Petersburg, every time I chanced to hire a sledge, I used to get into conversation with the driver.

I was particularly fond of talking to the night drivers, poor peasants from the country round, who come to the capital with their little ochre-painted sledges and wretched nags, in the hope of earning food for themselves and rent for their masters.

So one day I engaged such a sledge-driver…. He was a lad of twenty, tall and well-made, a splendid fellow with blue eyes and ruddy cheeks; his fair hair curled in little ringlets under the shabby little patched cap that was pulled over his eyes. And how had that little torn smock ever been drawn over those gigantic shoulders!

But the handsome, beardless face of the sledge-driver looked mournful and downcast.

I began to talk to him. There was a sorrowful note in his voice too.

‘What is it, brother?’ I asked him; ‘why aren’t you cheerful? Have you some trouble?’

The lad did not answer me for a minute. ‘Yes, sir, I have,’ he said at last. ‘And such a trouble, there could not be a worse. My wife is dead.’

‘You loved her … your wife?’

The lad did not turn to me; he only bent his head a little.

‘I loved her, sir. It’s eight months since then … but I can’t forget it. My heart is gnawing at me … so it is! And why had she to die? A young thing! strong!… In one day cholera snatched her away.’

‘And was she good to you?’

‘Ah, sir!’ the poor fellow sighed heavily, ‘and how happy we were together! She died without me! The first I heard here, they’d buried her already, you know; I hurried off at once to the village, home—I got there—it was past midnight. I went into my hut, stood still in the middle of the room, and softly I whispered, «Masha! eh, Masha!» Nothing but the cricket chirping. I fell a-crying then, sat on the hut floor, and beat on the earth with my fists! «Greedy earth!» says I … «You have swallowed her up … swallow me too!—Ah, Masha!»

‘Masha!’ he added suddenly in a sinking voice. And without letting go of the cord reins, he wiped the tears out of his eyes with his sleeve, shook it, shrugged his shoulders, and uttered not another word.

As I got out of the sledge, I gave him a few coppers over his fare. He bowed low to me, grasping his cap in both hands, and drove off at a walking pace over the level snow of the deserted street, full of the grey fog of a January frost.

April 1878.

THE FOOL

There lived a fool.

For a long time he lived in peace and contentment; but by degrees rumours began to reach him that he was regarded on all sides as a vulgar idiot.

The fool was abashed and began to ponder gloomily how he might put an end to these unpleasant rumours.

A sudden idea, at last, illuminated his dull little brain…. And, without the slightest delay, he put it into practice.

A friend met him in the street, and fell to praising a well-known painter….

‘Upon my word!’ cried the fool,’ that painter was out of date long ago … you didn’t know it? I should never have expected it of you … you are quite behind the times.’

The friend was alarmed, and promptly agreed with the fool.

‘Such a splendid book I read yesterday!’ said another friend to him.

‘Upon my word!’ cried the fool, ‘I wonder you’re not ashamed. That book’s good for nothing; every one’s seen through it long ago. Didn’t you know it? You’re quite behind the times.’

This friend too was alarmed, and he agreed with the fool.

‘What a wonderful fellow my friend N. N. is!’ said a third friend to the fool. ‘Now there’s a really generous creature!’

‘Upon my word!’ cried the fool. ‘N. N., the notorious scoundrel! He swindled all his relations. Every one knows that. You’re quite behind the times.’

The third friend too was alarmed, and he agreed with the fool and deserted his friend. And whoever and whatever was praised in the fool’s presence, he had the same retort for everything.

Sometimes he would add reproachfully: ‘And do you still believe in authorities?’

‘Spiteful! malignant!’ his friends began to say of the fool. ‘But what a brain!’

‘And what a tongue!’ others would add, ‘Oh, yes, he has talent!’

It ended in the editor of a journal proposing to the fool that he should undertake their reviewing column.

And the fool fell to criticising everything and every one, without in the least changing his manner, or his exclamations.

Now he, who once declaimed against authorities, is himself an authority, and the young men venerate him, and fear him.

And what else can they do, poor young men? Though one ought not, as a general rule, to venerate any one … but in this case, if one didn’t venerate him, one would find oneself quite behind the times!

