drowsy heaviness in my heart. Fancy! as I was sitting on the dike, under a willow, I suddenly and unexpectedly burst out crying, and should have gone on crying a long while, in spite of my advanced years, if I had not been put to shame by a passing peasant woman, who stared at me with curiosity, then, without turning her face towards me, gave a low bow from the waist, and passed on. I should be very glad to remain in the same mood (I shan’t do any more crying, of course) till I go away from here, that is, till September, and should be very sorry if any of my neighbours should take it into his head to call on me. However there is no danger, I fancy, of that; I have no near neighbours here. You will understand me, I’m sure; you know yourself, by experience, how often solitude is beneficial . . . I need it now after wanderings of all sorts.
But I shan’t be dull. I have brought a few books with me, and I have a pretty fair library here. Yesterday, I opened all the bookcases, and was a long while rummaging about among the musty books. I found many curious things I had not noticed before: Candide, in a manuscript translation of somewhere about 1770; newspapers and magazines of the same period; the Triumphant Chameleon (that is, Mirabeau), le Paysan Perverti, etc. I came across children’s books, my own, and my father’s, and my grandmother’s, and even, fancy, my great grandmother’s; in one dilapidated French grammar in a particoloured binding, was written in fat letters: «Ce livre appartient à Mile Eudoxie de Lavrine,» and it was dated 1741. I saw books I had brought at different times from abroad, among others, Goethe’s Faust. You’re not aware, perhaps, that there was a time when I knew Faust by heart (the first part, of course) word for word; I was never tired of reading it. . . But other days, other dreams, and for the last nine years, it has so happened, that I have scarcely had a Goethe in my hand. It was with an indescribable emotion that I saw the little book I knew so well, again (a poor edition of 1828). I brought it away with me, lay down on the bed, and began to read. How all that splendid first scene affected me! The entrance of the Spirit of the Earth, the words, you remember—«on the tide of life, in the whirl of creation,» stirred a long unfamiliar tremor and shiver of ecstasy. I recalled everything: Berlin, and student days, and Fräulein Clara Stick, and Zeidelmann in the rôle of Mephistopheles, and the music of Radzivil, and all and everything. . . . It was a long while before I could get to sleep: my youth rose up and stood before me like a phantom; it ran like fire, like poison through my veins, my heart leaped and would not be still, something plucked at its chords, and yearnings began surging up. . . .
You see what fantasies your friend gives himself up to, at almost forty, when he sits in solitude in his solitary little house! What if any one could have peeped at me! Well, what? I shouldn’t have been a bit ashamed of myself. To be ashamed is a sign of youth, too; and I have begun (do you know how?) to notice that I’m getting old. I’ll tell you how. I try in these days to make as much as I can of my happy sensations, and to make little of my sad ones, and in the days of my youth I did just the opposite. At times, one used to carry about one’s melancholy as if it were a treasure, and be ashamed of a cheerful mood . . . But for all that, it strikes me, that in spite of all my experience of life, there is something in the world, friend Horatio, which I have not experienced, and that «something» almost the most important.
Oh, what have I worked myself up to! Farewell for the present! What are you about in Petersburg? By the way; Savely, my country cook, wishes to send his duty to you. He too is older, but not very much so, he is grown rather corpulent, stouter all over. He is as good as ever at chicken-soup, with stewed onions, cheesecakes with goffered edges, and peagoose—peagoose is the famous dish of the steppes, which makes your tongue white and rough for twenty-four hours after. On the other hand, he roasts the meat as he always did, so that you can hammer on the plate with it—hard as a board. But I must really say, good-bye! Yours,
P. B. SECOND LETTER
From the SAME to the SAME
M—- VILLAGE, June 12, 1850.
I HAVE rather an important piece of news to tell you, my dear friend. Listen! Yesterday I felt disposed for a walk before dinner—only not in the garden; I walked along the road towards the town. Walking rapidly, quite aimlessly, along a straight, long road is very pleasant. You feel as if you’re doing something, hurrying somewhere. I look up; a coach is coming towards me. Surely not some one to see me, I wondered with secret terror . . . No: there was a gentleman with moustaches in the carriage, a stranger to me. I felt reassured. But all of a sudden, when he got abreast with me, this gentleman told the coachman to stop the horses, politely raised his cap, and still more politely asked me, «was not I» . . . mentioning my name. I too came to a standstill, and with the fortitude of a prisoner brought up for trial, replied that I was myself; while I stared like a sheep at the gentleman with the moustaches and said to myself—«I do believe I’ve seen him somewhere!»
«You don’t recognise me?» he observed, as he got out of the coach.
«No, I don’t.»
«But I knew you directly.»
Explanations followed; it appeared that it was Priemkov—do you remember?—a fellow we used to know at the university. «Why, is that an important piece of news?» you are asking yourself at this instant, my dear Semyon Nikolaitch. «Priemkov, to the best of my recollection, was rather a dull chap; no harm in him though, and not a fool.» Just so, my dear boy; but hear the rest of our conversation.
«I was delighted,» says he, «when I heard you had come to your country-place, into our neighbourhood. But I was not alone in that feeling.»
«Allow me to ask,» I questioned: «who was so kind. . .»
«My wife.»
«Your wife!»
«Yes, my wife; she is an old acquaintance of yours.»
«May I ask what was your wife’s name?»
«Vera Nikolaevna; she was an Eltsov . . .»
«Vera Nikolaevna!» I could not help exclaiming . . .
This it is, which is the important piece of news I spoke of at the beginning of my letter.
But perhaps you don’t see anything important even in this . . . I shall have to tell you something of my past . . . long past, life.
When we both left the university in 183— I was three-and-twenty. You went into the service; I decided, as you know, to go to Berlin. But there was nothing to be done in Berlin before October. I wanted to spend the summer in Russia—in the country—to have a good lazy holiday for the last time; and then to set to work in earnest. How far this last project was carried out, there is no need to enlarge upon here . . . «But where am I to spend the summer?» I asked myself. I did not want to go to my own place; my father had died not long before, I had no near relations, I was afraid of the solitude and dreariness . . . And so I was delighted to receive an invitation from a distant cousin to stay at his country-place in T . . . province. He was a well-to-do, good-natured, simple-hearted man; he lived in style as a country magnate, and had a palatial country house. I went to stay there. My cousin had a large family; two sons and five daughters. Besides them, there was always a crowd of people in his house. Guests were for ever arriving; and yet it wasn’t jolly at all. The days were spent in noisy entertainments, there was no chance of being by oneself. Everything was done in common, every one tried to be entertaining, to invent some amusement, and at the end of the day every one was fearfully exhausted. There was something vulgar about the way we lived. I was already beginning to look forward to getting away, and was only waiting till my cousin’s birthday festivities were over, when on the very day of those festivities, at the ball, I saw Vera Nikolaevna Eltsov—and I stayed on.
She was at that time sixteen. She was living with her mother on a little estate four miles from my cousin’s place. Her father—a remarkable man, I have been told—had risen rapidly to the grade of colonel, and would have attained further distinctions, but he died young, accidentally shot by a friend when out shooting. Vera Nikolaevna was a baby at the time of his death. Her mother too was an exceptional woman; she spoke several languages, and was very well informed. She was seven or eight years older than her husband whom she had married for love; he had run away with her in secret from her father’s house.
