely so, in fact—and his morals are exemplary.'

My grandmother heard Baburin out, chewing her lips and half closing her eyes.

'He lives at your expense?'

'Yes.'

'You keep him out of charity?'

'As an act of justice ... as it's the duty of one poor man to help another poor man.'

'Indeed! It's the first time I've heard that. I had supposed till now that that was rather the duty of rich people.'

'For the rich, if I may venture to say so, it is an entertainment ... but for such as we ...'

'Well, well, that's enough, that's enough,' my grandmother cut him short; and after a moment's thought she queried, speaking through her nose, which was always a bad sign, 'And what age is he, your protege?'

'About my own age.'

'Really, I imagined that you were bringing him up.'

'Not so; he is my comrade—and besides ...'

'That's enough,' my grandmother cut him short a second time. 'You're a philanthropist, it seems. Yakov Petrovitch is right; for a man in your position it's something very peculiar. But now let's get to business. I'll explain to you what your duties will be. And as regards wages.... _Que faites vous ici?_' added my grandmother suddenly, turning her dry, yellow face to me:—'Allez etudier votre devoir de mythologie._'

I jumped up, went up to kiss my grandmother's hand, and went out,—not to study mythology, but simply into the garden.

* * * * *

The garden on my grandmother's estate was very old and large, and was bounded on one side by a flowing pond, in which there were not only plenty of carp and eels, but even loach were caught, those renowned loach, that have nowadays disappeared almost everywhere. At the head of this pond was a thick clump of willows; further and higher, on both sides of a rising slope, were dense bushes of hazel, elder, honeysuckle, and sloe-thorn, with an undergrowth of heather and clover flowers. Here and there between the bushes were tiny clearings, covered with emerald-green, silky, fine grass, in the midst of which squat funguses peeped out with their comical, variegated pink, lilac, and straw-coloured caps, and golden balls of 'hen-dazzle' blazed in light patches. Here in spring-time the nightingales sang, the blackbirds whistled, the cuckoos called; here in the heat of summer it was always cool—and I loved to make my way into the wilderness and thicket, where I had favourite secret spots, known—so, at least, I imagined—only to me.

On coming out of my grandmother's room I made straight for one of these spots, which I had named 'Switzerland.' But what was my astonishment when, before I had reached 'Switzerland,' I perceived through the delicate network of half-dry twigs and green branches that some one besides me had found it out! A long, long figure in a long, loose coat of yellow frieze and a tall cap was standing in the very spot I loved best of all! I stole up a little nearer, and made out the face, which was utterly unknown to me, also very long and soft, with small reddish eyes, and a very funny nose; drawn out as long as a pod of peas, it positively over-hung the full lips; and these lips, quivering and forming a round O, were giving vent to a shrill little whistle, while the long fingers of the bony hands, placed facing one another on the upper part of the chest, were rapidly moving with a rotatory action. From time to time the motion of the hands subsided, the lips ceased whistling and quivering, the head was bent forward as though listening. I came still nearer, examined him still more closely.... The stranger held in each hand a small flat cup, such as people use to tease canaries and make them sing. A twig snapped under my feet; the stranger started, turned his dim little eyes towards the copse, and was staggering away ... but he stumbled against a tree, uttered an exclamation, and stood still.

I came out into the open space. The stranger smiled.

'Good morning,' said I.

'Good morning, little master!'

I did not like his calling me little master. Such familiarity!

'What are you doing here?' I asked sternly.

'Why, look here,' he responded, never leaving off smiling, 'I'm calling the little birds to sing.' He showed me his little cups. 'The chaffinches answer splendidly! You, at your tender years, take delight, no doubt, in the feathered songsters' notes! Listen, I beg; I will begin chirping, and they'll answer me directly—it's so delightful!'

He began rubbing his little cups. A chaffinch actually did chirp in response from a mountain ash near. The stranger laughed without a sound, and winked at me.

The laugh and the wink—every gesture of the stranger, his weak, lisping voice, his bent knees and thin hands, his very cap and long frieze coat—everything about him suggested good-nature, something innocent and droll.

'Have you been here long?' I asked.

'I came to-day.'

'Why, aren't you the person of whom ...'

'Mr. Baburin spoke to the lady here. The same, the same.'

'Your friend's name's Baburin, and what's yours?'

'I'm Punin. Punin's my name; Punin. He's Baburin and I'm Punin.' He set the little cups humming again. 'Listen, listen to the chaffinch.... How it carols!'

This queer creature took my fancy 'awfully' all at once. Like almost all boys, I was either timid or consequential with strangers, but I felt with this man as if I had known him for ages.

'Come along with me,' I said to him; 'I know a place better than this; there's a seat there; we can sit down, and we can see the dam from there.'

'By all means let us go,' my new friend responded in his singing voice. I let him pass before me. As he walked he rolled from side to side, tripped over his own feet, and his head fell back.

I noticed on the back of his coat, under the collar, there hung a small tassel. 'What's that you've got hanging there?' I asked.

'Where?' he questioned, and he put his hand up to the collar to feel. 'Ah, the tassel? Let it be! I suppose it was sewn there for ornament! It's not in the way.'

I led him to the seat, and sat down; he settled himself beside me. 'It's lovely here!' he commented, and he drew a deep, deep sigh. 'Oh, how lovely! You have a most splendid garden! Oh, o—oh!'

I looked at him from one side. 'What a queer cap you've got!' I couldn't help exclaiming. 'Show it me here!'

'By all means, little master, by all means.' He took off the cap; I was holding out my hand, but I raised my eyes, and—simply burst out laughing. Punin was completely bald; not a single hair was to be seen on the high conical skull, covered with smooth white skin. He passed his open hand over it, and he too laughed. When he laughed he seemed, as it were, to gulp, he opened his mouth wide, closed his eyes—and vertical wrinkles flitted across his forehead in three rows, like waves. 'Eh,' said he at last, 'isn't it quite like an egg?'

'Yes, yes, exactly like an egg!' I agreed with enthusiasm. 'And have you been like that long?'

'Yes, a long while; but what hair I used to have!—A golden fleece like that for which the Argonauts sailed over the watery deeps.'

Though I was only twelve, yet, thanks to my mythological studies, I knew who the Argonauts were; I was the more surprised at hearing the name on the lips of a man dressed almost in rags.

'You must have learned mythology, then?' I queried, as I twisted his cap over and over in my hands. It turned out to be wadded, with a mangy-looking fur trimming, and a broken cardboard peak.

'I have studied that subject, my dear little master; I've had time enough for everything in my life! But now restore to me my covering, it is a protection to the nakedness of my head.'

He put on the cap, and, with a downward slope of his whitish eyebrows, asked me who I was, and who were my parents.

'I'm the grandson of the lady who owns this place,' I answered. 'I live alone with her. Papa and mamma are dead.'

Punin crossed himself. 'May the kingdom of heaven be theirs! So then, you're an orphan; and the heir, too. The noble blood in you is visible at once; it fairly sparkles in your eyes, and plays like this ... sh ... sh ... sh ...' He represented with his fingers the play of the blood. 'Well, and do you know, your noble honour, whether my friend has come to terms with your grandmamma, whether he has obtained the situation he was promised?'

'I don't know.'

Punin cleared his throat. 'Ah! if one could be settled here, if only for a while! Or else one may wander and wander far, and find not a place to rest one's head; the disquieting alarms of life are unceasing, the soul is confounded....'

