This edition of Leonid Andreyev’s Short Fiction was produced from various translations. “The Red Laugh” was translated by Alexandra Linden and originally published in 1905. “The Seven Who Were Hanged”...

It would be unjust to say that Nature had injured Ivan Akindinich Bargamotov, who in his official capacity was called “Constable No. 20,” and unofficially simply Bargamotov. The inhabitants of one of ...

At times Sashka wished to give up what is called living: to cease to wash every morning in cold water, on which thin sheets of ice floated about; to go no more to the grammar school, and there to have...

At times Sashka wished to give up what is called living: to cease to wash every morning in cold water, on which thin sheets of ice floated about; to go no more to the grammar school, and there to have...

The children had not yet been admitted to the drawing-room, where the Christmas tree stood, but remained chattering in the nursery. Sashka, with lofty superciliousness, stood listening to their naive ...

His mother was asleep worn out with a whole day’s work and vodka-drinking. In the little room behind the partition there stood a small cooking-lamp burning on the table. Its feeble yellow light, with ...

Osip Abramovich, the barber, arranged a dirty sheeting on his customer’s chest, and tucking it into his collar, shouted abruptly in a sharp tone, “Boy! water!” The customer, examining his face in the ...

When late at night he rang at his own door, the first sound after that of the bell was a resonant dog’s bark, in which might be distinguished both fear that it might have been a stranger, and joy that...

They played vint19 three times a week⁠—on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Sunday would have been a very convenient day to play, but Sunday had to be kept open for all kinds of accidents, such as a cas...

He loved. According to his passport, he was called Max Z. But as it was stated in the same passport that he had no special peculiarities about his features, I prefer to call him Mr. N+1. He represente...

On a moonlight night in May, when the nightingales were singing, his wife came to Father Ignaty who was sitting in his study. Her face was expressive of suffering, and the small lamp trembled in her h...

On a moonlight night in May, when the nightingales were singing, his wife came to Father Ignaty who was sitting in his study. Her face was expressive of suffering, and the small lamp trembled in her h...

From the day of the funeral silence reigned in the little house. It was not stillness, for that is the mere absence of noise, but it was silence which means that those who kept silence could, apparent...

Out of the house Father Ignaty had much talking to do: with his ecclesiastical subordinates, and with his parishioners when he was performing his duties; and sometimes with acquaintances when he playe...

The next day, after an early and solitary dinner, Father Ignaty went to the cemetery⁠—for the first time since the death of his daughter. It was close, deserted, and still, as though the hot day were ...

Have you ever happened to walk in a burial-ground? Those little walled-in, quiet corners, overgrown with luscious grass, so small, and yet so ravenous, possess a peculiar dolorous poetry all their own...

“You lie! I know you lie!” “What are you shouting for? Is it necessary that everyone should hear us?” And here again she lied, for I had not shouted, but spoken in the quietest voice, holding her hand...

“You lie! I know you lie!” “What are you shouting for? Is it necessary that everyone should hear us?” And here again she lied, for I had not shouted, but spoken in the quietest voice, holding her hand...

She had lied. She did not come, and I waited for her in vain. The grey, uniform, frozen semidarkness descended from the lightless sky, and I was not conscious of when the twilight passed into evening,...

I threatened and entreated, grinding my teeth: “Tell me the truth!” But with a face cold as snow, while from beneath her brows, lifted in surprise, her dark, inscrutable eyes shone passionless and mys...

I killed her. I killed her, and when she lay a flat, lifeless heap by the window, beyond which shone the dead-white plain, I put my foot on her corpse, and burst into a fit of laughter. It was not the...

Once, when I was a child, I saw in a menagerie a panther, which struck my imagination and for long held my thoughts captive. It was not like the other wild beasts, which dozed without thought or angri...

Dark and terrible is the place to which she carried the truth, and the lie⁠—and I am going thither. At the very throne of Satan I shall overtake her, and falling on my knees will weep; and cry: “Tell ...

I and another leper cautiously drew near to the very wall, and looked up. From where we stood its top was not visible, but it rose straight and smooth, and as it were bisected the sky. Our half of the...

I and another leper cautiously drew near to the very wall, and looked up. From where we stood its top was not visible, but it rose straight and smooth, and as it were bisected the sky. Our half of the...

For us time was not; there was neither yesterday, nor today, nor tomorrow. Night never left us, never reposed behind the mountains, so as to return strong, coal-black, and still. Therefore was she alw...

And again we crept on, I and the other leper; and again a noise arose around us, and again the quartet circled noiselessly, shaking the dust from their dresses, and licking our bleeding wounds. But we...

They had finished their work⁠—the one who was occupied in knocking his head against the wall, and the other who was helping him. When I arrived there, one of them was hanging by a hook driven into the...

