It happened not long ago, in the reign of the Emperor Alexander II.,—in our epoch of civilization, of progress, of questions, of the regeneration of Russia, etc.,—the time when the victorious Russian army had returned from Sevastopol, which had just been surrendered to the enemy, when all Russia was celebrating its triumph in the destruction of the Black Sea fleet, and White-walled Moscow had gone forth to meet and congratulate the remains of the crews of that fleet, and reach them a good Russian glass of vodka, and in accordance with the good Russian custom offer them the bread and salt of hospitality,[1] and bow their heads to the ground; at the time when Russia in the person of perspicacious virgin-politicians bewailed the destruction of its favorite dreams about celebrating the Te Deum in the cathedral of Saint Sophia and the severely felt loss of two great men dear to the fatherland, who had been killed during the war (one carried away by his desire to hear the Te Deum as soon as possible in the said cathedral and who fell on the plains of Vallachia, for that very reason leaving two squadrons of hussars on those same plains; the other an invaluable man distributing tea, other people’s money, and sheets to the wounded, and not stealing either); at the time when from all sides, from all branches of human activity, in Russia, great men sprang up like mushrooms—colonels, administrators, economists, writers, orators, and simply great men, without any vocation or object; at the time when at the jubilee of a Moscow actor, public sentiment, strengthened by a toast, began to demand the punishment of all criminals; when formidable committees from Petersburg were galloping away toward the south, to apprehend, discover, and punish the evil-doers of the commissary department; when in all the cities, dinners with speeches were given to the heroes of Sevastopol, and these men who came with amputated arms and legs were given trifles as remembrances, and they were met on bridges and highways; at the time when oratorical talents were so rapidly spreading among the people that a single tapster everywhere and on every occasion wrote and printed, and, having learned by heart, made at dinners such powerful addresses that the keepers of order had, as a general thing, to employ repressive measures against the eloquence of the tapster; when in the English club itself they reserved a special room for the discussion of public affairs; when new periodicals made their appearance under the most diversified appellations—journals developing European principles on a European soil, but with a Russian point of view, and journals exclusively on Russian soil developing Russian principles, but with a European point of view; when suddenly so many periodicals appeared that it seemed as if all names were exhausted—the Viestnik (Messenger), and the Slovo (Word), and the Besyeda (Discussion), and the Nabliudatyel (Spectator), and the Zvezda (Star), and the Orel (Eagle), and many others—and notwithstanding this, new ones and ever new ones kept appearing; a time when pleiads of writers and thinkers kept appearing, proving that science is popular, and is not popular, and is unpopular, and the like, and a pleiad of writer-artists, describing the grove and the sunrise and the thunder-storm and the love of the Russian maiden and the laziness of a single chinovnik and the bad behavior of many other functionaries; at the time when from all sides came up questions—as in 1856 they called all those currents of circumstances to which no one could obtain a categorical answer—questions of military schools,[2] of universities, of the censorship, of verbal law-proceedings relating to finance, banks, police, emancipation, and many others, and all were trying to raise still new questions, all were giving experimental answers to them, were writing, reading, talking, arranging projects, all the time wishing to correct, to annihilate, to change, and all the Russians, as one man, found themselves in indescribable enthusiasm,—a state of things which has been witnessed twice in Russia during the nineteenth century—the first time when in 1812 we thrashed Napoleon I., and the second time when in 1856 Napoleon III. thrashed us—great and never-to-be-forgotten epoch of the regeneration of the Russian people. Like that Frenchman, who said that no one had ever lived at all who had not lived during the great French Revolution, so I also do not hesitate to say that any one who was not living in Russia in the year ’56 does not know what life is.

He who writes these lines not only lived at that time, but was actively at work then. Moreover, he himself stayed in one of the trenches before Sevastopol for several weeks. He wrote about the Crimean war a work which brought him great fame, and in this he clearly and circumstantially described how the soldiers fired their guns from the bastions, how wounds were bandaged at the ambulance stations, and how the dead were buried in the graveyard. Having accomplished these exploits, the writer of these lines spent some time at the heart of the empire, in a rocket establishment, where he received his laurels for his exploits. He saw the enthusiasm of both capitals and of the whole people, and he experienced in himself how Russia was able to reward genuine service. The powerful ones of that world all sought his acquaintance, shook hands with him, gave him dinners, kept inviting him out, and, in order to elicit from him the particulars of the war, told him their own sentiments. Consequently the writer of these lines may well appreciate that great unforgetable epoch.