'Tell me,' I interrupted: 'are you of the clerical profession?'

Punin turned to me and half closed his eyelids. 'And what may be the cause of that question, gentle youth?'

'Why, you talk so—well, as they read in church.'

'Because I use the old scriptural forms of expression? But that ought not to surprise you. Admitting that in ordinary conversation such forms of expression are not always in place; but when one soars on the wings of inspiration, at once the language too grows more exalted. Surely your teacher—the professor of Russian literature—you do have lessons in that, I suppose?—surely he teaches you that, doesn't he?'

'No, he doesn't,' I responded. 'When we stay in the country I have no teacher. In Moscow I have a great many teachers.'

'And will you be staying long in the country?'

'Two months, not longer; grandmother says that I'm spoilt in the country, though I have a governess even here.'

'A French governess?'

'Yes.'

Punin scratched behind his ear. 'A mamselle, that's to say?'

'Yes; she's called Mademoiselle Friquet.' I suddenly felt it disgraceful for me, a boy of twelve, to have not a tutor, but a governess, like a little girl! 'But I don't mind her,' I added contemptuously. 'What do I care!'

Punin shook his head. 'Ah, you gentlefolk, you gentlefolk! you're too fond of foreigners! You have turned away from what is Russian,—towards all that's strange. You've turned your hearts to those that come from foreign parts....'

'Hullo! Are you talking in verse?' I asked.

'Well, and why not? I can do that always, as much as you please; for it comes natural to me....'

But at that very instant there sounded in the garden behind us a loud and shrill whistle. My new acquaintance hurriedly got up from the bench.

'Good-bye, little sir; that's my friend calling me, looking for me.... What has he to tell me? Good-bye—excuse me....'

He plunged into the bushes and vanished, while I sat on some time longer on the seat. I felt perplexity and another feeling, rather an agreeable one ... I had never met nor spoken to any one like this before. Gradually I fell to dreaming, but recollected my mythology and sauntered towards the house.

* * * * *

At home, I learned that my grandmother had arranged to take Baburin; he had been assigned a small room in the servants' quarters, overlooking the stable-yard. He had at once settled in there with his friend.

When I had drunk my tea, next morning, without asking leave of Mademoiselle Friquet, I set off to the servants' quarters. I wanted to have another chat with the queer fellow I had seen the day before. Without knocking at the door—the very idea of doing so would never have occurred to us—I walked straight into the room. I found in it not the man I was looking for, not Punin, but his protector—the philanthropist, Baburin. He was standing before the window, without his outer garment, his legs wide apart. He was busily engaged in rubbing his head and neck with a long towel.

'What do you want?' he observed, keeping his hands still raised, and knitting his brows.

'Punin's not at home, then?' I queried in the most free-and-easy manner, without taking off my cap.

'Mr. Punin, Nikander Vavilitch, at this moment, is not at home, truly,' Baburin responded deliberately; 'but allow me to make an observation, young man: it's not the proper thing to come into another person's room like this, without asking leave.'

I! ... young man! ... how dared he! ... I grew crimson with fury.

'You cannot be aware who I am,' I rejoined, in a manner no longer free-and-easy, but haughty. 'I am the grandson of the mistress here.'

'That's all the same to me,' retorted Baburin, setting to work with his towel again. 'Though you are the seignorial grandson, you have no right to come into other people's rooms.'

'Other people's? What do you mean? I'm—at home here—everywhere.'

'No, excuse me: here—I'm at home; since this room has been assigned to me, by agreement, in exchange for my work.'

'Don't teach me, if you please,' I interrupted: 'I know better than you what ...'

'You must be taught,' he interrupted in his turn, 'for you're at an age when you ... I know my duties, but I know my rights too very well, and if you continue to speak to me in that way, I shall have to ask you to go out of the room....'

There is no knowing how our dispute would have ended if Punin had not at that instant entered, shuffling and shambling from side to side. He most likely guessed from the expression of our faces that some unpleasantness had passed between us, and at once turned to me with the warmest expressions of delight.

'Ah! little master! little master!' he cried, waving his hands wildly, and going off into his noiseless laugh: 'the little dear! come to pay me a visit! here he's come, the little dear!' (What's the meaning of it? I thought: can he be speaking in this familiar way to me?) 'There, come along, come with me into the garden. I've found something there.... Why stay in this stuffiness here! let's go!'

I followed Punin, but in the doorway I thought it as well to turn round and fling a glance of defiance at Baburin, as though to say, I'm not afraid of you!

He responded in the same way, and positively snorted into the towel—probably to make me thoroughly aware how utterly he despised me!

What an insolent fellow your friend is!' I said to Punin, directly the door had closed behind me.

Almost with horror, Punin turned his plump face to me.

'To whom did you apply that expression?' he asked me, with round eyes.

'Why, to him, of course.... What's his name? that ... Baburin.'

'Paramon Semyonevitch?'

'Why, yes; that ... blackfaced fellow.'

'Eh ... eh ... eh ...!' Punin protested, with caressing reproachfulness. 'How can you talk like that, little master! Paramon Semyonevitch is the most estimable man, of the strictest principles, an extraordinary person! To be sure, he won't allow any disrespect to him, because—he knows his own value. That man possesses a vast amount of knowledge—and it's not a place like this he ought to be filling! You must, my dear, behave very courteously to him; do you know, he's ...' here Punin bent down quite to my ear,—'a republican!'

I stared at Punin. This I had not at all expected. From Keidanov's manual and other historical works I had gathered the fact that at some period or other, in ancient times, there had existed republicans, Greeks and Romans. For some unknown reason I had always pictured them all in helmets, with round shields on their arms, and big bare legs; but that in real life, in the actual present, above all, in Russia, in the province of X——, one could come across republicans—that upset all my notions, and utterly confounded them!

'Yes, my dear, yes; Paramon Semyonitch is a republican,' repeated Punin; 'there, so you'll know for the future how one should speak of a man like that! But now let's go into the garden. Fancy what I've found there! A cuckoo's egg in a redstart's nest! a lovely thing!'

I went into the garden with Punin; but mentally I kept repeating: 'republican! re ... pub ... lican!'

'So,' I decided at last—'that's why he has such a blue chin!'

* * * * *

My attitude to these two persons—Punin and Baburin—took definite shape from that very day. Baburin aroused in me a feeling of hostility with which there was, however, in a short time, mingled something akin to respect. And wasn't I afraid of him! I never got over being afraid of him even when the sharp severity of his manner with me at first had quite disappeared. It is needless to say that of Punin I had no fear; I did not even respect him; I looked upon him—not to put too fine a point on it—as a buffoon; but I loved him with my whole soul! To spend hours at a time in his company, to be alone with him, to listen to his stories, became a genuine delight to me. My grandmother was anything but pleased at this intimite with a person of the 'lower classes'—du commun; but, whenever I could break away, I flew at once to my queer, amusing, beloved friend. Our meetings became more frequent after the departure of Mademoiselle Friquet, whom my grandmother sent back to Moscow in disgrace because, in conversation with a military staff captain, visiting in the neighbourhood, she had had the insolence to complain of the dulness which reigned in our household. And Punin, for his part, was not bored by long conversations with a boy of twelve; he seemed to seek them of himself. How often have I listened to his stories, sitting with him in the fragrant shade, on the dry, smooth grass, under the canopy of the silver poplars, or among the reeds above the pond, on the coarse, damp sand of the hollow bank, from which the knotted roots protruded, queerly interlaced, like great black veins, like snakes, like creatures emerging from some subterranean region! Punin told me the whole story of his life in minute detail, describing all his happy adventures, and all his misfortunes, with which I always felt the sincerest sympathy! His father had been a deacon;—'a splendid man—but, under the influence of drink, stern to the last extreme.'