But this is what happened then. High upon a rock there stood a gaunt old woman, her parched cheeks fallen in, her long locks uncombed like the grey mane of a starving old wolf. Her clothing was in rag...

And the black night sighed deeply: and, like a sea upheaved by a hurricane, dashed in all its heavy roaring mass upon the cliffs: the whole visible world rocked and swayed, and with a thousand tense a...

He belonged to no one, he had no name of his own, and none could say where he spent the long, frosty winter, or how he was fed. The house dogs hungry as himself, but proud and strong from the consciou...

He belonged to no one, he had no name of his own, and none could say where he spent the long, frosty winter, or how he was fed. The house dogs hungry as himself, but proud and strong from the consciou...

Spring came on, and the quiet bungalow was all a-voice with loud talk, the creaking of wheels, and the stamping of people moving heavy things. The owners had arrived from the city, a whole merry troop...

All Snapper’s doggy nature expanded. He had now a name, at the sound of which he rushed headlong from the green depths of the garden; he belonged to people, and could serve them. What more did a dog n...

Autumn began to glow with yellow fires, and the sky to weep with heavy rain, and the bungalows became quickly empty, and silent, as though the incessant rain and wind had extinguished them one by one,...

At 6:30 I was certain that she would come, and I was desperately happy. My coat was fastened only by the top button, and fluttered in the cold wind; but I felt no cold. My head was proudly thrown back...

At 6:30 I was certain that she would come, and I was desperately happy. My coat was fastened only by the top button, and fluttered in the cold wind; but I felt no cold. My head was proudly thrown back...

“Eugenia Nikolaevna will be there tonight,” one of my companions, a student, remarked to me, without the slightest arrière pensée. He could not know how that I had waited for her in the frost from sev...

Positively it was the most original mask. People followed me in crowds, turned me about, jostled me, pinched me. But when, harried, I turned on my persecutors in anger⁠—uncontrollable laughter seized ...

Scattered over the whole sleeping street and rousing the stillness of the night with our lusty, excited voices, we walked home. A companion said to me: “You have had a colossal success. I never saw pe...

He drank hard, lost his work and his acquaintances, and took up his abode in a cellar in the company of thieves and unfortunates, living on the last things he had. His was a sickly, anaemic body, worn...

He drank hard, lost his work and his acquaintances, and took up his abode in a cellar in the company of thieves and unfortunates, living on the last things he had. His was a sickly, anaemic body, worn...

That day, a Saturday, the frost was so severe that the boys did not go to school, and the horse-races were postponed for fear of the horses catching cold. When Natalya Vladimirovna came out from the l...

During that hot and ill-omened summer everything was burning. Whole towns, villages and hamlets were consumed; forests and fields were no longer a protection to them, but even the forests themselves s...

During that hot and ill-omened summer everything was burning. Whole towns, villages and hamlets were consumed; forests and fields were no longer a protection to them, but even the forests themselves s...

It was night and I was dosing restlessly, when there reached my ear a dull staccato sound, rising as it seemed from below the ground; it penetrated my brain, and settled there like a round stone. Afte...

I flung along the strand, and my dark shadow flung after me, and when I stooped down to the water to find a bottom, the spectre of a fire-red form gazed at me from the black abyss, and in the distorte...

“So you’ll come, won’t you?” Senista repeated this for the third time, and for the third time Sazonka answered hastily: “Sure I’ll come, sure I’ll come. Why shouldn’t I? Sure I’ll come.” And again the...

“So you’ll come, won’t you?” Senista repeated this for the third time, and for the third time Sazonka answered hastily: “Sure I’ll come, sure I’ll come. Why shouldn’t I? Sure I’ll come.” And again the...

Easter was coming on, and there was so much work in the tailor’s shop that Sazonka got a chance to get drunk only once, on a Sunday. He had to sit all day long near his window. He had a sort of platfo...

On the first day of Easter, Sazonka was drunk. On the second day, he was still more drunk, got into a fight, and had to spend the night in jail. It was only on the fourth day that he finally decided t...

The hospital stood on the outskirts of the city, and immediately beyond it began a large field. Sazonka went there. The level field, uninterrupted by a single tree or building, stretched in all direct...

On the 11th of December of the year 1900 Anton Ignatyeff Kerzhentseff, a physician by profession, perpetrated a murder. The evidence presented in connection with the act itself, as well as certain cir...

Till the present moment, gentlemen experts, I have concealed the truth; but now circumstances compel me to reveal it. Realizing this, you will comprehend that this business is not at all so simple a m...

Here was my problem. It was necessary not only that I should kill Alexis, but that Tatiana Nikolavevna should know that I had slain her husband and that I should evade the punishment provided by the l...

