The Collected tales of Nikolai Gogol

"I don't want, I have no need of a nose!" he said, waving his arms. "For this one nose I need three pounds of snuff a month. And I pay in the Russian vile shop, because the German shop doesn't have Russian snuff, I pay in the Russian vile shop forty kopecks for each pound; that makes one rouble twenty kopecks; twelve times one rouble twenty kopecks makes fourteen roubles forty kopecks. Do you hear, Hoffmann my friend? For this one nose, fourteen roubles forty kopecks! Yes, and on feast days I snuff rappee, because I don't want to snuff Russian vile tobacco on feast days. I snuff two pounds of rappee a year, two roubles a pound. Six plus fourteen-twenty roubles forty kopecks on snuff alone. That's highway robbery! I ask you, Hoffmann my friend, is it not so?" Hoffmann, who was drunk himself, answered in the affirmative. "Twenty roubles forty kopecks! I'm a Swabian German; I have a king in Germany. I don't want a nose! Cut my nose off! Here's my nose!"

And had it not been for the sudden appearance of Lieutenant Pirogov, there is no doubt that Hoffmann would have cut Schiller's nose off just like that, because he was already holding his knife in such a position as if he were about to cut out a shoe sole.

Schiller found it extremely vexing that an unknown, uninvited person had suddenly hindered them so inopportunely. Despite his being under the inebriating fumes of beer and wine, he felt it somewhat indecent to be in the presence of an outside witness while looking and behaving in such a fashion. Meanwhile Pirogov bowed slightly and said with his usual pleasantness:

"You will excuse me…"

"Get out!" Schiller drawled.

This puzzled Lieutenant Pirogov. Such treatment was completely new to him. The smile that had barely appeared on his face suddenly vanished. With a sense of distressed dignity, he said:

"I find it strange, my dear sir… you must have failed to notice… I am an officer…"

"What is an officer! I am a Swabian German. Mineself" (here Schiller banged his fist on the table) "I can be an officer: a year and a half a Junker, 11 two years a sub-lieutenant, and tomorrow I'm right away an officer. But I don't want to serve. I'll do this to an officer-poof!" Here Schiller held his hand to his mouth and poofed on it.

Lieutenant Pirogov saw that there was nothing left for him but to withdraw. Nevertheless, such treatment, not at all befitting his rank, was disagreeable to him. He stopped several times on the stairs, as if wishing to collect his wits and think how to make Schiller sensible of his insolence. He finally concluded that Schiller could be excused because his head was full of beer; besides, he pictured the pretty blonde and decided to consign it all to oblivion. Next morning, Lieutenant Pirogov showed up very early at the tinsmith's shop. In the front room he was met by the pretty blonde, who asked in a rather stern voice that was very becoming to her little face:

"What can I do for you?"

"Ah, good morning, my little dear! You don't recognize me? Sly thing, such pretty eyes you have!" at which Lieutenant Pirogov was going to chuck her nicely under the chin with his finger.

But the blonde uttered a timorous exclamation and asked with the same sternness:

"What can I do for you?"

"Let me look at you, that's all," Lieutenant Pirogov said with a very pleasant smile, getting closer to her; but, noticing that the timorous blonde wanted to slip out the door, he added, "I'd like to order some spurs, my little dear. Can you make spurs for me? Though to love you, what's needed is not spurs but a bridle. Such pretty hands!"

Lieutenant Pirogov was always very courteous in conversations of this sort.

"I'll call my husband right now," the German lady cried and left, and a few minutes later Pirogov saw Schiller come out with sleepy eyes, barely recovered from yesterday's drinking. Looking at the officer, he recalled as in a vague dream what had happened yesterday. He did not remember how it had been, but felt that he had done something stupid, and therefore he received the officer with a very stern air.

"I can't take less than fifteen roubles for spurs," he said, wishing to get rid of Pirogov, because as an honorable German he was very ashamed to look at anyone who had seen him in an improper position. Schiller liked to drink without any witnesses, with two or three friends, and at such times even locked himself away from his workmen.

"Why so much?" Pirogov asked benignly.

"German workmanship," Schiller uttered coolly, stroking his chin. "A Russian would make them for two roubles."

"Very well, to prove that I like you and want to become acquainted with you, I'll pay the fifteen roubles."

Schiller stood pondering for a moment: being an honest German, he felt a bit ashamed. Wishing to talk him out of the order, he announced that it would be two weeks before he could make them. But Pirogov, without any objection, declared his consent.

The German lapsed into thought and stood pondering how to do his work better, so that it would actually be worth fifteen roubles. At that moment, the blonde came into the workshop and began rummaging around on the table, which was all covered with coffeepots. The lieutenant took advantage of Schiller's thoughtful-ness, got close to her, and pressed her arm, which was bare up to the shoulder. Schiller did not like that at all.

"Mein' Frau!" he cried.

" Was wollen Sie dock?" answered the blonde.

"Geh'n Sie to the kitchen!"

The blonde withdrew.

"In two weeks, then?" said Pirogov.

"Yes, in two weeks," Schiller replied ponderingly. "I have a lot of work now."

"Good-bye! I'll be back."

"Good-bye," answered Schiller, locking the door behind him.

Lieutenant Pirogov decided not to abandon his quest, even though the German lady had obviously rebuffed him. He did not understand how he could be resisted, the less so as his courtesy and brilliant rank gave him full right to attention. It must be said, however, that Schiller's wife, for all her comeliness, was very stupid. Though stupidity constitutes a special charm in a pretty wife. I, at least, have known many husbands who are delighted with their wives' stupidity and see in it all the tokens of childlike innocence. Beauty works perfect miracles. All inner shortcomings in a beauty, instead of causing repugnance, become somehow extraordinarily attractive; vice itself breathes comeliness in them; but if it were to disappear, then a woman would have to be twenty times more intelligent than a man in order to inspire, if not love, at least respect. However, Schiller's wife, for all her stupidity, was always faithful to her duty, and therefore Pirogov was hard put to succeed in his bold enterprise; but pleasure is always combined with the overcoming of obstacles, and the blonde was becoming more and more interesting for him day by day. He began inquiring about the spurs quite frequently, so that Schiller finally got tired of it. He bent every effort towards quickly finishing the spurs he had begun; finally the spurs were ready.

"Ah, what excellent workmanship!" Lieutenant Pirogov exclaimed when he saw the spurs. "Lord, how well made! Our general doesn't have such spurs."

A sense of self-satisfaction spread all through Schiller's soul. His eyes acquired a very cheerful look, and he was completely reconciled with Pirogov. "The Russian officer is an intelligent man," he thought to himself.

"So, then, you can also make a sheath, for instance, for a dagger or something else?"

"Oh, very much so," Schiller said with a smile.

"Then make me a sheath for a dagger. I'll bring it. I have a very good Turkish dagger, but I'd like to make a different sheath for it."

Schiller was as if hit by a bomb. His brows suddenly knitted. "There you go!" he thought, denouncing himself inwardly for having called down more work on himself. He considered it dishonest to refuse now; besides, the Russian officer had praised his work. Shaking his head a little, he gave his consent; but the kiss Pirogov brazenly planted right on the lips of the pretty blonde threw him into total perplexity.

I consider it not superfluous to acquaint the reader a little more closely with Schiller. Schiller was a perfect German in the full sense of this whole word. From the age of twenty, that happy time when a Russian lives by hit-or-miss, Schiller had already measured out his entire life, and on no account would he make any exceptions. He had resolved to get up at seven, to have dinner at two, to be precise in all things, and to get drunk every Sunday. He had resolved to put together a capital of fifty thousand in ten years, and this was as sure and irresistible as fate, because a clerk will sooner forget to leave his card with his superior's doorman 12 than a German will decide to go back on his word. On no account would he increase his expenses, and if the price of potatoes went up too much compared to usual, he did not spend a kopeck more but merely decreased the quantity, and though he occasionally went a bit hungry, he would nevertheless get used to it. His accuracy went so far as the decision to kiss his wife not more than twice a day, and to avoid somehow kissing her an extra time, he never put more than one teaspoon of pepper in his soup; on Sundays, however, this rule was not fulfilled so strictly, because Schiller then drank two bottles of beer and one bottle of caraway-seed vodka, which he nevertheless always denounced. He drank not at all like an Englishman, who bolts his door right after dinner and gets potted by himself. On the contrary, being a German, he always drank inspiredly, either with the cobbler Hoffmann or with the cabinetmaker Kuntz, also a German and a big drinker. Such was the character of the noble Schiller, who was finally put into an extremely difficult position. Though he was phlegmatic and a German, Piro- gov's behavior still aroused something like jealousy in him. He racked his brain and could not figure out how to get rid of this Russian officer. Meanwhile, Pirogov, as he was smoking his pipe in a circle of his comrades-because Providence has so arranged it that where there are officers there are also pipes-smoking his pipe in a circle of his comrades, hinted significantly and with a pleasant smile at a little intrigue with a pretty German lady with whom, in his words, he was already on quite close terms and whom in reality he had all but lost hope of attracting to himself.

One day, while strolling along Meshchanskaya, he kept glancing at the house adorned by Schiller's shingle with its coffeepots and samovars; to his great joy, he saw the blonde's head leaning out the window and watching the passers-by. He stopped, waved his hand, and said: "Gut Morgen!" The blonde greeted him as an acquaintance.

"Say, is your husband at home?"

"Yes," answered the blonde.

"And when is he not at home?"

"He's not at home on Sundays," the stupid blonde answered.

"Not bad," Pirogov thought to himself, "I must take advantage of it."

And next Sunday, out of the blue, he appeared before the blonde. Schiller was indeed not at home. The pretty hostess got frightened; but this time Pirogov behaved quite prudently, treated her very respectfully and, bowing, showed all the beauty of his tightly fitted waist. He joked very pleasantly and deferentially, but the silly German woman replied to everything in monosyllables. Finally, having tried to get at her from all sides and seeing that nothing would amuse her, he offered to dance. The German woman accepted at once, because German women are always eager to dance. Pirogov placed great hopes in this: first, she already enjoyed it; second, it would demonstrate his tournure and adroitness; third, while dancing he could get closer and embrace the pretty German, and thus start it all going-in short, the result would be complete success. He started some sort of gavotte, knowing that German women need gradualness. The pretty German stepped out into the middle of the room and raised her beau- tiful little foot. This position so delighted Pirogov that he rushed to kiss her. The German woman began to scream, thereby increasing her loveliness still more in Pirogov's eyes; he showered her with kisses. When suddenly the door opened and in came Schiller with Hoffmann and the cabinetmaker Kuntz. These worthy artisans were all drunk as cobblers.

But I will let my readers judge of Schiller's wrath and indignation for themselves.

"Ruffian!" he cried in the greatest indignation. "How dare you kiss my wife? You are a scoundrel, not a Russian officer. Devil take it, Hoffmann my friend, I am a German, not a Russian swine!"

Hoffmann responded in the affirmative.

"Oh, I will not the horns have! Take him by the collar, Hoffmann my friend, I will not," he went on, swinging his arms violently, and his face was close in color to the red flannel of his waistcoat. "I have lived in Petersburg for eight years, I have my mother in Swabia and my uncle in Nuremberg; I am a German, not a horned beef! Off with everything, Hoffmann my friend! Hold his arm and leg, Kuntz my comrat!"

And the Germans seized Pirogov by his arms and legs.

He vainly tried to fight them off; the three artisans were the most stalwart fellows of all the Petersburg Germans, and they behaved so rudely and impolitely with him that I confess I can find no words to describe this sorry event.

I'm sure that Schiller was in a bad fever the next day, that he trembled like a leaf, expecting the police to come every moment, that he would have given God knows what for all of yesterday's events to have been a dream. But what's done cannot be undone. Nothing could compare with Pirogov's wrath and indignation. The very thought of such a terrible insult drove him to fury. He thought Siberia and the lash the very least of punishments for Schiller. He flew home so that, having changed, he could go straight to the general and describe for him in the most vivid colors the violence of the German artisans. He also wanted to petition general headquarters at the same time. And if the punishment of general headquarters was insufficient, he would go straight to the state council, or else to the sovereign himself.

But all this ended somehow strangely: he stopped at a pastry shop on his way, ate two puff pastries, read something from The Northern Bee, and left the place already in a less wrathful state. Besides, the rather pleasant, cool evening induced him to take a little stroll on Nevsky Prospect; toward nine o'clock he calmed down and decided it was not nice to trouble the general on a Sunday, and besides he had undoubtedly been summoned somewhere; and therefore he went to a soiree given by one of the heads of the college of auditors, where there was a very pleasant gathering of functionaries and officers. He enjoyed the evening he spent there, and so distinguished himself in the mazurka that not only the ladies but even their partners were delighted.

"Marvelous is the working of our world," I thought as I walked down Nevsky Prospect two days ago, calling to mind these two events. "How strangely, how inconceivably our fate plays with us! Do we ever get what we desire? Do we ever achieve that for which our powers seem purposely to prepare us? Everything happens in a contrary way. To this one fate gave wonderful horses, and he drives around indifferently without ever noticing their beauty- while another, whose heart burns with the horse passion, goes on foot and contents himself with merely clicking his tongue as a trotter is led past him. This one has an excellent cook, but unfortunately so small a mouth that it cannot let pass more than a couple of tidbits; another has a mouth as big as the archway of general headquarters, but, alas! has to be satisfied with some German dinner of potatoes. How strangely our fate plays with us!"

But strangest of all are the events that take place on Nevsky Prospect. Oh, do not believe this Nevsky Prospect! I always wrap myself tighter in my cloak and try not to look at the objects I meet at all. Everything is deception, everything is a dream, everything is not what it seems to be! You think this gentleman who goes about in a finely tailored frock coat is very rich? Not a bit of it: he consists entirely of his frock coat. You imagine that these two fat men who stopped at the church under construction are discussing its architecture? Not at all: they're talking about how strangely two crows are sitting facing each other. You think that this enthusiast waving his arms is telling how his wife threw a little ball out the window at a completely unknown officer? Not at all, he's talking about Lafayette. 13 You think these ladies… but least of all believe the ladies. Peer less at the shop windows: the knickknacks displayed in them are beautiful, but they smell of a terrible quantity of banknotes. But God forbid you should peer under the ladies' hats! However a beauty's cloak may flutter behind her, I shall never follow curiously after her. Further away, for God's sake, further away from the street lamp! pass it by more quickly, as quickly as possible. You'll be lucky to get away with it pouring its stinking oil on your foppish frock coat. But, along with the street lamp, everything breathes deceit. It lies all the time, this Nevsky Prospect, but most of all at the time when night heaves its dense mass upon it and sets off the white and pale yellow walls of the houses, when the whole city turns into a rumbling and brilliance, myriads of carriages tumble from the bridges, postillions shout and bounce on their horses, and the devil himself lights the lamps only so as to show everything not as it really looks.

The Diary of a Madman

October 3.

Today an extraordinary adventure took place. I got up rather late in the morning, and when Mavra brought me my polished boots, I asked what time it was. On hearing that it had long since struck ten, I quickly hastened to get dressed. I confess, I wouldn't have gone to the office at all, knowing beforehand what a sour face the section chief would make. He has long been saying to me: "Why is it you've got such a hotchpotch in your head, brother? You rush about frantically, you sometimes confuse a case so much the devil himself couldn't sort it out, you start the title in lowercase, forget the date or number." Cursed stork! He must be envious that I sit in the director's study and sharpen pens for His Excellency. In short, I wouldn't have gone to the office if it weren't for the hope of seeing the treasurer and maybe cajoling at least some of my pay out of that Jew in advance. What a creature! For him to hand out any money a month ahead-Lord God, the Last Judgment would come sooner! Even if you beg on your life, even if you're destitute-he won't hand out anything, the hoary devil! Yet at home his own cook slaps him in the face. The whole world knows it. I don't see the profit of working in my department. Absolutely no resources. In the provincial government, in the civil courts and treasuries, it's quite a different matter: there, lo and behold, a man squeezes himself into a corner and scribbles away. His tailcoat is vile, his mug begs to be spat in, but just look what sort of country house he rents! Don't even try giving him a gilded china cup: "That," he says, "is a gift fit for a doctor." He wants to be given a pair of trotters, or a droshky, or a beaver coat worth some three hundred roubles. He looks like such a goody-goody, he talks with such delicacy-"Lend me your little knife to trim my little pen"-and then he skins a petitioner so that the man's left in nothing but his shirt. It's true, our work is noble, it's clean everywhere, as you never see it in the provincial government: the tables are mahogany, and the superiors address each other formally. Yes, 1 confess, if it weren't for the nobility of the work, I'd long since have quit the department.

I put on my old overcoat and took an umbrella, because it was pouring rain. There was nobody in the streets; only peasant women with their skirts pulled over their heads and Russian merchants under umbrellas and messenger boys caught my eye. Of the gentry I met only a fellow clerk. I saw him at an intersection. As I noticed him, I said to myself at once, "Oh-ho! No, dear heart, you're not going to the office, you're rushing after that thing running ahead of you and ogling her little feet." Our fellow clerk is quite a customer! By God, he won't yield to any officer; if a pretty thing in a bonnet passes by, he's sure to tag after her. While I was thinking that, I saw a carriage drive up to a shop I was walking past. I recognized it at once: it was our director's carriage. "But he has no business in that shop," I thought, "it must be his daughter." I pressed myself to the wall. The lackey opened the doors, and she fluttered out of the carriage like a little bird. As she glanced right and left, as she flashed her eyebrows and eyes… Lord God! I'm lost, I'm utterly lost! And why does she have to go out in such rainy weather! Go on, now, tell me women don't have a great passion for all these rags. She didn't recognize me, and I tried to wrap myself up the best I could, because the overcoat I had on was very dirty, and old-fashioned besides. Now everyone wears cloaks with tall collars, and mine is short, overlapping; and the broadcloth isn't waterproof at all. Her lapdog didn't manage to get through the door into the shop and was left in the street. I know this dog. She's called Medji. A minute hadn't passed when I suddenly heard a piping little voice: "Hello, Medji!" Well, I'll be! Who said that? I looked around and saw two ladies walking under an umbrella: one a little old lady, the other a young one; but they had already passed by when I heard beside me: "Shame on you, Medji!" What the devil! I saw Medji and the little dog that was following the ladies sniff each other. "Oh-ho!" I said to myself, "what, am I drunk or something? Only that seldom seems to happen with me." "No, Fidele, you shouldn't think so," I myself saw Medji say it, "I've been bow-wow! I've been bow-wow-wow! very sick." Ah, you pup! I confess, I was very surprised to hear her speak in human language. But later, when I'd thought it over properly, I at once ceased to be surprised. Actually, there have already been many such examples in the world. They say in "England a fish surfaced who spoke a couple of words in such a strange language that scholars have already spent three years trying to define them and still haven't found anything out. I also read in the papers about two cows that came to a grocer's and asked for a pound of tea. But, I confess, I was much more surprised when Medji said, "I wrote to you, Fidele. It must be that Polkan didn't deliver my letter!" May my salary be withheld! Never yet in my life have I heard of a dog being able to write. Only a gentleman can write correctly. Of course, there are sometimes merchants' clerks and even certain serfs who can write a bit; but their writing is mostly mechanical- no commas, no periods, no style.

This surprised me. I confess, lately I had begun sometimes to hear and see things no one had ever seen or heard before. "I'll just follow that little dog," I said to myself, "and find out what she is and what she thinks."

I opened my umbrella and followed the two ladies. They went down Gorokhovaya, turned onto Meshchanskaya, from there to Stolyarnaya, and finally to the Kokushkin Bridge, where they stopped in front of a big house. "I know that building," I said to myself. "That's Zverkov's building." What a pile! And the sorts that live in it: so many cooks, so many out-of-towners! and our fellow clerks-like pups, one on top of the other. I, too, have a friend there, a very good trumpet player. The ladies went up to the fifth floor. "Very well," I thought, "I won't go up now, but I'll note the place and be sure to make use of it at the first opportunity."

October 4.

