In the present translation the American public has an opportunity of studying what the paternal Russian government regards as revolutionary literature. In the Russian cities it is possible, by offerin...

On the morning of the 23rd of July, 1856, the servants of one of the largest hotels of Petersburg, near the Moscow railroad station, were in perplexity, and even partly in fear. On the previous evenin...

On the morning of the 23rd of July, 1856, the servants of one of the largest hotels of Petersburg, near the Moscow railroad station, were in perplexity, and even partly in fear. On the previous evenin...

On that very same morning, about twelve o’clock, a young woman was sitting in one of the three rooms of a small dacha on the Kamennoï Ostrof (Stone Island); she was sewing, and singing in an undertone...

“The motive of this story is love; the principal character is a woman. So far, so good, although the story itself may be poor enough,” says my lady reader. “This is true,” say I. The man who reads is ...

Viéra Pavlovna’s training was very ordinary. Her life, up to the time when she made the acquaintance of the medical student Lopukhóf, was rather remarkable, although it was not singular. But in her ac...

Viéra Pavlovna’s training was very ordinary. Her life, up to the time when she made the acquaintance of the medical student Lopukhóf, was rather remarkable, although it was not singular. But in her ac...

Marya Alekséyevna knew what was spoken at the theatre, but she did not yet know what followed that conversation. At the very time that she was getting more and more angry with her daughter, and, in co...

“Nu, Viéra, all right! Your eyes show you haven’t cried. Evidently you saw that your mother tells the truth. You always used to be an off horse.” Viérotchka made an impatient gesture. “Nu! its all rig...

“Serge, does her mother speak French?” were Julie’s first words when she awoke. “I don’t know; so you have not put that idea out of your head yet?” “No, I have not.” And after taking into consideratio...

Storeshnikof’s plan was not so murderous as Marya Alekséyevna supposed; she in her own style put it in a too brutal form, but the spirit of the thing she interpreted aright. Storeshnikof’s idea was to...

Marya Alekséyevna, of course, did not even complain of Viérotchka’s refusal of the sleighride, after she found out that that Mishka-durak was not at all such a durak as she thought, and that he had al...

Storeshnikof kept thinking more and more frequently, “Well, now, suppose I should take and marry her?” What happened to him was a very common thing, not only with people of weak character of his stamp...

How could Matrióna help trembling when the whole trouble arose through her? As soon as she called Viérotchka to her pápenka and mámenka, she immediately ran off to tell the wife of the khozyáïka’s coo...

“Nu! how was it?” asked Marya Alekséyevna, as her husband came back. “Elegant, mátushka; she knew all about it, and she says, ‘How did you dare?’ and I says, ‘We don’t dare, your ladyship, and Viérotc...

It is well known how situations like the above would end in former times: a fine young girl, belonging to a low family, an insignificant man who is to become her husband under compulsion, who is detes...

It is well known how situations like the above would end in former times: a fine young girl, belonging to a low family, an insignificant man who is to become her husband under compulsion, who is detes...

No, Feódor did not misrepresent him; Lopukhóf was in fact a student whose head was full of books⁠—what books we shall learn from Marya Alekséyevna’s bibliographical investigations⁠—and with anatomical...

And so Lopukhóf entered the room, saw the company sitting at the tea-table, and in their number was Viérotchka; nu! of course the company, including also Viérotchka, saw that the tutor entered the roo...

Marya Alekséyevna wanted to give a great party on Viérotchka’s birthday, but Viérotchka begged to have no guests invited: the one wanted to show off the bridegroom; the other found such an exhibition ...

“How soon this came, how unexpected,” thinks Viérotchka alone in her room at the close of the evening. “We spoke for the first time, and yet we became such good friends; half an hour before not to kno...

During the time of the first quadrille Marya Alekséyevna was continually dogging her daughter and the tutor; but during the second quadrille she did not show herself near them, but was busy in her cap...

Marya Alekséyevna’s words had many interpretations, and they were not less fecund in results. On the side of the special signification⁠—that is, as regarded the reduction in the price of the lessons⁠—...

One day at tea, Marya Alekséyevna said that she had a headache; after serving the tea, and locking up the sugarbowl she went away and retired. Viéra and Lopukhóf remained sitting in the tearoom, which...