Now you understand the significance of the terrible fit into which I had fallen one evening at the house of the Kurganoffs. That was my first experiment and successful beyond all expectation. It is as...

Nurse Masha asked me last evening: “Anton Ignatyevich! Do you never pray to God?” She spoke seriously and she believed that I would answer sincerely and seriously. And I replied, without a smile, as s...

After my second attack they were afraid of me. In many houses the doors were quickly closed at my approach. At accidental meetings acquaintances shrank from me, smiled meanly and inquired significantl...

Please do not attempt to make clear what is crossed out at the end of the fourth part, and in general do not attach undue significance to my markings or accept them as evidences of deranged thought. I...

In the preceding pages I have written much that was unnecessary and absurd, and unfortunately you have received and read them. I fear that it will give you a false conception of my person, as well as ...

One of the manifestations of the paradoxicalness of my nature is that I exceedingly love children, altogether small children, just when they are beginning to lisp and resemble all tiny animals: pups, ...

A moment of silence had fallen on the company and amid the clatter of knives on plates, and the confused talk at distant tables, the froufrou of a dress, and the creaking of the floor under the brisk ...

On that terrible day, when the universal injustice was committed and Jesus Christ was crucified in Golgotha among robbers⁠—on that day, from early morning, Ben-Tovit, a tradesman of Jerusalem, suffere...

It was early spring when I went to the bungalow. On the road still lay last year’s darkened leaves. I was unaccompanied; and alone I wandered through the still empty bungalow, the windows of which ref...

A strange and mysterious fate pursued Vassily Feeveysky all through his life. As though damned by some unfathomable curse, from his youth on he staggered under a heavy burden of sadness, sickness and ...

A strange and mysterious fate pursued Vassily Feeveysky all through his life. As though damned by some unfathomable curse, from his youth on he staggered under a heavy burden of sadness, sickness and ...

No one liked Father Vassily, neither his parishioners, nor the vestry of the church. He intoned the service awkwardly, without decorum: his voice was dry and indistinct, and he either hurried so that ...

In the spring the Popadya knew that she would be a mother; all through the summer she abstained from liquor, and a peace, serene and joyous, was enthroned in Father Vassily’s household. But the invisi...

Another year passed in the benumbed stupefaction of grief, but when they emerged from this comatose state and began to look about, they discovered that above their thoughts and their lives sat enthron...

Among people, mid their affairs and conversations, Father Vassily was so evidently a man apart, so unfathomably alien to all, that he did not seem human at all, but a moving cerement. He did whatever ...

Lent had arrived. The muffled church-bell commenced its monotonous tinkle, but its wan, melancholy, modest sounds of summons could not dispel the wintry stillness which was lying over snow-covered fie...

The Lenten bell continued to send abroad its monotonous and somber summons, and it seemed as though with each muffled knell it gathered fresh power over the consciences of the village folk. In ever in...

For the three months that followed their souls were resting; gladness and hope, long strangers to their hearts, returned to their home once again. Strong through suffering endured was the Popadya’s fa...

It was obvious to all that Father Vassily was hastening to sever the last ties that still bound him to the past and to the vain cares of this life. He had written his sister in the city and made hurri...

The long evenings of winter time Father Vassily passed in solitude with the idiot, imprisoned together with him in the white cage of pine log walls and ceiling, as though locked in a shell. From the p...

On the eve of Whitsunday, the bright and happy festival of spring time, the peasants were digging sand to strew over the village roadways. The peasants of Snamenskoye had for several years past carted...

They were entering the church with cautious steps and took up their stations wherever they chanced to be, not where they usually stood at service, where they liked or where they were accustomed to sta...

… Horror and madness. I felt it for the first time as we were marching along the road⁠—marching incessantly for ten hours without stopping, never diminishing our step, never waiting to pick up those t...

… Horror and madness. I felt it for the first time as we were marching along the road⁠—marching incessantly for ten hours without stopping, never diminishing our step, never waiting to pick up those t...

… Horror and madness. I felt it for the first time as we were marching along the road⁠—marching incessantly for ten hours without stopping, never diminishing our step, never waiting to pick up those t...

… Nearly all the horses and men. The same in the eighth battery. In our twelfth battery, towards the end of the third day, there remained only three guns⁠—all the others being disabled⁠—six men and on...

They say there are a great number of madmen in our army as well as in the enemy’s. Four lunatic wards have been opened. When I was on the staff our adjutant showed me.⁠ ⁠…...

… Coiled round like snakes. He saw the wire, chopped through at one end, cut the air and coil itself round three soldiers. The barbs tore their uniforms and stuck into their bodies, and, shrieking, th...

… I was already asleep when the doctor roused me by pushing me cautiously. I woke, and jumping up, cried out, as we all did when anybody wakened us, and rushed to the entrance of our tent. But the doc...

