University of Virginia Library

THE KREUTZER SONATA.

1. CHAPTER I.

TRAVELLERS left and entered our car at every
stopping of the train. Three persons, however,
remained, bound, like myself, for the farthest
station: a lady neither young nor pretty, smok-
ing cigarettes, with a thin face, a cap on her
head, and wearing a semi-masculine outer gar-
ment; then her companion, a very loquacious
gentleman of about forty years, with baggage
entirely new and arranged in an orderly man-
ner; then a gentleman who held himself entire-
ly aloof, short in stature, very nervous, of un-
certain age, with bright eyes, not pronounced in
color, but extremely attractive,—eyes that dart-
ed with rapidity from one object to another.

This gentleman, during almost all the journey
thus far, had entered into conversation with no
fellow-traveller, as if he carefully avoided all

acquaintance. When spoken to, he answered
curtly and decisively, and began to look out of
the car window obstinately.

Yet it seemed to me that the solitude weighed
upon him. He seemed to perceive that I under-
stood this, and when our eyes met, as happened
frequently, since we were sitting almost opposite
each other, he turned away his head, and avoid-
ed conversation with me as much as with the
others. At nightfall, during a stop at a large
station, the gentleman with the fine baggage—
a lawyer, as I have since learned—got out with
his companion to drink some tea at the restaur-
ant. During their absence several new travel-
lers entered the car, among whom was a tall old
man, shaven and wrinkled, evidently a mer-
chant, wearing a large heavily-lined cloak and a
big cap. This merchant sat down opposite the
empty seats of the lawyer and his companion,
and straightway entered into conversation with
a young man who seemed like an employee in
some commercial house, and who had likewise
just boarded the train. At first the clerk had
remarked that the seat opposite was occupied,
and the old man had answered that he should

get out at the first station. Thus their con-
versation started.

I was sitting not far from these two travel-
lers, and, as the train was not in motion, I could
catch bits of their conversation when others
were not talking.

They talked first of the prices of goods and
the condition of business; they referred to a
person whom they both knew; then they
plunged into the fair at Nijni Novgorod. The
clerk boasted of knowing people who were lead-
ing a gay life there, but the old man did not
allow him to continue, and, interrupting him,
began to describe the festivities of the previous
year at Kounavino, in which he had taken part.

He was evidently proud of these recollections,
and, probably thinking that this would detract
nothing from the gravity which his face and
manners expressed, he related with pride how,
when drunk, he had fired, at Kounavino, such a
broadside that he could describe it only in the
other's ear.

The clerk began to laugh noisily. The old
man laughed too, showing two long yellow
teeth. Their conversation not interesting me,

I left the car to stretch my legs. At the door I
met the lawyer and his lady.

"You have no more time," the lawyer said to
me. "The second bell is about to ring."

Indeed I had scarcely reached the rear of the
train when the bell sounded. As I entered the
car again, the lawyer was talking with his com-
panion in an animated fashion. The merchant,
sitting opposite them, was taciturn.

"And then she squarely declared to her hus-
band," said the lawyer with a smile, as I passed
by them, "that she neither could nor would live
with him, because" . . .

And he continued, but I did not hear the rest
of the sentence, my attention being distracted by
the passing of the conductor and a new travel-
ler. When silence was restored, I again heard
the lawyer's voice. The conversation had
passed from a special case to general consid-
erations.

"And afterward comes discord, financial dif-
ficulties, disputes between the two parties, and
the couple separate. In the good old days that
seldom happened. Is it not so?" asked the law-

yer of the two merchants, evidently trying to
drag them into the conversation.

Just then the train started, and the old man,
without answering, took off his cap, and crossed
himself three times while muttering a prayer.

When he had finished, he clapped his cap far
down on his head, and said:

"Yes, sir, that happened in former times also,
but not as often. In the present day it is bound
to happen more frequently. People have become
too learned."

The lawyer made some reply to the old man,
but the train, ever increasing its speed, made
such a clatter upon the rails that I could no
longer hear distinctly. As I was interested in
what the old man was saying, I drew nearer.

My neighbor, the nervous gentleman, was evi-
dently interested also, and, without changing his
seat, he lent an ear.

"But what harm is there in education?" asked
the lady, with a smile that was scarcely percepti-
ble. "Would it be better to marry as in the old
days, when the bride and bridegroom did not
even see each other before marriage?" she con-
tinued, answering, as is the habit of our ladies,

not the words that her interlocutor had spoken,
but the words she believed he was going to
speak. "Women did not know whether they
would love or would be loved, and they were
married to the first comer, and suffered all their
lives. Then you think it was better so?" she
continued, evidently addressing the lawyer and
myself, and not at all the old man.

"People have become too learned," repeated
the last, looking at the lady with contempt, and
leaving her question unanswered.

"I should be curious to know how you explain
the correlation between education and conjugal
differences," said the lawyer, with a slight smile.

The merchant wanted to make some reply,
but the lady interrupted him.

"No, those days are past."

The lawyer cut short her words:—

"Let him express his thought."

"Because there is no more fear," replied the
old man.

"But how will you marry people who do not
love each other? Only animals can be coupled
at the will of a proprietor. But people have in-
clinations, attachments," the lady hastened to
say, casting a glance at the lawyer, at me, and

even at the clerk, who, standing up and leaning
his elbow on the back of a seat, was listening to
the conversation with a smile.

"You are wrong to say that, madam," said the
old man. "The animals are beasts, but man has
received the law."

"But, nevertheless, how is one to live with a
man when there is no love?" said the lady, evi-
dently excited by the general sympathy and at-
tention.

"Formerly no such distinctions were made,"
said the old man, gravely. "Only now have
they become a part of our habits. As soon as
the least thing happens, the wife says: 'I release
you. I am going to leave your house.' Even
among the moujiks this fashion has become ac-
climated. 'There,' she says, 'here are your
shirts and drawers. I am going off with Vanka.

His hair is curlier than yours.' Just go talk
with them. And yet the first rule for the wife
should be fear."

The clerk looked at the lawyer, the lady, and
myself, evidently repressing a smile, and all
ready to deride or approve the merchant's
words, according to the attitude of the others.

"What fear?" said the lady.

"This fear,—the wife must fear her husband;
that is what fear."

"Oh, that, my little father, that is ended."

"No, madam, that cannot end. As she, Eve,
the woman, was taken from man's ribs, so she
will remain unto the end of the world," said the
old man, shaking his head so triumphantly and
so severely that the clerk, deciding that the vic-
tory was on his side, burst into a loud laugh.

"Yes, you men think so," replied the lady,
without surrendering, and turning toward us.

"You have given yourself liberty. As for
woman, you wish to keep her in the seraglio.

To you, everything is permissible. Is it not so?"

"Oh, man,—that's another affair."

"Then, according to you, to man everything
is permissible?"

"No one gives him this permission; only, if
the man behaves badly outside, the family is not
increased thereby; but the woman, the wife, is a
fragile vessel," continued the merchant, se-
verely.

His tone of authority evidently subjugated
his hearers. Even the lady felt crushed, but she
did not surrender.

"Yes, but you will admit, I think, that woman
is a human being, and has feelings like her hus-
band. What should she do if she does not love
her husband?"

"If she does not love him!" repeated the old
man, stormily, and knitting his brows; "why,
she will be made to love him."

This unexpected argument pleased the clerk,
and he uttered a murmur of approbation.

"Oh, no, she will not be forced," said the
lady. "Where there is no love, one cannot be
obliged to love in spite of herself."

"And if the wife deceives her husband, what
is to be done?" said the lawyer.

