A bright spring day was fading into evening. High overhead in the clear heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be sinking into its depths of blue. In a handsome house in...

A tall man entered, wearing a tidy overcoat, rather short trousers, grey doeskin gloves, and two neckties⁠—a black one outside, and a white one below it. There was an air of decorum and propriety in e...

“How do you do, Marya Dmitrievna?” cried the young man in a pleasant, ringing voice. “How do you like my new purchase?” Marya Dmitrievna went up to the window. “How do you do, Woldemar! Ah, what a spl...

The name of the young man whom we have just introduced to the reader was Vladimir Nikolaitch Panshin. He served in Petersburg on special commissions in the department of internal affairs. He had come ...

Christopher Theodor Gottlieb Lemm was born in 1786 in the town of Chemnitz in Saxony. His parents were poor musicians. His father played the French horn, his mother the harp; he himself was practising...

Panshin, who was playing bass, struck the first chords of the sonata loudly and decisively, but Lisa did not begin her part. He stopped and looked at her. Lisa’s eyes were fixed directly on him, and e...

“You don’t recognise me,” he said, taking off his hat, “but I recognise you in spite of its being seven years since I saw you last. You were a child then. I am Lavretsky. Is your mother at home? Can I...

Fedor Ivanitch Lavretsky⁠—we must ask the reader’s permission to break off the thread of our story for a time⁠—came of an old noble family. The founder of the house of Lavretsky came over from Prussia...

For a long time the old Lavretsky could not forgive his son for his marriage. If six months later Ivan Petrovitch had come to him with a penitent face and had thrown himself at his feet, he would, ver...

Ivan Petrovitch returned to Russia an Anglomaniac. His short-cropped hair, his starched shirtfront, his long-skirted pea-green overcoat with its multitude of capes, the sour expression of his face, so...

Until Ivan Petrovitch’s return from abroad, Fedya was, as already related, in the hands of Glafira Petrovna. He was not eight years old when his mother died; he did not see her every day, and loved he...

After burying his father and entrusting to the unchanged Glafira Petrovna the management of his estate and superintendence of his bailiffs, young Lavretsky went to Moscow, whither he felt drawn by a v...

Varvara Pavlovna’s father, Pavel Petrovitch Korobyin, a retired general-major, had spent his whole time on duty in Petersburg. He had had the reputation in his youth of a good dancer and driller. Thro...

The young Spartan’s legs shook under him when Mihalevitch conducted him into the rather shabbily furnished drawing-room of the Korobyins, and presented him to them. But his overwhelming feeling of tim...

And so his offer was accepted, but on certain conditions. In the first place, Lavretsky was at once to leave the university; who would be married to a student, and what a strange idea too⁠—how could a...

Happening to go one day in Varvara Pavlovna’s absence into her boudoir, Lavretsky saw on the floor a carefully folded little paper. He mechanically picked it up, unfolded it, and read the following no...

The morning after the day we have described, at ten o’clock, Lavretsky was mounting the steps of the Kalitins’ house. He was met by Lisa coming out in her hat and gloves. “Where are you going?” he ask...

Four days later, he set off for home. His coach rolled quickly along the soft crossroad. There had been no rain for a fortnight; a fine milk mist was diffused in the air and hung over the distant wood...

The small manor-house to which Lavretsky had come and in which two years before Glafira Petrovna had breathed her last, had been built in the preceding century of solid pinewood; it looked ancient, bu...

The next day Lavretsky got up rather early, had a talk with the village bailiff, visited the threshing-floor, ordered the chain to be taken off the yard dog, who only barked a little but did not even ...

In the course of a fortnight, Fedor Ivanitch had brought Glafira Petrovna’s little house into order and had cleared the courtyard and the garden. From Lavriky comfortable furniture was sent him; from ...

He began talking about music, about Lisa, then of music again. He seemed to enunciate his words more slowly when he spoke of Lisa. Lavretsky turned the conversation on his compositions, and half in je...

The next morning the master of the house and his guest drank tea in the garden under an old lime-tree. “Master!” said Lavretsky among other things, “you will soon have to compose a triumphal cantata.”...