… They were our own men. During the strange confusion of all movements that reigned in both armies, our own and the enemy’s, during the last month, frustrating all orders and plans, we were sure it wa...

… It was godless and unlawful. The red cross is respected by the whole world, as a thing sacred, and they saw that it was a train full of harmless wounded and not soldiers, and they ought to have warn...

… Around a samovar, around a real samovar, out of which the steam was rising as out of an engine⁠—the glass on the lamp had even grown dim, there was so much steam. And the cups were the same, blue ou...

… I was sitting in a warm bath, while my brother was pacing up and down the small room in a troubled manner, sitting down, getting up again, catching hold of the soap and towel, bringing them close up...

… Happily he died last week on Friday. I say “happily,” and repeat that my brother’s death was a great blessing to him. A cripple with no legs, palsied, with a smitten soul, he was terrible and piteou...

… Happily he died last week on Friday. I say “happily,” and repeat that my brother’s death was a great blessing to him. A cripple with no legs, palsied, with a smitten soul, he was terrible and piteou...

… Prisoners, a group of trembling, terrified men. When they were led out of the train the crowd gave a roar⁠—the roar of an enormous savage dog, whose chain is too short and not strong enough. The cro...

… It is beginning. When I entered my brother’s study yesterday evening he was sitting in his armchair at his table heaped with books. The hallucination disappeared the moment I lighted a candle, but f...

… Universal mob-fights, senseless and sanguinary. The slightest provocation gives rise to the most savage club-law, knives, stones, logs of wood coming into action, and it is all the same who is being...

… In the eleventh row of stalls. Somebody’s arms were pressing closely against me on my right- and left-hand side, while far around me in the semidarkness stuck out motionless heads, tinged with red f...

… That absurd and terrible dream. It seemed as if the skull had been taken off my brain and, bared and unprotected, it submissively and greedily imbibed all the horrors of those bloody and senseless d...

… Today is the eighth day of the battle. It began last Friday, and Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday have passed⁠—and Friday has come again and is gone⁠—and it is still going o...

… A fight is going on in the town. There are dark and fearful rumours.⁠ ⁠…...

This morning, looking through the endless list of killed in the newspaper, I saw a familiar name; my sister’s affianced husband, an officer called for military service at the same time as my dead brot...

“… We look to you for the regeneration of human life!” So shouted a speaker, holding on with difficulty to a small pillar, balancing himself with his arm, and waving a flag with a large inscription ha...

A young little student girl⁠—almost a child. Her nose was thin, beautiful, with a slight upward tilt; and from her full lips there seemed to come the scent of chocolates and red caramels. And her fine...

He was a nonentity: the spirit of a rabbit and the shameless patience of a beast of burden. When fate, with malicious mockery, had cast him into our somber ranks, we laughed with insane merriment. Wha...

It was an immense city in which they lived: Petrov, clerk in a commercial bank, and he, the other⁠—name unknown. They used to meet once a year, at Easter, when they both went to pay a visit at one and...

There stood once in a public place a black tower with massive fortress-like walls and a few grim bastioned windows. It had been built by robber barons, but time swept them into the beyond, and the tow...

There stood once in a public place a black tower with massive fortress-like walls and a few grim bastioned windows. It had been built by robber barons, but time swept them into the beyond, and the tow...

And it happened that in that great country, the lord of which was the Twentieth, there occurred a revolution, a rising of the millions, as mysterious as had been the rule of the one. Something strange...

He had already attempted to flee. He had bewitched some and lulled others to sleep and had almost gained his diabolical liberty, when a faithful son of the fatherland recognized him in the disguise of...

The thousand-year-old monarchy was at last overthrown. There was no need of the plebiscite; every man in the popular assembly had risen to his feet, and from top to bottom it became filled with standi...

A few more days passed in the new and delicious sensations of freedom, and again new threads of distrust and fear appeared like dark veins running through white marble. The tyrant received the news of...

Then came the fateful day of the royal judgment. The mysterious power, ancient as the world, was called upon to answer for its misdeeds to the very people it had so long held in bondage. It was called...

They had been expecting a King, but there appeared before them a clown. They had been expecting a dragon, but there came a big-nosed bourgeois with a handkerchief and a bad cold. It was funny, and cur...

Many watched the execution of the king from the roofs, but even the roofs were not sufficient to accommodate the sightseers and many did not succeed after all in seeing how kings are executed. But the...

Fifteen days had passed since that memorable occurrence, and yet it filled his mind⁠—as though Time itself had lost its ascendancy over thought and things, or else had stopped like a broken clock. Whe...