"That should not happen," said the old man.

"He must have his eyes about him."

"And if it does happen, all the same? You
will admit that it does happen?"

"It happens among the upper classes, not
among us," answered the old man. "And if
any husband is found who is such a fool as not
to rule his wife, he will not have robbed her.

But no scandal, nevertheless. Love or not, but
do not disturb the household. Every husband
can govern his wife. He has the necessary

power. It is only the imbecile who does not
succeed in doing so."

Everybody was silent. The clerk moved, ad-
vanced, and, not wishing to lag behind the
others in the conversation, began with his eter-
nal smile:

"Yes, in the house of our employer, a scandal
has arisen, and it is very difficult to view the
matter clearly. The wife loved to amuse her-
self, and began to go astray. He is a capable
and serious man. First, it was with the book-
keeper. The husband tried to bring her back to
reason through kindness. She did not change
her conduct. She plunged into all sorts of
beastliness. She began to steal his money. He
beat her, but she grew worse and worse. To an
unbaptized, to a pagan, to a Jew (saving your
permission), she went in succession for her
caresses. What could the employer do? He
has dropped her entirely, and now he lives as a
bachelor. As for her, she is dragging in the
depths."

"He is an imbecile," said the old man. "If
from the first he had not allowed her to go
in her own fashion, and had kept a firm hand

upon her, she would be living honestly, no
danger. Liberty must be taken away from the
beginning. Do not trust yourself to your horse
upon the highway. Do not trust yourself to
your wife at home."

At that moment the conductor passed, asking
for the tickets for the next station. The old
man gave up his.

"Yes, the feminine sex must be dominated in
season, else all will perish."

"And you yourselves, at Kounavino, did you
not lead a gay life with the pretty girls?" asked
the lawyer with a smile.

"Oh, that's another matter," said the mer-
chant, severely. "Good-by," he added, rising.

He wrapped himself in his cloak, lifted his cap,
and, taking his bag, left the car.

2. CHAPTER II.

SCARCELY had the old man gone when a gen-
eral conversation began.

"There's a little Old Testament father for
you," said the clerk.

"He is a Domostroy,"* said the lady. "What
savage ideas about a woman and marriage!"

"Yes, gentlemen," said the lawyer, "we are
still a long way from the European ideas upon
marriage. First, the rights of woman, then
free marriage, then divorce, as a question not
yet solved." . . .

"The main thing, and the thing which such
people as he do not understand," rejoined the
lady, "is that only love consecrates marriage,
and that the real marriage is that which is con-
secrated by love."

The clerk listened and smiled, with the air of
one accustomed to store in his memory all in-
telligent conversation that he hears, in order to
make use of it afterwards.

"But what is this love that consecrates mar-
riage?" said, suddenly, the voice of the nervous
and taciturn gentleman, who, unnoticed by us,
had approached.

He was standing with his hand on the seat,
and evidently agitated. His face was red, a

vein in his forehead was swollen, and the mus-
cles of his cheeks quivered.

"What is this love that consecrates mar-
riage?" he repeated.

"What love?" said the lady. "The ordinary
love of husband and wife."

"And how, then, can ordinary love consecrate
marriage?" continued the nervous gentleman,
still excited, and with a displeased air. He
seemed to wish to say something disagreeable to
the lady. She felt it, and began to grow agi-
tated.

"How? Why, very simply," said she.

The nervous gentleman seized the word as it
left her lips.

"No, not simply."

"Madam says," interceded the lawyer indicat-
ing his companion, "that marriage should be
first the result of an attachment, of a love, if you
will, and that, when love exists, and in that case
only, marriage represents something sacred.

But every marriage which is not based on a nat-
ural attachment, on love, has in it nothing that
is morally obligatory. Is not that the idea that
you intended to convey?" he asked the lady.

The lady, with a nod of her head, expressed
her approval of this translation of her thoughts.

"Then," resumed the lawyer, continuing his
remarks.

But the nervous gentleman, evidently scarcely
able to contain himself, without allowing the
lawyer to finish, asked:

"Yes, sir. But what are we to understand by
this love that alone consecrates marriage?"

"Everybody knows what love is," said the
lady.

"But I don't know, and I should like to know
how you define it."

"How? It is very simple," said the lady.

And she seemed thoughtful, and then said:

"Love . . . love . . . is a preference for one
man or one woman to the exclusion of all
others. . . ."

"A preference for how long? . . . For a
month, two days, or half an hour?" said the
nervous gentleman, with special irritation.

"No, permit me, you evidently are not talking
of the same thing."

"Yes, I am talking absolutely of the same
thing. Of the preference for one man or one

woman to the exclusion of all others. But I
ask: a preference for how long?"

"For how long? For a long time, for a life-
time sometimes."

"But that happens only in novels. In life,
never. In life this preference for one to the
exclusion of all others lasts in rare cases several
years, oftener several months, or even weeks,
days, hours. . . ."

"Oh, sir. Oh, no, no, permit me," said all
three of us at the same time.

The clerk himself uttered a monosyllable of
disapproval.

"Yes, I know," he said, shouting louder than
all of us; "you are talking of what is believed to
exist, and I am talking of what is. Every man
feels what you call love toward each pretty
woman he sees, and very little toward his wife.

That is the origin of the proverb,—and it is a
true one,—'Another's wife is a white swan, and
ours is bitter wormwood."'

"Ah, but what you say is terrible! There
certainly exists among human beings this feel-
ing which is called love, and which lasts, not for
months and years, but for life."

"No, that does not exist. Even if it should
be admitted that Menelaus had preferred Helen
all his life, Helen would have preferred Paris;
and so it has been, is, and will be eternally.

And it cannot be otherwise, just as it cannot
happen that, in a load of chick-peas, two peas
marked with a special sign should fall side by
side. Further, this is not only an improbability,
but it is certain that a feeling of satiety will
come to Helen or to Menelaus. The whole dif-
ference is that to one it comes sooner, to the
other later. It is only in stupid novels that it is
written that 'they loved each other all their
lives.' And none but children can believe it.

To talk of loving a man or woman for life is
like saying that a candle can burn forever."

"But you are talking of physical love. Do
you not admit a love based upon a conformity
of ideals, on a spiritual affinity?"

"Why not? But in that case it is not neces-
sary to procreate together (excuse my brutal-
ity). The point is that this conformity of ideals
is not met among old people, but among young
and pretty persons," said he, and he began to
laugh disagreeably. "Yes, I affirm that love,

real love, does not consecrate marriage, as we
are in the habit of believing, but that, on the
contrary, it ruins it."

"Permit me," said the lawyer. "The facts
contradict your words. We see that marriage
exists, that all humanity—at least the larger
portion—lives conjugally, and that many hus-
bands and wives honestly end a long life to-
gether."

The nervous gentleman smiled ill-naturedly.

"And what then? You say that marriage is
based upon love, and when I give voice to a
doubt as to the existence of any other love than
sensual love, you prove to me the existence of
love by marriage. But in our day marriage is
only a violence and falsehood."

"No, pardon me," said the lawyer. "I say
only that marriages have existed and do exist."

"But how and why do they exist? They have
existed, and they do exist, for people who have
seen, and do see, in marriage something sacra-
mental, a sacrament that is binding before God.

For such people marriages exist, but to us they
are only hypocrisy and violence. We feel it,
and, to clear ourselves, we preach free love; but,

really, to preach free love is only a call back-
ward to the promiscuity of the sexes (excuse
me, he said to the lady), the haphazard sin of
certain
raskolniks
. The old foundation is shat-
tered; we must build a new one, but we must
not preach debauchery."