Fools have a good time among cowards.

April 1878.

AN EASTERN LEGEND

Who in Bagdad knows not Jaffar, the Sun of the Universe?

One day, many years ago (he was yet a youth), Jaffar was walking in the environs of Bagdad.

Suddenly a hoarse cry reached his ear; some one was calling desperately for help.

Jaffar was distinguished among the young men of his age by prudence and sagacity; but his heart was compassionate, and he relied on his strength.

He ran at the cry, and saw an infirm old man, pinned to the city wall by two brigands, who were robbing him.

Jaffar drew his sabre and fell upon the miscreants: one he killed, the other he drove away.

The old man thus liberated fell at his deliverer’s feet, and, kissing the hem of his garment, cried: ‘Valiant youth, your magnanimity shall not remain unrewarded. In appearance I am a poor beggar; but only in appearance. I am not a common man. Come to-morrow in the early morning to the chief bazaar; I will await you at the fountain, and you shall be convinced of the truth of my words.’

Jaffar thought: ‘In appearance this man is a beggar, certainly; but all sorts of things happen. Why not put it to the test?’ and he answered: ‘Very well, good father; I will come.’

The old man looked into his face, and went away.

The next morning, the sun had hardly risen, Jaffar went to the bazaar. The old man was already awaiting him, leaning with his elbow on the marble basin of the fountain.

In silence he took Jaffar by the hand and led him into a small garden, enclosed on all sides by high walls.

In the very middle of this garden, on a green lawn, grew an extraordinary-looking tree.

It was like a cypress; only its leaves were of an azure hue.

Three fruits—three apples—hung on the slender upward-bent twigs; one was of middle size, long-shaped, and milk-white; the second, large, round, bright-red; the third, small, wrinkled, yellowish.

The whole tree faintly rustled, though there was no wind. It emitted a shrill plaintive ringing sound, as of a glass bell; it seemed it was conscious of Jaffar’s approach.

‘Youth!’ said the old man, ‘pick any one of these apples and know, if you pick and eat the white one, you will be the wisest of all men; if you pick and eat the red, you will be rich as the Jew Rothschild; if you pick and eat the yellow one, you will be liked by old women. Make up your mind! and do not delay. Within an hour the apples will wither, and the tree itself will sink into the dumb depths of the earth!’

Jaffar looked down, and pondered. ‘How am I to act?’ he said in an undertone, as though arguing with himself. ‘If you become too wise, maybe you will not care to live; if you become richer than any one, every one will envy you; I had better pick and eat the third, the withered apple!’

And so he did; and the old man laughed a toothless laugh, and said: ‘O wise young man! You have chosen the better part! What need have you of the white apple? You are wiser than Solomon as it is. And you’ve no need of the red apple either…. You will be rich without it. Only your wealth no one will envy.’

‘Tell me, old man,’ said Jaffar, rousing himself, ‘where lives the honoured mother of our Caliph, protected of heaven?’

The old man bowed down to the earth, and pointed out to the young man the way.

Who in Bagdad knows not the Sun of the Universe, the great, the renowned

Jaffar?

April 1878.

TWO STANZAS

There was once a town, the inhabitants of which were so passionately fond of poetry, that if some weeks passed by without the appearance of any good new poems, they regarded such a poetic dearth as a public misfortune.

They used at such times to put on their worst clothes, to sprinkle ashes on their heads; and, assembling in crowds in the public squares, to shed tears and bitterly to upbraid the muse who had deserted them.

On one such inauspicious day, the young poet Junius came into a square, thronged with the grieving populace.

With rapid steps he ascended a forum constructed for this purpose, and made signs that he wished to recite a poem.

The lictors at once brandished their fasces. ‘Silence! attention!’ they shouted loudly, and the crowd was hushed in expectation.

‘Friends! Comrades!’ began Junius, in a loud but not quite steady voice:—

  ‘Friends! Comrades! Lovers of the Muse!

  Ye worshippers of beauty and of grace!

  Let not a moment’s gloom dismay your souls,

  Your heart’s desire is nigh, and light shall banish darkness.’

Junius ceased … and in answer to him, from every part of the