The relations of Marya Alekséyevna to Lopukhóf resemble a farce; Marya Alekséyevna’s character is exposed by them in a ridiculous way. Both these facts are quite against my will. If I had wanted to pr...

Of course, the main subject of the conversations between Lopukhóf and Viérotchka was not the question as to which fashion of ideas should be looked upon as the right one; but, as a rule, they spoke wi...

“Well, my dear, haven’t you found any situation for me yet?” “Not yet, Viéra Pavlovna, but don’t despair; we shall find one. Every day I go to see two or three families. It is impossible that a respec...

And Viérotchka dreamed a dream. She dreamed that she was locked up in a damp, gloomy cellar, and suddenly the door opened, and Viérotchka found herself in a field. She was running, frolicking, and she...

Lopukhóf during these last weeks has had no time to spend with his acquaintances of the medical school. Kirsánof, who has kept up his intercourse with them, has replied, when asked about Lopukhóf, tha...

Now Viérotchka has been sitting long, long, on the appointed bench, and how often did her heart beat quickly, quickly, when she saw an army cap coming around the corner. “Ah! there he is; my friend!” ...

Marya Alekséyevna was greatly surprised to see her daughter and Lopukhóf coming in together. She forthwith proceeded to subject them to the keenest inspection. “I called to tell you, Marya Alekséyevna...

But Viérotchka was sitting in her room. “Did I do well to make him come in? Mámenka looked so sharply! And what an awkward position I have put him in! How can he stay to dinner? Bozhe moï! what will b...

“Viérotchka, come to dinner!” shouted Marya Alekséyevna. In fact Pavel Konstantinuitch had returned; the pirog was all ready long ago; it was not the pirog from the confectioner’s, but one that Matrió...

“Forgive me, Viéra Pavlovna,” said Lopukhóf, coming into her room. How gently he speaks, and his voice trembles; but at dinner he spoke loud, and he did not call her my dear, but Viéra Pavlovna. “Forg...

Thus they talked⁠—rather a strange conversation for the first one after their engagement⁠—and they pressed each other’s hands, and Lopukhóf went home by himself, and Viérotchka locked the door after h...

“It is now the twenty-eighth of April; he said that he should be through by the first of July. Let us say the tenth; but that is not the first. Well, we can take the tenth; or, so as to get nearer, I’...

The wedding had been managed in simple, and yet far from common fashion. Two days after the conversation which resulted in their engagement, Viérotchka was delighted at her approaching freedom. On the...

But we have had only one-half of this scene. For about a moment⁠—no, rather less⁠—Marya Alekséyevna, who had suspected nothing of the kind, stood thunderstruck, endeavoring to understand, and absolute...

Marya Alekséyevna had a number of schemes in mind as to the way to act towards Lopukhóf when he should come in the evening. The most revengeful was to hide two dvorniks in the kitchen, who at a given ...

You have ceased to be a person of any importance in Viérotchka’s life, Marya Alekséyevna, and now that we are going to part from you, the author of this narrative begs you not to complain, that you ar...

Three months have passed since Viérotchka was rescued from the cellar. The Lopukhófs’ affairs have prospered. He has had a fair number of pupils; he obtained work of a certain publisher, to translate ...

Three months have passed since Viérotchka was rescued from the cellar. The Lopukhófs’ affairs have prospered. He has had a fair number of pupils; he obtained work of a certain publisher, to translate ...

The affairs of the Lopukhófs prospered. Viéra Pavlovna was always happy. But one time (this was some five months after the wedding) Dmitri Sergéitch, returning from one of his lessons, found his wife ...

And here Viéra Pavlovna falls asleep, and Viéra Pavlovna dreams a dream. A field, and across the field goes a man, namely, her mílenki, together with Alekséi Petróvitch, and her mílenki says: “You are...

Viéra Pavlovna’s sewing union was established. The foundations were very simple at first⁠—so simple, indeed, that it is not worth while to speak of them. Viéra Pavlovna did not make any rules at all f...

And thus three years have passed since the union was founded, and more than three years since Viéra Pavlovna’s marriage. How quietly and busily passed these three years, how full they were of calmness...