He grew so warm that all became silent, look-
ing at him in astonishment.

"And yet the transition state is terrible. Peo-
ple feel that haphazard sin is inadmissible. It is
necessary in some way or other to regulate the
sexual relations; but there exists no other foun-
dation than the old one, in which nobody longer
believes? People marry in the old fashion, with-
out believing in what they do, and the result is
falsehood, violence. When it is falsehood alone,
it is easily endured. The husband and wife
simply deceive the world by professing to live
monogamically. If they really are polygamous
and polyandrous, it is bad, but acceptable. But
when, as often happens, the husband and the
wife have taken upon themselves the obligation
to live together all their lives (they themselves
do not know why), and from the second month
have already a desire to separate, but continue

to live together just the same, then comes that
infernal existence in which they resort to drink,
in which they fire revolvers, in which they as-
sassinate each other, in which they poison each
other."

All were silent, but we felt ill at ease.

"Yes, these critical episodes happen in marital
life. For instance, there is the Posdnicheff af-
fair," said the lawyer, wishing to stop the con-
versation on this embarrassing and too exciting
ground. "Have you read how he killed his wife
through jealousy?"

The lady said that she had not read it. The
nervous gentleman said nothing, and changed
color.

"I see that you have divined who I am," said
he, suddenly, after a pause.

"No, I have not had that pleasure."

"It is no great pleasure. I am Posdnicheff."

New silence. He blushed, then turned pale
again.

"What matters it, however?" said he. "Ex-
cuse me, I do not wish to embarrass you."

And he resumed his old seat.

3. CHAPTER III.

I RESUMED mine, also. The lawyer and the
lady whispered together. I was sitting beside
Posdnicheff, and I maintained silence. I desired
to talk to him, but I did not know how to begin,
and thus an hour passed until we reached the
next station. There the lawyer and the lady
went out, as well as the clerk. We were left
alone, Posdnicheff and I.

"They say it, and they lie, or they do not
understand," said Posdnicheff.

"Of what are you talking?"

"Why, still the same thing."

He leaned his elbows upon his knees, and
pressed his hands against his temples.

"Love, marriage, family,—all lies, lies, lies."

He rose, lowered the lamp-shade, lay down
with his elbows on the cushion, and closed his
eyes. He remained thus for a minute.

"Is it disagreeable to you to remain with me,
now that you know who I am?"

"Oh, no."

"You have no desire to sleep?"

"Not at all."

"Then do you want me to tell you the story
of my life?"

Just then the conductor passed. He followed
him with an ill-natured look, and did not begin
until he had gone again. Then during all the
rest of the story he did not stop once. Even the
new travellers as they entered did not stop him.

His face, while he was talking, changed sev-
eral times so completely that it bore positively
no resemblance to itself as it had appeared just
before. His eyes, his mouth, his moustache, and
even his beard, all were new. Each time it was
a beautiful and touching physiognomy, and
these transformations were produced suddenly
in the penumbra; and for five minutes it was
the same face, that could not be compared to
that of five minutes before. And then, I know
not how, it changed again, and became unrecog-
nizable.

4. CHAPTER IV.

"WELL, I am going then to tell you my life,
and my whole frightful history,—yes, frightful.

And the story itself is more frightful than the
outcome."

He became silent for a moment, passed his
hands over his eyes, and began:—

"To be understood clearly, the whole must be
told from the beginning. It must be told how
and why I married, and what I was before my
marriage. First, I will tell you who I am. The
son of a rich gentleman of the steppes, an old
marshal of the nobility, I was a University pu-
pil, a graduate of the law school. I married in
my thirtieth year. But before talking to you of
my marriage, I must tell you how I lived for-
merly, and what ideas I had of conjugal life. I
led the life of so many other so-called respecta-
ble people,—that is, in debauchery. And like
the majority, while leading the life of a
dé-
bauché
, I was convinced that I was a man of
irreproachable morality.

"The idea that I had of my morality arose
from the fact that in my family there was no
knowledge of those special debaucheries, so
common in the surroundings of land-owners,
and also from the fact that my father and my
mother did not deceive each other. In conse-

quence of this, I had built from childhood a
dream of high and poetical conjugal life. My
wife was to be perfection itself, our mutual love
was to be incomparable, the purity of our con-
jugal life stainless. I thought thus, and all the
time I marvelled at the nobility of my projects.

"At the same time, I passed ten years of my
adult life without hurrying toward marriage,
and I led what I called the well-regulated and
reasonable life of a bachelor. I was proud of
it before my friends, and before all men of my
age who abandoned themselves to all sorts of
special refinements. I was not a seducer, I had
no unnatural tastes, I did not make debauchery
the principal object of my life; but I found
pleasure within the limits of society's rules, and
innocently believed myself a profoundly moral
being. The women with whom I had relations
did not belong to me alone, and I asked of them
nothing but the pleasure of the moment.

"In all this I saw nothing abnormal. On the
contrary, from the fact that I did not engage my
heart, but paid in cash, I supposed that I was
honest. I avoided those women who, by attach-
ing themselves to me, or presenting me with a

child, could bind my future. Moreover, per-
haps there may have been children or attach-
ments; but I so arranged matters that I could
not become aware of them.

"And living thus, I considered myself a per-
fectly honest man. I did not understand that
debauchery does not consist simply in physical
acts, that no matter what physical ignominy does
not yet constitute debauchery, and that real
debauchery consists in freedom from the moral
bonds toward a woman with whom one enters
into carnal relations, and I regarded
this free-
dom
as a merit. I remember that I once tor-
tured myself exceedingly for having forgotten
to pay a woman who probably had given herself
to me through love. I only became tranquil
again when, having sent her the money, I had
thus shown her that I did not consider myself as
in any way bound to her. Oh, do not shake
your head as if you were in agreement with me
(he cried suddenly with vehemence). I know
these tricks. All of you, and you especially, if
you are not a rare exception, have the same
ideas that I had then. If you are in agreement
with me, it is now only. Formerly you did not

think so. No more did I; and, if I had been
told what I have just told you, that which has
happened would not have happened. However,
it is all the same. Excuse me (he continued):
the truth is that it is frightful, frightful, fright-
ful, this abyss of errors and debaucheries in
which we live face to face with the real question
of the rights of woman." . . .

"What do you mean by the 'real' question of
the rights of woman?"

"The question of the nature of this special
being, organized otherwise than man, and how
this being and man ought to view the wife. . . .

5. CHAPTER V.

"YES: for ten years I lived the most revolt-
ing existence, while dreaming of the noblest
love, and even in the name of that love. Yes, I
want to tell you how I killed my wife, and for
that I must tell you how I debauched myself. I
killed her before I knew her. I killed
the
wife
when I first tasted sensual joys without love,
and then it was that I killed
my
wife. Yes, sir:

it is only after having suffered, after having
tortured myself, that I have come to understand
the root of things, that I have come to under-
stand my crimes. Thus you will see where and
how began the drama that has led me to mis-
fortune.

"It is necessary to go back to my sixteenth
year, when I was still at school, and my elder
brother a first-year student. I had not yet
known women but, like all the unfortunate chil-
dren of our society, I was already no longer
innocent. I was tortured, as you were, I am
sure, and as are tortured ninety-nine one-hun-
dredths of our boys. I lived in a frightful
dread, I prayed to God, and I prostrated myself.

