When I was back in Petersburg I made inquiries about
Masha. I even discovered the doctor who had treated
her. To my amazement I heard from him that she
had died not through poisoning but of cholera!
I told him what I had heard from Tyeglev.
“Eh! Eh!” cried the doctor all at
once. “Is that Tyeglev an artillery officer,
a man of middle height and with a stoop, speaks with
a lisp?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I thought so. That gentleman came
to me—I had never seen him before—and
began insisting that the girl had poisoned herself.
’It was cholera,’ I told him. ‘Poison,’
he said. ’It was cholera, I tell you,’
I said. ‘No, it was poison,’ he declared.
I saw that the fellow was a sort of lunatic, with
a broad base to his head—a sign of obstinacy,
he would not give over easily.... Well, it doesn’t
matter, I thought, the patient is dead.... ‘Very
well,’ I said, ’she poisoned herself if
you prefer it.’ He thanked me, even shook
hands with me—and departed.”
I told the doctor how the officer had shot himself
the same day.
The doctor did not turn a hair—and only
observed that there were all sorts of queer fellows
in the world.
“There are indeed,” I assented.
Yes, someone has said truly of suicides: until
they carry out their design, no one believes them;
and when they do, no one regrets them.
Baden, 1870.
* * * *
*
On the high road to B., at an equal distance from
the two towns through which it runs, there stood not
long ago a roomy inn, very well known to the drivers
of troikas, peasants with trains of waggons, merchants,
clerks, pedlars and the numerous travellers of all
sorts who journey upon our roads at all times of the
year. Everyone used to call at the inn; only
perhaps a landowner’s coach, drawn by six home-bred
horses, would roll majestically by, which did not prevent
either the coachman or the groom on the footboard from
looking with peculiar feeling and attention at the
little porch so familiar to them; or some poor devil
in a wretched little cart and with three five-kopeck
pieces in the bag in his bosom would urge on his weary
nag when he reached the prosperous inn, and would
hasten on to some night’s lodging in the hamlets
that lie by the high road in a peasant’s hut,
where he would find nothing but bread and hay, but,
on the other hand, would not have to pay an extra
kopeck. Apart from its favourable situation, the
inn with which our story deals had many attractions:
excellent water in two deep wells with creaking wheels
and iron buckets on a chain; a spacious yard with
a tiled roof on posts; abundant stores of oats in
the cellar; a warm outer room with a very huge Russian
stove with long horizontal flues attached that looked
like titanic shoulders, and lastly two fairly clean
rooms with the walls covered with reddish lilac paper