Once (it was towards the end of summer) the girls gathered, according to their custom on Sunday, at the outskirts of the city for a picnic. During the summer they used to go out almost every holiday i...

Two days later at morning tea, Viéra Pavlovna remarked to her husband that she did not like the color of his face. He said that he had not slept well the night before and that he had not felt well sin...

The sapient reader⁠—I explain myself only to the masculine reader; my lady reader has too much understanding to be bothered with guessing, and therefore I do not explain to her; I say this once and fo...

But as Europeans among Chinamen are all of one face and one way of acting, only so far as the Chinamen are concerned, but in reality, among the Europeans there are incomparably wider differences than ...

But it is necessary to say two or three words about Kirsánof’s outward appearance. He, as well as Lopukhóf, had regular and handsome features. Some regarded the former, others the latter, as the bette...

During the first part of Viéra Pavlovna’s married life, Kirsánof used to be very frequently at the Lopukhófs’, as often as every other day, or, to speak more accurately, almost every day; and soon, al...

Now Lopukhóf’s illness, or, more properly speaking, Viéra Pavlovna’s extraordinary attachment to her husband, compelled Kirsánof to be more than a week in close, familiar intercourse with the Lopukhóf...

Everything was going well with Kirsánof, as he thought. His attachment was renewed, and stronger than before; but the struggle with it did not present any serious suffering; it was easy. Here Kirsánof...

On the next day, early in the morning, Nástenka came to Viéra Pavlovna. “I want to tell you about what you saw yesterday, Viéra Pavlovna,” she said; but for some time she was at a loss how to go on. “...

Nástenka finished telling her story to Viéra Pavlovna on other days. She lived at Kirsánof’s house about two years. The signs of her threatening sickness seemed entirely to have disappeared; but at th...

Four months passed. The watching over Nástenka and then his recollections about her deceived Kirsánof; it seemed to him that now he was out of danger as far as Viéra Pavlovna were concerned; he did no...

If a stranger had consulted Kirsánof about the position in which Kirsánof found himself after he came to his senses, and if Kirsánof had been a perfect stranger to all the people who were concerned in...

But how could he withdraw? His former game of making believe offended, of exhibiting some mean feature of his character so as to depend upon it, would not work; twice to perform the same trick is impo...

And Viéra Pavlovna dreams a dream. After tea, she had a talk with her mílenki, and went to her room to lie down⁠—not to sleep; it was too early to sleep. Why, it was only half-past nine; no, she did n...

The next morning, Dmitri does not go to call his wife to breakfast; she is there with him, clinging to him. She is still asleep, and he is looking at her, and thinking, “What can be the matter with he...

But after his wife had gone to sleep sitting on his knees, after he laid her down on her little sofa, Lopukhóf began to think seriously about her dream. It was not his affair whether she loved him or ...

On the following day, Kirsánof had just thrown himself down like a sybarite, with a cigar, intending to read and rest after his late dinner upon returning from the hospital, when Lopukhóf came in. “A ...

The renewal of Kirsánof’s frequent visits could be explained very naturally; five months he had been interrupted in his occupations, and he had accumulated a great deal of work; and so it took him a m...

Slowly, unobservably, this discovery began to evolve itself in her mind. All the time there accumulated small, almost undistinguishable, impressions made by Kirsánof’s words and actions, to which no o...

“The best distraction for thoughts is work,” said Viéra Pavlovna to herself, and she was entirely right. “I shall spend every day in the shop until I am cured, and this will help me.” She began to spe...

At the end of two weeks, while Lopukhóf was sitting in the counting-room of his factory, Viéra Pavlovna was spending the whole morning in extraordinary excitement. She threw herself down on her bed, s...

When Viéra Pavlovna came out from her room the next morning, her husband and Masha were already packing two valises with things. And all the time Masha was hard at work; Lopukhóf gave her so many thin...

This was towards the end of April. Towards the middle of June Lopukhóf returned; lived three weeks in Petersburg, then he left for Moscow, on business for the factory, as he said. On the twenty-first ...