"I was already perverted in imagination, but
the last steps remained to be taken. I could
still escape, when a friend of my brother, a very
gay student, one of those who are called good
fellows,—that is, the greatest of scamps,—and
who had taught us to drink and play cards, took
advantage of a night of intoxication to drag us
THERE. We started. My brother, as innocent
as I, fell that night, and I, a mere lad of sixteen,
polluted myself and helped to pollute a sister-

woman, without understanding what I did.

Never had I heard from my elders that what I
thus did was bad. It is true that there are the
ten commandments of the Bible; but the com-
mandments are made only to be recited before
the priests at examinations, and even then are
not as exacting as the commandments in regard
to the use of
ut
in conditional propositions.

"Thus, from my elders, whose opinion I
esteemed, I had never heard that this was rep-
rehensible. On the contrary, I had heard people
whom I respected say that it was good. I had
heard that my struggles and my sufferings
would be appeased after this act. I had heard
it and read it. I had heard from my elders that
it was excellent for the health, and my friends
have always seemed to believe that it contained
I know not what merit and valor. So nothing is
seen in it but what is praiseworthy. As for the
danger of disease, it is a foreseen danger. Does
not the government guard against it? And even
science corrupts us."

"How so, science?" I asked.

"Why, the doctors, the pontiffs of science.

Who pervert young people by laying down such

rules of hygiene? Who pervert women by de-
vising and teaching them ways by which not to
have children?

"Yes: if only a hundredth of the efforts spent
in curing diseases were spent in curing debauch-
ery, disease would long ago have ceased to exist,
whereas now all efforts are employed, not in ex-
tirpating debauchery, but in favoring it, by as-
suring the harmlessness of the consequences.

Besides, it is not a question of that. It is a
question of this frightful thing that has hap-
pened to me, as it happens to nine-tenths, if not
more, not only of the men of our society, but of
all societies, even peasants,—this frightful thing
that I had fallen, and not because I was sub-
jected to the natural seduction of a certain
woman. No, no woman seduced me. I fell be-
cause the surroundings in which I found myself
saw in this degrading thing only a legitimate
function, useful to the health; because others
saw in it simply a natural amusement, not only
excusable, but even innocent in a young man.

I did not understand that it was a fall, and I
began to give myself to those pleasures (partly
from desire and partly from necessity) which

I was led to believe were characteristic of my
age, just as I had begun to drink and smoke.

"And yet there was in this first fall something
peculiar and touching. I remember that straight-
way I was filled with such a profound sadness
that I had a desire to weep, to weep over the
loss forever of my relations with woman. Yes,
my relations with woman were lost forever.

Pure relations with women, from that time for-
ward, I could no longer have. I had become
what is called a voluptuary; and to be a volup-
tuary is a physical condition like the condition
of a victim of the morphine habit, of a drunk-
ard, and of a smoker.

"Just as the victim of the morphine habit, the
drunkard, the smoker, is no longer a normal
man, so the man who has known several women
for his pleasure is no longer normal? He is ab-
normal forever. He is a voluptuary. Just as
the drunkard and the victim of the morphine
habit may be recognized by their face and man-
ner, so we may recognize a voluptuary. He may
repress himself and struggle, but nevermore will
he enjoy simple, pure, and fraternal relations
toward woman. By his way of glancing at a

young woman one may at once recognize a
voluptuary; and I became a voluptuary, and I
have remained one.

6. CHAPTER VI.

"YES, so it is; and that went farther and
farther with all sorts of variations. My God!
when I remember all my cowardly acts and bad
deeds, I am frightened. And I remember that
'me' who, during that period, was still the butt
of his comrades' ridicule on account of his inno-
cence.

"And when I hear people talk of the gilded
youth, of the officers, of the Parisians, and all
these gentlemen, and myself, living wild lives at
the age of thirty, and who have on our con-
sciences hundreds of crimes toward women, ter-
rible and varied, when we enter a parlor or
a ball-room, washed, shaven, and perfumed, with
very white linen, in dress coats or in uniform,
as emblems of purity, oh, the disgust! There
will surely come a time, an epoch, when all these
lives and all this cowardice will be unveiled!

"So, nevertheless, I lived, until the age of

thirty, without abandoning for a minute my in-
tention of marrying, and building an elevated
conjugal life; and with this in view I watched
all young girls who might suit me. I was buried
in rottenness, and at the same time I looked for
virgins, whose purity was worthy of me! Many
of them were rejected: they did not seem to me
pure enough!

"Finally I found one that I considered on a
level with myself. She was one of two daugh-
ters of a landed proprietor of Penza, formerly
very rich and since ruined. To tell the truth,
without false modesty, they pursued me and
finally captured me. The mother (the father
was away) laid all sorts of traps, and one of
these, a trip in a boat, decided my future.

"I made up my mind at the end of the afore-
said trip one night, by moonlight, on our way
home, while I was sitting beside her. I admired
her slender body, whose charming shape was
moulded by a jersey, and her curling hair, and I
suddenly concluded that
this was she
. It seemed
to me on that beautiful evening that she under-
stood all that I thought and felt, and I thought
and felt the most elevating things.

"Really, it was only the jersey that was so be-
coming to her, and her curly hair, and also the
fact that I had spent the day beside her, and that
I desired a more intimate relation.

"I returned home enthusiastic, and I persuad-
ed myself that she realized the highest perfec-
tion, and that for that reason she was worthy to
be my wife, and the next day I made to her a
proposal of marriage.

"No, say what you will, we live in such an
abyss of falsehood, that, unless some event
strikes us a blow on the head, as in my case, we
cannot awaken. What confusion! Out of the
thousands of men who marry, not only among
us, but also among the people, scarcely will you
find a single one who has not previously married
at least ten times. (It is true that there now
exist, at least so I have heard, pure young peo-
ple who feel and know that this is not a joke,
but a serious matter. May God come to their
aid! But in my time there was not to be found
one such in a thousand.)

"And all know it, and pretend not to know it.

In all the novels are described down to the
smallest details the feelings of the characters,

the lakes and brambles around which they walk;
but, when it comes to describing their
great

love, not a word is breathed of what
He
, the in-
teresting character, has previously done, not a
word about his frequenting of disreputable
houses, or his association with nursery-maids,
cooks, and the wives of others.

"And if anything is said of these things, such

improper
novels are not allowed in the hands of
young girls. All men have the air of believing,
in presence of maidens, that these corrupt pleas-
ures, in which
everybody
takes part, do not ex-
ist, or exist only to a very small extent. They
pretend it so carefully that they succeed in con-
vincing themselves of it. As for the poor young
girls, they believe it quite seriously, just as my
poor wife believed it.

"I remember that, being already engaged, I
showed her my 'memoirs,' from which she could
learn more or less of my past, and especially my
last
liaison
, which she might perhaps have dis-
covered through the gossip of some third party.

It was for this last reason, for that matter, that
I felt the necessity of communicating these me-
moirs to her. I can still see her fright, her de-

spair, her bewilderment, when she had learned
and understood it. She was on the point of
breaking the engagement. What a lucky thing
it would have been for both of us!"

Posdnicheff was silent for a moment, and
then resumed:—

"After all, no! It is better that things hap-
pened as they did, better!" he cried. "It was a
good thing for me. Besides, it makes no differ-
ence. I was saying that in these cases it is the
poor young girls who are deceived. As for the
mothers, the mothers especially, informed by
their husbands, they know all, and, while pre-
tending to believe in the purity of the young
man, they act as if they did not believe in it.

"They know what bait must be held out to
people for themselves and their daughters. We
men sin through ignorance, and a determination
not to learn. As for the women, they know very
well that the noblest and most poetic love, as we
call it, depends, not on moral qualities, but on
the physical intimacy, and also on the manner
of doing the hair, and the color and shape.