Fifteen days had passed since that memorable occurrence, and yet it filled his mind⁠—as though Time itself had lost its ascendancy over thought and things, or else had stopped like a broken clock. Whe...

The Governor’s audience has long been ended, and he is about to drive out to his villa, waiting on for his aide-de-camp Kosloff, who is shopping for her Excellency. He sits in his study, his papers be...

Laughter and song and merry games⁠—for tomorrow Peter Iljitch’s son, the officer, returned to St. Petersburg, and friends had gathered to say goodbye. Uniforms and gay frocks were scattered about in t...

Summer and winter, the Governor rose at seven, had his cold tub, drank his milk, and took his two-hour walk⁠—no matter what the weather. He had given up smoking early in life, hardly drank at all, and...

Already the city knew that the Governor was to be killed. They had heard it at dawn of the day after the shooting. None spoke of it openly, but all felt it; as though while the living lay in their une...

Sooner or later the news of the Governor’s assassination had crept into the palace, but here they took it with an extraordinary indifference. As the close presence of the strong man in his full powers...

In the next few days no letters came. The sendings stopped abruptly, as by preconcerted action, and the silence that followed held something sinister and unusual. The sudden cessation gave the feeling...

Two weeks before the Governor’s death, a linen-covered package was handed in to the Government House⁠—its value declared at three roubles. It proved to be an infernal machine⁠—a bomb intended to explo...

When Lazarus emerged from the grave wherein for the space of three days and three nights he had dwelt under the mysterious dominion of death, and returned living to his abode, the ominous peculiaritie...

When Lazarus emerged from the grave wherein for the space of three days and three nights he had dwelt under the mysterious dominion of death, and returned living to his abode, the ominous peculiaritie...

A reckless one lifted the veil. A reckless one, with one breath of a fleeting word, destroyed the sweet dreams and revealed the truth in its hideous nakedness. The thought was not yet clear in the que...

No one took care of Lazarus; he had retained no neighbors or friends, and the great desert which enchained the Holy City had encroached to the very threshold of his dwelling. And it entered his house,...

At that time there lived in Rome a celebrated sculptor. Out of clay, marble and bronze he fashioned the forms of gods and of men, and such was the beauty of his work that men proclaimed it immortal. B...

And now Augustus himself, the great, the divine, summoned Lazarus to appear before him. They attired him in sumptuous wedding garment, for time and usage seemed to have prescribed these as befitting h...

The magnificence of the Imperial palace failed to impress Lazarus. There might have been no difference between his ramshackle but at the threshold of the desert and the splendid and massive palace of ...

Jesus Christ had been frequently warned that Judas of Kerioth was a man of ill repute, a man against whom one should be on guard. Some of the disciples of Jesus who had been to Judea knew him well per...

Jesus Christ had been frequently warned that Judas of Kerioth was a man of ill repute, a man against whom one should be on guard. Some of the disciples of Jesus who had been to Judea knew him well per...

Little by little the disciples became accustomed to Judas and ceased to notice his ugliness. Jesus turned over to him the treasure chest, and with it the household cares: his task was now to purchase ...

Once about noon time, Jesus and his disciples were ascending a rocky and mountainous path barren of shade, and as they had been over five hours on the road Jesus commenced to complain of weariness. Th...

Judas purloined a few pieces of silver and the theft was discovered by Thomas who had chanced to note the exact sum of money given him. It was thought likely that he had stolen on previous occasions, ...

It was just about this time that Judas Iscariot took his first decisive step towards betrayal: he paid a secret visit to the high priest Annas. He was received very sternly, but this did not disconcer...

Betraying Jesus with one hand, Judas took great pains to destroy his own plans with the other. He did not attempt to dissuade Jesus from embarking on that last perilous journey to Jerusalem, as did th...

The moon had already risen when Jesus started towards Mount Olivet where he was wont of late to pass his nights. But He lagged strangely, and His disciples, who were ready to proceed, urged Him on. Th...

They pointed him out with their fingers, and some contemptuously, while others with hatred and terror added: “See, this is Judas, the Traitor.” This was the beginning of his shameful infamy to which h...

Like an old hypocrite, coughing, smiling ingratiatingly, bowing profusely, Judas of Kerioth, the Traitor, appeared before the Sanhedrim. It was on the day following the murder of Jesus, towards noon. ...

Exhausted with the painful uncertainty of the day, I fell asleep, dressed, on my bed. Suddenly my wife aroused me. In her hand a candle was flickering, which appeared to me in the middle of the night ...

As a rule success had accompanied him in all his undertakings, but during the last three days complications had arisen which were unfavourable, not to say critical. His life, though a short one, had l...

As a rule success had accompanied him in all his undertakings, but during the last three days complications had arisen which were unfavourable, not to say critical. His life, though a short one, had l...