Today is Wednesday, and so I was in my superior's study. I came earlier on purpose, sat down to work, and sharpened all the pens. Our director must be a very intelligent man. His whole study is filled with bookcases. I read the titles of some of the books: it's all learning, such learning as our kind can't even come close to: all in French, or in German. And to look at his face: pah, such importance shines in his eyes! I've never yet heard him utter an extra word. Except maybe when I hand him some papers, and he asks, "How is it outside?" "Wet, Your Excellency!" Yes, there's no comparison with our kind! A real statesman. I notice, though, that he has a special liking for me. If only the daughter also… ah, confound it!… Never mind, never mind, silence! I read the little Bee. 1 What fools these Frenchmen are! So, what is it they want? By God, I'd take the lot of them and give them a good birching! I also read a very pleasant portrayal of a ball there, described by a Kursk landowner. Kursk landowners are good writers. After that I noticed it had already struck twelve-thirty, and our man had never left his bedroom. But around one-thirty an event took place which no pen can describe. The door opened, I thought it was the director and jumped up from the chair with my papers; but it was she, she herself! Heavens above, how she was dressed! Her gown was white as a swan, and so magnificent, pah! and her glance-the sun, by God, the sun! She nodded and said, "Papa hasn't been here?" Aie, aie, aie! what a voice! A canary, truly, a canary! "Your Excellency," I almost wanted to say, "don't punish me, but if it is your will to punish me, punish me with Your Excellency's own hand." But, devil take it, my tongue somehow refused to move, and I said only, "No, ma'am." She looked at me, at the books, and dropped her handkerchief. I rushed headlong, slipped on the cursed parquet, almost smashed my nose, nevertheless kept my balance and picked up the handkerchief. Heavens, what a handkerchief! The finest cambric-ambrosia, sheer ambrosia! it simply exuded excellency. She thanked me and just barely smiled, so that her sugary lips scarcely moved, and after that she left. I sat for another hour, when suddenly a lackey came in and said, "Go home, Aksenty Ivanovich, the master has already gone out." I can't stand the lackey circle: there is one always sprawled in the front hall who won't even nod his head. Moreover, one of the knaves decided once to offer me some snuff without getting up. But don't you know, stupid churl, that I am an official, a man of noble birth? However, I took my hat and put my overcoat on by myself- because these gentlemen never help you-and left. At home I lay in bed most of the time. Then I copied out some very nice verses: "I was gone from her an hour, / Yet to me it seemed a year; / Life itself for me turned sour, / And the future dark and drear." Must be Pushkin's writing. 2 In the evening, wrapped in my overcoat, I went to Her Excellency's front gates and waited for a long time to see whether she'd come out for a carriage, to have one more look-but no, she didn't come out.

November 6. Furious with the section chief. When I came to the office, he called me over and started talking to me like this: "Well, pray tell me, what are you up to?" "What am I up to? Why, nothing," I replied. "Well, think a little better! You're over forty-it's time you got smart. What are you dreaming of? Do you think I don't know all your pranks? You're dangling after the director's daughter! Well, take a look at yourself, only think, what are you? You're a zero, nothing more. You haven't got a kopeck to your name. Just look at yourself in the mirror, how can you even think of it!" Devil take him, his face bears a slight resemblance to a druggist's bottle, with a tuft of hair curled into a forelock sticking up, smeared with some pomade, so he thinks he's the only one allowed anything. I see, I see why he's angry with me. He's jealous. Maybe he saw the signs of benevolence preferentially bestowed on me. Well, spit on him! Big deal, a court councillor! hangs a gold watch chain on himself, orders thirty-rouble boots-who the devil cares! Am I some sort of nobody, a tailor's son, or a sergeant's? I'm a nobleman. So, I, too, can earn rank. I'm only forty-two-the age at which service just seriously begins. Wait, friend! we, too, will become a colonel and, God willing, maybe something even higher. We'll get ourselves a reputation even better than yours. What, have you taken it into your head that there are no decent men except you? Just give me a Ruch 3 tailcoat, cut in the latest fashion, and let me have the same kind of necktie as you have-you won't hold a candle to me. No income-that's the trouble.

November 8. Went to the theater. The Russian fool Filatka 4 was playing. Laughed a lot. There was some other vaudeville with funny verses about lawyers, especially about some collegiate registrar, written quite freely, so that I wondered how it passed the censors, and they said outright that merchants cheat people and their sons are de-bauchers and try to worm their way into the nobility. Also a very funny couplet about journalists: that they like denouncing everything-and the author asked the public for protection. Authors write very funny plays nowadays. I like going to the theater. As soon as I have a penny in my pocket, I just can't keep myself from going. But there are such pigs among our fellow clerks: they decidedly will not go to the theater, the clods, unless you give them a free ticket. One actress sang very well. I remembered the other… ah, confound it!… never mind, never mind… silence.

November 9. At eight o'clock I went to the office. The section chief assumed such an air as if he didn't notice my arrival. I, for my part, acted as if there had been nothing between us. Looked through and collated papers. Left at four o'clock. Passed by the director's apartment but didn't see anybody. Lay in bed most of the time after dinner.

November 11.

Today I sat in our director's study and sharpened twenty-three pens for him, and for her, aie, aie!… four pens for Her Excellency. He likes very much having more pens. Oh, what a head that must be! Quite silent, but in his head, I think, he ponders everything. I wish I knew what he thinks about most; what's cooking in that head? I'd like to have a closer look at these gentlemen's lives, at all these equivocations and courtly tricks-how they are, what they do in their circle-that's what I'd like to find out! I've meant several times to strike up a conversation with His Excellency, only, devil take it, my tongue wouldn't obey me: I'd just say it was cold or warm outside, and be decidedly unable to say anything else. I'd like to peek into the drawing room, where you sometimes see only an open door into yet another room beyond the drawing room. Ah, such rich furnishings! Such mirrors and china! I'd like to peek in there, into that half, Her Excellency's-that's what I'd like! Into the boudoir, with all those little jars and vials standing there, such flowers that you're afraid to breathe on them; with her dress thrown down there, more like air than a dress. I'd like to peek into her bedroom… there, I think, there are wonders; there, I think, there is paradise, such as is not even to be found in heaven. To look at the little stool she puts her little foot on when she gets out of bed, at how a snow-white stocking is being put on that foot… aie! aie! aie! never mind, never mind… silence.

Today, however, it dawned on me clear as daylight: I recalled the conversation of the two little dogs I'd heard on Nevsky Prospect. "Very well," I thought to myself, "I'll find out everything now. I must get hold of the correspondence those rotten little dogs have exchanged. I'll learn a thing or two from it." I confess, I had even called Medji over once and said, "Listen, Medji, we're alone now; I'll lock the door if you like, so no one can see-tell me everything you know about the young miss, what and how she is? I swear to God I won't tell anybody." But the cunning little dog put her tail between her legs, shrank to half her size, and quietly walked out the door as if she hadn't heard anything. I've long suspected dogs of being much smarter than people; I was even certain they could speak, but there was only some kind of stubbornness in them. They're extraordinary politicians: they notice every human step. No, I'll go to Zverkov's building tomorrow at all costs, question Fidele, and, if I'm lucky, get hold of all the letters Medji has written to her.

November 12.

At two o'clock in the afternoon I set out with the firm intention of seeing Fidиle and questioning her. I can't stand cabbage, the smell of which comes pouring out of all the small shops on Meshchanskaya; besides that, there was such a whiff of hell coming from under the gates of each house that I held my nose and ran for dear life. And those vile artisans produce so much soot and smoke in their workshops that it's decidedly impossible for a gentleman to walk there. When I got to the sixth floor and rang the bell, a girl came out, not so bad looking, with little freckles. I recognized her. It was the same one who was walking with the old lady. She blushed slightly, and I understood at once: You, my sweet, are looking for a fiance. "What can I do for you?" she said. "I must have a word with your little dog." The girl was stupid! I knew at once she was stupid! At that moment the dog ran in, barking; I wanted to seize her, but she, vile thing, almost seized me by the nose with her teeth. I saw her basket in the corner, however. Aha, just what I need! I went over to it, rummaged in the straw of the wooden box, and, to my greatest satisfaction, pulled out a small bundle of little papers. Seeing that, the nasty little dog first bit me on the calf and then, when she realized I'd taken the papers, began squealing and fawning, but I said, "No, my sweet, good-bye!" and rushed out. I suppose the girl took me for a madman, because she was extremely frightened. On coming home, I wanted to get to work and sort these letters out at once, because I see poorly by candlelight. But Mavra had decided to wash the floor. These stupid Finnish women are always cleaning at the wrong moment. And so I went out to walk around and think this event over. Now I'll finally learn about all these affairs and intentions, all these springs, and finally get to the bottom of it. These letters will reveal everything to me. Dogs are smart folk, they know all the political relations, and so it's all sure to be there: the picture of the man and all his doings. There'll also be something about her who… never mind, silence! Toward evening I came home. Lay in bed most of the time.

November 13.

Well, now, let's see: the letter looks pretty clear. However, there's still something doggy in the writing. Let's read it:

Dear Fidele,

I still cannot get used to your common-sounding name. As if they couldn't have given you a better one? Fidele, Rosy- such banal tone! However, that's all beside the point. I'm very glad we've decided to write to each other.

The letter is written very correctly. Punctuation and even tricky spellings all in order. Not even our section chief can write like that, though he keeps saying he studied at some university. Let's see what comes next:

It seems to me that sharing thoughts, feelings, and impressions with others is one of the foremost blessings in the world.

Hm! the thought is drawn from some work translated from the German. Can't recall the title.

I say it from experience, though I've never run farther in the world than the gates of our house. Whose life flows by in pleasure if not mine? My young mistress, whom Papa calls Sophie, loves me to distraction.

Aie, aie!… never mind, never mind. Silence.

Papa also pets me very often. I drink tea and coffee with cream. Ah, ma chere, I must tell you that I see no pleasure at all in those big, bare bones our Polkan slobbers over in the kitchen. Only bones from wild game are good, and only before anyone has sucked out the marrow. Mixtures of several gravies are very good, only not with capers or herbs; but I know nothing worse than the habit of giving dogs little balls of bread. Some gentleman sitting at the table, after holding all sorts of trash in his hands, begins to roll bread in those same hands, then calls you over and puts the ball in your teeth. It's somehow impolite to refuse, so you eat it; with disgust, but you eat it…

Devil knows what this is! Such nonsense! As if there were no better subjects to write about. Let's look at the next page. For something more sensible.

I'm quite ready and willing to inform you of all that goes on in our house. I've already told you a little something about the main gentleman, whom Sophie calls Papa. He's a very strange man.

Ah! at last! Yes, I knew it: they have political views on all subjects. Let's see about Papa:

… a very strange man. He's silent most of the time. Speaks very rarely; but a week ago, he talked to himself constantly: "Will I get it or won't I?" He would take a piece of paper in one hand, close the other empty one, and say: "Will I get it or won't I?" Once he addressed the question to me: "What do you think, Medji? Will I get it or won't I?" I could understand none of it, so I sniffed his boot and went away. Then, ma chere, a week later Papa came home very happy. All morning gentlemen in uniforms kept coming to him, congratulating him for something. At the table he was merrier than I'd ever seen him before, told jokes, and after dinner he held me up to his neck and said: "Look, Medji, what's this?" I saw some little ribbon. I sniffed it but found decidedly no aroma; finally I licked it on the sly: it was a bit salty.

Hm! This little dog seems to me to be much too… she ought to be whipped! Ah! so he's ambitious. That must be taken into consideration.

Good-bye, ma there, I must run, and so on… and so forth… I'll finish my letter tomorrow. Well, hello! here I am again… Today my mistress Sophie…

Ah! so we shall see about Sophie. Eh, confound it!… Never mind, never mind… let's go on.

… my mistress Sophie was in a great bustle. She was going to a ball, and I was glad that in her absence I'd be able to write to you. My Sophie is always greatly delighted to be going to a ball, though she's almost always angry as she's being dressed. I simply don't understand, ma chere, the pleasure in going to a ball. Sophie comes home from the ball at six o'clock in the morning, and I can almost always tell by her pale and skinny look that the poor thing was given nothing to eat there. I confess, I could never live like that. If I wasn't given hazel grouse with gravy or roast chicken wings, I… I don't know what would become of me. Gruel with gravy is also good. But carrots, turnips, and artichokes will never be good…

Extremely uneven style. Shows at once that it wasn't written by a man. Begins properly, but ends with some dogginess. Let's have a look at another letter. A bit long. Hm! and no date.

Ah, my dear, how one senses the approach of spring! My heart throbs as if it keeps waiting for something. There is an eternal humming in my ears, so that I often stand for several minutes with uplifted paw, listening at the door. I'll confide to you that I have many wooers. I often sit in the window and look at them. Ah, if you only knew how ugly some of them are. The coarsest of all mutts, terribly stupid, stupidity written all over his face, goes down the street most imposingly, imagining he's the noblest person, thinking everyone is looking only at him. Not a bit of it. I didn't even pay attention, just as if I hadn't seen him. And what a frightful Great Dane stops outside my window! If he stood on his hind legs- something the boor is surely incapable of doing-he'd be a whole head taller than my Sophie's Papa, who is also quite tall and fat. This blockhead must be terribly impudent. I growled at him a little, but he couldn't have cared less. He didn't flinch! stuck his tongue out, hung his enormous ears, and stared in the window-what a clod! But don't think, ma chere, that my heart is indifferent to all suitors-oh, no… If you saw a certain gallant who climbs over the fence from the neighbors' house, by the name of Tresor. Ah, ma chere, he has such a cute muzzle!

Pah, devil take it!… What rot!… How can one fill letters with such silliness? Give me a man! I want to see a man; I demand food-such as nourishes and delights my soul; and instead I get these trifles… let's skip a page, maybe it will get better:

… Sophie sat at her table sewing something. I was looking out the window, because I enjoy watching passers-by. When suddenly a lackey came in and said: "Teplov!" "Show him in," Sophie cried and rushed to embrace me… "Ah, Medji, Medji! If you knew who he is: dark hair, a kammerjunker, 5 and such eyes! dark and glowing like fire"-and Sophie ran to her room. A moment later a young kammerjunker with dark side-whiskers came in, went up to the mirror, smoothed his hair, and glanced around the room. I growled a little and kept my place. Sophie came out soon and bowed gaily to his scraping; and I, as if noticing nothing, just went on looking out the window; however, I cocked my head a little to one side and tried to hear what they were talking about. Ah, ma chere, such nonsense they talked about! They talked about a lady who performed one figure instead of another during a dance; also how a certain Bobov looked just like a stork in his jabot and nearly fell down; how a certain Miss Lidin fancies she has blue eyes, whereas they're green-and the like. "Well," thought I to myself, "and if we compare the kammerjunker with Tresor!" Heavens, what a difference! First of all, the kammerjunker has a perfectly smooth, broad face with side- whiskers around it, as if someone had tied it with a black band; while Tresor has a slender little muzzle and a white spot right on his forehead. Between Tresor's waist and the kam-merjunker's there's no comparing. The eyes, the gestures, the manners are not at all alike. Oh, what a difference! I don't know, ma chere, what she finds in her Teplov. Why does she admire him so?…

To me it also seems that there's something wrong here. It can't be that a kammerjunker could enchant her so. Let's see further on:

It seems to me that if she likes that kammerjunker, she'll soon be liking the clerk who sits in Papa's study. Ah, ma chere, if you only knew how ugly he is. A perfect turtle in a sack…

What clerk might this be?…

He has the strangest last name. He always sits and sharpens pens. The hair on his head looks very much like hay. Papa always sends him out instead of a servant.

I think the vile little dog is aiming at me. How is my hair like hay?

Sophie can never help laughing when she looks at him.

You're lying, you cursed dog! What a vile tongue! As if I don't know it's a matter of envy. As if I don't know whose tricks these are. These are the section chief's tricks. The man has sworn undying hatred-and so he injures me, he keeps injuring me at every step. However, let's look at another letter. Maybe the thing will explain itself.

Ma chere Fidele, you must excuse my not writing for so long. I've been in perfect ecstasy. It's entirely correct what some writer has said, that love is a second life. Besides, there are big changes in our house now. The kammerjunker now comes every day. Sophie loves him to distraction. Papa is very happy. I even heard from our Grigory, who sweeps the floor and almost always talks to himself, that there will be a wedding soon; because Papa absolutely wants to see Sophie married to a general, or a kammerjunker, or an army colonel…

Devil take it! I can't read any more… It's all either kammerjunker or general. All that's best in the world, all of it goes either to kammerjunkers or generals. You find a poor treasure for yourself, hope to reach out your hand to it-a kammerjunker or a general plucks it away from you. Devil take it! I wish I could become a general myself: not so as to get her hand and the rest of it, no, I want to be a general simply to see how they'll fawn and perform all those various courtly tricks and equivocations, and then to tell them I spit on them both. Devil take it. How annoying! I've torn the stupid dog's letters to shreds.

December 3.

It can't be. Lies! The wedding won't take place! So what if he's a kammerjunker. It's nothing more than a dignity; it's not anything visible that you can take in your hands. He's not going to have a third eye on his forehead because he's a kammerjunker. His nose isn't made of gold, it's the same as mine or anybody else's; he doesn't eat with it, he smells; he doesn't cough, he sneezes. Several times already I've tried to figure out where all these differences come from. What makes me a titular councillor, and why on earth am I a titular councillor? Maybe I'm some sort of count or general and only seem to be a titular councillor? Maybe I myself don't know who I am. There are so many examples in history: some simple fellow, not only not a nobleman, but simply some tradesman or even peasant-and it's suddenly revealed that he's some sort of dignitary, or sometimes even an emperor. If even a muzhik sometimes turns out like that, what, then, may become of a nobleman? Suddenly, for instance, I walk in wearing a general's uniform: an epaulette on my right shoulder, and an epaulette on my left shoulder, a blue ribbon over my shoulder-what then? How is my beauty going to sing? What is Papa himself, our director, going to say? Oh, he's a man of great ambition! He's a Mason, a downright Mason, though he pretends to be this and that, I noticed right away he's a Mason: whenever he shakes a person's hand, he only holds out two fingers. But can't I be promoted this minute to governor general, or intendant, or something else like that? I'd like to know, what makes me a titular councillor? Why precisely a titular councillor?

December 5. I spent the whole morning today reading the newspapers. There are strange doings in Spain. I couldn't even make them out properly. They write that the throne is vacant and that the officials are in a difficult position about the selection of an heir, which is causing disturbances. This seems terribly strange to me. How can a throne be vacant? They say some dona should ascend the throne. 6 A doсa cannot ascend a throne. Simply cannot. There should be a king on a throne. But, they say, there is no king. It cannot be that there was no king. A state cannot be without a king. There is a king, only he's somewhere unknown. Possibly he's right there, but either some sort of family reasons, or apprehensions about neighboring powers, such as France and other countries, have forced him into hiding, or there are other reasons of some sort.

December 8.

I was just about to go to the office, but various reasons and reflections held me back. I couldn't get these Spanish affairs out of my head. How can a doсa be made a queen? They won't allow it. And, first of all, England won't allow it. And besides, the political affairs of the whole of Europe: the Austrian emperor, our sovereign… I confess, these events so crushed and shook me that I was decidedly unable to busy myself with anything all day long. Mavra observed to me that I was extremely distracted at the table. And, indeed, it seems I absentmindedly threw two plates on the floor, which proceeded to break. After dinner, I strolled around the toboggan slides. Couldn't arrive at anything constructive. Mostly lay in bed and reasoned about the affairs in Spain.

The Year 2000, 43rd of April. This day-is a day of the greatest solemnity! Spain has a king. He has been found. I am that king. Only this very day did I learn of it. I confess, it came to me suddenly in a flash of lightning. I don't understand how I could have thought and imagined that I was a titular councillor. How could such a wild notion enter my head? It's a good thing no one thought of putting me in an insane asylum. Now everything is laid open before me. Now I see everything as on the palm of my hand. And before, I don't understand, before everything around me was in some sort of fog. And all this happens, I think, because people imagine that the human brain is in the head. Not at all: it is brought by a wind from the direction of the Caspian Sea. First off, I announced to Mavra who I am. When she heard that the king of Spain was standing before her, she clasped her hands and nearly died of fright. The stupid woman had never seen a king of Spain before. However, I endeavored to calm her down and assured her in gracious words of my benevolence and that I was not at all angry that she sometimes polished my boots poorly. They're benighted folk. It's impossible to tell them about lofty matters. She got frightened, because she's convinced that all kings of Spain are like Philip II. But I explained to her that there was no resemblance between me and Philip II, and that I didn't have a single Capuchin 7… I didn't go to the office… To hell with it! No, friends, you won't lure me there now; I'm not going to copy your vile papers!