Punin himself had received his education in a seminary; but, unable to stand the severe thrashings, and feeling no inclination for the priestly calling, he had become a layman, and in consequence had experienced all sorts of hardships; and, finally, had become a vagrant. 'And had I not met with my benefactor, Paramon Semyonitch,' Punin commonly added (he never spoke of Baburin except in this way), 'I should have sunk into the miry abysses of poverty and vice.' Punin was fond of high-sounding expressions, and had a great propensity, if not for lying, for romancing and exaggeration; he admired everything, fell into ecstasies over everything.... And I, in imitation of him, began to exaggerate and be ecstatic, too. 'What a crazy fellow you've grown! God have mercy on you!' my old nurse used to say to me. Punin's narratives used to interest me extremely; but even better than his stories I loved the readings we used to have together.

It is impossible to describe the feeling I experienced when, snatching a favourable moment, suddenly, like a hermit in a tale or a good fairy, he appeared before me with a ponderous volume under his arm, and stealthily beckoning with his long crooked finger, and winking mysteriously, he pointed with his head, his eyebrows, his shoulders, his whole person, toward the deepest recesses of the garden, whither no one could penetrate after us, and where it was impossible to find us out. And when we had succeeded in getting away unnoticed; when we had satisfactorily reached one of our secret nooks, and were sitting side by side, and, at last, the book was slowly opened, emitting a pungent odour, inexpressibly sweet to me then, of mildew and age;—with what a thrill, with what a wave of dumb expectancy, I gazed at the face, at the lips of Punin, those lips from which in a moment a stream of such delicious eloquence was to flow! At last the first sounds of the reading were heard. Everything around me vanished ... no, not vanished, but grew far away, passed into clouds of mist, leaving behind only an impression of something friendly and protecting. Those trees, those green leaves, those high grasses screen us, hide us from all the rest of the world; no one knows where we are, what we are about—while with us is poetry, we are saturated in it, intoxicated with it, something solemn, grand, mysterious is happening to us.... Punin, by preference, kept to poetry, musical, sonorous poetry; he was ready to lay down his life for poetry. He did not read, he declaimed the verse majestically, in a torrent of rhythm, in a rolling outpour through his nose, like a man intoxicated, lifted out of himself, like the Pythian priestess. And another habit he had: first he would lisp the verses through softly, in a whisper, as it were mumbling them to himself.... This he used to call the rough sketch of the reading; then he would thunder out the same verse in its 'fair copy,' and would all at once leap up, throw up his hand, with a half-supplicating, half-imperious gesture.... In this way we went through not only Lomonosov, Sumarokov, and Kantemir (the older the poems, the more they were to Punin's taste), but even Heraskov's Rossiad. And, to tell the truth, it was this same Rossiad which aroused my enthusiasm most. There is in it, among others, a mighty Tatar woman, a gigantic heroine; I have forgotten even her name now; but in those days my hands and feet turned cold as soon as it was mentioned. 'Yes,' Punin would say, nodding his head with great significance, 'Heraskov, he doesn't let one off easily. At times one comes upon a line, simply heart-breaking.... One can only stick to it, and do one's best.... One tries to master it, but he breaks away again and trumpets, trumpets, with the crash of cymbals. His name's been well bestowed on him—the very word, Herrraskov!' Lomonosov Punin found fault with for too simple and free a style; while to Derzhavin he maintained an attitude almost of hostility, saying that he was more of a courtier than a poet. In our house it was not merely that no attention was given to literature, to poetry; but poetry, especially Russian poetry, was looked upon as something quite undignified and vulgar; my grandmother did not even call it poetry, but 'doggrel verses'; every author of such doggrel was, in her opinion, either a confirmed toper or a perfect idiot. Brought up among such ideas, it was inevitable that I should either turn from Punin with disgust—he was untidy and shabby into the bargain, which was an offence to my seignorial habits—or that, attracted and captivated by him, I should follow his example, and be infected by his passion for poetry.... And so it turned out. I, too, began reading poetry, or, as my grandmother expressed it, poring over doggrel trash.... I even tried my hand at versifying, and composed a poem, descriptive of a barrel-organ, in which occurred the following two lines:

'Lo, the barrel turns around, And the cogs within resound.'

Punin commended in this effort a certain imitative melody, but disapproved of the subject itself as low and unworthy of lyrical treatment.

Alas! all those efforts and emotions and transports, our solitary readings, our life together, our poetry, all came to an end at once. Trouble broke upon us suddenly, like a clap of thunder.

* * * * *

My grandmother in everything liked cleanliness and order, quite in the spirit of the active generals of those days; cleanliness and order were to be maintained too in our garden. And so from time to time they 'drove' into it poor peasants, who had no families, no land, no beasts of their own, and those among the house serfs who were out of favour or superannuated, and set them to clearing the paths, weeding the borders, breaking up and sifting the earth in the beds, and so on. Well, one day, in the very heat of these operations, my grandmother went into the garden, and took me with her. On all sides, among the trees and about the lawns, we caught glimpses of white, red, and blue smocks; on all sides we heard the scraping and clanging of spades, the dull thud of clods of earth on the slanting sieves. As she passed by the labourers, my grandmother with her eagle eye noticed at once that one of them was working with less energy than the rest, and that he took off his cap, too, with no show of eagerness. This was a youth, still quite young, with a wasted face, and sunken, lustreless eyes. His cotton smock, all torn and patched, scarcely held together over his narrow shoulders.

'Who's that?' my grandmother inquired of Filippitch, who was walking on tiptoe behind her.

'Of whom ... you are pleased ...' Filippitch stammered.

'Oh, fool! I mean the one that looked so sullenly at me. There, standing yonder, not working.'

'Oh, him! Yes ... th ... th ... that's Yermil, son of Pavel Afanasiitch, now deceased.'

Pavel Afanasiitch had been, ten years before, head butler in my grandmother's house, and stood particularly high in her favour. But suddenly falling into disgrace, he was as suddenly degraded to being herdsman, and did not long keep even that position. He sank lower still, and struggled on for a while on a monthly pittance of flour in a little hut far away. At last he had died of paralysis, leaving his family in the most utter destitution.

'Aha!' commented my grandmother; 'it's clear the apple's not fallen far from the tree. Well, we shall have to make arrangements about this fellow too. I've no need of people like that, with scowling faces.'

My grandmother went back to the house—and made arrangements. Three hours later Yermil, completely 'equipped,' was brought under the window of her room. The unfortunate boy was being transported to a settlement; the other side of the fence, a few steps from him, was a little cart loaded with his poor belongings. Such were the times then. Yermil stood without his cap, with downcast head, barefoot, with his boots tied up with a string behind his back; his face, turned towards the seignorial mansion, expressed not despair nor grief, nor even bewilderment; a stupid smile was frozen on his colourless lips; his eyes, dry and half-closed, looked stubbornly on the ground. My grandmother was apprised of his presence. She got up from the sofa, went, with a faint rustle of her silken skirts, to the window of the study, and, holding her golden-rimmed double eyeglass on the bridge of her nose, looked at the new exile. In her room there happened to be at the moment four other persons, the butler, Baburin, the page who waited on my grandmother in the daytime, and I.