He found them all at home, but he did not at once disclose his plan to them; he wanted to discuss it first with Lisa alone. Fortune favoured him; they were left alone in the drawing-room. They had som...

When Lavretsky reached home, he was met at the door of the drawing-room by a tall, thin man, in a threadbare blue coat, with a wrinkled, but lively face, with disheveled grey whiskers, a long straight...

Two days later, Marya Dmitrievna visited Vassilyevskoe according to her promise, with all her young people. The little girls ran at once into the garden, while Marya Dmitrievna languidly walked throug...

Meanwhile the evening had come on, Marya Dmitrievna expressed a desire to return home, and the little girls were with difficulty torn away from the pond, and made ready. Lavretsky declared that he wou...

The next morning, over their tea, Lemm asked Lavretsky to let him have the horses to return to town. “It’s time for me to set to work, that is, to my lessons,” observed the old man. “Besides, I am onl...

Marya Dmitrievna did not give Lavretsky an over-cordial welcome when he made his appearance the following day. “Upon my word, he’s always in and out,” she thought. She did not much care for him, and P...

As he was coming away from the Kalitins, Lavretsky met Panshin; they bowed coldly to one another. Lavretsky went to his lodgings, and locked himself in. He was experiencing emotions such as he had har...

Lavretsky was not a young man; he could not long delude himself as to the nature of the feeling inspired in him by Lisa; he was brought on that day to the final conviction that he loved her. This conv...

Painful days followed for Fedor Ivanitch. He found himself in a continual fever. Every morning he made for the post, and tore open letters and papers in agitation, and nowhere did he find anything whi...

One day Lavretsky, according to his habit, was at the Kalitins’. After an exhaustingly hot day, such a lovely evening had set in that Marya Dmitrievna, in spite of her aversion to a draught, ordered a...

Lisa had not uttered a word in the course of the dispute between Lavretsky and Panshin, but she had followed it attentively and was completely on Lavretsky’s side. Politics interested her very little;...

The reader knows how Lavretsky grew up and developed. Let us say a few words about Lisa’s education. She was in her tenth year when her father died; but he had not troubled himself much about her. Wei...

On the following day at twelve o’clock, Lavretsky set off to the Kalitins. On the way he met Panshin, who galloped past him on horseback, his hat pulled down to his very eyebrows. At the Kalitins’, La...

For more than two hours Lavretsky wandered about the streets of town. The night he had spent in the outskirts of Paris returned to his mind. His heart was bursting and his head, dull and stunned, was ...

The day of the arrival of Lavretsky’s wife at the town of O⁠⸺, a sorrowful day for him, had been also a day of misery for Lisa. She had not had time to go downstairs and say good morning to her mother...

Marya Dmitrievna was much agitated when she received the announcement of the arrival of Varvara Pavlovna Lavretsky, she did not even know whether to receive her; she was afraid of giving offence to Fe...

Meanwhile, downstairs, preference was going on merrily in the drawing-room; Marya Dmitrievna was winning, and was in high good-humour. A servant came in and announced that Panshin was below. Marya Dmi...

Lavretsky spent a day and a half at Vassilyevskoe, and employed almost all the time in wandering about the neighbourhood. He could not stop long in one place: he was devoured by anguish; he was torn u...

Lisa had written to Lavretsky the day before, to tell him to come in the evening; but he first went home to his lodgings. He found neither his wife nor his daughter at home; from the servants he learn...

Marya Dmitrievna was sitting alone in her boudoir in an easy-chair, sniffing eau de cologne; a glass of orange-flower-water was standing on a little table near her. She was agitated and seemed nervous...

The following day was Sunday. The sound of bells ringing for early mass did not wake Lavretsky⁠—he had not closed his eyes all night⁠—but it reminded him of another Sunday, when at Lisa’s desire he ha...

Lisa had a room to herself on the second story of her mother’s house, a clean bright little room with a little white bed, with pots of flowers in the corners and before the windows, a small writing-ta...

Eight years had passed by. Once more the spring had come.⁠ ⁠… But we will say a few words first of the fate of Mihalevitch, Panshin, and Madame Lavretsky⁠—and then take leave of them. Mihalevitch, aft...