"Ask an experienced coquette, who has under-
taken to seduce a man, which she would prefer,

—to be convicted, in presence of the man whom
she is engaged in conquering, of falsehood, per-
versity, cruelty, or to appear before him in an
ill-fitting dress, or a dress of an unbecoming
color. She will prefer the first alternative. She
knows very well that we simply lie when we talk
of our elevated sentiments, that we seek only the
possession of her body, and that because of that
we will forgive her every sort of baseness, but
will not forgive her a costume of an ugly shade,
without taste or fit.

"And these things she knows by reason,
where as the maiden knows them only by in-
stinct, like the animal. Hence these abominable
jerseys, these artificial humps on the back, these
bare shoulders, arms, and throats.

"Women, especially those who have passed
through the school of marriage, know very well
that conversations upon elevated subjects are
only conversations, and that man seeks and de-
sires the body and all that ornaments the body.

Consequently, they act accordingly? If we re-
ject conventional explanations, and view the life
of our upper and lower classes as it is, with all
its shamelessness, it is only a vast perversity.

You do not share this opinion? Permit me, I
am going to prove it to you (said he, interrupt-
ing me).

"You say that the women of our society live
for a different interest from that which actuates
fallen women. And I say no, and I am going
to prove it to you. If beings differ from one
another according to the purpose of their life,
according to their
inner life
, this will necessarily
be reflected also in their
outer life
, and their ex-
terior will be very different. Well, then, com-
pare the wretched, the despised, with the women
of the highest society: the same dresses, the
same fashions, the same perfumeries, the same
passion for jewelry, for brilliant and very ex-
pensive articles, the same amusements, dances,
music, and songs. The former attract by all
possible means; so do the latter. No difference,
none whatever!

"Yes, and I, too, was captivated by jerseys,
bustles, and curly hair.

7. CHAPTER VII.

"AND it was very easy to capture me, since
I was brought up under artificial conditions, like
cucumbers in a hothouse. Our too abundant
nourishment, together with complete physical
idleness, is nothing but systematic excitement of
the imagination. The men of our society are
fed and kept like reproductive stallions. It is
sufficient to close the valve,—that is, for a young
man to live a quiet life for some time,—to pro-
duce as an immediate result a restlessness,
which, becoming exaggerated by reflection
through the prism of our unnatural life, pro-
vokes the illusion of love.

"All our idyls and marriage, all, are the result
for the most part of our eating. Does that
astonish you? For my part, I am astonished
that we do not see it. Not far from my estate
this spring some moujiks were working on a
railway embankment. You know what a peas-
ant's food is,—bread,
kvass,* onions. With this

frugal nourishment he lives, he is alert, he
makes light work in the fields. But on the rail-
way this bill of fare becomes
cacha
and a pound
of meat. Only he restores this meat by sixteen
hours of labor pushing loads weighing twelve
hundred pounds.

"And we, who eat two pounds of meat and
game, we who absorb all sorts of heating drinks
and food, how do we expend it? In sensual ex-
cesses. If the valve is open, all goes well; but
close it, as I had closed it temporarily before my
marriage, and immediately there will result an
excitement which, deformed by novels, verses,
music, by our idle and luxurious life, will give a
love of the finest water. I, too, fell in love, as
everybody does, and there were transports, emo-
tions, poesy; but really all this passion was pre-
pared by mamma and the dressmakers. If there
had been no trips in boats, no well-fitted gar-
ments, etc., if my wife had worn some shapeless
blouse, and I had seen her thus at her home,

I should not have been seduced.

8. CHAPTER VIII.

"AND note, also, this falsehood, of which all
are guilty; the way in which marriages are
made. What could there be more natural? The
young girl is marriageable, she should marry.

What simpler, provided the young person is not
a monster, and men can be found with a desire
to marry? Well, no, here begins a new hypoc-
risy.

"Formerly, when the maiden arrived at a
favorable age, her marriage was arranged by
her parents. That was done, that is done
still, throughout humanity, among the Chinese,
the Hindoos, the Mussulmans, and among our
common people also. Things are so managed in
at least ninety-nine per cent. of the families of
the entire human race.

"Only we riotous livers have imagined that
this way was bad, and have invented another.

And this other,—what is it? It is this. The
young girls are seated, and the gentlemen walk
up and down before them, as in a bazaar, and
make their choice. The maidens wait and think,

but do not dare to say: 'Take me, young man,
me and not her. Look at these shoulders and
the rest.' We males walk up and down, and
estimate the merchandise, and then we discourse
upon the rights of woman, upon the liberty that
she acquires, I know not how, in the theatrical
halls."

"But what is to be done?" said I to him.

"Shall the woman make the advances?"

"I do not know. But, if it is a question of
equality, let the equality be complete. Though
it has been found that to contract marriages
through the agency of match-makers is humi-
liating, it is nevertheless a thousand times prefer-
able to our system. There the rights and the
chances are equal; here the woman is a slave,
exhibited in the market. But as she cannot bend
to her condition, or make advances herself, there
begins that other and more abominable lie which
is sometimes called
going into society, some-
times
amusing one's self
, and which is really
nothing but the hunt for a husband.

"But say to a mother or to her daughter that
they are engaged only in a hunt for a husband.

God! What an offence! Yet they can do noth-

ing else, and have nothing else to do; and the
terrible feature of it all is to see sometimes very
young, poor, and innocent maidens haunted
solely by such ideas. If only, I repeat, it were
done frankly; but it is always accompanied with
lies and babble of this sort:—

"'Ah, the descent of species! How interest-
ing it is!'

"'Oh, Lily is much interested in painting.'

"'Shall you go to the Exposition? How
charming it is!'

"'And the troika, and the plays, and the sym-
phony. Ah, how adorable!'

"'My Lise is passionately fond of music.'

"'And you, why do you not share these con-
victions?'

"And through all this verbiage, all have but
one single idea: 'Take me, take my Lise. No,
me! Only try!"'

9. CHAPTER IX.

"DO YOU know," suddenly continued Posd-
nicheff, "that this power of women from which

the world suffers arises solely from what I have
just spoken of?"

"What do you mean by the power of wom-
en?" I said. "Everybody, on the contrary, com-
plains that women have not sufficient rights, that
they are in subjection."

"That's it; that's it exactly," said he, viva-
ciously. "That is just what I mean, and that is
the explanation of this extraordinary phenom-
enon, that on the one hand woman is reduced to
the lowest degree of humiliation and on the
other hand she reigns over everything. See the
Jews: with their power of money, they avenge
their subjection, just as the women do. 'Ah!
you wish us to be only merchants? All right;
remaining merchants, we will get possession of
you,' say the Jews. 'Ah! you wish us to be only
objects of sensuality? All right; by the aid of
sensuality we will bend you beneath our yoke,'
say the women.

"The absence of the rights of woman does not
consist in the fact that she has not the right to
vote, or the right to sit on the bench, but in the
fact that in her affectional relations she is not
the equal of man, she has not the right to ab-

stain, to choose instead of being chosen. You
say that that would be abnormal. Very well!

But then do not let man enjoy these rights, while
his companion is deprived of them, and finds
herself obliged to make use of the coquetry by
which she governs, so that the result is that man
chooses 'formally,' whereas really it is woman
who chooses. As soon as she is in possession of
her means, she abuses them, and acquires a ter-
rible supremacy."

"But where do you see this exceptional
power?"

"Where? Why, everywhere, in everything.