The 86th of Martober. Between day and night.

Today our manager came to tell me to go to the office, since I hadn't been to work for over three weeks. I went to the office as a joke. The section chief thought I'd bow to him and start apologizing, but I looked at him with indifference-neither too wrathfully nor too benevolently-and sat down at my place as if not noticing anyone. I looked at all that office riffraff and thought: "What if you knew who was sitting amongst you… Lord God! what a rumpus you'd raise, and the section chief would start bowing as low to me as he now bows to the director." Some papers were placed in front of me so that I could make an abstract of them. But

I didn't even set a finger to them. A few minutes later everything was in turmoil. They said the director was coming. Many clerks ran up front to show themselves before him. But I didn't budge. When he was passing through our section, everybody buttoned up their tailcoats; but I-nothing of the sort! What is a director that I should stand up before him-never! What sort of director is he? He's a doornail, not a director. An ordinary doornail, a simple doornail, nothing more. The kind used in doors. I was most amused when they slipped me a paper to be signed. They thought I'd write "Chief Clerk So-and-So" at the very bottom of the page. Not a chance! In the central place, where the director of the department signs, I dashed off: "Ferdinand VIII." You should have seen what reverent silence ensued; but I merely waved my hand, saying, "No need for any tokens of homage!" and walked out. From there I went straight to the director's apartment. He was not at home. The lackey didn't want to let me in, but after what I said to him, he just dropped his arms. I made my way straight to the boudoir. She was sitting before the mirror, jumped up, and backed away from me. However, I didn't tell her I was the king of Spain. I only said that such happiness awaited her as she could not even imagine, and that despite the machinations of enemies, we would be together. I did not want to say anything more, and walked out. Oh, she's a perfidious being-woman! Only now have I grasped what woman is. Till now no one has found out who she's in love with: I'm the first to discover it. Woman is in love with the devil. Yes, no joking. It's stupid what physicists write, that she's this or that-she loves only the devil. See there, from a box in the first balcony, she's aiming her lorgnette. You think she's looking at that fat one with the star? Not at all, she's looking at the devil standing behind his back. There he is hiding in his tailcoat. There he is beckoning to her with his finger! And she'll marry him. Marry him. And all those high-ranking fathers of theirs, all those who fidget in all directions and worm their way into court and say they're patriots and this and that: income, income is what these patriots want! Mother, father, God-they'll sell them all for money, the ambitious Judases! It's all ambition, and ambition is caused by a little blister under the tongue with a little worm in it the size of a pinhead, and it's all the doing of some barber who lives in Gorokhovaya Street. I don't know what his name is; but it's known for certain that he, together with some midwife, wants to spread Mohammedanism throughout the world, and as a result, they say, in France the majority of people already accepts the faith of Mohammed.

Date none. The day had no date.

Strolled incognito on Nevsky Prospect. His Majesty the emperor drove by. The whole city took their hats off, and I did, too; however, I didn't let on that I was the king of Spain. I considered it unsuitable to reveal myself right there in front of everybody; because, first of all, I have to present myself at court. The only thing holding me up is that I still don't have royal attire. If only I could get some sort of mantle. I was going to order one from a tailor, but they're perfect asses, and, besides, they neglect their work completely; they've thrown themselves into affairs and are mostly busy paving the streets with stones. I decided to make a mantle out of my new uniform, which I had only worn twice. But, to prevent those blackguards from ruining it, I decided to sew it myself, after locking the door so that no one could see. I cut it all up with scissors, because the style has to be completely different.

Don't remember the date. There was no month, either. Devil knows what there was.

The mantle is all ready and sewn up. Mavra cried out when I put it on. However, I still refrain from presenting myself at court. No deputation from Spain so far. Without deputies it's not proper. There'll be no weight to my dignity. I expect them any moment.

The 1st. I'm extremely astonished at the slowness of the deputies. What reasons can be holding them up? Can it be France? Yes, that is the most unfavorably disposed power. I went to inquire at the post office whether the Spanish deputies had arrived. But the postmaster is very stupid, he doesn't know anything; no, he says, there are no Spanish deputies here, and if you wish to write letters, we accept them at the set rate. Devil take it! what's a letter! A letter's nonsense. Apothecaries can write letters…

Madrid. Thirtieth Februarius.

And so I'm in Spain, and it happened so quickly that I've barely come to my senses. This morning the Spanish deputies came to me, and I got into the carriage together with them. The extraordinary speed seemed strange to me. We drove so quickly that in half an hour we reached the Spanish border. However, there are railroads everywhere in Europe now, and steamships drive very fast. Spain is a strange land: when we entered the first room, I saw a lot of people with shaved heads. I guessed, however, that they must be either grandees or soldiers, since they shave their heads. The behavior of the lord chancellor, who led me by the arm, seemed extremely strange to me; he pushed me into a little room and said, "Sit here, and if you still want to call yourself King Ferdinand, I'll beat the wish out of you." But I, knowing it was nothing but a provocation, replied in the negative-for which the chancellor hit me twice on the back with a stick, so painfully that I nearly cried out, but caught myself, having remembered that this was the knightly custom on entering upon high rank, because in Spain they still preserve knightly customs. Being left alone, I decided to occupy myself with state affairs. I discovered that China and Spain are absolutely one and the same land, and it is only out of ignorance that they are considered separate countries. I advise everyone purposely to write Spain on a piece of paper, and it will come out China. But, nevertheless, I was extremely upset by an event that is going to take place tomorrow. Tomorrow at seven o'clock a strange phenomenon will occur: the earth is going to sit on the moon. This has also been written about by the noted English chemist Wellington. I confess, I felt troubled at heart when I pictured to myself the extraordinary delicacy and fragility of the moon. For the moon is usually made in Hamburg, and made quite poorly. I'm surprised England doesn't pay attention to this. It's made by a lame cooper, and one can see that the fool understands nothing about the moon. He used tarred rope and a quantity of cheap olive oil, and that's why there's a terrible stench all over the earth, so that you have to hold your nose. And that's why the moon itself is such a delicate sphere that people can't live on it, and now only noses live there. And for the same reason, we can't see our own noses, for they're all in the moon. And when I pictured how the earth is a heavy substance and in sitting down may grind our noses into flour, I was overcome with such anxiety that, putting on my stockings and shoes, I hurried to the state council chamber to order the police not to allow the earth to sit on the moon. The shaved grandees, great numbers of whom I found in the state council chamber, were all very intelligent people, and when I said, "Gentlemen, let us save the moon, because the earth wants to sit on it," they all rushed at once to carry out my royal will, and many crawled up the wall in order to get the moon; but just then the lord chancellor came in. Seeing him, they all ran' away. I, being the king, was the only one to remain. But, to my surprise, the chancellor hit me with a stick and drove me to my room. Such is the power of popular custom in Spain!

January of the same year, which came after February.

I still cannot understand what sort of country Spain is. The popular customs and court etiquette are absolutely extraordinary. I do not understand, I do not understand, I decidedly do not understand anything. Today they shaved my head, though I shouted with all my might about my unwillingness to be a monk. But I cannot even remember how I felt when they began dripping cold water on my head. I've never experienced such hell before. I was ready to start raging, so that they were barely able to hold me back. I don't understand the meaning of this strange custom at all. A stupid, senseless custom! The folly of the kings, who still have not abolished it, is incomprehensible to me. Judging by all probabilities, I guess I may have fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, and the one I took for the chancellor may be the grand inquisitor himself. Only I still cannot understand how a king can be made subject to the Inquisition. True, this might come from the French side, especially from Polignac. 8 Oh, he's a sly customer, Polignac! He's sworn to injure me as long as I live. And so he persecutes me, per- secutes me; but I know, friend, that you're being led by the Englishman. The Englishman is a great politician. He fusses about everywhere. The whole world knows that when England takes snuff, France sneezes.

The 25th. Today the grand inquisitor came to my room, but, hearing his footsteps from far off, I hid under a chair. Seeing I wasn't there, he began calling out. First he shouted, "Poprishchin!" but I didn't say a word. Then: "Aksenty Ivanovich! Titular councillor! Nobleman!" I kept silent. "Ferdinand VIII, king of Spain!" I wanted to poke my head out, but then thought, "No, brother, you're not going to hoodwink me! We know you: you'll pour cold water on my head again." Nevertheless, he saw me and chased me out from under the chair with his stick. That cursed stick is extremely painful. However, all this has been rewarded by my present discovery: I've learned that every rooster has his Spain, that it's located under his feathers. The grand inquisitor nevertheless left me in wrath and threatened me with some punishment. But I utterly ignored his impotent anger, knowing that he was acting mechanically, as the Englishman's tool.

The of 34 February th, yrea 349.

No, I no longer have the strength to endure. God! what they're doing to me! They pour cold water on my head! They do not heed, do not see, do not listen to me. What have I done to them? Why do they torment me? What do they want from poor me? What can I give them? I have nothing. It's beyond my strength, I cannot endure all their torments, my head is burning, and everything is whirling before me. Save me! take me! give me a troika of steeds swift as the wind! Take the reins, my driver, ring out, my bells, soar aloft, steeds, and carry me out of this world! Farther, farther, so that there's nothing to be seen, nothing. Here is the sky billowing before me; a little star shines in the distance; a forest races by with dark trees and a crescent moon; blue mist spreads under my feet; a string twangs in the mist; on one side the sea, on the other Italy; and there I see some Russian huts. Is that my house blue in the distance? Is that my mother sitting at the window? Dear mother, save your poor son! shed a tear on his sick head! see how they torment him! press the poor orphan to your breast! there's no place for him in the world! they're driving him out! Dear mother! pity your sick child!… And do you know that the Dey of Algiers has a bump just under his nose?

The Nose

O n the twenty-fifth day of March, 1 an extraordinarily strange incident occurred in Petersburg. The barber Ivan Yakovle-vich, who lives on Voznesensky Prospect (his family name has been lost, and even on his signboard-which portrays a gentleman with a soaped cheek along with the words "Also Bloodletting"- nothing more appears), the barber Ivan Yakovlevich woke up quite early and sensed the smell of hot bread. Raising himself a little in bed, he saw that his wife, quite a respectable lady, who very much liked her cup of coffee, was taking just-baked loaves from the oven.

"Today, Praskovya Osipovna, I will not have coffee," said Ivan Yakovlevich, "but instead I'd like to have some hot bread with onion."

(That is, Ivan Yakovlevich would have liked the one and the other, but he knew it was utterly impossible to ask for two things at the same time, for Praskovya Osipovna very much disliked such whims.) "Let the fool eat bread; so much the better for me," the wife thought to herself, "there'll be an extra portion of coffee left." And she threw a loaf of bread on the table.

For the sake of propriety, Ivan Yakovlevich put his tailcoat on over his undershirt and, settling at the table, poured out some salt, prepared two onions, took a knife in his hands, and, assuming a significant air, began cutting the bread. Having cut the loaf in two, he looked into the middle and, to his surprise, saw something white. Ivan Yakovlevich poked cautiously with his knife and felt with his finger. "Firm!" he said to himself. "What could it be?"

He stuck in his fingers and pulled out-a nose!… Ivan Yakovlevich even dropped his arms; he began rubbing his eyes and feeling it: a nose, precisely a nose! and, what's more, it seemed like a familiar one. Terror showed on Ivan Yakovlevich's face. But this terror was nothing compared to the indignation that came over his wife.

"Where did you cut that nose off, you beast?" she shouted wrathfully. "Crook! Drunkard! I'll denounce you to the police myself! What a bandit! I've heard from three men already that you pull noses so hard when you give a shave that they barely stay attached."

But Ivan Yakovlevich was more dead than alive. He recognized this nose as belonging to none other than the collegiate assessor Kovalev, whom he shaved every Wednesday and Sunday.

"Wait, Praskovya Osipovna! I'll wrap it in a rag and put it in the corner. Let it stay there a while, and later I'll take it out."

"I won't hear of it! That I should leave some cut-off nose lying about my room?… You dried-up crust! You only know how to drag your razor over the strop, but soon you won't be able to do your duties at all, you trull, you blackguard! That I should have to answer for you to the police?… Ah, you muck-worm, you stupid stump! Out with it! out! take it wherever you like! so that I never hear of it again!"

Ivan Yakovlevich stood totally crushed. He thought and thought and did not know what to think.

"Devil knows how it happened," he said finally, scratching himself behind the ear. "Whether I came home drunk yesterday or not, I can't say for sure. But by all tokens this incident should be unfeasible: for bread is a baking matter, and a nose is something else entirely. I can't figure it out!…"

Ivan Yakovlevich fell silent. The thought of the police finding the nose at his place and accusing him drove him to complete dis- traction. He could already picture the scarlet collar, beautifully embroidered with silver, the sword… and he trembled all over. Finally he took his shirt and boots, pulled all this trash on him, and, to the accompaniment of Praskovya Osipovna's weighty admonitions, wrapped the nose in a rag and went out.

He wanted to leave it somewhere, in an iron hitching post under a gateway, or just somehow accidentally drop it and turn down an alley. But unfortunately he kept running into someone he knew, who would begin at once by asking, "Where are you off to?" or "Who are you going to shave so early?"-so that Ivan Yakovlevich could never seize the moment. Another time, he had already dropped it entirely, but a policeman pointed to it from afar with his halberd and said: "Pick that up! You've dropped something there!" And Ivan Yakovlevich had to pick the nose up and put it in his pocket. Despair came over him, especially as there were more and more people in the street as the stores and shops began to open.

He decided to go to St. Isaac's Bridge: might he not somehow manage to throw it into the Neva?… But I am slightly remiss for having said nothing yet about Ivan Yakovlevich, a worthy man in many respects.

Ivan Yakovlevich, like every decent Russian artisan, was a terrible drunkard. And though he shaved other people's chins every day, his own was eternally unshaven. Ivan Yakovlevich's tailcoat (Ivan Yakovlevich never went around in a frock coat) was piebald; that is, it was black, but all dappled with brownish-yellow and gray spots; the collar was shiny, and in place of three buttons there hung only threads. Ivan Yakovlevich was a great cynic, and whenever the collegiate assessor Kovalev said to him while being shaved, "Your hands eternally stink, Ivan Yakovlevich"-Ivan Yakovlevich would reply with a question: "And why should they stink?" to which the collegiate assessor would say, "I don't know, brother, but they stink," and for that Ivan Yakovlevich, after a pinch of snuff, would soap him up on the cheeks, and under the nose, and behind the ears, and under the chin-in short, anywhere he liked.

This worthy citizen was already on St. Isaac's Bridge. First he glanced around; then he leaned over the rail, as if looking under the bridge to see if there were lots of fish darting about, and quietly threw down the rag with the nose. He felt as if a three-hundred-pound weight had suddenly fallen from him; Ivan Yakovlevich even grinned. Instead of going to shave the chins of functionaries, he was heading for an institution under a sign that read "Food and Tea" to ask for a glass of punch, when suddenly he saw at the end of the bridge a police officer of noble appearance, with broad side-whiskers, in a three-cornered hat, wearing a sword. He went dead; and meanwhile the policeman was beckoning to him with his finger and saying, "Come here, my good man!"

Ivan Yakovlevich, knowing the rules, took off his peaked cap while still far away and, approaching rapidly, said:

"Good day to your honor!"

"No, no, brother, never mind my honor. Tell me what you were doing standing on the bridge."

"By God, sir, I'm on my way to give a shave and just stopped to see if the river's flowing fast."

"Lies, lies! You won't get off with that. Be so good as to answer!"

"I'm ready to shave you twice a week, sir, or even three times, with no objections," Ivan Yakovlevich answered.

"No, friend, that's trifles. I have three barbers to shave me, and they consider it a great honor. Kindly tell me what you were doing there."

Ivan Yakovlevich blanched… But here the incident becomes totally shrouded in mist, and of what happened further decidedly nothing is known.

II

The collegiate assessor Kovalev woke up quite early and went "brr…" with his lips-something he always did on waking up, though he himself was unable to explain the reason for it. Kovalev stretched and asked for the little mirror that stood on the table. He wished to look at a pimple that had popped out on his nose the previous evening; but, to his greatest amazement, he saw that instead of a nose he had a perfectly smooth place! Frightened,

Kovalev asked for water and wiped his eyes with a towel: right, no nose! He began feeling with his hand to find out if he might be asleep, but it seemed he was not. The collegiate assessor Kovalev jumped out of bed, shook himself: no nose!… He ordered his man to dress him and flew straight to the chief of police.

But meanwhile it is necessary to say something about Kovalev, so that the reader may see what sort of collegiate assessor he was. Collegiate assessors who obtain that title by means of learned diplomas cannot in any way be compared with collegiate assessors who are made in the Caucasus. 2 They are two entirely different sorts. Learned collegiate assessors… But Russia is such a wondrous land that, if you say something about one collegiate assessor, all collegiate assessors, from Riga to Kamchatka, will unfailingly take it to their own account. The same goes for all ranks and titles. Kovalev was a Caucasian collegiate assessor. He had held this rank for only two years, and therefore could not forget it for a moment; and to give himself more nobility and weight, he never referred to himself as a collegiate assessor, but always as a major. "Listen, dearie," he used to say on meeting a woman selling shirt fronts in the street, "come to my place; I live on Sadovaya; just ask, 'Where does Major Kovalev live?'-anyone will show you." And if he met some comely little thing, he would give her a secret order on top of that, adding: "Ask for Major Kovalev's apartment, sweetie." For which reason, we shall in future refer to this collegiate assessor as a major.

Major Kovalev had the habit of strolling on Nevsky Prospect every day. The collar of his shirt front was always extremely clean and starched. His side-whiskers were of the sort that can still be seen on provincial and regional surveyors, architects, and regimental doctors, as well as on those fulfilling various police duties, and generally on all men who have plump, ruddy cheeks and play a very good game of Boston: these side-whiskers go right across the middle of the cheek and straight to the nose. Major Kovalev wore many seals, of carnelian, with crests, and the sort that have Wednesday, Thursday, Monday, and so on, carved on them. Major Kovalev had come to Petersburg on business-namely, to seek a post suited to his rank: as vice-governor if he was lucky, or else as an executive in some prominent department. Major Kovalev would not have minded getting married, but only on the chance that the bride happened to come with two hundred thousand in capital. And therefore the reader may now judge for himself what the state of this major was when he saw, instead of a quite acceptable and moderate nose, a most stupid, flat, and smooth place.

As ill luck would have it, not a single coachman appeared in the street, and he had to go on foot, wrapping himself in his cloak and covering his face with a handkerchief as if it were bleeding. "But maybe I just imagined it that way: it's impossible for a nose to vanish so idiotically," he thought and went into a pastry shop on purpose to look at himself in the mirror. Luckily there was no one in the pastry shop; the boys were sweeping the rooms and putting the chairs in place; some of them, sleepy-eyed, brought out hot pastries on trays; yesterday's newspapers, stained with spilt coffee, lay about on tables and chairs. "Well, thank God nobody's here," he said. "Now I can have a look." He timidly approached a mirror and looked: "Devil knows, what rubbish!" he said, spitting. "There might at least be something instead of a nose, but there's nothing!…"

Biting his lips in vexation, he walked out of the pastry shop and decided, contrary to his custom, not to look at anyone or smile to anyone. Suddenly he stopped as if rooted outside the doors of one house; before his eyes an inexplicable phenomenon occurred: a carriage stopped at the entrance; the door opened; a gentleman in a uniform jumped out, hunching over, and ran up the stairs. What was Kovalev's horror as well as amazement when he recognized him as his own nose! At this extraordinary spectacle, everything seemed to turn upside down in his eyes; he felt barely able to stand; but, trembling all over as if in a fever, he decided that, whatever the cost, he would await his return to the carriage. Two minutes later the nose indeed came out. He was in a gold-embroidered uniform with a big standing collar; he had kidskin trousers on; at his side hung a sword. From his plumed hat it could be concluded that he belonged to the rank of state councillor. By all indications, he was going somewhere on a visit. He looked both ways, shouted, "Here!" to the coachman, got in, and drove off.