But that does not concern us now.

One evening about this time two conveyances and a sledge were standing at the entrance of the best hotel in Moscow. A young man was just going in to inquire about rooms. An old man was sitting in one of the carriages with two ladies, and was discussing about the Kuznetsky Bridge at the time of the French Invasion.

It was the continuation of a conversation which had been begun on their first arrival at Moscow, and now the old, white-bearded man, with his fur shuba thrown open, was calmly going on with it, still sitting in the carriage, as if he intended to spend the night there. His wife and daughter listened to him, but kept looking at the door, not without impatience. The young man came out again accompanied by the Swiss and the hallboy.

“Well, how is it, Sergyeï?” asked the mother, looking out so that the lamplight fell on her weary face.

Either because it was his usual custom, or to prevent the Swiss from mistaking him for a lackey, as he was dressed in a half-shuba, Sergyeï replied in French that they could have rooms, and he opened the carriage door. The old man for an instant glanced at his son, and fell back once more into the dark depths of the carriage, as if this affair did not concern him at all.

“There was no theater then.”

“Pierre,” said his wife, pulling him by the cloak, but he continued:—

“Madame Chalmé was on the Tverskaya ....”

From the depths of the carriage rang out a young, merry laugh.

“Papa, come,—you are talking nonsense.”

The old man seemed at last to realize that they had reached their destination, and he looked round.

“Come, step out.”

He pulled his hat over his eyes and obediently got out of the carriage. The Swiss offered him his arm, but, convinced that the old man was perfectly able to take care of himself, he immediately proffered his services to the elder lady.

Natalya Nikolayevna, the lady, by her sable cloak, and by the slowness of her motions in getting out, and by the way in which she leaned heavily on his arm, and by the way in which, without hesitation, she immediately took her son’s arm and walked up the steps, impressed the man as a woman of great distinction. He could not distinguish the young woman from the maids that dismounted from the second carriage; she, just as they, carried a bundle and a pipe, and walked behind. Only by her laughing, and the fact that she called the old man “father,” did he know it.

“Not that way, papa, turn to the right,” said she, detaining him by the sleeve of his coat. “To the right.”

And on the stairway, above the stamping of feet, the opening of doors, and the panting of the elderly lady, was heard the same laughter which had rung out in the carriage, and which any one hearing would have surely exclaimed: “What a jolly laugh! I wish I could laugh like that.”

The son, Sergyeï, had been busied with all the material conditions on the way; and, while busied with them, made up for his lack of knowledge by the energy characteristic of his five and twenty years and his bustling activity, which filled him with satisfaction. Twenty times, at least, and apparently without any sufficient cause, dressed in but a single paletot, he had run down to the sledge and up the steps again, shivering with the cold, and taking two or three steps at a time with his long, young legs. Natalya Nikolayevna begged him not to catch cold, but he assured her that there was no danger, and he kept giving orders, slamming doors, and going and coming; and, even after he was convinced that everything now rested on the servants and muzhiks alone, he several times made a tour of all the rooms, entering the drawing-room by one door and going out by another, trying to find something more to do.

“Tell me, papa, will you go to the bath? Do you know where it is?” he asked.

Papa was in a brown study, and seemed to be entirely unable to account for his present environment. He was slow in replying. He heard the words, but they made no impression on him. Suddenly he comprehended.

“Yes, yes, yes; please find out; .... at the Kamennoï Most.”

The head of the family, with quick, nervous step, crossed the room and sat down in an arm-chair.

“Well, now we must decide what is to be done,—how to get settled,” said he. “Help me, children; be quick about it! Be good and take hold and get things arranged, and then to-morrow we will send Serozha with a note to sister Mary Ivanovna, to Nikitin, or we will go ourselves. How is that, Natasha? But now let us get settled.”

“To-morrow is Sunday; I hope that you will go to service first, before you do anything else, Pierre,” said his wife, who was kneeling before a trunk and opening it.