Go see the stores in the large cities. There are
millions there, millions. It is impossible to esti-
mate the enormous quantity of labor that is ex-
pended there. In nine-tenths of these stores is
there anything whatever for the use of men?

All the luxury of life is demanded and sustained
by woman. Count the factories; the greater
part of them are engaged in making feminine
ornaments. Millions of men, generations of
slaves, die toiling like convicts simply to satisfy
the whims of our companions.

"Women, like queens, keep nine-tenths of the

human race as prisoners of war, or as prisoners
at hard labor. And all this because they have
been humiliated, because they have been de-
prived of rights equal to those which men enjoy.

They take revenge for our sensuality; they catch
us in their nets.

"Yes, the whole thing is there. Women have
made of themselves such a weapon to act upon
the senses that a young man, and even an old
man, cannot remain tranquil in their presence.

Watch a popular festival, or our receptions or
ball-rooms. Woman well knows her influence
there. You will see it in her triumphant smiles.

"As soon as a young man advances toward a
woman, directly he falls under the influence of
this opium, and loses his head. Long ago I felt
ill at ease when I saw a woman too well adorned,
—whether a woman of the people with her red
neckerchief and her looped skirt, or a woman of
our own society in her ball-room dress. But now
it simply terrifies me. I see in it a danger to
men, something contrary to the laws; and I feel
a desire to call a policeman, to appeal for de-
fence from some quarter, to demand that this
dangerous object be removed.

"And this is not a joke, by any means. I am
convinced, I am sure, that the time will come—
and perhaps it is not far distant—when the
world will understand this, and will be aston-
ished that a society could exist in which actions
as harmful as those which appeal to sensuality
by adorning the body as our companions do
were allowed. As well set traps along our pub-
lic streets, or worse than that.

10. CHAPTER X.

"THAT, then, was the way in which I was
captured. I was in love, as it is called; not only
did she appear to me a perfect being, but I con-
sidered myself a white blackbird. It is a com-
monplace fact that there is no one so low in the
world that he cannot find some one viler than
himself, and consequently puff with pride and
self-contentment. I was in that situation. I did
not marry for money. Interest was foreign to
the affair, unlike the marriages of most of my
acquaintances, who married either for money or
for relations. First, I was rich, she was poor.

Second, I was especially proud of the fact that,
while others married with an intention of con-
tinuing their polygamic life as bachelors, it was
my firm intention to live monogamically after
my engagement and the wedding, and my pride
swelled immeasurably.

"Yes, I was a wretch, convinced that I was
an angel. The period of my engagement did not
last long. I cannot remember those days with-
out shame. What an abomination!

"It is generally agreed that love is a moral
sentiment, a community of thought rather than
of sense. If that is the case, this community of
thought ought to find expression in words and
conversation. Nothing of the sort. It was ex-
tremely difficult for us to talk with each other.

What a toil of Sisyphus was our conversation!

Scarcely had we thought of something to say,
and said it, when we had to r
sum our silence
and try to discover new subjects. Literally, we
did not know what to say to each other. All
that we could think of concerning the life that
was before us and our home was said.

"And then what? If we had been animals,
we should have known that we had not to talk.

But here, on the contrary, it was necessary to
talk, and there were no resources! For that
which occupied our minds was not a thing to be
expressed in words.

"And then that silly custom of eating bon-
bons, that brutal gluttony for sweetmeats, those
abominable preparations for the wedding, those
discussions with mamma upon the apartments,
upon the sleeping-rooms, upon the bedding,
upon the morning-gowns, upon the wrappers,
the linen, the costumes! Understand that if
people married according to the old fashion, as
this old man said just now, then these eider-
down coverlets and this bedding would all be
sacred details; but with us, out of ten married
people there is scarcely to be found one who, I
do not say believes in sacraments (whether he
believes or not is a matter of indifference to us),
but believes in what he promises. Out of a
hundred men, there is scarcely one who has not
married before, and out of fifty scarcely one
who has not made up his mind to deceive his
wife.

"The great majority look upon this journey
to the church as a condition necessary to the

possession of a certain woman. Think then of
the supreme significance which material details
must take on. Is it not a sort of sale, in which
a maiden is given over to a
débauché, the sale
being surrounded with the most agreeable de-
tails?

11. CHAPTER XI.

"ALL marry in this way. And I did like the
rest. If the young people who dream of the
honeymoon only knew what a disillusion it is,
and always a disillusion! I really do not know
why all think it necessary to conceal it.

"One day I was walking among the shows in
Paris, when, attracted by a sign, I entered an
establishment to see a bearded woman and a
water-dog. The woman was a man in disguise,
and the dog was an ordinary dog, covered with
a sealskin, and swimming in a bath. It was not
in the least interesting, but the Barnum accom-
panied me to the exit very courteously, and, in
addressing the people who were coming in, made
an appeal to my testimony. 'Ask the gentleman
if it is not worth seeing! Come in, come in! It

only costs a franc!' And in my confusion I did
not dare to answer that there was nothing curi-
ous to be seen, and it was upon my false shame
that the Barnum must have counted.

"It must be the same with the persons who
have passed through the abominations of the
honeymoon. They do not dare to undeceive
their neighbor. And I did the same.

"The felicities of the honeymoon do not exist.

On the contrary, it is a period of uneasiness, of
shame, of pity, and, above all, of
ennui
,—of
ferocious
ennui
. It is something like the feeling
of a youth when he is beginning to smoke. He
desires to vomit; he drivels, and swallows his
drivel, pretending to enjoy this little amusement.

The vice of marriage" . . .

"What! Vice?" I said. "But you are talk-
ing of one of the most natural things."

"Natural!" said he. "Natural! No, I con-
sider on the contrary that it is against nature,
and it is I, a perverted man, who have reached
this conviction. What would it be, then, if I had
not known corruption? To a young girl, to
every unperverted young girl, it is an act ex-
tremely unnatural, just as it is to children. My

sister married, when very young, a man twice
her own age, and who was utterly corrupt. I
remember how astonished we were the night of
her wedding, when, pale and covered with tears,
she fled from her husband, her whole body
trembling, saying that for nothing in the world
would she tell what he wanted of her.

"You say natural? It is natural to eat; that
is a pleasant, agreeable function, which no one
is ashamed to perform from the time of his
birth. No, it is not natural. A pure young girl
wants one thing,—children. Children, yes, not
a lover." . . .

"But," said I, with astonishment, "how would
the human race continue?"

"But what is the use of its continuing?" he
rejoined, vehemently.

"What! What is the use ? But then we
should not exist."

"And why is it necessary that we should
exist?"

"Why, to live, to be sure."

"And why live? The Schopenhauers, the
Hartmanns, and all the Buddhists, say that the
greatest happiness is Nirvana, Non-Life; and

they are right in this sense,—that human happi-
ness is coincident with the annihilation of 'Self.'

Only they do not express themselves well. They
say that Humanity should annihilate itself to
avoid its sufferings, that its object should be to
destroy itself. Now the object of Humanity
cannot be to avoid sufferings by annihilation,
since suffering is the result of activity. The
object of activity cannot consist in suppressing
its consequences. The object of Man, as of Hu-
manity, is happiness, and, to attain it, Humanity
has a law which it must carry out. This law
consists in the union of beings. This union is
thwarted by the passions. And that is why, if
the passions disappear, the union will be accom-
plished. Humanity then will have carried out
the law, and will have no further reason to
exist."

"And before Humanity carries out the law?"