Poor Kovalev nearly lost his mind. He did not know what to think of such a strange incident. How was it possible, indeed, that the nose which just yesterday was on his face, unable to drive or walk-should be in a uniform! He ran after the carriage, which luckily had not gone far and was stopped in front of the Kazan Cathedral.

He hastened into the cathedral, made his way through a row of old beggar women with bandaged faces and two openings for the eyes, at whom he had laughed so much before, and went into the church. There were not many people praying in the church: they all stood just by the entrance. Kovalev felt so upset that he had no strength to pray, and his eyes kept searching in all corners for the gentleman. He finally saw him standing to one side. The nose had his face completely hidden in his big standing collar and was praying with an expression of the greatest piety.

"How shall I approach him?" thought Kovalev. "By all tokens, by his uniform, by his hat, one can see he's a state councillor. Devil knows how to go about it!"

He began to cough beside him; but the nose would not abandon his pious attitude for a minute and kept bowing down.

"My dear sir," said Kovalev, inwardly forcing himself to take heart, "my dear sir…"

"What can I do for you?" the nose said, turning.

"I find it strange, my dear sir… it seems to me… you should know your place. And suddenly I find you, and where?-in a church. You must agree…"

"Excuse me, I don't understand what you're talking about… Explain, please."

"How shall I explain it to him?" thought Kovalev, and, gathering his courage, he began:

"Of course, I… anyhow, I'm a major. For me to go around without a nose is improper, you must agree. Some peddler woman selling peeled oranges on Voskresensky Bridge can sit without a nose; but, having prospects in view… being acquainted, moreover, with ladies in many houses: Chekhtareva, the wife of a state councillor, and others… Judge for yourself… I don't know, my dear sir…" (Here Major Kovalev shrugged his shoulders.) "Par- don me, but… if one looks at it in conformity with the rules of duty and honor… you yourself can understand…"

"I understand decidedly nothing," replied the nose. "Explain more satisfactorily."

"My dear sir…" Kovalev said with dignity, "I don't know how to understand your words… The whole thing seems perfectly obvious… Or do you want to… But you're my own nose!"

The nose looked at the major and scowled slightly.

"You are mistaken, my dear sir. I am by myself. Besides, there can be no close relationship between us. Judging by the buttons on your uniform, you must serve in a different department."

Having said this, the nose turned away and continued praying.

Kovalev was utterly bewildered, not knowing what to do or even what to think. At that moment the pleasant rustle of a lady's dress was heard; an elderly lady all decked out in lace approached, followed by a slim one in a white dress that very prettily outlined her slender waist, wearing a pale yellow hat as light as a pastry. Behind them a tall footman with big side-whiskers and a full dozen collars stopped and opened his snuffbox.

Kovalev stepped closer, made the cambric collar of his shirt front peek out, straightened the seals hanging on his gold watch chain, and, smiling to all sides, rested his attention on the ethereal lady who, bending slightly like a flower in spring, brought her white little hand with its half-transparent fingers to her brow. The smile on Kovalev's face broadened still more when he saw under her hat a rounded chin of a bright whiteness and part of a cheek glowing with the color of the first spring rose. But he suddenly jumped back as if burnt. He remembered that in place of a nose he had absolutely nothing, and tears squeezed themselves from his eyes. He turned with the intention of telling the gentleman in the uniform outright that he was only pretending to be a state councillor, that he was a knave and a scoundrel, and nothing but his own nose… But the nose was no longer there; he had already driven off, again probably to visit someone.

This threw Kovalev into despair. He went back and paused for a moment under the colonnade, looking carefully in all directions, in case he might spot the nose. He remembered very well that he was wearing a plumed hat and a gold-embroidered uniform; but he had not noted his overcoat, nor the color of his carriage, nor of his horses, nor even whether he had a footman riding behind and in what sort of livery. Besides, there were so many carriages racing up and down, and at such speed, that it was even difficult to notice anything; and if he had noticed one of them, he would have had no way of stopping it. The day was beautiful and sunny. There were myriads of people on Nevsky; a whole flowery cascade of ladies poured down the sidewalk from the Police to the Anich-kin Bridge. There goes an acquaintance of his, a court councillor whom he called Colonel, especially if it occurred in front of strangers. And there is Yarygin, a chief clerk in the Senate, a great friend who always called remise when he played eight at Boston. There is another major who got his assessorship in the Caucasus, waving his arm, inviting him to come over…

"Ah, devil take it!" said Kovalev. "Hey, cabby, drive straight to the chief of police!"

Kovalev got into the droshky and kept urging the cabby on: "Gallop the whole way!"

"Is the chief of police in?" he cried, entering the front hall.

"No, he's not," the doorman replied, "he just left."

"Worse luck!"

"Yes," the doorman added, "not so long ago, but he left. If you'd have come one little minute sooner, you might have found him at home."

Kovalev, without taking the handkerchief from his face, got into a cab and shouted in a desperate voice:

"Drive!"

"Where to?" said the cabby.

"Straight ahead!"

"How, straight ahead? There's a turn here-right or left?"

This question stopped Kovalev and made him think again. In his situation, he ought first of all to address himself to the Office of Public Order, not because it was related directly to the police, but because its procedures were likely to be much quicker than elsewhere; to seek satisfaction from the authorities in the place where the nose claimed to work would be unreasonable, because it could be seen from the nose's own replies that nothing was sacred for this man, and he could be lying in this case just as he lied when he insisted that he never saw him before. And so Kovalev was about to tell the cabby to drive to the Office of Public Order when it again occurred to him that this knave and cheat, who had already behaved so shamelessly at their first encounter, might again conveniently use the time to slip out of the city somehow, and then all searching would be in vain, or might, God forbid, go on for a whole month. In the end it seemed that heaven itself gave him an idea. He decided to address himself directly to the newspaper office and hasten to take out an advertisement, with a detailed description of all his qualities, so that anyone meeting him could bring him to him or at least inform him of his whereabouts. And so, having decided on it, he told the cabby to drive to the newspaper office, and all the way there he never stopped hitting him on the back with his fist, saying: "Faster, you scoundrel! Faster, you cheat!" "Eh, master!" the coachman replied, shaking his head and whipping up his horse, whose coat was as long as a lapdog's. The droshky finally pulled up, and Kovalev, breathless, ran into a small reception room, where a gray-haired clerk in an old tailcoat and spectacles sat at a table, holding a pen in his teeth and counting the copper money brought to him.

"Who here takes advertisements?" cried Kovalev. "Ah, how do you do!"

"My respects," said the gray-haired clerk, raising his eyes for a moment and lowering them again to the laid-out stacks of coins.

"I wish to place…"

"Excuse me. I beg you to wait a bit," said the clerk, setting down a number on a piece of paper with one hand, and with the fingers of the left moving two beads on his abacus.

A lackey with galloons and an appearance indicating that he belonged to an aristocratic household, who was standing by the table with a notice in his hand, deemed it fitting to display his sociability:

"Believe me, sir, the pup isn't worth eighty kopecks, I mean, I wouldn't give eight for it; but the countess loves it, by God, she loves it-and so whoever finds it gets a hundred roubles! To put it proper, between you and me, people's tastes don't correspond at all: if you're a hunter, keep a pointer or a poodle, it'll cost you five hundred, a thousand, but you'll have yourself a fine dog."

The worthy clerk listened to this with a significant air and at the same time made an estimate of the number of letters in the notice. Around them stood a host of old women, shop clerks, and porters holding notices. One announced that a coachman of sober disposition was available for hire; another concerned a little-used carriage brought from Paris in 1814; elsewhere a nineteen-year-old serf girl was released, a good laundress and also fit for other work; a sturdy droshky lacking one spring; a hot young dapple-gray horse, seventeen years old; turnip and radish seeds newly received from London; a country house with all its appurtenances-two horse stalls and a place where an excellent birch or pine grove could be planted; next to that was an appeal to all those desiring to buy old shoes, with an invitation to come to the trading center every day from eight till three. The room into which all this company crowded was small and the air in it was very heavy; but the collegiate assessor Kovalev could not smell it, because he had covered his face with a handkerchief, and because his nose itself was in God knows what parts.

"My dear sir, allow me to ask… It's very necessary for me," he finally said with impatience.

"Right away, right away! Two roubles forty-three kopecks! This minute! One rouble sixty-four kopecks!" the gray-haired gentleman was saying as he flung the notices into the old women's and porters' faces. "What can I do for you?" he said at last, turning to Kovalev.

"I ask…" said Kovalev, "some swindling or knavery has occurred-I haven't been able to find out. I only ask you to advertise that whoever brings this scoundrel to me will get a sufficient reward."

"What is your name, if I may inquire?"

"No, why the name? I can't tell you. I have many acquaintances: Chekhtareva, wife of a state councillor, Palageya Grigorievna Pod- tochina, wife of a staff officer… God forbid they should suddenly find out! You can simply write: a collegiate assessor, or, better still, one holding the rank of major."

"And the runaway was your household serf?"

"What household serf? That would be no great swindle! The one that ran away was… my nose…"

"Hm! what a strange name! And did this Mr. Nosov steal a large sum of money from you?"

"Nose, I said… you've got it wrong! My nose, my own nose, disappeared on me, I don't know where. The devil's decided to make fun of me!"

"Disappeared in what fashion? I'm afraid I don't quite understand."

"I really can't say in what fashion; but the main thing is that he's now driving around town calling himself a state councillor. And therefore I ask you to announce that whoever catches him should immediately present him to me within the shortest time. Consider for yourself, how indeed can I do without such a conspicuous part of the body? It's not like some little toe that I can put in a boot and no one will see it's not there. On Thursdays I call on the wife of the state councillor Chekhtarev; Palageya Grigorievna Pod-tochina, a staff officer's wife-and she has a very pretty daughter- they, too, are my very good acquaintances, and consider for yourself, now, how can I… I can't go to them now."

The clerk fell to pondering, as was indicated by his tighdy compressed lips.

"No, I can't place such an announcement in the newspaper," he said finally, after a long silence.

"What? Why not?"

"Because. The newspaper may lose its reputation. If everybody starts writing that his nose has run away, then… People say we publish a lot of absurdities and false rumors as it is."

"But what's absurd about this matter? It seems to me that it's nothing of the sort."

"To you it seems so. But there was a similar incident last week. A clerk came, just as you've come now, brought a notice, it came to two roubles seventy-three kopecks in costs, and the whole announcement was that a poodle of a black coat had run away. Nothing much there, you'd think? But it turned out to be a lampoon: this poodle was the treasurer of I forget which institution."

"But I'm giving you an announcement not about a poodle, but about my own nose: which means almost about me myself."

"No, I absolutely cannot place such an announcement."

"But my nose really has vanished!"

"If so, it's a medical matter. They say there are people who can attach any nose you like. I observe, however, that you must be a man of merry disposition and fond of joking in company."

"I swear to you as God is holy! Very well, if it's come to that, I'll show you."

"Why trouble yourself!" the clerk went on, taking a pinch of snuff. "However, if it's no trouble," he added with a movement of curiosity, "it might be desirable to have a look."

The collegiate assessor took the handkerchief from his face.

"Extremely strange, indeed!" said the clerk. "The place is per-fecdy smooth, like a just-made pancake. Yes, of an unbelievable flatness!"

"Well, are you going to argue now? You can see for yourself that you've got to print it. I'll be especially grateful to you; and I'm very glad that this incident has afforded me the pleasure of making your acquaintance…"

The major, as may be seen from that, had decided to fawn a bit this time.

"Of course, printing it is no great matter," said the clerk, "only I don't see any profit in it for you. If you really want, you should give it to someone with a skillful pen, who can describe it as a rare work of nature and publish the little article in The Northern Bee" 3 (here he took another pinch of snuff), "for the benefit of the young" (here he wiped his nose), "or just for general curiosity."

The collegiate assessor was totally discouraged. He dropped his eyes to the bottom of the newspaper, where theater performances were announced; his face was getting ready to smile, seeing the name of a pretty actress, and his hand went to his pocket to see if he had a blue banknote 4 on him, because staff officers, in Kovalev's opinion, ought to sit in the orchestra-but the thought of the nose ruined everything!

The clerk himself seemed to be moved by Kovalev's difficult situation. Wishing to soften his grief somehow, he deemed it fitting to express his sympathy in a few words:

"I'm truly sorry that such an odd thing has happened to you. Would you care for a pinch? It dispels headaches and melancholy states of mind; it's even good with regard to hemorrhoids."

So saying, the clerk held the snuffbox out to Kovalev, quite deftly flipping back the lid with the portrait of some lady in a hat.

This unintentional act brought Kovalev's patience to an end.

"I do not understand how you find it possible to joke," he said in passion. "Can you not see that I precisely lack what's needed for a pinch of snuff? Devil take your snuff! I cannot stand the sight of it now, not only your vile Berezinsky, but even if you were to offer me rappee itself."

Having said this, he left the newspaper office in deep vexation and went to see the police commissioner, a great lover of sugar. In his house, the entire front room, which was also the dining room, was filled with sugar loaves that merchants brought him out of friendship. Just then the cook was removing the commissioner's regulation boots; his sword and other military armor were already hanging peacefully in the corners, and his three-year-old son was playing with his awesome three-cornered hat; and he himself, after his martial, military life, was preparing to taste the pleasures of peace.

Kovalev entered just as he stretched, grunted, and said: "Ah, now for a nice two-hour nap!" And therefore it could be foreseen that the collegiate assessor's arrival was quite untimely; and I do not know whether he would have been received all that cordially even if he had brought him several pounds of sugar or a length of broadcloth. The commissioner was a great patron of all the arts and manufactures, but preferred state banknotes to them all. "Here's a thing," he used to say, "there's nothing better than this thing: doesn't ask to eat, takes up little space, can always be put in the pocket, drop it and it won't break."

The commissioner received Kovalev rather drily and said that after dinner was no time for carrying out investigations, that nature herself had so arranged it that after eating one should have a little rest (from this the collegiate assessor could see that the police commissioner was not unacquainted with the sayings of the ancient wise men), that a respectable man would not have his nose torn off, and that there were many majors in the world whose underclothes were not even in decent condition, and who dragged themselves around to all sorts of improper places.

That is, a square hit, right between the eyes. It must be noted that Kovalev was an extremely touchy man. He could forgive anything said about himself, but he could never pardon a reference to his rank or title. He even thought that in theatrical plays everything referring to inferior officers could pass, but staff officers should never be attacked. The commissioner's reception so perplexed him that he shook his head and said with dignity, spreading his arms slightly, "I confess, after such offensive remarks on your part, I have nothing to add…" and left.

He returned home scarcely feeling his legs under him. It was already dark. Dismal or extremely vile his apartment seemed to him after this whole unsuccessful search. Going into the front room, he saw his lackey Ivan lying on his back on the soiled leather sofa, spitting at the ceiling and hitting the same spot quite successfully. The man's indifference infuriated him; he gave him a whack on the forehead with his hat, adding, "You pig, you're always busy with stupidities!"

Ivan suddenly jumped up from his place and rushed to help him off with his cape.

Going into his bedroom, the major, weary and woeful, threw himself into an armchair and finally, after several sighs, said:

"My God! my God! Why this misfortune? If I lacked an arm or a leg, it would still be better; if I lacked ears, it would be bad, but still more bearable; but lacking a nose, a man is devil knows what: not a bird, not a citizen-just take and chuck him out the window! And if it had been cut off in war or a duel, or if I'd caused it myself-but it vanished for no reason, vanished for nothing, nothing at all!… Only, no, it can't be," he added, after reflecting briefly.

"It's incredible that a nose should vanish, simply incredible. I must be dreaming, or just imagining it; maybe, by mistake somehow, instead of water I drank the vodka I use to pat my chin after shaving. That fool Ivan didn't take it away, and I must have downed it."

To make absolutely sure that he was not drunk, the major pinched himself so painfully that he cried out. This pain completely reassured him that he was acting and living in a waking state. He slowly approached the mirror and at first closed his eyes, thinking that the nose might somehow show up where it ought to be; but he jumped back at that same moment, saying:

"What a lampoonish look!"

This was indeed incomprehensible. If it had been a button, a silver spoon, a watch, or something of the sort, that had vanished- but to vanish, and who was it that vanished? and what's more, in his own apartment!… Major Kovalev, having put all the circumstances together, supposed it would hardly be unlikely if the blame were placed on none other than Podtochina, the staff officer's wife, who wished him to marry her daughter. He himself enjoyed dallying with her, but kept avoiding a final settlement. And when the mother announced to him directly that she wanted to give him the girl's hand, he quiedy eased off with his compliments, saying that he was still young and had to serve some five years more, until he turned exactly forty-two. And therefore the staff officer's wife, probably in revenge, decided to put a spell on him, and to that end hired some sorceress, because it was by no means possible to suppose that the nose had been cut off; no one had come into his room; and the barber Ivan Yakovlevich had shaved him on Wednesday, and the nose had been there for the whole of Wednesday, and even all day Thursday-he remembered that and knew it very well; besides, he would have felt the pain, and the wound undoubtedly could not have healed so quickly and become smooth as a pancake. He made plans in his head: to formally summon the staff officer's wife to court, or to go to her in person and expose her. His reflections were interrupted by the light flickering through all the chinks in the door, signifying that Ivan had already lighted a candle in the front room. Soon Ivan himself appeared, carrying it before him and brightly lighting up the whole bedroom. Kovalev's first impulse was to grab the handkerchief and cover the place where his nose had been just the day before, so that the stupid man would not actually start gaping, seeing such an oddity in his master.

Ivan had just gone back to his closet when an unfamiliar voice came from the front room, saying:

"Does the collegiate assessor Kovalev live here?"

"Come in. Major Kovalev is here," said Kovalev, hastily jumping up and opening the door.

In came a police officer of handsome appearance, with quite plump cheeks and side-whiskers neither light nor dark, the very same one who, at the beginning of this tale, was standing at the end of St. Isaac's Bridge.

"Did Your Honor lose his nose?"

"Right."

"It has now been found."

"What's that you say?" cried Major Kovalev. Joy robbed him of speech. He stared with both eyes at the policeman standing before him, over whose plump lips and cheeks the tremulous candlelight flickered brightly. "How did it happen?"

"By a strange chance: he was intercepted almost on the road. He was getting into a stage coach to go to Riga. And he had a passport long since filled out in the name of some official. The strange thing was that I myself first took him for a gentleman. But fortunately I was wearing my spectacles, and I saw at once that he was a nose. For I'm nearsighted, and if you're standing right in front of me, I'll see only that you have a face, but won't notice any nose or beard. My mother-in-law-that is, my wife's mother-can't see anything either."

Kovalev was beside himself

"Where is it? Where? I'll run there at once."

"Don't trouble yourself.. Knowing you had need of him, I brought him with me. And it's strange that the chief participant in this affair is that crook of a barber on Voznesenskaya Street, who is now sitting in the police station. I've long suspected him of being a drunkard and a thief, and only two days ago he pilfered a card of buttons from a shop. Your nose is exactly as it was."

Here the policeman went to his pocket and took out a nose wrapped in a piece of paper.

"That's it!" cried Kovalev. "That's it all right! Kindly take a cup of tea with me today."

"I'd consider it a great pleasure, but I really can't: I must go to the house of correction… The prices of all products have gone up so expensively… I've got my mother-in-law-that is, my wife's mother-living with me, and the children-for the oldest in particular we have great hopes: he's a very clever lad, but there's no means at all for his education…"

Kovalev understood and, snatching a red banknote from the table, put it into the hand of the officer, who bowed and scraped his way out, and at almost the same moment Kovalev heard his voice in the street, where he delivered an admonition into the mug of a stupid muzhik who had driven his cart right on to the boulevard.