Three hours after Kirsánof left, Viéra Pavlovna came to her senses, and almost her very first thought was, that it was impossible to leave the shop in such a way. Yes; though Viéra Pavlovna loved to a...

“Well [nu!],” thinks the sapient reader, “now the main character is to be Rakhmétof; and he will put everybody into his belt, and Viéra Pavlovna will fall in love with him; and soon the same story wil...

“Now tell me, O sapient reader, why Rakhmétof was introduced,81 who has now vanished, and will not appear again in my story? I have already told thee that this figure has no part in my story⁠—” “That ...

Berlin, July 20, 1856. Much Esteemed Lady, Viéra Pavlovna⁠— My close relationship with the late Dmitri Sergéitch Lopukhóf gives me the hope that you will kindly include in the number of your acquainta...

Berlin, July 20, 1856. Much Esteemed Lady, Viéra Pavlovna⁠— My close relationship with the late Dmitri Sergéitch Lopukhóf gives me the hope that you will kindly include in the number of your acquainta...

Petersburg, Aug. 25, 1856. Dear Sir⁠— You will understand what a degree of happiness your letter gave me. With all my soul I thank you for it. Your intimacy with the late Dmitri Sergéitch gives me the...

These letters, absolutely sincere, were really somewhat warped, as Viéra Pavlovna herself noticed. Both correspondents of course were trying to diminish for each other the strength of the heavy shocks...

Viéra Pavlovna is resting on her soft lounge, expecting her husband home to dinner from the hospital. Today she has been busying herself very little in the kitchen over the sweet additions to dinner. ...

“Mílenki, I am going with thee.” “But you have not your things ready.” “Mílenki mine, then I will go with you tomorrow, if you do not want to take me today.” “Think it over; consider it. Wait for my l...

Viéra Pavlovna does not very often recollect the past days of their present love. Yes, in the present there is so much life that there is little recollection; but whenever she recalls the past⁠—as som...

“Sasha, how lovely this N. N. is (Viéra Pavlovna named the officer with whom she wanted to become acquainted with Tambulik and Bosio in her dream); he brought me a new poem, which is not soon going to...

“Sasha, let us finish talking about what we left yesterday. It is necessary; for I have made up my mind to go with you: and you must know why,” said Viéra Pavlovna, the next morning. “With me? You are...

“Almost all the channels of civilized life are closed to us by law.”92 A good many are closed to us practically⁠—almost all paths of public activity⁠—even those which are not closed to us by legal hin...

Viéra Pavlovna finished her conversation with her husband by putting on her bonnet, and going with him to the hospital to put her nerves to the test, to find if she could bear the sight of blood, or b...

And thus a year passes; and another year will pass, and still another since her marriage to Kirsánof; and thus all of Viéra Pavlovna’s days will pass as they pass now, a year after the wedding, as the...

“A blue stocking! an extreme case of blue stocking! I can’t endure a blue stocking. A blue stocking is dull and tedious!” cries the sapient reader, losing his temper, and not without reason. After all...

The talk about Blue Stockings, so useful for the sapient reader, who was shown to be one, took me away from my description of Viéra Pavlovna’s manner of spending her days. Now that when⁠—when⁠—wheneve...

“And so here we have been living together three years” (before, it used to be said a year, two years, and later it will be said four years, and so on), “and yet we are still like lovers, who see each ...

And Viéra Pavlovna dreams a dream as though:⁠— A voice familiar to her⁠—oh, how familiar to her!⁠—from afar, then nearer, nearer. Wie herrlich leuchtet Mir die Natur Wie glänzet die Sonne Wie lacht di...

A year later the new union was in perfect running order. Both shops were closely connected; one shop would give the other orders when there was slack work and the other had time to fill them. A runnin...

My Dear Paulina⁠— I have been so delighted with an absolute novelty which I have lately discovered, and to which I am now devoting all my energies, that I want to describe it to you. I am sure that yo...

Miss Pólozova, in her letter to her friend, referred to her gratitude to Viéra Pavlovna’s husband. To explain this it is necessary to explain what kind of a man her father was. Pólozof was a retired c...

Miss Pólozova, in her letter to her friend, referred to her gratitude to Viéra Pavlovna’s husband. To explain this it is necessary to explain what kind of a man her father was. Pólozof was a retired c...