It was still early when he arrived, about ten o’clock; but the great white hall with its gilded chairs and mirrors was ready for the reception of guests, and all the fires were lighted. The pianist wa...

Something had happened, something unexpected and terrible, something considerable and of consequence, whilst he was sleeping⁠—this much he understood at a flash, even before he was properly awake, at ...

Two voices were speaking in the dark⁠—Liuba’s, intimate, tentative, sensitive, with delicate intonations of private apprehension such as a woman’s voice always gains in the dark⁠—and his, hard, quiet,...

Day was already dawning, and in the house all was as quiet as in any other house, when the police appeared. After long arguments and hesitations Mark had been dispatched to the police station with the...

As the Minister was a very stout man, inclined to apoplexy, they feared to arouse in him any dangerous excitement, and it was with every possible precaution that they informed him that a very serious ...

As the Minister was a very stout man, inclined to apoplexy, they feared to arouse in him any dangerous excitement, and it was with every possible precaution that they informed him that a very serious ...

Everything befell as the police had foretold. Four terrorists, three men and a woman, armed with bombs, infernal machines and revolvers, were seized at the very entrance of the house, and another woma...

Two weeks before the terrorists had been tried the same military district court, with a different set of judges, had tried and condemned to death by hanging Ivan Yanson, a peasant. Ivan Yanson was a w...

The same council-chamber of the military district court which had condemned Yanson had also condemned to death a peasant of the Government of Oryol, of the District of Yeletzk, Mikhail Golubets, nickn...

The verdict concerning the five terrorists was pronounced finally and confirmed upon the same day. The condemned were not told when the execution would take place, but they knew from the usual procedu...

On the fortress where the condemned terrorists were imprisoned there was a steeple with an old-fashioned clock upon it. At every hour, at every half-hour, and at every quarter-hour the clock rang out ...

Just as Tanya Kovalchuk had thought all her life only of others and never of herself, so now she suffered and grieved painfully, but only for her comrades. She pictured death, only as awaiting them, a...

Sergey Golovin never thought of death, as though it were something not to be considered, something that did not concern him in the least. He was a strong, healthy, cheerful youth, endowed with that ca...

Under the same ringing of the clock, separated from Sergey and Musya by only a few empty cells, but yet so painfully desolate and alone in the whole world as though no other soul existed, poor Vasily ...

The unidentified man, who called himself Werner, was tired of life and struggle. There was a time when he loved life very dearly, when he enjoyed the theater, literature and social intercourse. Endowe...

Before placing the condemned people in coaches, all five were brought together in a large cold room with a vaulted ceiling, which resembled an office, where people worked no longer, or a deserted wait...

The little cars ran on carefully. Sergey Golovin at one time had lived for several years with his relatives at their country-house, along this very road. He had traveled upon it by day as well as by n...

… And then there came the giant, the big, great Giant. Such a great, big one. There he came, on and on. Such a funny Giant⁠ ⁠… His hands are huge and thick, and his fingers are outspread, and his feet...

I was twenty-seven years old and had just maintained my thesis for the degree of Doctor of Mathematics with unusual success, when I was suddenly seized in the middle of the night and thrown into this ...

I was twenty-seven years old and had just maintained my thesis for the degree of Doctor of Mathematics with unusual success, when I was suddenly seized in the middle of the night and thrown into this ...

Those of my kind visitors who honour me by expressing their delight and even⁠—may this little indiscretion be forgiven me!⁠—even their adoration of my spiritual clearness, can hardly imagine what I wa...

Thus I lived sadly in my prison for five or six years. The first redeeming ray flashed upon me when I least expected it. Endowed with the gift of imagination, I made my former fiancée the object of al...

In order to make the further narrative clearer to my indulgent reader, I am compelled to say a few words about the exclusive, quite flattering, and, I fear, not entirely deserved, position which I occ...

Deviating from time to time from the calm form of a historical narrative I must pause on current events. Thus I will permit myself to acquaint my readers in a few lines with a rather interesting speci...

Having conveyed to the Warden of our prison the contents of my conversation with K., I asked him not to punish the young man for spoiling the walls, which would thus betray me, and I, to save the yout...

My spiritual clearness, as I had the pleasure of informing the reader before, has built up for me a considerable circle of men and women admirers. With self-evident emotion I shall tell of the pleasan...

Last Sunday a great misfortune occurred in our prison: The artist K., whom the reader knows already, ended his life in suicide by flinging himself from the table with his head against the stone floor....

Something altogether unexpected has happened; the efforts of my friends, the Warden and his wife, were crowned with success, and for two months I have been free, out of prison. I am happy to inform yo...

My God! What has happened to me? I do not know how I shall tell my reader about it. I was on the brink of the abyss, I almost perished. What cruel temptations fate is sending me! Fools, we smile, with...