On the policeman's departure, the collegiate assessor remained in some vague state for a few minutes, and only after several minutes acquired the ability to see and feel: such obliviousness came over him on account of the unexpected joy. He carefully took the found nose in his two cupped hands and once again studied it attentively.

"That's it, that's it all right!" Major Kovalev kept repeating. "There's the pimple that popped out on the left side yesterday."

The major almost laughed for joy.

But nothing in this world lasts long, and therefore joy, in the minute that follows the first, is less lively; in the third minute it becomes still weaker, and finally it merges imperceptibly with one's usual state of mind, as a ring in the water, born of a stone's fall, finally merges with the smooth surface. Kovalev began to reflect and realized that the matter was not ended yet: the nose had been found, but it still had to be attached, put in its place.

"And what if it doesn't stick?"

At this question, presented to himself, the major blanched.

With a feeling of inexplicable fear, he rushed to the table and set the mirror before him, so as not to put the nose on somehow askew. His hands were trembling. Carefully and cautiously he applied it to its former place. Oh, horror! The nose did not stick!… He held it to his mouth, warmed it a little with his breath, and again brought it to the smooth space between his two cheeks; but in no way would the nose hold on.

"Well, so, stay there, you fool!" he said to it. But the nose was as if made of wood and kept falling to the table with a strange, corklike sound. The major's face twisted convulsively. "Can it be that it won't grow back on?" he repeated in fear. But no matter how many times he put it in its proper place, his efforts remained unsuccessful.

He called Ivan and sent him for the doctor, who occupied the best apartment on the first floor of the same building. This doctor was an imposing man, possessed of handsome, pitch-black side-whiskers and of a fresh, robust doctress, ate fresh apples in the morning, and kept his mouth extraordinarily clean by rinsing it every morning for nearly three quarters of an hour and polishing his teeth with five different sorts of brushes. The doctor came that same minute. Having asked him how long ago the misfortune had occurred, he raised Major Kovalev's face by the chin and flicked him with his thumb in the very place where the nose had formerly been, which made the major throw his head back so hard that it struck the wall behind. The physician said it was nothing, advised him to move away from the wall a bit, told him to tip his head to the right first, and, having palpated the spot where the nose had been, said, "Hm!" Then he told him to tip his head to the left, said, "Hm!" and in conclusion flicked him again with his thumb, which made Major Kovalev jerk his head back like a horse having its teeth examined. After performing this test, the physician shook his head and said:

"No, impossible. You'd better stay the way you are, because it might come out still worse. Of course, it could be attached; I could perhaps attach it for you now; but I assure you it will be the worse for you."

"Well, that's just fine! How can I stay without a nose?" said Kovalev. "It can't be worse than now. This is simply devil knows what! Where can I show myself with such lampoonery! I have good acquaintances; today alone I have to be at soirees in two houses. I know many people: Chekhtareva, a state councillor's wife, Podtochina, a staff officer's wife… though after this act I won't deal with her except through the police. Do me the kindness," Kovalev said in a pleading voice, "isn't there some remedy? Attach it somehow-maybe not perfectly, so long as it holds; I can even prop it up with my hand on dangerous occasions. Besides, I don't dance, so I can't injure it with some careless movement. Regarding my gratitude for your visits, rest assured that everything my means will permit…"

"Believe me," the doctor said in a voice neither loud nor soft but extremely affable and magnetic, "I never treat people for profit. That is against my rules and my art. True, I take money for visits, but solely so as not to give offense by refusing. Of course, I could attach your nose; but I assure you on my honor, if you do not believe my word, that it will be much worse. You'd better leave it to the effect of nature herself. Wash it frequently with cold water, and I assure you that you'll be as healthy without a nose as with one. As for the nose, I advise you to put it in a jar of alcohol, or, better still, add two tablespoons of aquafortis and warm vinegar-then you'll get decent money for it. I'll even buy it myself, if you don't put too high a price on it."

"No, no! I won't sell it for anything!" cried the desperate Major Kovalev. "Better let it perish!"

"Excuse me!" said the doctor, bowing out. "I wished to be of use to you… Nothing to be done! At least you've seen how I tried."

Having said this, the doctor, with a noble bearing, left the room. Kovalev did not even notice his face but, plunged in profound insensibility, saw only the cuffs of his shirt, clean and white as snow, peeking out from the sleeves of his black tailcoat.

He resolved to write to the staff officer's wife the next day, before filing a complaint, on the chance that she might agree to return to him what she owed without a fight. The content of the letter was as follows:

My dear madam, Alexandra 5 Grigorievna!

I am unable to understand this strange act on your part. Rest assured that in behaving in this fashion you gain nothing and will by no means prevail upon me to marry your daughter. Believe me, I am perfectly well informed concerning the story of my nose, as well as the fact that none other than the two of you are the main participants in it. Its sudden detachment from its place, its flight, its disguising itself first as an official and now finally as its own self, are nothing else but the results of witchcraft, performed either by you or by those who exercise similarly noble occupations. I, for my part, consider it my duty to warn you: if the above-mentioned nose of mine is not back in place this same day, I shall be forced to resort to the shelter and protection of the law.

Nevertheless, with the utmost respect for you, I have the honor of being

Your humble servant,

Platon Kovalev

My dear sir, Platon Kuzmich!

I am extremely astonished by your letter. I confess to you in all frankness, I never expected, the less so with regard to unjust reproaches on your part. I warn you that I have never received the official you mention in my house, either disguised or as his real self. True, Filipp Ivanovich Potanchikov used to visit me. And though he indeed sought my daughter's hand, being himself of good, sober behavior and great learning, I never gave him reasons for any hope. You also mention a nose. If by that you mean that I supposedly led you by the nose and intended to refuse you formally, I am surprised that you speak of it, since I, as you know, was of the completely opposite opinion, and if you were to propose to my daughter in a lawful fashion right now, I would be ready to satisfy you at once, for this has always constituted the object of my liveliest desire, in hopes of which I remain, always ready to be at your service,

Alexandra Podtochina

"No," said Kovalev, after reading the letter. "She's clearly not guilty. She can't be! The way the letter's written, it couldn't have been written by a person guilty of a crime." The collegiate assessor was informed in such matters, because he had been sent on investigations several times while still in the Caucasus. "How, then, how on earth did it happen? The devil alone can sort it all out!" he finally said, dropping his arms.

Meanwhile, rumors of this remarkable incident spread all over the capital, and, as usually happens, not without special additions. Just then everyone's mind was precisely attuned to the extraordinary: only recently the public had been taken up with experiments on the effects of magnetism. What's more, the story about the dancing chairs on Konyushennaya Street was still fresh, and thus it was no wonder people soon began saying that the nose of the collegiate assessor Kovalev went strolling on Nevsky Prospect at exactly three o'clock. Hordes of the curious thronged there every day. Someone said the nose was supposed to be in Junker's shop 6 - and such a crowd and crush formed outside Junker's that the police even had to intervene. One speculator of respectable appearance, with side-whiskers, who sold various kinds of cookies at the entrance to the theater, had some fine, sturdy wooden benches specially made, which he invited the curious to stand on for eighty kopecks per visitor. One worthy colonel left home earlier specifically for that and made his way through the crowd with great difficulty; but to his great indignation, he saw in the shop window, instead of the nose, an ordinary woolen jacket and a lithograph portraying a girl straightening a stocking and a fop with a turned-back waistcoat and a small beard peeping at her from behind a tree-a picture that had been hanging in the same place for over ten years. He walked off saying vexedly, "How is it possible to upset people with such stupid and implausible rumors?"

Then the rumor spread that Major Kovalev's nose went strolling not on Nevsky Prospect but in the Tavrichesky Garden, and had long been going there; that when Khozrev-Mirza 7 lived there, he wondered greatly at this strange sport of nature. Some students from the College of Surgeons went there. One noble, respectable lady, in a special letter, asked the overseer of the garden to show this rare phenomenon to her children and, if possible, with an explanation instructive and edifying for the young.

All these events were an extreme joy for those inevitable frequenters of social gatherings who delight in making the ladies laugh and whose stock was by then completely exhausted. A small portion of respectable and right-minded people was extremely displeased. One gentleman said with indignation that he did not understand how such preposterous inventions could be spread in our enlightened age and that he was astonished that the government paid no attention to it. This gentleman was obviously one of those gentlemen who wish to mix the government into everything, even their daily quarrels with their wives. After that… but here again the whole incident is shrouded in mist, and what came later is decidedly unknown.

III

Perfect nonsense goes on in the world. Sometimes there is no plausibility at all: suddenly, as if nothing was wrong, that same nose which had driven about in the rank of state councillor and made such a stir in town was back in place-that is, precisely between the two cheeks of Major Kovalev. This happened on the seventh of April. Waking up and chancing to look in the mirror, he saw: the nose! He grabbed it with his hand-yes, the nose! "Aha!" said Kovalev, and in his joy he nearly burst into a trepak all around the room, but Ivan hindered him by coming in. He ordered a wash at once and, as he was washing, again glanced in the mirror: the nose! Drying himself with a towel, he again glanced in the mirror: the nose!

"Look, Ivan, I think I've got a pimple on my nose," he said, and thought meanwhile, "What a disaster if Ivan says, 'No, sir, not only no pimple, but no nose either!'"

But Ivan said:

"Nothing, sir, no pimple at all-the nose is clean!"

"Good, devil take it!" the major said to himself and snapped his fingers. At that moment the barber Ivan Yakovlevich peeked in the door, but as timorously as a cat that has just been beaten for stealing lard.

"Tell me first: are your hands clean?" Kovalev cried to him from afar.

"Yes."

"Lies!"

"By God, they're clean, sir."

"Well, watch yourself now."

Kovalev sat down. Ivan Yakovlevich covered him with a towel and in an instant, with the aid of a brush, transformed his whole chin and part of his cheeks into a cream such as is served on merchants' birthdays.

"Look at that!" Ivan Yakovlevich said to himself, glancing at the nose. Then he tipped the head the other way and looked at it from the side. "There, now! really, just think of it," he continued and went on looking at the nose for a long time. At last, lightly, as cautiously as one can imagine, he raised two fingers so as to grasp the tip of it. Such was Ivan Yakovlevich's system.

"Oh-oh, watch out!" cried Kovalev.

Ivan Yakovlevich dropped his arms, more confused and taken aback than he had ever been before. Finally he started tickling carefully under his chin with the razor; and though it was quite difficult and inconvenient for him to give a shave without holding on to the smelling part of the body, nevertheless, resting his rough thumb on the cheek and lower jaw, he finally overcame all obstacles and shaved him.

When everything was ready, Kovalev hastened at once to get dressed, hired a cab, and drove straight to the pastry shop. Going in, he cried from afar, "A cup of hot chocolate, boy!" and instantly went up to the mirror: the nose was there! He gaily turned around and, with a satirical air, squinting one eye a little, looked at two. military men, one of whom had a nose no bigger than a waistcoat button. After that, he went to the office of the department where he had solicited a post as vice-governor or, failing that, as an executive. Passing through the waiting room, he looked in the mirror: the nose was there! Then he went to see another collegiate assessor, or major, a great mocker, to whom he often said in response to various needling remarks: "Well, don't I know you, you sharpy!" On the way there, he thought, "If even the major doesn't split from laughing when he sees me, then it's a sure sign that whatever's there is sitting where it should." But from the collegiate assessor- nothing. "Good, good, devil take it!" Kovalev thought to himself. On his way he met Podtochina, the staff officer's wife, with her daughter, greeted them, and was met with joyful exclamations- nothing, then; he was in no way damaged. He talked with them for a very long time and, purposely taking out his snuffbox, spent a very long time in front of them filling his nose from both entrances, murmuring to himself, "There, that's for you, females, hen folk! and even so I won't marry the daughter. Just like that- par amour, if you please!" And Major Kovalev strolled on thereafter as if nothing was wrong, on Nevsky Prospect, and in the theaters, and everywhere. And the nose also sat on his face as if nothing was wrong, not even showing a sign that it had ever gone anywhere. And after that Major Kovalev was seen eternally in a good humor, smiling, chasing after decidedly all the pretty ladies, and even stopping once in front of a shop in the Merchants' Arcade to buy some ribbon or other, no one knows for what reason, since he was not himself the bearer of any decoration.

Such was the story that occurred in the northern capital of our vast country! Only now, on overall reflection, we can see that there is much of the implausible in it. To say nothing of the strangeness of the supernatural detachment of the nose and its appearance in various places in the guise of a state councillor-how was it that Kovalev did not realize that he ought not to make an announcement about the nose through the newspaper office? I'm speaking here not in the sense that I think it costly to pay for an announcement: that is nonsense, and I am not to be numbered among the mercenary. But it is indecent, inept, injudicious! And then, too-how did the nose end up in the baked bread and how did Ivan Yakovlevich himself…? no, that I just do not understand, I decidedly do not understand! But what is strangest, what is most incomprehensible of all is how authors can choose such subjects… I confess, that is utterly inconceivable, it is simply… no, no, I utterly fail to understand. In the first place, there is decidedly no benefit to the fatherland; in the second place… but in the second place there is also no benefit. I simply do not know what it…

And yet, for all that, though it is certainly possible to allow for one thing, and another, and a third, perhaps even… And then, too, are there not incongruities everywhere?… And yet, once you reflect on it, there really is something to all this. Say what you like, but such incidents do happen in the world-rarely, but they do happen.

The Carriage

The little town of B. became much gayer when the cavalry regiment was stationed there. Before then, it was awfully boring. When you happened to drive through it and gaze at the low cob houses looking out so incredibly sourly, it's impossible to describe what would come over your heart then-such anguish as if you'd lost at cards or blurted out something stupid at the wrong time; in short, no good. The cob has fallen off them on account of the rain, and the walls, instead of white, have become piebald; the roofs are in most cases covered with thatch, as is usual in our southern towns; as for the gardens, they were cut down long ago on the mayor's orders, to improve appearances. You wouldn't meet a soul abroad, except maybe a rooster crossing the street, soft as a pillow owing to the five inches of dust lying on it, which turns to mud with the slightest rain, and then the streets of the town of B. fill up with those stout animals the mayor of the place calls Frenchmen. Poking their serious snouts out of their baths, they set up such a grunting that the traveler can only urge his horses on taster. However, it was hard to meet a traveler in the town of B. Rarely, very rarely, some landowner possessed of eleven peasant souls, wearing a nankeen frock coat, would rattle down the street in something halfway between a cart and a britzka, peeking out from amidst a heap of flour sacks and whipping up a bay mare with a colt running behind her. The marketplace itself has a rather woeful look: the tailor's house sits quite stupidly, not with the whole front facing it, but catercorner; across from it some stone building with two windows has been a-building for fifteen years now; further on, a fashionable plank fence stands all by itself, painted gray to match the color of the mud, erected as a model for other buildings by the mayor in the time of his youth, when he did not yet have the habit of napping directly after dinner and taking some sort of infusion of dried gooseberries before going to bed. In other places, it's almost all wattle fence; in the middle of the square stand the smallest shops: in them you could always notice a string of pretzels, a woman in a red kerchief, a crate of soap, a few pounds of bitter almonds, shot for small arms, half-cotton cloth, and two salesclerks playing mumblety-peg by the shop door all the time. But when the cavalry regiment began to be stationed in the regional town of B., everything changed. The streets became colorful, animated-in short, acquired a totally different look. The little, low houses often saw passing by a trim, adroit officer with a plume on his head, on his way to visit a friend for a chat about horse breeding, or the excellence of tobacco, or occasionally for a game of cards, with what might be called the regimental droshky as the stake, because it managed to pass through everybody's hands without ever leaving the regiment: today the major was driving around in it, tomorrow it turned up in the lieutenant's stable, and a week later, lo and behold, again the major's orderly was greasing it with lard. The wooden fences between houses were all dotted with soldiers' caps hanging out in the sun; a gray overcoat was bound to be sticking up somewhere on a gate; in the lanes you might run into soldiers with mustaches as stiff as a bootblack's brush. These mustaches could be seen in all places. If tradeswomen got together at the market with their dippers, a mustache was sure to be peeking over their shoulders. In the middle of the square, a soldier with a mustache was sure to be soaping the beard of some village yokel, who merely grunted, rolling up his eyes. The officers animated society, which till then had consisted only of the judge, who lived in the same house as some deacon's widow, and the mayor, a reasonable man, but who slept decidedly all day: from dinner till evening, and from evening till dinner. Society became still more numerous and entertaining when the quarters of the brigadier general were transferred there. Neighboring landowners, whose existence no one had even suspected till then, began coming to the little town more often, to meet the gentlemen officers and on occasion to play a little game of faro, which before had been an extremely vague fancy in their heads, busied with crops, their wives' errands, and hunting hares. It's a great pity I'm unable to remember for what occasion the brigadier general gave a big dinner; enormous preparations went into it: the snick of the chef's knives in the general's kitchen could be heard as far as the town gates. The entire market was completely bought up for this dinner, so that the judge and his deaconess had to eat buckwheat pancakes and cornstarch custard. The small yard of the general's house was entirely filled with droshkies and carriages. The company consisted of men: officers and some neighboring landowners. Among the landowners, the most remarkable was Pythagor Pythagorovich Chertokutsky, one of the chief aristocrats of the B. region, who made the biggest stir at the local elections, coming to them in a jaunty carriage. He had served formerly in one of the cavalry regiments and had numbered among its important and notable officers. At least he was seen at many balls and gatherings, wherever his regiment happened to migrate; the girls of Tambov and Simbirsk provinces might, incidentally, be asked about that. It's quite possible that his favorable repute would have spread to other provinces as well, if he had not retired on a certain occasion, usually known as an unpleasant incident: either he gave someone a slap in his earlier years, or he was given one, I don't remember for sure, only the upshot was that he was asked to retire. However, he by no means lost any of his dignity: wore a high-waisted tailcoat after the fashion of military uniforms, spurs on his boots, and a mustache under his nose, because otherwise the noblemen might have thought he had served in the infantry, which he sometimes scornfully called infantury and sometimes infantary. He visited all the crowded fairs, where the insides of Russia, consisting of nannies, children, daughters, and fat landowners, came for the merrymaking in britzkas, gigs, tarantasses, and such carriages as no one ever saw even in dreams. His nose could smell where a cavalry regiment was stationed, and he always went to meet the gentleman officers. With great adroitness he would leap from his light carriage or droshky before them and make their acquaintance extremely quickly. During the last election, he gave an excellent dinner for the nobility, at which he announced that if he were elected marshal, 1 he would put the nobility on the very best footing. He generally behaved with largesse, as they say in the districts and provinces, married a pretty little thing, with her got a dowry of two hundred souls plus several thousand in capital. The capital went immediately on a sixsome of really fine horses, gilded door latches, a tame monkey for the house, and a Frenchman for a butler. The two hundred souls, together with his own two hundred, were mortgaged with a view to some sort of commercial transactions. In short, he was a real landowner… A landowner good and proper. Besides him, there were several other landowners at the general's dinner, but they are not worth talking about. The rest were all army men of the same regiment, including two staff officers: a colonel and a rather fat major. The general was stocky and corpulent himself, though a good commander in the officers' opinion. He spoke in a rather deep, imposing bass. The dinner was extraordinary: sturgeon, beluga, sterlet, bustard, asparagus, quail, partridge, and mushrooms testified that the cook had not sat down to eat since the day before, and that four soldiers, knives in hand, had worked all night helping him with the fricassees and gelees. The myriads of bottles-tall ones of Lafitte, short-necked ones of Madeira-the beautiful summer day, the windows all thrown wide open, the plates of ice on the table, the gentlemen officers with their bottom button unbuttoned, the owners of trim tailcoats with their shirt fronts all rumpled, the crisscross conversation dominated by the general's voice and drowned in champagne-everything was in harmony with everything else. After dinner they all got up with an agreeable heaviness in their stomachs and, having lit their long or short chibouks, stepped out on the porch, cups of coffee in their hands.

The general, the colonel, and even the major had their uniforms completely unbuttoned, so that their noble silk suspenders showed slightly, while the gentlemen officers, observing due respect, remained buttoned up except for the bottom three buttons.