My grandmother nodded her head up and down....

'Madam,' a hoarse almost stifled voice was heard suddenly. I looked round. Baburin's face was red ... dark red; under his overhanging brows could be seen little sharp points of light.... There was no doubt about it; it was he, it was Baburin, who had uttered the word 'Madam.'

My grandmother too looked round, and turned her eyeglass from Yermil to Baburin.

'Who is that ... speaking?' she articulated slowly ... through her nose. Baburin moved slightly forward.

'Madam,' he began, 'it is I.... I venture ... I imagine ... I make bold to submit to your honour that you are making a mistake in acting as ... as you are pleased to act at this moment.'

'That is?' my grandmother said, in the same voice, not removing her eyeglass.

'I take the liberty ...' Baburin went on distinctly, uttering every word though with obvious effort—'I am referring to the case of this lad who is being sent away to a settlement ... for no fault of his. Such arrangements, I venture to submit, lead to dissatisfaction, and to other—which God forbid!—consequences, and are nothing else than a transgression of the powers allowed to seignorial proprietors.'

'And where have you studied, pray?' my grandmother asked after a short silence, and she dropped her eyeglass.

Baburin was disconcerted. 'What are you pleased to wish?' he muttered.

'I ask you: where have you studied? You use such learned words.'

'I ... my education ...' Baburin was beginning.

My grandmother shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. 'It seems,' she interrupted, 'that my arrangements are not to your liking. That is of absolutely no consequence to me—among my subjects I am sovereign, and answerable to no one for them, only I am not accustomed to having people criticising me in my presence, and meddling in what is not their business. I have no need of learned philanthropists of nondescript position; I want servants to do my will without question. So I always lived till you came, and so I shall live after you've gone. You do not suit me; you are discharged. Nikolai Antonov,' my grandmother turned to the steward, 'pay this man off; and let him be gone before dinner-time to-day! D'you hear? Don't put me into a passion. And the other too ... the fool that lives with him—to be sent off too. What's Yermilka waiting for?' she added, looking out of window, 'I have seen him. What more does he want?' My grandmother shook her handkerchief in the direction of the window, as though to drive away an importunate fly. Then she sat down in a low chair, and turning towards us, gave the order grimly: 'Everybody present to leave the room!'

We all withdrew—all, except the day page, to whom my grandmother's words did not apply, because he was nobody.

My grandmother's decree was carried out to the letter. Before dinner, both Baburin and my friend Punin were driving away from the place. I will not undertake to describe my grief, my genuine, truly childish despair. It was so strong that it stifled even the feeling of awe-stricken admiration inspired by the bold action of the republican Baburin. After the conversation with my grandmother, he went at once to his room and began packing up. He did not vouchsafe me one word, one look, though I was the whole time hanging about him, or rather, in reality, about Punin. The latter was utterly distraught, and he too said nothing; but he was continually glancing at me, and tears stood in his eyes ... always the same tears; they neither fell nor dried up. He did not venture to criticise his 'benefactor'—Paramon Semyonitch could not make a mistake,—but great was his distress and dejection. Punin and I made an effort to read something out of the Rossiad for the last time; we even locked ourselves up in the lumber-room—it was useless to dream of going into the garden—but at the very first line we both broke down, and I fairly bellowed like a calf, in spite of my twelve years, and my claims to be grown-up.

When he had taken his seat in the carriage Baburin at last turned to me, and with a slight softening of the accustomed sternness of his face, observed: 'It's a lesson for you, young gentleman; remember this incident, and when you grow up, try to put an end to such acts of injustice. Your heart is good, your nature is not yet corrupted.... Mind, be careful; things can't go on like this!' Through my tears, which streamed copiously over my nose, my lips, and my chin, I faltered out that I would ... I would remember, that I promised ... I would do ... I would be sure ... quite sure ...

But at this point, Punin, whom I had before this embraced twenty times (my cheeks were burning from the contact with his unshaven beard, and I was odoriferous of the smell that always clung to him)—at this point a sudden frenzy came over Punin. He jumped up on the seat of the cart, flung both hands up in the air, and began in a voice of thunder (where he got it from!) to declaim the well-known paraphrase of the Psalm of David by Derzhavin,—a poet for this occasion—not a courtier.

'God the All-powerful doth arise And judgeth in the congregation of the mighty! ... How long, how long, saith the Lord, Will ye have mercy on the wicked? "Ye have to keep the laws...."'

'Sit down!' Baburin said to him.

Punin sat down, but continued:

'To save the guiltless and needy, To give shelter to the afflicted, To defend the weak from the oppressors.'

Punin at the word 'oppressors' pointed to the seignorial abode, and then poked the driver in the back.

'To deliver the poor out of bondage! They know not! neither will they understand! ...'

Nikolai Antonov running out of the seignorial abode, shouted at the top of his voice to the coachman: 'Get away with you! owl! go along! don't stay lingering here!' and the cart rolled away. Only in the distance could still be heard:

'Arise, O Lord God of righteousness! ... Come forth to judge the unjust— And be Thou the only Ruler of the nations!'

'What a clown!' remarked Nikolai Antonov.

'He didn't get enough of the rod in his young days,' observed the deacon, appearing on the steps. He had come to inquire what hour it would please the mistress to fix for the night service.

The same day, learning that Yermil was still in the village, and would not till early next morning be despatched to the town for the execution of certain legal formalities, which were intended to check the arbitrary proceedings of the landowners, but served only as a source of additional revenue to the functionaries in superintendence of them, I sought him out, and, for lack of money of my own, handed him a bundle, in which I had tied up two pocket-handkerchiefs, a shabby pair of slippers, a comb, an old night-gown, and a perfectly new silk cravat. Yermil, whom I had to wake up—he was lying on a heap of straw in the back yard, near the cart—Yermil took my present rather indifferently, with some hesitation in fact, did not thank me, promptly poked his head into the straw and fell asleep again. I went home somewhat disappointed. I had imagined that he would be astonished and overjoyed at my visit, would see in it a pledge of my magnanimous intentions for the future—and instead of that ...

'You may say what you like—these people have no feeling,' was my reflection on my homeward way.

My grandmother, who had for some reason left me in peace the whole of that memorable day, looked at me suspiciously when I came after supper to say good-night to her.

'Your eyes are red,' she observed to me in French; 'and there's a smell of the peasant's hut about you. I am not going to enter into an examination of what you've been feeling and doing—I should not like to be obliged to punish you—but I hope you will get over all your foolishness, and begin to conduct yourself once more in a manner befitting a well-bred boy. However, we are soon going back to Moscow, and I shall get you a tutor—as I see you need a man's hand to manage you. You can go.'

We did, as a fact, go back soon after to Moscow.



II

1837

Seven years had passed by. We were living as before at Moscow—but I was by now a student in my second year—and the authority of my grandmother, who had aged very perceptibly in the last years, no longer weighed upon me. Of all my fellow-students the one with whom I was on the friendliest terms was a light-hearted and good-natured youth called Tarhov. Our habits and our tastes were similar. Tarhov was a great lover of poetry, and himself wrote verses; while in me the seeds sown by Punin had not been without fruit. As is often the case with young people who are very close friends, we had no secrets from one another. But behold, for several days together I noticed a certain excitement and agitation in Tarhov.... He disappeared for hours at a time, and I did not know where he had got to—a thing which had never happened before. I was on the point of demanding, in the name of friendship, a full explanation.... He anticipated me.