The father loved his Kátya; he did not allow ultra-high-society’s governesses to train the girl too severely. “That is nonsense,” he used to say at all straightenings of the figure, straightening of t...

Kirsánof did not care to practise, but he did not consider it right for him to refuse consultations. But at this time⁠—it was a year after he became professor, and a year before he married Viéra Pavlo...

Bridegrooms had swarmed by the hundred around the heiress of the great fortune; but the society which flocked to Pólozof’s dinners and suppers was a society of that excessively dubious type, of that e...

But if the practising Big Wigs agreed that Mademoiselle Pólozova’s atrophia nervorum, which had been developed by a weakening mode of life, with the natural inclination towards dreaminess and melancho...

Of course in other cases of this sort Kirsánof would not have thought of running such a risk; it would be more simple to take the girl from home, and let her marry whomsoever she pleased. But here the...

Kirsánof could not give up the case; it was necessary to help Katerina Vasílyevna emerge from her blindness, and it was still more necessary to manage her father, to keep him up to his promise of not ...

After these occurrences, Katerina Vasílyevna was long melancholy; but her melancholy, though developed by this state of things, was not at all attributable to this special state of things. There are c...

Pólozof was anxious to arrange for the sale of the stearine factory of which he was part owner and had been the manager. After more than half a year of energetic effort, he found a purchaser. On the p...

Charles Beaumont, like the average Charles, John, James, and William, did not care to indulge in intimacies or personal confidences; but on being asked, he related his story briefly, but very plainly....

Beaumont found himself at the dinner-table, sitting with only two others, the old man and a very genteel, but somewhat melancholy blondinka, his daughter. “Did I ever think,” said Pólozof at dinner, “...

It thus came about that Miss Pólozova became acquainted with Viéra Pavlovna. She went to see her the very next morning; and Beaumont was so much interested, that he came back in the evening to find ou...

Beaumont got into the way of making frequent calls at the Pólozofs’. “Why not?” thought the old man. “He is an excellent match. Of course in other days Kátya could have had a better husband. But even ...

For the next two or three visits Beaumont was met very coolly by Katerina Vasílyevna. In truth, she began to feel a certain distrust in this person with whom her acquaintance was so slight, and who ex...

Katerina Vasílyevna’s enthusiasm continued without diminution, but changed into a constant, habitual mood, earnest, eager, and bright. And, as it seemed to her, this enthusiasm drew Beaumont closer to...

But the main thing was, did they love each other? Let us begin with her. There was one case when she showed some solicitude about Beaumont; but how did this case end? Quite otherwise from what might h...

Does it ever happen that people do such things? Do young girls who are in love ever make such visits? Not to speak of the fact that no well-trained young lady would allow herself to do such a thing; b...

Meantime, so far as the old man Pólozof could judge, the affair was coming to a marriage. When the probable bride and probable bridegroom were getting to be so intimate, it was evident that there woul...

On the next day at three o’clock Katerina Vasílyevna went to Viéra Pavlovna. “I am to be married day after tomorrow, Viéra Pavlovna,” she said as she entered; “and this evening I am going to bring my ...

There was still more riotous conduct during the evening; but when order was restored, Beaumont, by the request of his new acquaintance, began to tell the story of his life after he came to the United ...

That very evening they made an agreement that the two families should look for apartments which should be adjoining. In the expectation of finding and arranging suitable apartments, the Beaumonts live...

The two families each lived according to the style that best pleased them. On ordinary days there was much noise in one apartment, much quiet in the other. They met like kinsfolks; some days they met ...

They live gayly and cordially; they work and they rest; they enjoy life; and look forward to the future if not without thought, yet with a firm and substantial assurance that the further they go, the ...

“Let us start,” said the lady in mourning; but now she was no longer in mourning; a bright pink dress, a pink hat, a white mantilla, and a handsome bouquet. She was not alone, but with Mosolof. Mosolo...

It is also sometimes spelt “Cerniscevski,” in the Polish fashion. ↩ “The disgraceful post,” as it is called, stands upon the scaffold, provided with rings and chains. The convict’s hands are thrust th...