“Oh, it is Sunday, is it? Assuredly; we will go to the Uspyensky Cathedral. That will note the beginning of our return. My God! when I recall the last time I was in the Uspyensky Cathedral .... do you re- member, Natasha? But that is not the matter in hand.”

And the head of the family leaped up from the chair in which he had only just sat down.

“But now we must get established.”

Yet, without doing anything to help, he walked from one room into the other. “Tell me, will you drink some tea? Or are you tired, and would you rather rest?”

“Yes, yes,” replied his wife, taking something from the trunk, “but I thought you were going to the bath.”

“Yes .... in my day it used to be on the Kamennoï Most. Serozha, just go and find out if the baths are still at the Kamennoï Most.—Here, Serozha and I will take this room. Serozha, do you like this one?”

But Serozha had already gone to find out about the baths. “No,” the old man went on to say, “that won’t do at all. You won’t have a passage directly into the drawing-room. What do you think about it, Natasha?”

“Don’t you worry, Pierre, everything will be arranged,” replied Natasha from the next room, into which the muzhiks were carrying various articles. But Pierre had come under the influence of the excitement and enthusiasm caused by his return.

“See here, don’t disturb Serozha’s things; there, they’ve brought his snow-shoes into the drawing-room.” And he himself picked them up, and with extraordinary carefulness, as if the whole future order of their establishment depended on it, placed them against the lintel of the door, and pressed them close to it. But the shoes would not stay put, and as soon as Pierre had left them they fell with a crash across the door. Natalya Nikolayevna frowned and shuddered, but, when she saw the cause of the disturbance, she said:—

“Sonya, pick them up, my love.”

“Pick them up, my love,” echoed her husband. “And I am going to see the landlord. Don’t make any changes in our arrangements. We must talk it all over with him first.”

“Better send for him, Pierre. Why do you disturb yourself?”

Pierre acquiesced in this.

“Sonya, do you attend to this, please..... M. Cavalier; tell him that we want to talk things over with him.”

“Chevalier, papa,” said Sonya, and she started to go.

Natalya Nikolayevna, who was giving orders in a low voice, and moving about quietly from room to room, now with a drawer, now with a pipe, now with a cushion, gradually and imperceptibly reducing the heaps of articles into order, and getting everything into its place, remarked, as she passed Sonya:—

“Don’t go yourself; send a servant.”

While the man was gone after the landlord, Pierre employed his spare moments, under the pretext of assisting his wife, in rumpling up some of her gowns, and then he tumbled over a half-emptied trunk. Catching by the wall to keep from falling, the Dekabrist looked round with a smile. His wife, it seemed, was too busy to notice; but Sonya looked at him with such mischievous eyes that it seemed as if she were asking his permission to laugh out loud. He readily gave her that permission, and laughed himself with such a hearty laugh that all who were in the room, his wife as well as the maid-servant and the muzhik, joined in.

This laughter still more cheered up the old man; he discovered that the divan in the room taken by his wife and daughter was placed inconveniently for them, notwithstanding the fact that they assured him to the contrary and begged him not to trouble himself. Just as he, with the assistance of the muzhik, was trying to move it to another place, the French landlord entered the room.

“You asked for me?” asked the landlord, curtly; and, as a proof of his indifference, if not his disdain, he deliberately took out his handkerchief, deliberately unfolded it, and deliberately blew his nose.

“Yes, my dear friend,” said Piotr Ivanovitch, approaching him. “You see, we ourselves do not know how long we shall be here, my wife and I.” And Piotr Ivanovitch, who had the weakness of seeing an intimate in every man, began to tell him his circumstances and plans.

Mr. Chevalier did not share this way of men, and was not interested in the particulars communicated by Piotr Ivanovitch; but the excellent French which the Dekabrist spoke,—a French which, as every one knows, has something of the nature of a patent of respectability in Russia,—and the aristocratic ways of the newcomers, caused him to have a higher opinion of them than before.

“In what way can I aid you?” he asked.

This question did not embarrass Piotr Ivanovitch. He expressed his desire to have rooms, tea, a samovar, luncheon, dinner, food for his servants,—in a word, all those things for which hotels are intended to provide; and when Mr. Chevalier, amazed at the innocence of the old man, who, it may be surmised, thought that he had reached the Trukhmensky steppe, or that all these things were to be furnished as a free gift, explained that his desires would be fully gratified, Piotr Ivanovitch reached the height of enthusiasm.