One day I was sitting in his room.... 'Petya,' he said suddenly, blushing gaily, and looking me straight in the face, 'I must introduce you to my muse.'

'Your muse! how queerly you talk! Like a classicist. (Romanticism was at that time, in 1837, at its full height.) As if I had not known it ever so long—your muse! Have you written a new poem, or what?'

'You don't understand what I mean,' rejoined Tarhov, still laughing and blushing. 'I will introduce you to a living muse.'

'Aha! so that's it! But how is she—yours?'

'Why, because ... But hush, I believe it's she coming here.'

There was the light click of hurrying heels, the door opened, and in the doorway appeared a girl of eighteen, in a chintz cotton gown, with a black cloth cape on her shoulders, and a black straw hat on her fair, rather curly hair. On seeing me she was frightened and disconcerted, and was beating a retreat ... but Tarhov at once rushed to meet her.

'Please, please, Musa Pavlovna, come in! This is my great friend, a splendid fellow—and the soul of discretion. You've no need to be afraid of him. Petya,' he turned to me, 'let me introduce my Musa—Musa Pavlovna Vinogradov, a great friend of mine.'

I bowed.

'How is that ... Musa?' I was beginning.... Tarhov laughed. 'Ah, you didn't know there was such a name in the calendar? I didn't know it either, my boy, till I met this dear young lady. Musa! such a charming name! And suits her so well!'

I bowed again to my comrade's great friend. She left the door, took two steps forward and stood still. She was very attractive, but I could not agree with Tarhov's opinion, and inwardly said to myself: 'Well, she's a strange sort of muse!'

The features of her curved, rosy face were small and delicate; there was an air of fresh, buoyant youth about all her slender, miniature figure; but of the muse, of the personification of the muse, I—and not only I—all the young people of that time had a very different conception! First of all the muse had infallibly to be dark-haired and pale. An expression of scornful pride, a bitter smile, a glance of inspiration, and that 'something'—mysterious, demonic, fateful—that was essential to our conception of the muse, the muse of Byron, who at that time held sovereign sway over men's fancies. There was nothing of that kind to be discerned in the face of the girl who came in. Had I been a little older and more experienced I should probably have paid more attention to her eyes, which were small and deep-set, with full lids, but dark as agate, alert and bright, a thing rare in fair-haired people. Poetical tendencies I should not have detected in their rapid, as it were elusive, glance, but hints of a passionate soul, passionate to self-forgetfulness. But I was very young then.

I held out my hand to Musa Pavlovna—she did not give me hers—she did not notice my movement; she sat down on the chair Tarhov placed for her, but did not take off her hat and cape.

She was, obviously, ill at ease; my presence embarrassed her. She drew deep breaths, at irregular intervals, as though she were gasping for air.

'I've only come to you for one minute, Vladimir Nikolaitch,' she began—her voice was very soft and deep; from her crimson, almost childish lips, it seemed rather strange;—'but our madame would not let me out for more than half an hour. You weren't well the day before yesterday ... and so, I thought ...'

She stammered and hung her head. Under the shade of her thick, low brows her dark eyes darted—to and fro—elusively. There are dark, swift, flashing beetles that flit so in the heat of summer among the blades of dry grass.

'How good you are, Musa, Musotchka!' cried Tarhov. 'But you must stay, you must stay a little.... We'll have the samovar in directly.'

'Oh no, Vladimir Nikolaevitch! it's impossible! I must go away this minute.'

'You must rest a little, anyway. You're out of breath.... You're tired.'

'I'm not tired. It's ... not that ... only ... give me another book; I've finished this one.' She took out of her pocket a tattered grey volume of a Moscow edition.

'Of course, of course. Well, did you like it? Roslavlev,' added Tarhov, addressing me.

'Yes. Only I think Yury Miloslavsky is much better. Our madame is very strict about books. She says they hinder our working. For, to her thinking ...'

'But, I say, Yury Miloslavsky's not equal to Pushkin's Gipsies? Eh? Musa Pavlovna?' Tarhov broke in with a smile.

'No, indeed! The Gipsies ...' she murmured slowly. 'Oh yes, another thing, Vladimir Nikolaitch; don't come to-morrow ... you know where.'

'Why not?'

'It's impossible.'

'But why?'

The girl shrugged her shoulders, and all at once, as though she had received a sudden shove, got up from her chair.

'Why, Musa, Musotchka,' Tarhov expostulated plaintively. 'Stay a little!'

'No, no, I can't.' She went quickly to the door, took hold of the handle....

'Well, at least, take the book!'

'Another time.'

Tarhov rushed towards the girl, but at that instant she darted out of the room. He almost knocked his nose against the door. 'What a girl! She's a regular little viper!' he declared with some vexation, and then sank into thought.

I stayed at Tarhov's. I wanted to find out what was the meaning of it all. Tarhov was not disposed to be reserved. He told me that the girl was a milliner; that he had seen her for the first time three weeks before in a fashionable shop, where he had gone on a commission for his sister, who lived in the provinces, to buy a hat; that he had fallen in love with her at first sight, and that next day he had succeeded in speaking to her in the street; that she had herself, it seemed, taken rather a fancy to him.

'Only, please, don't you suppose,' he added with warmth,—'don't you imagine any harm of her. So far, at any rate, there's been nothing of that sort between us.

'Harm!' I caught him up; 'I've no doubt of that; and I've no doubt either that you sincerely deplore the fact, my dear fellow! Have patience—everything will come right'

'I hope so,' Tarhov muttered through his teeth, though with a laugh. 'But really, my boy, that girl ... I tell you—it's a new type, you know. You hadn't time to get a good look at her. She's a shy thing!—oo! such a shy thing! and what a will of her own! But that very shyness is what I like in her. It's a sign of independence! I'm simply over head and ears, my boy!'

Tarhov fell to talking of his 'charmer,' and even read me the beginning of a poem entitled: 'My Muse.' His emotional outpourings were not quite to my taste. I felt secretly jealous of him. I soon left him.

* * * * *

A few days after I happened to be passing through one of the arcades of the Gostinny Dvor. It was Saturday; there were crowds of people shopping; on all sides, in the midst of the pushing and crushing, the shopmen kept shouting to people to buy. Having bought what I wanted, I was thinking of nothing but getting away from their teasing importunity as soon as possible—when all at once I halted involuntarily: in a fruit shop I caught sight of my comrade's charmer—Musa, Musa Pavlovna! She was standing, profile to me, and seemed to be waiting for something. After a moment's hesitation I made up my mind to go up to her and speak. But I had hardly passed through the doorway of the shop and taken off my cap, when she tottered back dismayed, turned quickly to an old man in a frieze cloak, for whom the shopman was weighing out a pound of raisins, and clutched at his arm, as though fleeing to put herself under his protection. The latter, in his turn, wheeled round facing her—and, imagine my amazement, I recognised him as Punin!

Yes, it was he; there were his inflamed eyes, his full lips, his soft, overhanging nose. He had, in fact, changed little during the last seven years; his face was a little flabbier, perhaps.

'Nikander Vavilitch!' I cried. 'Don't you know me?' Punin started, opened his mouth, stared at me....

'I haven't the honour,' he was beginning—and all at once he piped out shrilly: 'The little master of Troitsky (my grandmother's property was called Troitsky)! Can it be the little master of Troitsky?'

The pound of raisins tumbled out of his hands.

'It really is,' I answered, and, picking up Punin's purchase from the ground, I kissed him.