"In the meantime it will have the sign of the
unfulfilled law, and the existence of physical
love. As long as this love shall exist, and be-
cause of it, generations will be born, one of
which will finally fulfil the law. When at last
the law shall be fulfilled, the Human Race will

be annihilated. At least it is impossible for us
to conceive of Life in the perfect union of peo-
ple."

12. CHAPTER XII

"STRANGE theory!" cried I.

"Strange in what? According to all the doc-
trines of the Church, the world will have an end.

Science teaches the same fatal conclusions.

Why, then, is it strange that the same thing
should result from moral Doctrine? 'Let those
who can, contain,' said Christ. And I take this
passage literally, as it is written. That moral-
ity may exist between people in their worldly re-
lations, they must make complete chastity their
object. In tending toward this end, man humili-
ates himself. When he shall reach the last de-
gree of humiliation, we shall have moral mar-
riage.

"But if man, as in our society, tends only
toward physical love, though he may clothe it
with pretexts and the false forms of marriage,
he will have only permissible debauchery, he
will know only the same immoral life in which I

fell and caused my wife to fall, a life which we
call the honest life of the family. Think what a
perversion of ideas must arise when the happiest
situation of man, liberty, chastity, is looked upon
as something wretched and ridiculous. The
highest ideal, the best situation of woman, to be
pure, to be a vestal, a virgin, excites fear and
laughter in our society. How many, how many
young girls sacrifice their purity to this Moloch
of opinion by marrying rascals that they may
not remain virgins,—that is, superiors!

Through fear of finding themselves in that ideal
state, they ruin themselves.

"But I did not understand formerly, I did not
understand that the words of the Gospel, that
'he who looks upon a woman to lust after her
has already committed adultery,' do not apply
to the wives of others, but notably and especially
to our own wives. I did not understand this,
and I thought that the honeymoon and all of my
acts during that period were virtuous, and that
to satisfy one's desires with his wife is an emi-
nently chaste thing. Know, then, that I con-
sider these departures, these isolations, which
young married couples arrange with the per-

mission of their parents, as nothing else than a
license to engage in debauchery.

"I saw, then, in this nothing bad or shameful,
and, hoping for great joys, I began to live the
honeymoon. And very certainly none of these
joys followed. But I had faith, and was deter-
mined to have them, cost what they might. But
the more I tried to secure them, the less I suc-
ceeded. All this time I felt anxious, ashamed,
and weary. Soon I began to suffer. I believe
that on the third or fourth day I found my wife
sad and asked her the reason. I began to em-
brace her, which in my opinion was all that she
could desire. She put me away with her hand,
and began to weep.

"At what? She could not tell me. She was
filled with sorrow, with anguish. Probably her
tortured nerves had suggested to her the truth
about the baseness of our relations, but she
found no words in which to say it. I began to
question her; she answered that she missed her
absent mother. It seemed to me that she was
not telling the truth. I sought to console her by
maintaining silence in regard to her parents. I
did not imagine that she felt herself simply over-

whelmed, and that her parents had nothing to do
with her sorrow. She did not listen to me, and
I accused her of caprice. I began to laugh at
her gently. She dried her tears, and began to
reproach me, in hard and wounding terms, for
my selfishness and cruelty.

"I looked at her. Her whole face expressed
hatred, and hatred of me. I cannot describe to
you the fright which this sight gave me. 'How?
What?' thought I, 'love is the unity of souls,
and here she hates me? Me? Why? But it is
impossible! It is no longexr she!'

"I tried to calm her. I came in conflict with
an immovable and cold hostility, so that, having
no time to reflect, I was seized with keen irrita-
tion. We exchanged disagreeable remarks. The
impression of this first quarrel was terrible. I
say quarrel, but the term is inexact. It was the
sudden discovery of the abyss that had been dug
between us. Love was exhausted with the satis-
faction of sensuality. We stood face to face in
our true light, like two egoists trying to procure
the greatest possible enjoyment, like two indi-
viduals trying to mutually exploit each other.

"So what I called our quarrel was our actual

situation as it appeared after the satisfaction of
sensual desire. I did not realize that this cold
hostility was our normal state, and that this first
quarrel would soon be drowned under a new
flood of the intensest sensuality. I thought that
we had disputed with each other, and had be-
come reconciled, and that it would not happen
again. But in this same honeymoon there came
a period of satiety, in which we ceased to be
necessary to each other, and a new quarrel broke
out.

"It became evident that the first was not a
matter of chance. 'It was inevitable,' I thought.

This second quarrel stupefied me the more, be-
cause it was based on an extremely unjust cause.

It was something like a question of money,—
and never had I haggled on that score; it was
even impossible that I should do so in relation to
her. I only remember that, in answer to some
remark that I made, she insinuated that it was
my intention to rule her by means of money, and
that it was upon money that I based my sole
right over her. In short, something extraordi-
narily stupid and base, which was neither in my
character nor in hers.

"I was beside myself. I accused her of indeli-
cacy. She made the same accusation against
me, and the dispute broke out. In her words,
in the expression of her face, of her eyes, I
noticed again the hatred that had so astonished
me before. With a brother, friends, my father,
I had occasionally quarrelled, but never had
there been between us this fierce spite. Some
time passed. Our mutual hatred was again con-
cealed beneath an access of sensual desire, and
I again consoled myself with the reflection that
these scenes were reparable faults.

"But when they were repeated a third and a
fourth time, I understood that they were not
simply faults, but a fatality that must happen
again. I was no longer frightened, I was simply
astonished that I should be precisely the one to
live so uncomfortably with my wife, and that the
same thing did not happen in other households.

I did not know that in all households the same
sudden changes take place, but that all, like my-
self, imagine that it is a misfortune exclusively
reserved for themselves alone, which they care-
fully conceal as shameful, not only to others, but
to themselves, like a bad disease.

"That was what happened to me. Begun in
the early days, it continued and increased with
characteristics of fury that were ever more pro-
nounced. At the bottom of my soul, from the
first weeks, I felt that I was in a trap, that I had
what I did not expect, and that marriage is not
a joy, but a painful trial. Like everybody else,
I refused to confess it (I should not have con-
fessed it even now but for the outcome). Now I
am astonished to think that I did not see my real
situation. It was so easy to perceive it, in
view of those quarrels, begun for reasons so
trivial that afterwards one could not recall them.

"Just as it often happens among gay young
people that, in the absence of jokes, they laugh
at their own laughter, so we found no reasons
for our hatred, and we hated each other because
hatred was naturally boiling up in us. More
extraordinary still was the absence of causes for
reconciliation.

"Sometimes words, explanations, or even
tears, but sometimes, I remember, after insult-
ing words, there tacitly followed embraces and
declarations. Abomination! Why is it that I
did not then perceive this baseness?

13. CHAPTER XIII.

"ALL of us, men and women, are brought up
in these aberrations of feeling that we call love.

I from childhood had prepared myself for this
thing, and I loved, and I loved during all my
youth, and I was joyous in loving. It had been
put into my head that it was the noblest and
highest occupation in the world. But when this
expected feeling came at last, and I, a man,
abandoned myself to it, the lie was pierced
through and through. Theoretically a lofty love
is conceivable; practically it is an ignoble and
degrading thing, which it is equally disgusting
to talk about and to remember. It is not in vain
that nature has made ceremonies, but people pre-
tend that the ignoble and the shameful is beauti-
ful and lofty.