“There, that is excellent! very good! Then we will arrange it so. Now; how then, please ....”

But he began to feel ashamed of talking about himself exclusively, and so he proceeded to ask Mr. Chevalier about his family and affairs.

Sergyeï Petrovitch, returning, showed evident signs of dissatisfaction at his father’s behavior. He noticed the landlord’s irritation, and he reminded his father of the bath. But Piotr Ivanovitch was greatly interested in the question how a French hotel could succeed in Moscow in 1856, and how Madame Chevalier spent her time. At last the landlord bowed, and asked if there was anything they wished to order.

“Will you have some tea, Natasia. Yes? Tea, then, if you please, and we will have another talk, mon cher monsieur!—What a splendid man! ”

“But are you going to the bath, papa?”

“Oh, then we don’t need any tea.”

Thus the only result of the conference with the newcomers was snatched away from the landlord.

Accordingly Piotr Ivanovitch was now proud and happy with the arrangements that he had made. The drivers who came to get their vodka-money annoyed him because Serozha had no small change, and Piotr Ivanovitch was about to send for the landlord again, when the happy thought occurred to him that he ought not to be the only gay one that evening, and restored him to his good humor. He took out two three-ruble notes, and, pressing one into the hand of one of the drivers, said, “This is for you,” — Piotr Ivanovitch had the custom of addressing all persons without exception, save the members of his own family, with the formal second person, plural, vui—“and this is for you,” said he, thrusting the bank-note into the man’s palm, somewhat as men do when they pay a doctor for his visit. After all these matters had been attended to, he went to his bath.

Sonya sat down on the divan, and, supporting her head on her hand, laughed heartily.

“Oh, how good it is, mama; oh, how good it is!”

Then she put up her feet on the divan, stretched herself out, lay back, and thus fell asleep, with the sound, silent sleep of a girl of eighteen after a journey which had lasted a month and a half.

Natalya Nikolayevna, who was still busy in her sleeping-room, apparently heard with her maternal ear that Sonya was not stirring, and went in to see for herself. She took a cushion, and with her large white hand, raising the girl’s rosy head, laid it gently on the cushion. Sonya sighed deeply, settled her shoulders, and let her head rest on the pillow, not saying “merci,” but taking it as a matter of course.

“Not there, not there, Gavrilovna, Katya,” said Natalya Nikolayena, addressing the two maid-servants who were making a bed; and with one hand, as it were in passing, smoothing her daughter’s disordered locks. Without delaying, and without haste, Natalya Nikolayevna put things in order, and by the time her husband and son returned everything was in readiness,—the trunks were removed from the rooms; in Pierre’s sleeping-room everything was just as it had been for years and years at Irkutsk; his khalat, his pipe, his tobacco-box, his eau sucré, the Gospels which he read at night, and even a little image fastened in some way above the beds, to the luxurious wall-hangings of the rooms of Chevalier, who did not employ this form of adornment, though that evening they made their appearance in all the rooms of the third suite of the hotel.

Natalya Nikolayevna, having got things arranged to rights, put on her collar and cuffs, which in spite of the long journey she had kept clean, brushed her hair, and sat down opposite the table. Her beautiful black eyes had a far-away look; she gazed, and rested!

It would seem that she rested, not from the labor of getting settled only, not from the journey only, not from her weary years only; she rested, it seemed, from her whole life; and the far distance into which she gazed, where in imagination she saw the living faces of dear ones, that was the rest for which she sighed. Whether it was the exploit of love which she had performed for her husband’s sake, or the love which she had felt for her children when they were small, whether it was her heavy loss, or the peculiarity of her character, any one, looking at this woman, must have certainly comprehended that nothing more from her was to be expected, that she had already, and long ago, given herself to life, and that nothing remained for her. There remained a certain beautiful and melancholy dignity of worth, like old memories, like moonlight. It was impossible to imagine her otherwise than surrounded by reverence and all the amenities of life. That she should ever be hungry and eat ravenously, or that she should ever wear soiled linen, that she should ever stumble or forget to blow her nose, was utterly unthinkable. It was a physical impossibility! Why this was so, I do not know; but her every motion was majesty, grace, sympathy for all those that enjoyed the sight of her.