He was breathless with delight and excitement; he almost cried, removed his cap—which enabled me to satisfy myself that the last traces of hair had vanished from his 'egg'—took a handkerchief out of it, blew his nose, poked the cap into his bosom with the raisins, put it on again, again dropped the raisins.... I don't know how Musa was behaving all this time, I tried not to look at her. I don't imagine Punin's agitation proceeded from any extreme attachment to my person; it was simply that his nature could not stand the slightest unexpected shock. The nervous excitability of these poor devils!

'Come and see us, my dear boy,' he faltered at last; 'you won't be too proud to visit our humble nest? You're a student, I see ...'

'On the contrary, I shall be delighted, really.'

'Are you independent now?'

'Perfectly independent.'

'That's capital! How pleased Paramon Semyonitch will be! To-day he'll be home earlier than usual, and madame lets her, too, off for Saturdays. But, stop, excuse me, I am quite forgetting myself. Of course, you don't know our niece!'

I hastened to slip in that I had not yet had the pleasure.

'Of course, of course! How could you know her! Musotchka ... Take note, my dear sir, this girl's name is Musa—and it's not a nickname, but her real name ... Isn't that a predestination? Musotchka, I want to introduce you to Mr. ... Mr. ...'

'B.,' I prompted.

'B.,' he repeated. 'Musotchka, listen! You see before you the most excellent, most delightful of young men. Fate threw us together when he was still in years of boyhood! I beg you to look on him as a friend!'

I swung off a low bow. Musa, red as a poppy, flashed a look on me from under her eyelids, and dropped them immediately.

'Ah!' thought I, 'you 're one of those who in difficult moments don't turn pale, but red; that must be made a note of.'

'You must be indulgent, she's not a fine lady,' observed Punin, and he went out of the shop into the street; Musa and I followed him.

* * * * *

The house in which Punin lodged was a considerable distance from the Gostinny Dvor, being, in fact, in Sadovoy Street. On the way my former preceptor in poetry had time to communicate a good many details of his mode of existence. Since the time of our parting, both he and Baburin had been tossed about holy Russia pretty thoroughly, and had not long—only a year and a half before—found a permanent home in Moscow. Baburin had succeeded in becoming head-clerk in the office of a rich merchant and manufacturer. 'Not a lucrative berth,' Punin observed with a sigh,—'a lot of work, and not much profit ... but what's one to do? One must be thankful to get that! I, too, am trying to earn something by copying and lessons; only my efforts have so far not been crowned with success. My writing, you perhaps recollect, is old-fashioned, not in accordance with the tastes of the day; and as regards lessons—what has been a great obstacle is the absence of befitting attire; moreover, I greatly fear that in the matter of instruction—in the subject of Russian literature—I am also not in harmony with the tastes of the day; and so it comes about that I am turned away.' (Punin laughed his sleepy, subdued laugh. He had retained his old, somewhat high-flown manner of speech, and his old weakness for falling into rhyme.) 'All run after novelties, nothing but innovations! I dare say you, too, do not honour the old divinities, and fall down before new idols?'

'And you, Nikander Vavilitch, do you really still esteem Heraskov?'

Punin stood still and waved both hands at once. 'In the highest degree, sir! in the high ... est de ... gree, I do!'

'And you don't read Pushkin? You don't like Pushkin?'

Punin again flung his hands up higher than his head.

'Pushkin? Pushkin is the snake, lying hid in the grass, who is endowed with the note of the nightingale!'

While Punin and I talked like this, cautiously picking our way over the unevenly laid brick pavement of so-called 'white-stoned' Moscow—in which there is not one stone, and which is not white at all—Musa walked silently beside us on the side further from me. In speaking of her, I called her 'your niece.' Punin was silent for a little, scratched his head, and informed me in an undertone that he had called her so ... merely as a manner of speaking; that she was really no relation; that she was an orphan picked up and cared for by Baburin in the town of Voronezh; but that he, Punin, might well call her daughter, as he loved her no less than a real daughter. I had no doubt that, though Punin intentionally dropped his voice, Musa could hear all he said very well; and she was at once angry, and shy, and embarrassed; and the lights and shades chased each other over her face, and everything in it was slightly quivering, the eyelids and brows and lips and narrow nostrils. All this was very charming, and amusing, and queer.

* * * * *

But at last we reached the 'modest nest.' And modest it certainly was, the nest. It consisted of a small, one-storied house, that seemed almost sunk into the ground, with a slanting wooden roof, and four dingy windows in the front. The furniture of the rooms was of the poorest, and not over tidy, indeed. Between the windows and on the walls hung about a dozen tiny wooden cages containing larks, canaries, and siskins. 'My subjects!' Punin pronounced triumphantly, pointing his finger at them. We had hardly time to get in and look about us, Punin had hardly sent Musa for the samovar, when Baburin himself came in. He seemed to me to have aged much more than Punin, though his step was as firm as ever, and the expression of his face altogether was unchanged; but he had grown thin and bent, his cheeks were sunken, and his thick black shock of hair was sprinkled with grey. He did not recognise me, and showed no particular pleasure when Punin mentioned my name; he did not even smile with his eyes, he barely nodded; he asked—very carelessly and drily—whether my granny were living—and that was all. 'I'm not over-delighted at a visit from a nobleman,' he seemed to say; 'I don't feel flattered by it.' The republican was a republican still.

Musa came back; a decrepit little old woman followed her, bringing in a tarnished samovar. Punin began fussing about, and pressing me to take things; Baburin sat down to the table, leaned his head on his hands, and looked with weary eyes about him. At tea, however, he began to talk. He was dissatisfied with his position. 'A screw—not a man,' so he spoke of his employer; 'people in a subordinate position are so much dirt to him, of no consequence whatever; and yet it's not so long since he was under the yoke himself. Nothing but cruelty and covetousness. It's a bondage worse than the government's! And all the trade here rests on swindling and flourishes on nothing else!'

Hearing such dispiriting utterances, Punin sighed expressively, assented, shook his head up and down, and from side to side; Musa maintained a stubborn silence.... She was obviously fretted by the doubt, what I was, whether I was a discreet person or a gossip. And if I were discreet, whether it was not with some afterthought in my mind. Her dark, swift, restless eyes fairly flashed to and fro under their half-drooping lids. Only once she glanced at me, but so inquisitively, so searchingly, almost viciously ... I positively started. Baburin scarcely talked to her at all; but whenever he did address her, there was a note of austere, hardly fatherly, tenderness in his voice.

Punin, on the contrary, was continually joking with Musa; she responded unwillingly, however. He called her little snow-maiden, little snowflake.

'Why do you give Musa Pavlovna such names?' I asked.

Punin laughed. 'Because she's such a chilly little thing.'

'Sensible,' put in Baburin: 'as befits a young girl.'

'We may call her the mistress of the house,' cried Punin. 'Hey? Paramon Semyonitch?' Baburin frowned; Musa turned away ... I did not understand the hint at the time.

So passed two hours ... in no very lively fashion, though Punin did his best to 'entertain the honourable company.' For instance, he squatted down in front of the cage of one of the canaries, opened the door, and commanded: 'On the cupola! Begin the concert!' The canary fluttered out at once, perched on the cupola, that is to say, on Punin's bald pate, and turning from side to side, and shaking its little wings, carolled with all its might. During the whole time the concert lasted, Punin kept perfectly still, only conducting with his finger, and half closing his eyes. I could not help roaring with laughter ... but neither Baburin nor Musa laughed.