"We can have a look at her now," said the general. "Please, my good fellow," he added, turning to his aide-de-camp, a rather adroit young man of pleasant appearance, "tell them to bring the bay mare here! You'll see for yourselves." Here the general drew on his pipe and let the smoke out. "She still hasn't been well cared for-cursed little town, not a decent stable in it. The horse, puff, puff, is quite a decent one!"

"And have you, puff, puff, had her long, Your Excellency?" said Chertokutsky.

"Puff, puff, puff, well… puff, not so long. It's only two years since I brought her from the stud farm!"

"And was she broken when you got her, or did they break her here?"

"Puff, puff, pu, pu, pu… u… u… ff, here." Having said which, the general vanished completely in smoke.

Meanwhile, a soldier sprang out of the stable, the sound of hooves was heard, another finally appeared in a white coverall, with an enormous black mustache, leading by the bridle the twitching and shying horse, which, suddenly raising its head, all but raised the crouching soldier into the air along with his mustache. "Now, now, Agrafena Ivanovna!" he said as he led her to the porch.

The mare's name was Agrafena Ivanovna; strong and wild as a southern beauty, she drummed her hooves on the wooden porch and suddenly stood still.

The general, lowering his pipe, began looking at Agrafena Ivanovna with a contented air. The colonel himself stepped down from the porch and took Agrafena Ivanovna by the muzzle. The major himself patted Agrafena Ivanovna on the leg. The rest clucked their tongues.

Chertokutsky got down from the porch and went behind her.

The soldier, standing at attention and holding the bridle, stared straight into the visitor's eyes, as if he wished to jump into them.

"Very, very good," said Chertokutsky, "a shapely horse! How's her gait, Your Excellency, if I may ask?"

"Her gait is good, only… devil knows… that fool of a vet gave her some sort of pills, and she's been sneezing for two days now."

"Very, very nice. And do you have a corresponding equipage, Your Excellency?"

"Equipage?… But this is a saddle horse."

"I know that. But I asked Your Excellency about it so as to learn whether you have corresponding equipages for your other horses."

"Well, as for equipages, I don't have quite enough. I must confess to tell you, I've long wanted to own a modern carriage. I wrote about it to my brother, who is now in Petersburg, but I don't know whether he'll send me one or not."

"It seems to me, Your Excellency," the colonel observed, "that there's no better carriage than a Viennese one."

"You think rightly, puff, puff, puff!"

"I have a surpassing carriage, Your Excellency, real Viennese workmanship."

"Which? The one you came in?"

"Oh, no. This one's just for driving around, for my own use, but that one… it's astonishing, light as a feather; and when you get in, it's simply as if-with Your Excellency's permission-as if a nurse were rocking you in a cradle!"

"So it's comfortable?"

"Very, very comfortable; cushions, springs-all just like a pic-ture.

"That's good."

"And so roomy! I mean, Your Excellency, I've never yet seen the like of it. When I was in the service, I used to put ten bottles of rum and twenty pounds of tobacco in the trunk; and besides that I'd take with me some six changes of uniform, linens, and two chibouks, Your Excellency, as long-if you'll permit the expression-as tapeworms, and you could put a whole ox in the pouches."

"That's good."

"I paid four thousand for it, Your Excellency."

"Judging by the price, it must be good. And you bought it yourself?"

"No, Your Excellency, it happened to come to me. It was bought by a friend of mine, a rare person, a childhood friend, you'd get along perfectly with him. Between us there was no yours or mine, it was all the same. I won it from him at cards. Perhaps you'd care to do me the honor, Your Excellency, of coming to dine with me tomorrow and of having a look at the carriage at the same time?"

"I don't know what to say to you. Myself alone, it's somehow… Or, if you please, perhaps the gentlemen officers can come along?"

"I humbly invite the gentlemen officers as well. Gentlemen, I would consider myself greatly honored to have the pleasure of seeing you in my house!"

The colonel, the major, and the other officers thanked him with a courteous bow.

"I personally am of the opinion, Your Excellency, that if one buys something, it ought to be good, and if it's bad, there's no point in acquiring it. At my place, when you honor me with your visit tomorrow, I'll show you a thing or two that I've acquired for the management of my estate."

The general looked and let the smoke out of his mouth.

Chertokutsky was extremely pleased to have invited the gentlemen officers; in anticipation, he ordered pates and sauces in his head, kept glancing very gaily at the gentlemen officers, who, for their part, also doubled their benevolence toward him, as could be noticed by their eyes and little gestures of a half-bowing sort. Chertokutsky's step grew somehow more casual, his voice more languid: it sounded like a voice heavy with pleasure.

"There, Your Excellency, you will make the acquaintance of the mistress of the house."

"I shall be very pleased," said the general, stroking his mustache.

After which Chertokutsky wanted to go home at once, so as to make all the preparations for receiving his guests at the next day's dinner in good time; he had already picked up his hat, but it hap- pened somehow strangely that he stayed a little longer. Meanwhile the card tables were set up in the room. Soon the whole company broke up into foursomes for whist and settled in different corners of the general's rooms.

Candles were brought. For a long time, Chertokutsky did not know whether to sit down to whist or not. But since the gentlemen officers had begun to invite him, he thought it quite against social rules to decline. He sat down. Imperceptibly, a glass of punch turned up before him, which he, forgetting himself, drank straight off that same minute. Having played two rubbers, Chertokutsky again found a glass of punch under his hand, which he, forgetting himself, again drank off, after first saying, "It's time, gentlemen, really, it's time I went home." But he sat down again for a second game. Meanwhile the conversation took it's own particular turn in different corners of the room. Those playing whist were rather silent; but the nonplayers sitting to the side on sofas conducted their own conversation. In one corner a cavalry staff captain, putting a pillow under his side and a pipe in his mouth, spoke quite freely and fluently of his amorous adventures and held the full attention of the circle around him. One extremely fat landowner with short arms, somewhat resembling two potatoes growing on him, listened with an extraordinarily sweet look and only tried now and then to send his short arm behind his broad back to get out his snuffbox. In another corner, a rather heated argument sprang up about squadron exercises, and Chertokutsky, who by then had twice played a jack instead of a queen, would suddenly interfere in other people's conversation and cry out from his corner: "What year was that?" or "What regiment?"-not noticing that the question was sometimes completely beside the point. Finally, a few minutes before suppertime, the whist came to an end, though it still went on in words and everyone's head seemed filled with whist. Chertokutsky remembered very well that he had won a lot, but he had nothing in his hands, and, getting up from the table, he stood for a long time in the position of a man who finds no handkerchief in his pocket. Meanwhile supper was served. It goes without saying that there was no shortage of wines and that Chertokutsky almost inadvertently had sometimes to fill his glass because there were bottles standing to right and left of him.

A most lengthy conversation went on at the table, yet it was conducted somehow strangely. One landowner who had served back in the campaign of 1812 2 told about a battle such as never took place, and then, for completely unknown reasons, removed the stopper from a decanter and stuck it into a pastry. In short, when they began to leave, it was already three o'clock in the morning, and the coachmen had to gather up some persons in their arms like shopping parcels, and Chertokutsky, for all his aris-tocratism, bowed so low and swung his head so much as he sat in his carriage that he brought two burrs home with him on his mustache.

In the house all was completely asleep; the coachman had great difficulty finding the valet, who brought his master through the drawing room and handed him over to the chambermaid, following whom Chertokutsky somehow reached his bedroom and lay down next to his young and pretty wife, who was lying there looking lovely in her white-as-snow nightgown. The movement produced by her husband falling into bed woke her up. She stretched herself, raised her eyelashes, and, quickly squinting three times, opened her eyes with a half-angry smile; but seeing that he was decidedly unwilling to show her any tenderness just then, she vexedly turned on her other side and, putting her fresh cheek on her hand, fell asleep soon after he did.

It was already that time which on country estates is not called early, when the young mistress woke up beside her snoring husband. Recalling that he had come home past three o'clock last night, she was sorry to rouse him, and having put on her slippers, which her husband had ordered from Petersburg, with a white jacket draping her like flowing water, she went out to her dressing room, washed with water fresh as her own self, and approached the mirror. Glancing at herself a couple of times, she saw that she was not at all bad looking that day. This apparently insignificant circumstance made her sit for precisely two extra hours before the mirror. At last she dressed herself very prettily and went to take some fresh air in the garden. As if by design, the weather was beautiful then, such as only a southern summer day can boast of. The sun, getting toward noon, blazed down with all the force of its rays, but it was cool strolling in the dense shade of the alleys, and the flowers, warmed by the sun, tripled their fragrance. The pretty mistress quite forgot that it was already twelve and her husband was still asleep. There already came to her ears the after-dinner snoring of the two coachmen and one postilion, who slept in the stables beyond the garden. But she went on sitting in the dense alley, from which a view opened onto the high road, and gazing absentmindedly at its unpeopled emptiness, when dust suddenly rising in the distance caught her attention. Looking closer, she soon made out several carriages. At their head drove a light, open two-seater; in it sat the general, his thick epaulettes gleaming in the sun, with the colonel beside him. It was followed by another, a four-seater; in it sat the major, with the general's aide-de-camp and two officers on the facing seats; following that carriage came the regimental droshky known to all the world, owned this time by the corpulent major; after the droshky came a four-place bon-voyage in which four officers sat holding a fifth on their lap… behind the bonvoyage three officers pranced on handsome dapple-bay horses.

"Can they be coming here?" the mistress of the house thought. "Ah, my God! they've actually turned onto the bridge!" She cried out, clasped her hands, and ran across flower beds and flowers straight to her husband's bedroom. He lay in a dead sleep.

"Get up, get up! Get up quickly!" she cried, pulling him by the arm.

"Ah?" said Chertokutsky, stretching without opening his eyes.

"Get up, poopsy! Do you hear? Guests!"

"Guests? What guests?" Having said which, he uttered a little moo, like a calf feeling for its mother's teats with its muzzle. "Mm…" he grunted, "give me your little neck, moomsy! I'll kiss you."

"Sweetie, get up quickly, for God's sake. The general and the officers! Ah, my God, you've got a burr on your mustache!"

"The general? Ah, so he's coming already? But why the devil didn't anybody wake me up? And the dinner, what about the dinner-is everything properly prepared?"

"What dinner?" "Didn't I order it?"

"You? You came home at four o'clock in the morning and never told me anything, no matter how I asked. I didn't wake you up, poopsy, because I felt sorry for you-you hadn't had any sleep…" These last words she pronounced in an extremely languid and pleading voice.

Chertokutsky, his eyes popping out, lay in bed for a moment as if thunderstruck. Finally he jumped up in nothing but his shirt, forgetting that it was quite indecent.

"Ah, what a horse I am!" he said, slapping himself on the forehead. "I invited them for dinner. What can we do? Are they far off?"

"I don't know… they must be here by now."

"Sweetie… hide somewhere!… Hey, who's there? Go, my girl-what, fool, are you afraid? The officers will come any minute. Tell them the master isn't here, tell them he won't be home today, that he left in the morning, do you hear? And tell all the servants. Go quickly!"

Having said that, he hastily grabbed his dressing gown and ran to hide in the carriage shed, supposing he would be completely safe there. But, after installing himself in a corner of the shed, he saw that even there he might somehow be visible. "Now, this will be better," flashed in his head, and he instantly folded down the steps of a nearby carriage, jumped in, closed the doors, covered himself with the apron and the rug for greater safety, and became perfectly still, crouched there in his dressing gown.

Meanwhile the carriages drove up to the porch.

The general stepped out and shook himself, followed by the colonel, straightening the plumes on his hat. Then the fat major jumped down from the droshky, holding his saber under his arm. Then the slim lieutenants who had been holding the sublieutenant on their laps leaped down from the bonvoyage, and finally the horse-prancing officers dismounted.

"The master's not at home," said a lackey, coming out to the porch.

"How, not at home? But, in any case, he'll be home by dinnertime?"

"No, sir, he's gone for the whole day. He may be back around this time tomorrow."

"Well, look at that!" said the general. "How can it be?…"

"Some stunt, I must say!" the colonel said, laughing.

"Ah, no, it isn't done," the general went on with displeasure. "Pah… the devil… If you can't receive, why go inviting?"

"I don't understand how anyone could do it, Your Excellency," said one young officer.

"What?" said the general, who was in the habit of always uttering this interrogative word when speaking with his officers.

"I said, Your Excellency, how can anyone act in such a way?"

"Naturally… Well, if something's happened, let people know, at least, or don't invite them."

"So, Your Excellency, there's no help for it, let's go back!" said the colonel.

"Certainly, nothing else to be done. However, we can have a look at the carriage even without him. He surely hasn't taken it with him. Hey, you there, come here, brother!"

"What's your pleasure?"

"You're a stable boy?"

"I am, Your Excellency."

"Show us the new carriage your master acquired recently."

"It's here in the shed, sir."

The general went into the shed together with the officers.

"If you wish, I'll move it out a little, it's a bit dark in here."

"Enough, enough, that's good!"

The general and the officers walked around the carriage, thoroughly examining the wheels and springs.

"Well, nothing special," said the general, "a most ordinary carriage."

"Most ungainly," said the colonel, "absolutely nothing good about it."

"It seems to me, Your Excellency, that it's hardly worth four thousand," said one of the young officers.

"What?"

"I said, Your Excellency, that it seems to me it's not worth four thousand."

"Four thousand, hah! It's not even worth two. There's simply nothing to it. Unless there's something special inside… Be so kind, my good fellow, as to undo the cover…"

And before the officers' eyes Chertokutsky appeared, sitting in his dressing gown and crouched in an extraordinary fashion.

"Ah, you're here!…" said the amazed general.

Having said which, the general at once slammed the doors, covered Chertokutsky with the apron again, and drove off with the other gendemen officers.

The Portrait

PART I Nowhere did so many people stop as in front of the art shop in the Shchukin market. This shop, indeed, presented the most heterogeneous collection of marvels: the pictures were for the most part painted in oils and covered with a dark green varnish, in gaudy, dark-yellow frames. Winter with white trees, a completely red evening like the glow of a fire, a Flemish peasant with a pipe and a dislocated arm, looking more like a turkey with cuffs than a human being-these were their usual subjects. To them should be added a few engraved prints: the portrait of Khozrev-Mirza 1 in a lambskin hat, the portraits of some generals in three-cornered hats, with crooked noses. Moreover, the doors of such a shop are usually hung with sheaves of popular prints on large sheets, which witness to the innate giftedness of the Russian man. On one was the tsarevna Miliktrisa Kirbitievna, 2 on another the city of Jerusalem, whose houses and churches were unceremoniously rolled over with red paint, which invaded part of the ground and two praying Russian peasants in mittens. These works usually have few purchasers, but a heap of viewers. Some bibulous lackey is sure to be there gaping at them, holding covered dishes from the restaurant for his master, who without doubt will sup a none-too-hot soup. In front of them there is sure to be standing a soldier in an overcoat, that cavalier of the flea market, with a couple of penknives to sell, and an Okhta 3 market woman with a box full of shoes. Each admires in his own way: the peasants usually poke their fingers; gentlemen study seriously; lackey boys and boy artisans laugh and tease each other with caricatures; old lackeys in frieze overcoats look on only so as to stand somewhere and gape; and young Russian market women hasten there by instinct, to hear what people are gabbing about and look at what they are looking at.

Just then the young artist Chartkov, passing by, stopped involuntarily in front of the shop. His old overcoat and unstylish clothes showed him to be a man who was selflessly devoted to his work and had no time to concern himself with his attire, which always has some mysterious attraction for the young. He stopped in front of the shop and at first laughed to himself at these ugly pictures. In the end, an involuntary pondering came over him: he began thinking about who might have need of these works. That the Russian populace should stare at Yeruslan Lazarevich, at the big eaters and big drinkers, at Foma and Yerema, 4 did not seem surprising to him: the subjects portrayed were easily accessible and understandable for the people; but where were the purchasers for these motley, dirty daubings in oil? Who needed these Flemish peasants, these red and blue landscapes, which displayed some pretense to a slightly higher step of art, while showing all the depths of its humiliation? They seemed not altogether the works of a self-taught child. Otherwise, for all the insensitive caricature of the whole, some sharp impulse would have burst through in them. But here one could only see dull-witted, impotent, decrepit giftlessness arbitrarily placing itself among the arts, when it belonged among the lowest crafts-a giftlessness which was faithful to its calling, however, and introduced its craft into art itself. The same colors, the same manner, the same practiced, habituated hand, belonging rather to a crudely made automaton than to a man!… He stood for a long time before these grimy paintings, finally not thinking about them at all, and meanwhile the owner of the shop, a gray little man in a frieze overcoat, with a chin unshaved since Sunday, had long been talking to him, bargaining and setting a price, before even finding out what he liked and wanted.

"For these peasants here and this little landscape, I'm asking twenty-five roubles. What painterliness! It simply hits you in the eye. We just got them from the exchange; the varnish is still wet. Or there's this winter, take this winter! Fifteen roubles! The frame is worth a lot by itself. Look, what a winter!" Here the shop owner gave the canvas a light flick, probably to show how good a winter it was. "Shall I have them tied up together and taken along with you? Where do you live? Hey, lad, fetch me the string!"

"Wait, brother, not so fast," the artist said, coming to his senses and seeing that the nimble shop owner had seriously started tying them up together. He felt a bit ashamed not to take anything after standing in the shop for so long, and he said:

"Wait, now, I'll see if there's anything here for me," and, bending down, he started going through some shabby, dusty old daub-ings piled on the floor and evidently not held in any respect. There were old family portraits, whose descendants were perhaps not even to be found in this world, pictures of total strangers on torn canvases, frames that had lost their gilding-in short, all sorts of decrepit trash. But the artist began to examine them, thinking secretly, "Maybe something will turn up." More than once he had heard stories of great master paintings occasionally being found among the trash sold by cheap print dealers.

The owner, seeing where he was getting to, abandoned his bustling and, assuming his usual position and proper dignity, placed himself by the door again, calling to passers-by and pointing with one hand to the shop: "Here, my friends, see what pictures! Come in, come in! Fresh from the exchange!" He had already shouted his fill, for the most part fruitlessly, and talked to his heart's content with the rag seller who stood across the street by the door of his own shop, and, remembering at last that he had a customer in his shop, he turned his back to the people and went inside. "Well, my friend, have you chosen something?" But the artist had already been standing motionless for some time before a portrait in a big, once magnificent frame, on which traces of gilding now barely gleamed.

It was an old man with a face the color of bronze, gaunt, high-cheekboned; the features seemed to have been caught at a moment of convulsive movement and bespoke an un-northern force. Fiery noon was stamped on them. He was draped in a loose Asiatic costume. Damaged and dusty though the portrait was, when he managed to clean the dust off the face, he could see the marks of a lofty artist's work. The portrait, it seemed, was unfinished; but the force of the brush was striking. Most extraordinary of all were the eyes: in them the artist seemed to have employed all the force of his brush and all his painstaking effort. They simply stared, stared even out of the portrait itself, as if destroying its harmony by their strange aliveness. When he brought the portrait to the door, the eyes stared still more strongly. They produced almost the same impression among the people. A woman who stopped behind him exclaimed, "It's staring, it's staring!" and backed away. He felt some unpleasant feeling, unaccountable to himself, and put the portrait down.

"So, take the portrait!" said the owner.

"How much?" said the artist.

"Why make it expensive? Give me seventy-five kopecks!" "No."

"Well, then, what will you give me?"

"Twenty kopecks," said the artist, preparing to leave.

"Eh, what kind of price is that? Twenty kopecks won't even pay for the frame. I see, you think you'll buy it tomorrow? Mister, mister, come back! Tack on ten kopecks at least. Take it, then, take it, give me the twenty kopecks. Really, it's just for openers, since you're my first customer."

At which he made a gesture as if to say, "So be it, and perish the picture!"