I am profoundly happy to inform my dear reader that I have completely recovered my physical as well as my spiritual powers. A long rest out in the country, amid nature’s soothing beauties; the contemp...

Hush, hush, hush! Move nearer to me. Look into my eyes. I have always been a charming creature, so gentle, so sensitive, so grateful, and wise, and noble, and so elastic in the curvings of my beautifu...

… This free song of the stern days of justice and retribution I have composed myself, as well as I could, I, Geronimo Pascagna, a Sicilian bandit, murderer, highwayman, criminal. Having composed it to...

… This free song of the stern days of justice and retribution I have composed myself, as well as I could, I, Geronimo Pascagna, a Sicilian bandit, murderer, highwayman, criminal. Having composed it to...

… This free song of the stern days of justice and retribution I have composed myself, as well as I could, I, Geronimo Pascagna, a Sicilian bandit, murderer, highwayman, criminal. Having composed it to...

If I am then alive, I shall laugh with joy; and if I chance to be dead, my bones shall dance in their insecure grave. That will be a merry Tarantella! Can you say upon your oath that such things can n...

These be the names of the comrades with whom I made friends in those fleeting hours: Pascale, a professor; Giuseppe, Pincio, Alba. They were shot by firing squads. There was also another one, young, o...

The firing squad put them to death. Remember the names which I have mentioned; and with regard to those whom I have not mentioned by name, remember merely that they were put to death. But don’t go and...

That first quake that destroyed the prison and the city had a voice of rare power and of queer, superhuman dignity: it roared from below, from beneath the ground, it was vast and hoarse and menacing; ...

I had sat a long time in prison, without hope. I had tried to flee and failed. Nor could you have managed to escape, for that accursed prison was very well built. And I had become accustomed to the ir...

The streets were in ruins, in a terrible chaos. All the material of which people build was resolved to its elements and lay as it had been in the beginning. The houses were crumbling, bursting, reelin...

Free!...

It is harder for you to bend a grass blade than for him to bend three iron rails one atop the other. Three or a hundred, it is all the same to him. It is more difficult for you to raise a cup of water...

All that had been open he has shut; the door of your house has grown into its walls, and together they have choked you: your door, your walls, your ceiling. And he likewise has opened the doors of the...

If I gather from all over the world all the good words which people use, all the tender sayings, all the ringing songs and fling them all into the joyous air; If I gather all the smiles of children, t...

Freedom!...

Over my head was the sky, and the sky is always free, always open to the winds and to the movement of the clouds; under my feet was the road, and the road is always free; it was made to walk on, it wa...

A long time we walked about the city and saw much that was striking, strange and sinister. Neither can you shut in the fire⁠—I was saying this, I, Geronimo Pascagna. If you would be at peace, put it o...

A long time we walked about the city and saw much that was striking, strange and sinister....

Neither can you shut in the fire⁠—I was saying this, I, Geronimo Pascagna. If you would be at peace, put it out altogether, but do not lock it up in stone, in iron or in glass; it will escape, and you...

We saw more dead people than living; and the dead were calm; they did not know what had happened to them, and they were calm. But what about the living? Just think what a ridiculous thing was told us ...

For a long time they played their comedy among the ruins, the lunatic and the monk, while we sat on a heap of stones, laughing and encouraging them, shouting “bravo.” “Fraud! I have been deceived!” cr...

He assured us all that God had deceived him and he wept. He swore like a crooked gambler that this was poor recompense for his prayers and his faith. He stamped his feet and he cursed like a mule driv...

And we walked a long time about the city and saw many odd things. But the day was short, and the night fell upon earth earlier than ever before; and when the firing squad was killing Pascale, the sold...

When Pascale was put against the wall, against the portion of it which had remained uninjured, and the soldiers raised their rifles, the officer said to him: “You will die in a moment. Tell me why are...

“Naked I stand in front of your rifles and fear nothing, not even your rifles. But you are pale with fear, and you fear everything, even your own rifles, even my naked body. When the quake was heard, ...

“And if the whole earth crumbled into ruin, and the very beasts howled with horror, and the fish found a voice to express their grief, and the birds fell to the ground with dread, even then I would no...

“And if the universe crumbled, with heaven and hell, and horror were enthroned over the infinity of living creatures, even then I would know no fear. For all it would be the end of the universe, for m...

“And now, when with one salvo of your rifles you will destroy for me the earth and the universe, even now I know no fear. For all of you it will be the destruction and the fall of a human body, but fo...

The torches blazed. It was the shortest day which I had ever seen. Night fell upon the earth more quickly than ever before. “It is your turn now,” ordered the officer, when Pascale, the professor, had...

Another day passed. And on that day the soldiers shot that youngster who had called me father....