Just as I was leaving, Baburin surprised me by an unexpected question. He wished to ask me, as a man studying at the university, what sort of person Zeno was, and what were my ideas about him.

'What Zeno?' I asked, somewhat puzzled.

'Zeno, the sage of antiquity. Surely he cannot be unknown to you?'

I vaguely recalled the name of Zeno, as the founder of the school of Stoics; but I knew absolutely nothing more about him.

'Yes, he was a philosopher,' I pronounced, at last.

'Zeno,' Baburin resumed in deliberate tones, 'was that wise man, who declared that suffering was not an evil, since fortitude overcomes all things, and that the good in this world is one: justice; and virtue itself is nothing else than justice.'

Punin turned a reverent ear.

'A man living here who has picked up a lot of old books, told me that saying,' continued Baburin; 'it pleased me much. But I see you are not interested in such subjects.'

Baburin was right. In such subjects I certainly was not interested. Since I had entered the university, I had become as much of a republican as Baburin himself. Of Mirabeau, of Robespierre, I would have talked with zest. Robespierre, indeed ... why, I had hanging over my writing-table the lithographed portraits of Fouquier-Tinville and Chalier! But Zeno! Why drag in Zeno?

As he said good-bye to me, Punin insisted very warmly on my visiting them next day, Sunday; Baburin did not invite me at all, and even remarked between his teeth, that talking to plain people of nondescript position could not give me any great pleasure, and would most likely be disagreeable to my granny. At that word I interrupted him, however, and gave him to understand that my grandmother had no longer any authority over me.

'Why, you've not come into possession of the property, have you?' queried Baburin.

'No, I haven't,' I answered.

'Well, then, it follows ...' Baburin did not finish his sentence; but I mentally finished it for him: 'it follows that I'm a boy.'

'Good-bye,' I said aloud, and I retired.

I was just going out of the courtyard into the street ... Musa suddenly ran out of the house, and slipping a piece of crumpled paper into my hand, disappeared at once. At the first lamp-post I unfolded the paper. It turned out to be a note. With difficulty I deciphered the pale pencil-marks. 'For God's sake,' Musa had written, 'come to-morrow after matins to the Alexandrovsky garden near the Kutafia tower I shall wait for you don't refuse me don't make me miserable I simply must see you.' There were no mistakes in spelling in this note, but neither was there any punctuation. I returned home in perplexity.

* * * * *

When, a quarter of an hour before the appointed time, next day, I began to get near the Kutafia tower (it was early in April, the buds were swelling, the grass was growing greener, and the sparrows were noisily chirrupping and quarrelling in the bare lilac bushes), considerably to my surprise, I caught sight of Musa a little to one side, not far from the fence. She was there before me. I was going towards her; but she herself came to meet me.

'Let's go to the Kreml wall,' she whispered in a hurried voice, running her downcast eyes over the ground; 'there are people here.'

We went along the path up the hill.

'Musa Pavlovna,' I was beginning.... But she cut me short at once.

'Please,' she began, speaking in the same jerky and subdued voice, 'don't criticise me, don't think any harm of me. I wrote a letter to you, I made an appointment to meet you, because ... I was afraid.... It seemed to me yesterday,—you seemed to be laughing all the time. Listen,' she added, with sudden energy, and she stopped short and turned towards me: 'listen; if you tell with whom ... if you mention at whose room you met me, I'll throw myself in the water, I'll drown myself, I'll make an end of myself!'

At this point, for the first time, she glanced at me with the inquisitive, piercing look I had seen before.

'Why, she, perhaps, really ... would do it,' was my thought.

'Really, Musa Pavlovna,' I protested, hurriedly: 'how can you have such a bad opinion of me? Do you suppose I am capable of betraying my friend and injuring you? Besides, come to that, there's nothing in your relations, as far as I'm aware, deserving of censure.... For goodness' sake, be calm.'

Musa heard me out, without stirring from the spot, or looking at me again.

'There's something else I ought to tell you,' she began, moving forward again along the path, 'or else you may think I'm quite mad! I ought to tell you, that old man wants to marry me!'

'What old man? The bald one? Punin?'

'No—not he! The other ... Paramon Semyonitch.'

'Baburin?'

'Yes.'

'Is it possible? Has he made you an offer?'

'Yes.'

'But you didn't consent, of course?'

'Yes, I did consent ... because I didn't understand what I was about then. Now it's a different matter.'

I flung up my hands. 'Baburin—and you! Why, he must be fifty!'

'He says forty-three. But that makes no difference. If he were five—and—twenty I wouldn't marry him. Much happiness I should find in it! A whole week will go by without his smiling once! Paramon Semyonitch is my benefactor, I am deeply indebted to him; he took care of me, educated me; I should have been utterly lost but for him; I'm bound to look on him as a father.... But be his wife! I'd rather die! I'd rather be in my coffin!'

'Why do you keep talking about death, Musa Pavlovna?'

Musa stopped again.

'Why, is life so sweet, then? Even your friend Vladimir Nikolaitch, I may say, I've come to love from being wretched and dull: and then Paramon Semyonitch with his offers of marriage.... Punin, though he bores me with his verses, he doesn't scare me, anyway; he doesn't make me read Karamzin in the evenings, when my head's ready to drop off my shoulders for weariness! And what are these old men to me? They call me cold, too. With them, is it likely I should be warm? If they try to make me—I shall go. Paramon Semyonitch himself's always saying: Freedom! freedom! All right, I want freedom too. Or else it comes to this! Freedom for every one else, and keeping me in a cage! I'll tell him so myself. But if you betray me, or drop a hint—remember; they'll never set eyes on me again!'

Musa stood in the middle of the path.

'They'll never set eyes on me again!' she repeated sharply. This time, too, she did not raise her eyes to me; she seemed to be aware that she would infallibly betray herself, would show what was in her heart, if any one looked her straight in the face.... And that was just why she did not lift her eyes, except when she was angry or annoyed, and then she stared straight at the person she was speaking to.... But her small pretty face was aglow with indomitable resolution.

'Why, Tarhov was right,' flashed through my head; 'this girl is a new type.'

'You've no need to be afraid of me,' I declared, at last.

'Truly? Even, if ... You said something about our relations.... But even if there were ...' she broke off.

'Even in that case, you would have no need to be afraid, Musa Pavlovna. I am not your judge. Your secret is buried here.' I pointed to my bosom. 'Believe me, I know how to appreciate ...'

'Have you got my letter?' Musa asked suddenly.

'Yes.'

'Where?'

'In my pocket.'

'Give it here ... quick, quick!'

I got out the scrap of paper. Musa snatched it in her rough little hand, stood still a moment facing me, as though she were going to thank me; but suddenly started, looked round, and without even a word at parting, ran quickly down the hill.

I looked in the direction she had taken. At no great distance from the tower I discerned, wrapped in an 'Almaviva' ('Almavivas' were then in the height of fashion), a figure which I recognised at once as Tarhov.

'Aha, my boy,' thought I, 'you must have had notice, then, since you're on the look-out.'

And whistling to myself, I started homewards.