Thus Chartkov quite unexpectedly bought the old portrait and at the same time thought: "Why did I buy it? What do I need it for?" But there was nothing to be done. He took a twenty-kopeck piece from his pocket, gave it to the owner, took the portrait under his arm, and dragged it home. On the way, he recalled that the twenty kopecks he had paid out were his last. His thoughts suddenly darkened; vexation and an indifferent emptiness came over him in the same moment. "Devil take it! it's vile in this world!" he said, with the feeling of a Russian for whom things are going badly. And he walked on almost mechanically, with hurried steps, insensible to everything. The red light of the evening sun still lingered over half the sky; the houses turned toward it still glowed faintly with its warm light; and meanwhile the cold, bluish radiance of the moon grew stronger. Light, half-transparent shadows fell tail-like on the ground, cast by houses and the legs of passers-by. The artist was beginning gradually to admire the sky, aglow with some transparent, thin, uncertain light, and almost simultaneously the words "What a light tone!" and "It's irksome, devil take it!" flew out of his mouth. And, straightening the portrait, which kept slipping from under his arm, he quickened his pace.

Weary and all in a sweat, he dragged himself to the Fifteenth Line on Vasilievsky Island. 5 Straining and panting, he climbed the stairs, slopped with swill and adorned with the traces of cats and dogs. His knocking at the door brought no response: his man was not at home. He leaned against the window and set himself to waiting patiently, until he finally heard behind him the steps of the lad in the blue shirt, his companion, his model, his paint grinder and floor sweeper, who dirtied it straight away with his boots. The lad was called Nikita, and he spent all his time outside the gates when his master was not at home. Nikita was a long time trying to get the key into the keyhole, which was completely invisible on account of the darkness. At last the door opened. Chartkov went into his front room, which was insufferably cold, as is always the case with artists, something they, however, do not notice. Not handing Nikita his overcoat, he went in it to his studio, a square room, large but low, with frost-covered windows, set about with all sorts of artistic litter: pieces of plaster arms, stretched canvases, sketches begun and abandoned, lengths of fabric draped over chairs. He was very weary, threw off his overcoat, absentmindedly stood the portrait he had bought between two small canvases, and threw himself down on a narrow couch, of which one could not say that it was covered in leather, because the row of brass tacks formerly attaching it had long since existed on its own, and the leather over it also existed on its own, so that Nikita could shove black stockings, shirts, and all the dirty linen under it. Sitting there, sprawling as much as one could on this narrow couch, he finally asked for a candle.

"We have no candles," said Nikita.

"No?"

"And we had none yesterday either," said Nikita.

The artist remembered that in fact they had not had any candles yesterday, so he calmed down and fell silent. He allowed himself to be undressed and put on his well- and much-worn dressing gown.

"And the landlord also came," said Nikita.

"Well, so he came for money? I know," the artist said, waving his hand.

"He didn't come alone," said Nikita.

"With whom, then?"

"I don't know… some policeman."

"Why a policeman?"

"I don't know why. He says the rent isn't paid."

"Well, so what will come of it?"

"I don't know. He said, 'If he doesn't want to pay, he can move out.' They're both coming back tomorrow."

"Let them," Chartkov said with sad indifference. And a dreary state of mind came over him completely.

Young Chartkov was an artist with a talent that promised much: in flashes and moments his brush bespoke power of observation, understanding, a strong impulse to get closer to nature. "Watch out, brother," his professor had told him more than once, "you have talent; it would be a sin to ruin it. But you're impatient. Some one thing entices you, some one thing takes your fancy-and you occupy yourself with it, and the rest can rot, you don't care about it, you don't even want to look at it. Watch out you don't turn into a fashionable painter. Even now your colors are beginning to cry a bit too loudly. Your drawing is imprecise, and sometimes quite weak, the line doesn't show; you go for fashionable lighting, which strikes the eye at once. Watch out or you'll fall right into the English type. Beware. You already feel drawn to the world: every so often I see a showy scarf on your neck, a glossy hat… It's enticing, you can start painting fashionable pictures, little portraits for money. But that doesn't develop talent, it ruins it. Be patient.

Ponder over every work, drop showiness-let the others make money. You won't come out the loser."

The professor was partly right. Sometimes, indeed, our artist liked to carouse or play the dandy-in short, to show off his youth here and there. Yet, for all that, he was able to keep himself under control. At times he was able to forget everything and take up his brush, and had to tear himself away again as if from a beautiful, interrupted dream. His taste was developing noticeably. He still did not understand all the depth of Raphael, but was already carried away by the quick, broad stroke of Guido, paused before Titian's portraits, admired the Flemish school. 6 The dark surface obscuring the old paintings had not yet been entirely removed for him; yet he already perceived something in them, though inwardly he did not agree with his professor that the old masters surpassed us beyond reach; it even seemed to him that the nineteenth century was significantly ahead of them in certain things, that the imitation of nature as it was done now had become somehow brighter, livelier, closer; in short, he thought in this case as a young man thinks who already understands something and feels it in his proud inner consciousness. At times he became vexed when he saw how some foreign painter, a Frenchman or a German, sometimes not even a painter by vocation, with nothing but an accustomed hand, a quick brush, and bright colors, would produce a general stir and instandy amass a fortune. This would come to his mind not when, all immersed in his work, he forgot drinking and eating and the whole world, but when he would finally come hard up against necessity, when he had no money to buy brushes and paints, when the importunate landlord came ten times a day to demand the rent. Then his hungry imagination enviously pictured the lot of the rich painter; then a thought glimmered that often passes through a Russian head: to drop everything and go on a spree out of grief and to spite it all. And now he was almost in such a situation.

"Yes! be patient, be patient!" he said with vexation. "But patience finally runs out. Be patient! And on what money will I have dinner tomorrow? No one will lend to me. And if I were to go and sell all my paintings and drawings, I'd get twenty kopecks for the lot. They've been useful, of course, I feel that: it was not in vain that each of them was undertaken, in each of them I learned something. But what's the use? Sketches, attempts-and there will constantly be sketches, attempts, and no end to them. And who will buy them, if they don't know my name? And who needs drawings from the antique, or from life class, or my unfinished Love of Psyche, or a perspective of my room, or the portrait of my Nikita, though it's really better than the portraits of some fashionable painter? What is it all, in fact? Why do I suffer and toil over the ABC's like a student, when I could shine no worse than the others and have money as they do?"

Having said that, the artist suddenly shuddered and went pale: gazing at him, peering from behind the canvas on the easel, was someone's convulsively distorted face. Two terrible eyes were fixed directly on him, as if preparing to devour him; on the mouth was written the threatening command to keep silent. Frightened, he wanted to cry out and call Nikita, who had already managed to set up a mighty snoring in the front room; but suddenly he stopped and laughed. The feeling of fear instantly subsided. It was the portrait he had bought, which he had quite forgotten about. Moonlight illuminated the room and, falling on it, endowed it with a strange aliveness. He began studying it and cleaning it. Wetting a sponge, he went over it several times, washed off almost all the dust and dirt that had accumulated and stuck to it, hung it on the wall before him, and marveled still more at the extraordinary work: the whole face almost came to life, and the eyes stared at him so that he finally gave a start and stepped back, saying in an amazed voice, "It stares, it stares at you with human eyes!" A story he had heard long ago from his professor suddenly came to his mind, about a certain portrait by the famous Leonardo da Vinci, which the great master had labored over for several years and still considered unfinished, but which, according to the words of Vasari, 7 everyone nevertheless considered a most perfect and finished work of art. Most finished of all in it were the eyes, at which his contemporaries were amazed; even the tiniest, barely visible veins were not omitted but were rendered on the canvas. But here, in the portrait now before him, there was nevertheless something strange. This was no longer art: it even destroyed the har- mony of the portrait itself. They were alive, they were human eyes! It seemed as if they had been cut out of a living man and set there. Here there was not that lofty pleasure which comes over the soul at the sight of an artist's work, however terrible its chosen subject; here there was some morbid, anguished feeling. "What is it?" the artist asked himself involuntarily. "It's nature all the same, it's living nature-why, then, this strangely unpleasant feeling? Or else the slavish, literal imitation of nature is already a trespass and seems like a loud, discordant cry? Or else, if you take the subject indifferently, unfeelingly, with no feeling for it, it inevitably stands out only in its terrible reality, not illumined by the light of some incomprehensible, ever-hidden thought, stands out in that reality which is revealed only when, wishing to understand a beautiful man, one arms oneself with an anatomical knife, cuts into his insides, and sees a repulsive man? Why, then, does simple, lowly nature appear with one artist in such a light that you have no lowly impression; on the contrary, it seems as if you enjoy it, and after that everything around you flows and moves more calmly and evenly? And why, with another artist, does that same nature seem low, dirty, though he has been just as faithful to nature? But no, some radiance is missing. Just as with a natural landscape: however splendid, it still lacks something if there's no sun in the sky."

He went up to the portrait again, so as to study those wondrous eyes, and noticed with horror that they were indeed staring at him. This was no longer a copy from nature, this was that strange aliveness that would radiate from the face of a dead man rising from the grave. Either it was the light of the moon bringing delirious reveries with it and clothing everything in other images, opposite to positive daylight, or there was some other cause, only suddenly, for some reason, he felt afraid to be alone in the room. He quietly withdrew from the portrait, turned away and tried not to look at it, and yet his eyes, of themselves, involuntarily cast sidelong glances at it. Finally he even became frightened of walking about the room; it seemed to him that some other would immediately start walking behind him, and he kept timorously looking back. He had never been a coward; but his imagination and nerves were sensitive, and that evening he was unable to explain this involun- tary fear to himself. He sat in the corner, but there, too, it seemed to him that someone was about to look over his shoulder into his face. Not even the snores of Nikita resounding from the front room could drive away his fear. Finally, timorously, without raising his eyes, he stood up, went behind his screen, and got into bed. Through a chink in the screen he could see his room lit up by moonlight, and directly opposite him he could see the portrait on the wall. The eyes were fixed still more terribly, still more meaningly, on him, and seemed not to want to look at anything but him. Filled with an oppressive feeling, he decided to get up, grabbed a bedsheet, and, going over to the portrait, covered it completely.

Having done so, he went back to bed more calmly, began thinking about the poverty and pitifulness of the artist's lot, about the thorny path that lay before him in this world; and meanwhile his eyes involuntarily looked through the chink in the screen at the sheet-covered portrait. The moonlight intensified the whiteness of the sheet, and it seemed to him that the terrible eyes even began to glow through the cloth. In fear, he fixed his eyes on it more intently, as if wishing to assure himself that it was nonsense. But finally, indeed now… he saw, saw clearly: the sheet was no longer there… the portrait was all uncovered and staring, past whatever was around it, straight into him, simply staring into his insides… His heart went cold. And he saw: the old man stirred and suddenly leaned on the frame with both hands. Finally he propped himself on his hands and, thrusting out both legs, leaped free of the frame… Now all that could be seen through the chink in the screen was the empty frame. The noise of footsteps sounded in the room, finally coming closer and closer to the screen. The poor artist's heart began to pound harder. Breathless with fear, he expected the old man to look behind the screen at any moment. And then he did look behind the screen, with the same bronze face, moving his big eyes. Chartkov tried to cry out and found that he had no voice, tried to stir, to make some movement, but his limbs would not move. Open-mouthed and with bated breath, he looked at this terrible phantom, tall, in a loose Asian robe, waiting for what he would do. The old man sat down almost at his feet and then took something from under the folds of his loose garment. It was a sack. The old man untied it and, taking it by the corners, shook it upside down: with a dull sound, heavy packets shaped like long posts fell to the floor, and each was wrapped in blue paper and had "1,000 Gold Roubles" written on it. Thrusting his long, bony hands from the wide sleeves, the old man began to unwrap the packets. Gold gleamed. However great the oppressive feeling and frantic fear of the artist, still all of him gazed at the gold, staring fixedly as it was unwrapped by the bony hands, gleaming, clinking thinly and dully, and then wrapped up again. Here he noticed one packet that had rolled farther away than the rest, just near the leg of his bed, by its head. He seized it almost convulsively and looked fearfully to see whether the old man would notice. But it seemed the old man was very busy. He gathered up all his packets, put them back into the sack, and, without looking at him, went out from behind the screen. Chartkov's heart pounded heavily as he heard the shuffle of the retreating steps in the room. He clutched his packet tighter in his hand, his whole body trembling over it, when suddenly he heard the footsteps approaching the screen again-evidently the old man had remembered that one packet was missing. And now-he looked behind the screen again. Filled with despair, the artist clutched the packet in his hand with all his might, tried as hard as he could to make some movement, cried out-and woke up.

He was bathed in a cold sweat; his heart could not have pounded any harder; his chest was so tight that it was as if the last breath was about to fly out of it. "Could it have been a dream?" he said, clutching his head with both hands; but the terrible aliveness of the apparition was not like a dream. Awake now, he saw the old man going into the frame, even caught a glimpse of the skirts of his loose clothing, and his hand felt clearly that a moment before it had been holding something heavy. Moonlight lit up the room, drawing out of its dark corners now a canvas, now a plaster arm, now some drapery left on the floor, now trousers and a pair of unpolished boots. Only here did he notice that he was not lying in bed but standing right in front of the portrait. How he got there- that he simply could not understand. He was still more amazed that the portrait was all uncovered and there was in fact no sheet over it. In motionless fear he gazed at it and saw living, human eyes peer straight into him. Cold sweat stood out on his brow; he wanted to back away, but felt as if his feet were rooted to the ground. And he saw-this was no longer a dream-the old man's features move, his lips begin to stretch toward him, as if wishing to suck him out… With a scream of despair, he jumped back-and woke up.

"Could this, too, have been a dream?" His heart pounding to the point of bursting, he felt around him with his hands. Yes, he was lying on his bed in the same position in which he had fallen asleep. Before him stood the screen; moonlight filled the room. Through the chink in the screen he could see the portrait properly covered with a sheet-as he himself had covered it. And so, this, too, had been a dream! But his clenched hand felt even now as if something had been in it. The pounding of his heart was hard, almost terrible; the heaviness on his chest was unbearable. He looked through the chink and fixed his eyes on the sheet. And now he saw clearly that the sheet was beginning to come away, as if hands were fumbling under it, trying to throw it off. "Lord God, what is this!" he cried out, crossing himself desperately, and woke up.

And this had also been a dream! He jumped from the bed, half demented, frantic, no longer able to explain what was happening to him: the oppression of a nightmare or a household spirit, delirious raving or a living vision. Trying to calm somewhat his mental agitation and the stormy blood that throbbed in tense pulsations through all his veins, he went to the window and opened the vent pane. A chill breath of wind revived him. Moonlight still lay on the roofs and white walls of the houses, though small clouds passed across the sky more often. Everything was still: occasionally there came the distant rattle of a droshky, whose coachman was sleeping somewhere in an out-of-sight alley, lulled by his lazy nag as he waited for a late passenger. He gazed for a long time, thrusting his head out the vent. The sky was already beginning to show signs of approaching dawn; finally he felt the approach of drowsiness, slammed the vent shut, left the window, went to bed, and soon fell sound asleep, like the dead.

He woke up very late and felt himself in the unpleasant condition that comes over a man after fume poisoning; his head ached unpleasantly. The room was bleak; an unpleasant dampness drizzled through the air, penetrating the cracks in his windows, obstructed by paintings or primed canvases. Gloomy, disgruntled, he sat down like a wet rooster on his tattered couch, not knowing himself what to undertake, what to do, and finally recalled the whole of his dream. As he recalled it, the dream presented itself to his imagination so oppressively alive that he even began to wonder whether it had indeed been a dream and a mere delirium, and not something else, not an apparition. Pulling off the sheet, he studied this terrible portrait in the light of day. The eyes were indeed striking in their extraordinary aliveness, yet he found nothing especially terrible in them; only, it was as if some inexplicable, unpleasant feeling remained in one's soul. For all that, he still could not be completely certain that it had been a dream. It seemed to him that amidst the dream there had been some terrible fragment of reality. It seemed that even in the very gaze and expression of the old man something was as if saying that he had visited him that night; his hand felt the heaviness that had only just lain in it, as if someone had snatched it away only a moment before. It seemed to him that if he had only held on to the packet more tightly, it would surely have stayed in his hand after he woke up.

"My God, if I had at least part of that money!" he said, sighing heavily, and in his imagination all the packets he had seen, with the alluring inscription of "1,000 Gold Roubles" began to pour from the sack. The packets came unwrapped, gold gleamed, was wrapped up again, and he sat staring fixedly and mindlessly into the empty air, unable to tear himself away from such a subject- like a child sitting with dessert in front of him, his mouth watering, watching while others eat. Finally there came a knock at the door, which roused him unpleasantly. His landlord entered with the police inspector, whose appearance, as everyone knows, is more unpleasant for little people than the face of a petitioner is for the rich. The owner of the small house where Chartkov lived was such a creature as owners of houses somewhere on the Fifteenth

Line of Vasilievsky Island or on the Petersburg side or in a remote corner of Kolomna 8 usually are-a creature of which there are many in Russia and whose character is as difficult to define as the color of a worn-out frock coat. In his youth, he had been a captain and a loudmouth, had also been employed in civil affairs, had been an expert at flogging, an efficient man, a fop, and a fool; but in his old age, he had merged all these sharp peculiarities in himself into some indefinite dullness. He was a widower, he was retired, he no longer played the fop, stopped boasting, stopped bullying, and only liked drinking tea and babbling all sorts of nonsense over it; paced the room, straightened a tallow candle end; visited his tenants punctually at the end of every month for the money; went outside, key in hand, to look at the roof of his house; repeatedly chased the caretaker out of the nook where he hid and slept; in short-a retired man who, after all his rakish life and jolting about in post chaises, is left with nothing but trite habits.

"Kindly look for yourself, Varukh Kuzmich," the landlord said, addressing the inspector and spreading his arms. "You see, he doesn't pay the rent. He doesn't pay."

"And what if I have no money? Just wait, I'll pay up."

"I cannot wait, my dear," the landlord said angrily, gesturing with the key he was holding. "I've had Potogonkin, a lieutenant colonel, as a tenant for seven years now; Anna Petrovna Bukhmisterova also rents a shed and a stable with two stalls, she has three household serfs with her-that's the sort of tenants I have. I am not, to put it to you candidly, in the habit of letting the rent go unpaid. Kindly pay what you owe and move out."

"Yes, since that's the arrangement, kindly pay," said the police inspector, shaking his head slightly and putting one finger behind a button of his uniform.

"But what to pay with-that's the question. Right now I haven't got a cent."

"In that case, you'll have to satisfy Ivan Ivanovich with your professional productions," said the inspector. "Perhaps he'll agree to be paid in pictures."

"No, my dear fellow, no pictures, thank you. It would be fine if they were pictures with some noble content, something that could be hung on the wall, maybe a general with a star, or a portrait of Prince Kutuzov; 9 but no, he's painted a peasant, a peasant in a shirt, the servant who grinds paints for him. What an idea, to paint a portrait of that swine! He'll get it in the neck from me: he pulled all the nails out of the latches on me, the crook! Look here, what subjects: here he's painted his room. It would be fine if he'd taken a neat, tidy room, but no, he's painted it with all this litter and trash just as it's lying about. Look here, how he's mucked up my room, kindly see for yourself. I've had tenants staying on for seven years now-colonels, Bukhmisterova, Anna Petrovna… No, I tell you, there's no worse tenant than a painter: they live like real pigs, God spare us."

And the poor painter had to listen patiently to all that. The police inspector was busy meanwhile studying the paintings and sketches, and showed straight away that his soul was more alive than the landlord's and was even no stranger to artistic impressions.

"Heh," he said, jabbing a finger into one canvas on which a naked woman was portrayed, "the subject's a bit… playful. And this one, why is it all black under his nose? Did he spill snuff there or what?"

"A shadow," Chartkov answered sternly and without turning his eyes to him.

"Well, it could have been moved somewhere else, under the nose it's too conspicuous," said the inspector. "And whose portrait is that?" he continued, going up to the portrait of the old man. "Much too terrifying. Was he really as terrible as that? Look how he stares! Eh, what a Gromoboy! 10 Who was your model?"

