I, now ... what did I hope for, what did I expect,
what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of
my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called
forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?
And what has come to pass of all I hoped for?
And now, when the shades of evening begin to steal
over my life, what have I left fresher, more precious,
than the memories of the storm—so soon over—of
early morning, of spring?
But I do myself injustice. Even then, in those
light-hearted young days, I was not deaf to the voice
of sorrow, when it called upon me, to the solemn strains
floating to me from beyond the tomb. I remember,
a few days after I heard of Zinaida’s death,
I was present, through a peculiar, irresistible impulse,
at the death of a poor old woman who lived in the
same house as we. Covered with rags, lying on
hard boards, with a sack under her head, she died
hardly and painfully. Her whole life had been
passed in the bitter struggle with daily want; she
had known no joy, had not tasted the honey of happiness.
One would have thought, surely she would rejoice at
death, at her deliverance, her rest. But yet,
as long as her decrepit body held out, as long as
her breast still heaved in agony under the icy hand
weighing upon it, until her last forces left her,
the old woman crossed herself, and kept whispering,
‘Lord, forgive my sins’; and only with
the last spark of consciousness, vanished from her
eyes the look of fear, of horror of the end.
And I remember that then, by the death-bed of that
poor old woman, I felt aghast for Zinaida, and longed
to pray for her, for my father—and for
myself.
In one of the outlying streets of Moscow, in a grey
house with white columns and a balcony, warped all
askew, there was once living a lady, a widow, surrounded
by a numerous household of serfs. Her sons were
in the government service at Petersburg; her daughters
were married; she went out very little, and in solitude
lived through the last years of her miserly and dreary
old age. Her day, a joyless and gloomy day, had
long been over; but the evening of her life was blacker
than night.
Of all her servants, the most remarkable personage
was the porter, Gerasim, a man full twelve inches
over the normal height, of heroic build, and deaf
and dumb from his birth. The lady, his owner,
had brought him up from the village where he lived
alone in a little hut, apart from his brothers, and
was reckoned about the most punctual of her peasants
in the payment of the seignorial dues. Endowed
with extraordinary strength, he did the work of four
men; work flew apace under his hands, and it was a
pleasant sight to see him when he was ploughing, while,
with his huge palms pressing hard upon the plough,
he seemed alone, unaided by his poor horse, to cleave
the yielding bosom of the earth, or when, about St.
Peter’s Day, he plied his scythe with a. furious