* * * * *

Next morning I had only just drunk my morning tea, when Punin made his appearance. He came into my room with rather an embarrassed face, and began making bows, looking about him, and apologising for his intrusion, as he called it. I made haste to reassure him. I, sinful man, imagined that Punin had come with the intention of borrowing money. But he confined himself to asking for a glass of tea with rum in it, as, luckily, the samovar had not been cleared away. 'It's with some trepidation and sinking of heart that I have come to see you,' he said, as he nibbled a lump of sugar. 'You I do not fear; but I stand in awe of your honoured grandmother! I am abashed too by my attire, as I have already communicated to you.' Punin passed his finger along the frayed edge of his ancient coat. 'At home it's no matter, and in the street, too, it's no harm; but when one finds one's self in gilded palaces, one's poverty stares one in the face, and one feels confused!' I occupied two small rooms on the ground floor, and certainly it would never have entered any one's head to call them palaces, still less gilded; but Punin apparently was referring to the whole of my grandmother's house, though that too was by no means conspicuously sumptuous. He reproached me for not having been to see them the previous day; 'Paramon Semyonitch,' said he, 'expected you, though he did declare that you would be sure not to come. And Musotchka, too, expected you.'

'What? Musa Pavlovna too?' I queried.

'She too. She's a charming girl we have got with us, isn't she? What do you say?'

'Very charming,' I assented. Punin rubbed his bare head with extraordinary rapidity.

'She's a beauty, sir, a pearl or even a diamond—it's the truth I am telling you.' He bent down quite to my ear. 'Noble blood, too,' he whispered to me, 'only—you understand—left-handed; the forbidden fruit was eaten. Well, the parents died, the relations would do nothing for her, and flung her to the hazards of destiny, that's to say, despair, dying of hunger! But at that point Paramon Semyonitch steps forward, known as a deliverer from of old! He took her, clothed her and cared for her, brought up the poor nestling; and she has blossomed into our darling! I tell you, a man of the rarest qualities!'

Punin subsided against the back of the armchair, lifted his hands, and again bending forward, began whispering again, but still more mysteriously: 'You see Paramon Semyonitch himself too.... Didn't you know? he too is of exalted extraction—and on the left side, too. They do say—his father was a powerful Georgian prince, of the line of King David.... What do you make of that? A few words—but how much is said? The blood of King David! What do you think of that? And according to other accounts, the founder of the family of Paramon Semyonitch was an Indian Shah, Babur. Blue blood! That's fine too, isn't it? Eh?'

'Well?' I queried, 'and was he too, Baburin, flung to the hazards of destiny?'

Punin rubbed his pate again. 'To be sure he was! And with even greater cruelty than our little lady! From his earliest childhood nothing but struggling! And, in fact, I will confess that, inspired by Ruban, I composed in allusion to this fact a stanza for the portrait of Paramon Semyonitch. Wait a bit ... how was it? Yes!

'E'en from the cradle fate's remorseless blows Baburin drove towards the abyss of woes! But as in darkness gleams the light, so now The conqueror's laurel wreathes his noble brow!'

Punin delivered these lines in a rhythmic, sing-song voice, with full rounded vowels, as verses should be read.

'So that's how it is he's a republican!' I exclaimed.

'No, that's not why,' Punin answered simply. 'He forgave his father long ago; but he cannot endure injustice of any sort; it's the sorrows of others that trouble him!'

I wanted to turn the conversation on what I had learned from Musa the day before, that is to say, on Baburin's matrimonial project,—but I did not know how to proceed. Punin himself got me out of the difficulty.

'Did you notice nothing?' he asked me suddenly, slily screwing up his eyes, 'while you were with us? nothing special?'

'Why, was there anything to notice?' I asked in my turn.

Punin looked over his shoulder, as though anxious to satisfy himself that no one was listening. 'Our little beauty, Musotchka, is shortly to be a married lady!'

'How so?'

'Madame Baburin,' Punin announced with an effort, and slapping his knees several times with his open hands, he nodded his head, like a china mandarin.

'Impossible!' I cried, with assumed astonishment. Punin's head slowly came to rest, and his hands dropped down. 'Why impossible, allow me to ask?'

'Because Paramon Semyonitch is more fit to be your young lady's father; because such a difference in age excludes all likelihood of love—on the girl's side.'

'Excludes?' Punin repeated excitedly. 'But what about gratitude? and pure affection? and tenderness of feeling? Excludes! You must consider this: admitting that Musa's a splendid girl; but then to gain Paramon Semyonitch's affection, to be his comfort, his prop—his spouse, in short! is that not the loftiest possible happiness even for such a girl? And she realises it! You should look, turn an attentive eye! In Paramon Semyonitch's presence Musotchka is all veneration, all tremor and enthusiasm!'

'That's just what's wrong, Nikander Vavilitch, that she is, as you say, all tremor. If you love any one you don't feel tremors in their presence.'

'But with that I can't agree! Here am I, for instance; no one, I suppose, could love Paramon Semyonitch more than I, but I ... tremble before him.'

'Oh, you—that's a different matter.'

'How is it a different matter? how? how?' interrupted Punin. I simply did not know him; he got hot, and serious, almost angry, and quite dropped his rhythmic sing-song in speaking. 'No,' he declared; 'I notice that you have not a good eye for character! No; you can't read people's hearts!' I gave up contradicting him ... and to give another turn to the conversation, proposed, for the sake of old times, that we should read something together.

Punin was silent for a while.

'One of the old poets? The real ones?' he asked at last.

'No; a new one.'

'A new one?' Punin repeated mistrustfully.

'Pushkin,' I answered. I suddenly thought of the Gypsies which Tarhov had mentioned not long before. There, by the way, is the ballad about the old husband. Punin grumbled a little, but I sat him down on the sofa, so that he could listen more comfortably, and began to read Pushkin's poem. The passage came at last, 'old husband, cruel husband'; Punin heard the ballad through to the end, and all at once he got up impulsively.

'I can't,' he pronounced, with an intense emotion, which impressed even me;—'excuse me; I cannot hear more of that author. He is an immoral slanderer; he is a liar ... he upsets me. I cannot! Permit me to cut short my visit to-day.'

I began trying to persuade Punin to remain; but he insisted on having his own way with a sort of stupid, scared obstinacy: he repeated several times that he felt upset, and wished to get a breath of fresh air—and all the while his lips were faintly quivering and his eyes avoided mine, as though I had wounded him. So he went away. A little while after, I too went out of the house and set off to see Tarhov.

* * * * *

Without inquiring of any one, with a student's usual lack of ceremony, I walked straight into his lodgings. In the first room there was no one. I called Tarhov by name, and receiving no answer, was just going to retreat; but the door of the adjoining room opened, and my friend appeared. He looked at me rather queerly, and shook hands without speaking. I had come to him to repeat all I had heard from Punin; and though I felt at once that I had called on Tarhov at the wrong moment, still, after talking a little about extraneous matters, I ended by informing him of Baburin's intentions in regard to Musa. This piece of news did not, apparently, surprise him much; he quietly sat down at the table, and fixing his eyes intently upon me, and keeping silent as before, gave to his features an expression ... an expression, as though he would say: 'Well, what more have you to tell? Come, out with your ideas!' I looked more attentively into his face.... It struck me as eager, a little ironical, a little arrogant even. But that did not hinder me from bringing out my ideas. On the contrary. 'You're showing off,' was my thought; 'so I am not going to spare you!' And there and then I proceeded straightway to enlarge upon the mischief of yielding to impulsive feelings, upon the duty of every man to respect the freedom and personal life of another man—in short, I proceeded to enunciate useful and appropriate counsel. Holding forth in this manner, I walked up and down the room, to be more at ease. Tarhov did not interrupt me, and did not stir from his seat; he only played with his fingers on his chin.