"But that's some…" said Chartkov, and did not finish. A crack was heard. The inspector must have squeezed the frame of the portrait too hard, owing to the clumsy way his policeman's hands were made; the side boards split inward, one fell to the floor, and along with it a packet wrapped in blue paper fell with a heavy clank. The inscription "1,000 Gold Roubles" struck Chartkov's eyes. He rushed like a madman to pick it up, seized the packet, clutched it convulsively in his hand, which sank from the heavy weight.

"Sounds like the clink of money," said the inspector, hearing something thud on the floor and unable to see it for the quickness of Chartkov's movement as he rushed to pick it up.

"And what business is it of yours what I have?"

"It's this: that you have to pay the landlord for the apartment right now; that you've got money but don't want to pay-that's what."

"Well, I'll pay him today."

"Well, why didn't you want to pay before? Why make the landlord worry, and bother the police besides?"

"Because I didn't want to touch this money. I'll pay him everything by this evening and leave the apartment by tomorrow, because I don't wish to remain with such a landlord."

"Well, Ivan Ivanovich, he's going to pay you," said the inspector, turning to the landlord. "And in the event of your not being properly satisfied by this evening, then I beg your pardon, mister painter."

So saying, he put on his three-cornered hat and went out to the front hall, followed by the landlord, his head bowed, it seemed, in some sort of reflection.

"Thank God they got the hell out of here," said Chartkov when he heard the front door close.

He peeked out to the front hall, sent Nikita for something so as to be left completely alone, locked the door behind him, and, returning to his room, began with wildly fluttering heart to unwrap the packet. There were gold roubles in it, every one of them new, hot as fire. Nearly out of his mind, he sat over the heap of gold, still asking himself if he was not dreaming. There was an even thousand of them in the packet, which looked exactly the same as the ones he had seen in his dream. For several minutes he ran his fingers through them, looking at them, and still unable to come to his senses. In his imagination there suddenly arose all the stories about treasures, about boxes with secret compartments, left by forebears to their spendthrift grandchildren in the firm conviction of their future ruined condition. He reflected thus: "Mightn't some grandfather have decided even now to leave his grandson a gift, locking it up in the frame of a family portrait?" Full of romantic nonsense, he even began thinking whether there might not be some secret connection with his destiny here: whether the existence of the portrait might not be connected with his own existence, and whether its very acquisition had not been somehow predestined? He began studying the frame of the portrait with curiosity. On one side a groove had been chiseled out, covered so cleverly and inconspicuously with a board that, if the inspector's weighty hand had not broken through it, the roubles might have lain there till the world's end. Studying the portrait, he marveled again at the lofty workmanship, the extraordinary finish of the eyes; they no longer seemed terrible to him, but all the same an unpleasant feeling remained in his soul each time. "No," he said to himself, "whoever's grandfather you were, I'll put you under glass for this and make you a golden frame." Here he placed his hand on the heap of gold that lay before him, and his heart began to pound hard at the touch of it. "What shall I do with it?" he thought, fixing his eyes on it. "Now I'm set up for at least three years, I can shut myself in and work. I have enough for paints now, enough for dinners, for tea, for expenses, for rent; no one will hinder and annoy me anymore; I'll buy myself a good mannequin, order a plaster torso, model some legs, set up a Venus, buy prints of the best pictures. And if I work some three years for myself, unhurriedly, not to sell, I'll beat them all, and maybe become a decent artist."

So he was saying together with the promptings of his reason; but within him another voice sounded more audibly and ringingly. And as he cast another glance at the gold, his twenty-two years and his ardent youth said something different. Now everything he had looked at till then with envious eyes, which he had admired from afar with watering mouth, was in his power. Oh, how his heart leaped in him as soon as he thought of it! To put on a fashionable tailcoat, to break his long fast, to rent a fine apartment, to go at once to the theater, the pastry shop, the… all the rest-and, having seized the money, he was already in the street.

First of all he stopped at a tailor's, got outfitted from top to toe, and, like a child, began looking himself over incessantly; bought up lots of scents, pomades; rented, without bargaining, a magnifi- cent apartment on Nevsky Prospect, the first that came along, with mirrors and plate-glass windows; chanced to buy an expensive lorgnette in a shop; also chanced to buy a quantity of various neckties, more than he needed; had his locks curled at a hairdresser's; took a couple of carriage rides through the city without any reason; stuffed himself with sweets in a pastry shop; and went to a French restaurant, of which hitherto he had heard only vague rumors, as of the state of China. There he dined, arms akimbo, casting very proud glances at others, and ceaselessly looking in the mirror and touching his curled locks. There he drank a bottle of champagne, which till then he had also known more from hearsay. The wine went to his head a little, and he left feeling lively, pert, devil-may-care, as the saying goes. He strutted down the sidewalk like a dandy, aiming his lorgnette at everyone. On the bridge, he noticed his former professor and darted nimbly past him as if without noticing him at all, so that the dumbfounded professor stood motionless on the bridge for a long time, his face the picture of a question mark.

All his things, and whatever else there was-easel, canvases, paintings-were transported to the magnificent apartment that same evening. The better objects he placed more conspicuously, the worse he stuck into a corner, and he walked through the magnificent rooms, ceaselessly looking in the mirrors. An irresistible desire was born in him to catch fame by the tail at once and show himself to the world. He could already imagine the cries: "Chartkov, Chartkov! Have you seen Chartkov's picture? What a nimble brush this Chartkov has! What a strong talent this Chartkov has!" He walked about his room in a state of rapture, transported who knows where. The next day, taking a dozen gold roubles, he went to the publisher of a popular newspaper to ask for his magnanimous aid; the journalist received him cordially, called him "most honorable sir" at once, pressed both his hands, questioned him in detail about his name, patronymic, place of residence. And the very next day there appeared in the newspaper, following an advertisement for newly invented tallow candles, an article entitled "On the Extraordinary Talents of Chartkov": "We hasten to delight the educated residents of the capital with a won- derful-in all respects, one may say-acquisition. Everyone agrees that there are many most beautiful physiognomies and most beautiful faces among us, but so far the means have been lacking for transferring them to miracle-working canvas, to be handed on to posterity; now this lack has been filled: an artist has been discovered who combines in himself all that is necessary. Now the beautiful woman may be sure that she will be depicted with all the graciousness of her beauty-ethereal, light, charming, wonderful, like butterflies fluttering over spring flowers. The respectable paterfamilias will see himself with all his family around him. The merchant, the man of war, the citizen, the statesman-each will continue on his path with renewed zeal. Hurry, hurry, come from the fete, from strolling to see a friend or cousine, from stopping at a splendid shop, hurry from wherever you are. The artist's magnificent studio (Nevsky Prospect, number such-and-such) is all filled with portraits from his brush, worthy of Van Dycks and Titians. One hardly knows which to be surprised at: their faithfulness and likeness to the originals, or the extraordinary brightness and freshness of the brush. Praised be you, artist! You drew the lucky ticket in the lottery! Viva, Andrei Petrovich!" (The journalist evidently enjoyed taking liberties.) "Glorify yourself and us. We know how to appreciate you. Universal attraction, and money along with it, though some of our fellow journalists rise up against it, will be your reward."

The artist read this announcement with secret pleasure: his face beamed. He was being talked about in print-a new thing for him. He read the lines over several times. The comparison with Van Dyck and Titian pleased him very much. The phrase "Viva, Andrei Petrovich!" also pleased him very much; to be called by his first name and patronymic in print was an honor hitherto completely unknown to him. He began to pace the room rapidly, ruffling his hair, now sitting down on a chair, now jumping up and moving to the couch, constantly picturing himself receiving visitors, men and women, going up to a canvas and making dashing gestures over it with a brush, trying to impart graciousness to the movement of his arm. The next day his bell rang; he rushed to open the door. A lady came in, preceded by a lackey in a livery overcoat with fur lining, and together with the lady came a young eighteen-year-old girl, her daughter.

"Are you M'sieur Chartkov?" asked the lady.

The artist bowed.

"You are written about so much; your portraits, they say, are the height of perfection." Having said this, the lady put a lorgnette to her eye and quickly rushed to examine the walls, on which nothing was hung. "But where are your portraits?"

"Taken down," said the artist, slightly confused. "I've only just moved to this apartment, they're still on the way… haven't come yet."

"Have you been to Italy?" said the lady, aiming her lorgnette at him, since she found nothing else to aim it at.

"No, I haven't, but I wanted to… however, I've put it off for the time being… Here's an armchair, madam, you must be tired…"

"No, thank you, I sat in the carriage for a long time. Ah, there, I see your work at last!" said the lady, rushing across the room to the wall and aiming her lorgnette at the sketches, set pieces, perspectives, and portraits standing on the floor. "C'est charmant! Lise, Lise, venez ici! A room to Teniers' 11 taste, you see-disorder, disorder, a table with a bust on it, an arm, a palette. There's dust, see how the dust is painted! C'est charmant! And there, on that other canvas, a woman washing her face- quelle jolie figure! Ah, a peasant! Lise, Lise, a little peasant in a Russian shirt! look-a peasant! So you don't do portraits only?"

"Oh, it's rubbish… Just for fun… sketches…"

"Tell me, what is your opinion regarding present-day portraitists? Isn't it true that there are none like Titian nowadays? None with that strength of color, that… a pity I can't express it in Russian" (the lady was a lover of art and had gone running with her lorgnette through all the galleries of Italy). "However, M'sieur Null… ah, what a painter! Such an extraordinary brush! I find his faces even more expressive than Titian's. Do you know M'sieur Null?"

"Who is this Null?" asked the artist.

"M'sieur Null. Ah, such talent! He painted her portrait when she was only twelve. You absolutely must come and visit us. Lise, you shall show him your album. You know, we came so that you could start at once on her portrait."

"Why, I'm ready this very minute."

He instantly moved over the easel with a prepared canvas on it, took up the palette, and fixed his eyes on the daughter's pale face. Had he been a connoisseur of human nature, in a single moment he would have read in it the beginnings of a childish passion for balls, the beginnings of boredom and complaints about the length of time before dinner and after dinner, the wish to put on a new dress and run to the fete, the heavy traces of an indifferent application to various arts, imposed by her mother for the sake of loftiness of soul and feelings. But the artist saw in this delicate little face nothing but an almost porcelain transparency of body, so alluring for the brush, an attractive, light languor, a slender white neck, and an aristocratic lightness of figure. And he was preparing beforehand to triumph, to show the lightness and brilliance of his brush, which so far had dealt only with the hard features of crude models, with the stern ancients and copies of some classical masters. He could already picture mentally to himself how this light little face was going to come out.

"You know," said the lady, even with a somewhat touching expression on her face, "I'd like to… the dress she's wearing now-I confess, I'd like her not to be wearing a dress we're so used to; I'd like her to be dressed simply and sitting in the shade of greenery, with a view of some fields, with herds in the distance, or a copse… so that it won't look as if she were going to some ball or fashionable soiree. Our balls, I confess, are so deadly for the soul, so destructive of what's left of our feelings… simplicity, there should be more simplicity."

Alas! it was written on the faces of mother and daughter that they danced themselves away at balls until they nearly turned to wax.

Chartkov got down to work, seated his model, pondered it all somewhat in his head; traced in the air with his brush, mentally establishing the points; squinted his eye a little, stepped back, looked from a distance-and in one hour had begun and finished the rough sketch. Pleased with it, he now got to painting, and the work carried him away. He forgot everything, forgot even that he was in the presence of aristocratic ladies, even began to exhibit some artistic mannerisms, uttering various sounds aloud, humming along every once in a while, as happens with artists who are wholeheartedly immersed in their work. Without any ceremony, just with a movement of his brush, he made his model raise her head, for she had finally become quite fidgety and looked utterly weary.

"Enough, that's enough for the first time," said the lady.

"A little longer," said the artist, forgetting himself.

"No, it's time, Lise, it's three o'clock!" she said, taking out a small watch hanging on a golden chain from her belt and exclaiming, "Ah, how late!"

"Only one little minute," Chartkov said in the simple-hearted and pleading voice of a child.

But the lady did not seem at all disposed to cater to his artistic needs this time, and instead promised a longer sitting the next time.

"That's annoying, though," Chartkov thought to himself. "My hand just got going." And he recalled that no one had interrupted him or stopped him when he was working in his studio on Vasilievsky Island; Nikita used to sit in one spot without stirring- paint him as much as you like; he would even fall asleep in the position he was told. Disgruntled, he put his brush and palette down on a chair and stopped vaguely before the canvas. A compliment uttered by the society lady awakened him from his oblivion. He rushed quickly to the door to see them off; on the stairs he received an invitation to visit, to come the next week for dinner, and with a cheerful look he returned to his room. The aristocratic lady had charmed him completely. Till then he had looked at such beings as something inaccessible, born only to race by in a magnificent carriage with liveried lackeys and a jaunty coachman, casting an indifferent glance at the man plodding along on foot in a wretched cloak. And now suddenly one of these beings had entered his room; he was painting a portrait, he was invited to dinner in an aristocratic house. An extraordinary contentment came over him; he was completely intoxicated and rewarded himself for it with a fine dinner, an evening performance, and again took a carriage ride through the city without any need.

During all those days he was unable even to think about his usual work. He was preparing and waiting only for the moment when the bell would ring. At last the aristocratic lady arrived with her pale daughter. He sat them down, moved the canvas over, with adroitness now and a pretense to worldly manners, and began to paint. The brightness of the sunny day was a great help to him. He saw much in his light model of that which, if caught and transferred to canvas, might endow the portrait with great merit; he saw that he might do something special, if everything was finally executed according to the idea he now had of his model. His heart even began to throb lightly when he sensed that he was about to express something others had never noticed. The work occupied him totally, he was all immersed in his brush, again forgetting about his model's aristocratic origin. With bated breath, he saw the light features and nearly transparent body of a seventeen-year-old girl emerge from under his brush. He picked up every nuance, a slight yellowness, a barely noticeable blue under the eyes, and was even about to catch a small pimple that had broken out on her forehead, when suddenly he heard the mother's voice at his ear. "Ah, why that? There's no need for it," the lady said. "And you've also… look, in a few places… it seems a bit yellow, and look, here it's just like dark spots." The artist started to explain that it was precisely those spots and the yellowness that had played out so well, and that they made up the pleasing and light tones of the face. To which he received the reply that they did not make up any tones and had not played out in any way, and that it only seemed so to him. "But allow me to touch in a little yellow here, just in this one place," the artist said simple-heartedly. But that precisely he was not allowed to do. It was declared that Lise was merely a bit indisposed that day, and there had never been any yellowness in her face, that it was always strikingly fresh in color. Sadly, he began to wipe out what his brush had brought forth on the canvas. Many barely noticeable features disappeared, and the likeness partly disappeared along with them. Unfeelingly, he began to lend it the general color scheme that is given by rote and turns even faces taken from nature into something coldly ideal, such as is seen in student set pieces. But the lady was pleased that the offensive colors had been quite driven out. She only expressed surprise that the work was taking so long, and added that she had heard he finished a portrait completely in two sittings. The artist found nothing to reply to that. The ladies rose and prepared to leave. He put down his brush, saw them to the door, and after that stood vaguely for a long time on the same spot in front of the portrait. He gazed at it stupidly, and meanwhile those light feminine features raced through his head, those nuances and ethereal tones he had observed and which his brush had mercilessly destroyed. All filled with them, he set the portrait aside and found somewhere in the studio an abandoned head of Psyche, which he had roughly sketched out on canvas once long ago. It was a deftly painted face, but completely ideal, cold, consisting only of general features that had not taken on living flesh. Having nothing to do, he now began going over it, recalling on it all that he had happened to observe in the face of the aristocratic visitor. The features, nuances, and tones he had caught laid themselves down here in that purified form in which they come only when an artist, having looked long enough at the model, withdraws from it and produces a creation equal to it. Psyche began to come to life, and the barely glimpsed idea gradually began to be clothed in visible flesh. The facial type of the young society girl was inadvertently imparted to Psyche, and through that she acquired the distinctive expression which gives a work the right to be called truly original. It seemed he made use of both the parts and the whole of what his model had presented to him, and he became totally caught up in his work. For several days he was occupied with nothing else. And it was at this work that the arrival of his lady acquaintances found him. He had no time to remove the painting from the easel. Both ladies uttered joyful cries of amazement and clasped their hands:

"Lise, Lise! Ah, what a likeness! Superbe, superbe! What a good idea to dress her in Greek costume. Ah, such a surprise!"

The artist did not know what to do with the agreeably deceived ladies. Embarrassed and looking down, he said quietly:

"It's Psyche."

"In the guise of Psyche? C'est charmant!" the mother said, smiling, and the daughter smiled as well. "Don't you think, Lise, that it's most becoming for you to be portrayed as Psyche? Quelle idee delicieuse! But what work! It's Correge. 12 I confess, I had read and heard about you, but I didn't know you had such talent. No, you absolutely must paint my portrait as well."

The lady evidently also wanted to be presented as some sort of Psyche.

"What am I to do with them?" thought the artist. "If they want it so much themselves, let Psyche pass for whatever they want." And he said aloud:

"Be so good as to sit for a little while, and I'll do a little touching up.

"Ah, no, I'm afraid you might… it's such a good likeness now."

But the artist understood that there were apprehensions regarding yellow tints and reassured them by saying that he would only give more brightness and expression to the eyes. For, in all fairness, he felt rather ashamed and wanted to give at least a little more resemblance to the original, lest someone reproach him for decided shamelessness. And, indeed, the features of the young girl did finally begin to show more clearly through the image of Psyche.

"Enough!" said the mother, beginning to fear that the resemblance would finally become too close.

The artist was rewarded with everything: a smile, money, a compliment, a warm pressing of the hand, an open invitation to dinner-in short, he received a thousand flattering rewards. The portrait caused a stir in town. The lady showed it to her lady friends; all were amazed at the art with which the painter had managed to keep the likeness and at the same time endow the model with beauty. This last observation they made, naturally, not without a slight flush of envy on their faces. And the artist was suddenly beset with commissions. It seemed the whole town wanted to be painted by him. The doorbell was constantly ringing. On the one hand, this might have been a good thing, offering him endless practice, diversity, a multitude of faces. But, unfortunately, these were all people who were hard to get along with, hurried people, busy or belonging to society-meaning still busier than any other sort, and therefore impatient in the extreme. From all sides came only the request that it be done well and promptly. The artist saw that it was decidedly impossible to finish his works, that everything had to be replaced by adroitness and quick, facile brushwork. To catch only the whole, only the general expression, without letting the brush go deeper into fine details-in short, to follow nature to the utmost was decidedly impossible. To this it must be added that almost all those being painted had many other claims to various things. The ladies demanded that only their soul and character be portrayed in the main, while the rest sometimes should not even be adhered to, all corners should be rounded, all flaws lightened, or, if possible, avoided altogether. In short, so as to make the face something to admire, if not to fall completely in love with. And as a result of that, when they sat for him, they sometimes acquired such expressions as astonished the artist: one tried to make her face show melancholy, another reverie, a third wanted at all costs to reduce the size of her mouth and compressed it so much that it finally turned into a dot no bigger than a pinhead. And, despite all that, they demanded a good likeness from him and an easy naturalness. Nor were the men any better than the ladies. One demanded to be portrayed with a strong, energetic turn of the head; another with inspired eyes raised aloft; a lieutenant of the guards absolutely insisted that Mars show in his look; a civil dignitary was bent on having more frankness and nobility in his face, and his hand resting on a book on which would be clearly written: "He always stood for truth." At first these demands made the artist break out in a sweat: all this had to be calculated, pondered, and yet he was given very little time. He finally worked the whole business out and no longer had any difficulty. He could grasp ahead of time, from two or three words, how the person wanted to be portrayed. If someone wanted Mars, he put Mars into his face; if someone aimed at Byron, he gave him a Byronic pose and attitude. If a lady wished to be Corinne, Ondine, or Aspasia, 13 he agreed to everything with great willingness and added a dose of good looks on his own, which, as everyone knows, never hurts, and on account of which an artist may even be forgiven the lack of likeness. Soon he himself began to marvel at the wonderful quickness and facility of his brush. And those he painted, it goes without saying, were delighted and proclaimed him a genius.