“Sie pflegen und weben
Himmlische Rosen ins irdische Leben.”

She knew that couplet and liked it, but she was not guided by it. Her whole nature was the expression of this thought; her whole life unconsciously devoted to the weaving of invisible roses into the lives of those with whom she came into contact. She accompanied her husband to Siberia purely because she loved him; she did what she might do for him, and she involuntarily did everything for him. She made his bed for him, she packed his things, she prepared his dinner and tea for him, and above all, she was always where he was, and greater happiness no woman could give her husband.

In the drawing-room the samovar was singing on the round table. Before it sat Natalya Nikolayevna. Sonya was wrinkling up her forehead and smiling under her mother’s hand, which tickled her, when with trimmed finger-tips and shining cheeks and brows,—the father’s bald spot was especially brilliant,—fresh clean linen and dark hair and beaming faces, the men came into the room.

“It has grown lighter since you have come in,” said Natalya Nikolayevna. “Ye powers,[3] how white.”

For years she had said this every Saturday, and every Saturday Pierre had experienced a sense of modesty and satisfaction. They sat down at the table; there was a smell of tea and tobacco, the voices of the parents and the children were heard, and of the servants who in the same room were carrying away the cups. They recalled the amusing things which had happened on the road, they praised Sonya’s mode of dressing her hair, they chatted and laughed. Geographically they had all been transported five thousand versts into an entirely different and alien environment, but morally they were that evening still at home, just the same as their peculiar lonely family life had made them. Of this there was to be no morrow. Piotr Ivanovitch sat down near the samovar and smoked his pipe. He was not gay at all.

“Well, here we are back again,” said he, “and I am glad that we shall not see any one this evening; this evening will be the last that we shall spend together as a family;” and he drank these words down with a great swallow of tea.

“Why the last, Pierre?”

“Why? Because the young eagles have been taught to fly; they will have to be building their own nests, and so they will be flying off each in his own direction.” ....

“How absurd,” exclaimed Sonya, taking his glass from him, and smiling as she smiled at everything. “The old nest is good enough.”

“The old nest is a wretched nest; the father-eagle could not build it; he got into a cage; his young ones were hatched in the cage and he was let out only when his wings were no longer able to bear him aloft. No, the young eagles will have to build their nests higher, more successfully, nearer to the sun. They are his young, in order that his example may aid them; but the old eagle, as long as he has his eyes, will look out for them, and if he becomes blind will listen for them .... give me a little rum, more, more .... there, that will do!”

“Let us see who will leave the others first,” remarked Sonya, giving her mother a fleeting glance, as if she reproached herself for speaking before her. “Let us see who will leave the others first,” she repeated. “I have no fear for myself or for Serozha either.”

Serozha was striding up and down the room and thinking how the next day he would order some new clothes, and trying to decide whether he would go himself or send for the tailor, and so he was not interested in the conversation between Sonya and his father.

Sonya laughed.

“What is the matter with you? What is it?” asked their father.

“You are younger than we are, papa, ever so much younger, that is a fact,” said she, and again she laughed.

“How is that?” exclaimed the old man, and the gloomy frown on his brow melted away in an affectionate and, at the same time, rather scornful smile.

Natalya Nikolayevna leaned out from behind the samovar, which prevented her from seeing her husband.

“Sonya is right. You are only sixteen years old, Pierre. Serozha is younger in his feelings, but you are younger than he in spirit. I can foresee what he will do, but you are still capable of surprising me.”

Whether it was that the old man recognized the justice of the remark, or being flattered by it did not know what answer to make, he went on smoking in silence, drinking his tea, and only letting his eyes flash. But Serozha, with the egotism characteristic of youth, for the first time began to feel interested in what was said about him, joined the conversation, and assured them that he was really old, that his coming to Moscow and the new life which was opening before him did not rejoice him in the least, that he was perfectly calm in his thought and expectations of the future.

“Nevertheless this is the last evening,” repeated Piotr Ivanovitch. “To-morrow it will no longer be the same.”

And once more he filled up his glass with rum. And for some time longer he sat by the tea-table with an expression on his face as if he had much to say, but there was no one to listen. He kept pouring out the rum until his daughter surreptitiously carried away the bottle.