Night sank upon the earth and I departed from that city of the dead....

Dies irae⁠—the day of wrath, the day of vengeance and of stern retribution, the day of Horror and of Death....

… That procession which I had watched from behind the wall was a strange and a terrible sight. They were bearing the statues of their saints, but did not know whether to raise them still higher over t...

From whom were they fleeing? There was not a soul behind them....

You barely touched a tree, and a ripe orange fell at your feet. First one, then another, a third.⁠ ⁠… The crop bids fair to be fine. A good orange is like a little sun, and when there is an abundance ...

Pascale, the professor⁠—we called him “il professore” because he was so wise, he could write verses, and he discoursed so nobly on all sorts of subjects. He is dead....

Why am I terrified? Why do I walk faster and faster? I had been afraid there.⁠ ⁠…...

I never knew that my feet so loved to walk. They love every step which they make. They part so sadly with every step; they seem to want to turn back. And so greedy are they that the longest road seems...

What else can I tell you? I was seized by the gendarmes....

Once more thou hast locked the doors of my prison, O Man! When didst thou have time to build it? Still in ruins lies thy house, the bones of thy children are not yet bare in the grave, but thou art al...

The iron does not even rattle⁠—so strong it is. And it is cold to the touch like someone’s icy heart. Silent is also the stone of the walls⁠—so proud it is, so everlasting and mighty. At the appointed...

But I do not believe in thy prison, O Man, my master! I do not believe in thy iron; I do not believe in thy stone, in thy power, O Man, my master! That which I have once seen destroyed, shall never be...

Set thy clock a-going, it marks well the time until it stops. Rattle thy keys, for even thy paradise thou hast shut with lock and key. Rattle thy keys and shut the door, they shut well while there is ...

Freedom!...

A misty February twilight is descending over the ocean. The newly fallen snow has melted and the warm air is heavy and damp. The northwestern wind from the sea is driving it silently toward the mainla...

A misty February twilight is descending over the ocean. The newly fallen snow has melted and the warm air is heavy and damp. The northwestern wind from the sea is driving it silently toward the mainla...

A strong wind is tossing the fragment of a sail which is hanging over the large, open window. The sail is too small to cover the entire window, and, through the gaping hole, the dark night is breathin...

The work is ended. Having lost its gloss, the last neglected fish lies on the ground; even the children are too lazy to pick it up; and an indifferent, satiated foot treads it into the mud. A quiet, f...

At the very edge of the water, upon a narrow landing on the rocky shore, stands a man⁠—a small, dark, motionless dot. Behind him is the cold, almost vertical slope of granite, and before his eyes the ...

“Your hands are in blood, Haggart. Whom have you killed, Haggart?” “Silence, Khorre, I killed that man. Be silent and listen⁠—he will commence to play soon. I stood here and listened, but suddenly my ...

The flame in the oil-lamp is dying out, having a smell of burning. It is near sunrise. A large, clean, fisherman’s hut. A skilfully made little ship is fastened to the ceiling, and even the sails are ...

“These are your comrades, Haggart? I am so glad to see them. You said, Gart, yes⁠—you said that their faces were entirely different from the faces of our people, and that is true. Oh, how true it is! ...

His name was Yura. He was six years old, and the world was to him enormous, alive and bewitchingly mysterious. He knew the sky quite well. He knew its deep azure by day, and the white-breasted, half s...

His name was Yura. He was six years old, and the world was to him enormous, alive and bewitchingly mysterious. He knew the sky quite well. He knew its deep azure by day, and the white-breasted, half s...

An unusual day arrived. It was mother’s birthday. Guests were expected in the evening; military music was to play, and in the garden and upon the terrace parti-coloured lanterns were to burn, and Yura...

Night arrived in the form of red, green and yellow lanterns. While there were no lanterns, there was no night. And now it lay everywhere. It crawled into the bushes; it covered the entire garden with ...

To speak with a clear conscience as one does at confession, even now I can’t make out why I was in such a panic on that day. War is war, we all know; no one greets its coming with delight; still, it i...

To speak with a clear conscience as one does at confession, even now I can’t make out why I was in such a panic on that day. War is war, we all know; no one greets its coming with delight; still, it i...

It was Petrov, a volunteer and friend of Pavel’s, who informed me about his death. To spare his mother and Sashenka a sudden shock, Pavel must have arranged with his friend to write to my office addre...

In my excitement of the last few days I have accused myself of many unjust things. Excitement is a poor guide when a man wants to take a sober view of things. I must have been too upset by these unexp...

In Russia the windows have double panes during the winter for the purpose of keeping out the cold. —⁠Trans. ↩ Diminutive of dove, a term of endearment very common in Russia. ↩ Murder is punishable in ...