"I will tell you brutally and briefly what were
the first signs of my love. I abandoned myself
to beastly excesses, not only not ashamed of
them, but proud of them, giving no thought to
the intellectual life of my wife. And not only
did I not think of her intellectual life, I did not

even consider her physical life. I was aston-
ished at the origin of our hostility, and yet how
clear it was! This hostility is nothing but a
protest of human nature against the beast that
enslaves it. It could not be otherwise. This
hatred was the hatred of accomplices in a crime.

Was it not a crime that, this poor woman having
become pregnant in the first month, our
liaison should have continued just the same?

"You imagine that I am wandering from my
story. Not at all. I am always giving you an
account of the events that led to the murder of
my wife. The imbeciles! They think that I
killed my wife on the 5th of October. It was
long before that that I immolated her, just as
they all kill now. Understand well that in our
society there is an idea shared by all that woman
procures man pleasure (and
vice versa
, proba-
bly, but I know nothing of that, I only know my
own case).
Wein, Weiber und Gesang.
So say
the poets in their verses: Wine, women, and
song!

"If it were only that! Take all the poetry, the
painting, the sculpture, beginning with Pousch-
kine's 'Little Feet,' with 'Venus and Phryne,'

and you will see that woman is only a means of
enjoyment. That is what she is at Trouba, * at
Gratchevka, and in a court ball-room. And
think of this diabolical trick: if she were a thing
without moral value, it might be said that wom-
an is a fine morsel; but, in the first place, these
knights assure us that they adore woman (they
adore her and look upon her, however, as a
means of enjoyment), then all assure us that
they esteem woman. Some give up their seats
to her, pick up her handkerchief; others recog-
nize in her a right to fill all offices, participate in
government, etc., but, in spite of all that, the
essential point remains the same. She is, she re-
mains, an object of sensual desire, and she
knows it. It is slavery, for slavery is nothing
else than the utilization of the labor of some for
the enjoyment of others. That slavery may not
exist people must refuse to enjoy the labor of
others, and look upon it as a shameful act and
as a sin.

"Actually, this is what happens. They abol-
ish the external form, they suppress the formal

sales of slaves, and then they imagine and as-
sure others that slavery is abolished. They are
unwilling to see that it still exists, since people,
as before, like to profit by the labor of others,
and think it good and just. This being given,
there will always be found beings stronger or
more cunning than others to profit thereby. The
same thing happens in the emancipation of
woman. At bottom feminine servitude consists
entirely in her assimilation with a means of
pleasure. They excite woman, they give her all
sorts of rights equal to those of men, but they
continue to look upon her as an object of sensual
desire, and thus they bring her up from infancy
and in public opinion.

"She is always the humiliated and corrupt
serf, and man remains always the debauched
Master. Yes, to abolish slavery, public opinion
must admit that it is shameful to exploit one's
neighbor, and, to make woman free, public opin-
ion must admit that it is shameful to consider
woman as an instrument of pleasure.

"The emancipation of woman is not to be
effected in the public courts or in the chamber
of deputies, but in the sleeping chamber. Pros-

titution is to be combated, not in the houses of
ill-fame, but in the family. They free woman in
the public courts and in the chamber of deputies,
but she remains an instrument. Teach her, as
she is taught among us, to look upon herself as
such, and she will always remain an inferior
being. Either, with the aid of the rascally doc-
tors, she will try to prevent conception, and
descend, not to the level of an animal, but to
the level of a thing; or she will be what she is
in the great majority of cases,—sick, hysterical,
wretched, without hope of spiritual prog-
ress." . . .

"But why that?" I asked.

"Oh! the most astonishing thing is that no
one is willing to see this thing, evident as it is,
which the doctors must understand, but which
they take good care not to do. Man does not
wish to know the law of nature,—children. But
children are born and become an embarrassment.

Then man devises means of avoiding this em-
barrassment. We have not yet reached the low
level of Europe, nor Paris, nor the 'system of
two children,' nor Mahomet. We have discov-
ered nothing, because we have given it no

thought. We feel that there is something bad
in the two first means; but we wish to preserve
the family, and our view of woman is still worse.

"With us woman must be at the same time
mistress and nurse, and her strength is not suf-
ficient. That is why we have hysteria, nervous
attacks, and, among the peasants, witchcraft.

Note that among the young girls of the peasan-
try this state of things does not exist, but only
among the wives, and the wives who live with
their husbands. The reason is clear, and this is
the cause of the intellectual and moral decline
of woman, and of her abasement.

"If they would only reflect what a grand work
for the wife is the period of gestation! In her is
forming the being who continues us, and this
holy work is thwarted and rendered painful . . .
by what? It is frightful to think of it! And
after that they talk of the liberties and the
rights of woman! It is like the cannibals fatten-
ing their prisoners in order to devour them, and
assuring these unfortunates at the same time
that their rights and their liberties are guarded!"

All this was new to me, and astonished me
very much.

"But if this is so," said I, "it follows that one
may love his wife only once every two years;
and as man" . . .

"And as man has need of her, you are going
to say. At least, so the priests of science assure
us. I would force these priests to fulfil the
function of these women, who, in their opinion,
are necessary to man. I wonder what song they
would sing then. Assure man that he needs
brandy, tobacco, opium, and he will believe those
poisons necessary. It follows that God did not
know how to arrange matters properly, since,
without asking the opinions of the priests, he
has combined things as they are. Man needs,
so they have decided, to satisfy his sensual de-
sire, and here this function is disturbed by the
birth and the nursing of children.

"What, then, is to be done? Why, apply to
the priests; they will arrange everything, and
they have really discovered a way. When, then,
will these rascals with their lies be uncrowned!

It is high time. We have had enough of them.

People go mad, and shoot each other with re-
volvers, and always because of that! And how
could it be otherwise?

"One would say that the animals know that
descent continues their race, and that they fol-
low a certain law in regard thereto. Only man
does not know this, and is unwilling to know it.

He cares only to have as much sensual enjoy-
ment as possible. The king of nature,—man!

In the name of his love he kills half the human
race. Of woman, who ought to be his aid in the
movement of humanity toward liberty, he
makes, in the name of his pleasures, not an aid,
but an enemy. Who is it that everywhere puts
a check upon the progressive movement of hu-
manity? Woman. Why is it so? For the rea-
son that I have given, and for that reason only.

14.
CHAPTER XIV.

"Yes, much worse than the animal is man
when he does not live as a man. Thus was I.

The horrible part is that I believed, inasmuch as
I did not allow myself to be seduced by other
women that I was leading an honest family life,
that I was a very mortal being, and that if we

had quarrels, the fault was in my wife, and in
her character.

"But it is evident that the fault was not in her.

She was like everybody else, like the majority.

She was brought up according to the principles
exacted by the situation of our society,—that is,
as all the young girls of our wealthy classes,
without exception, are brought up, and as they
cannot fail to be brought up. How many times
we hear or read of reflections upon the ab-
normal condition of women, and upon what they
ought to be. But these are only vain words.

The education of women results from the real
and not imaginary view which the world enter-
tains of women's vocation. According to this
view, the condition of women consists in pro-
curing pleasure and it is to that end that her
education is directed. From her infancy she is
taught only those things that are calculated to
increase her charm. Every young girl is accus-
tomed to think only of that.

"As the serfs were brought up solely to please
their masters, so woman is brought up to attract
men. It cannot be otherwise. But you will say,
perhaps, that that applies only to young girls

who are badly brought up, but that there is an-
other education, an education that is serious, in
the schools, an education in the dead languages,
an education in the institutions of midwifery, an
education in medical courses, and in other
courses. It is false.

"Every sort of feminine education has for its
sole object the attraction of men.

"Some attract by music or curly hair, others
by science or by civic virtue. The object is the
same, and cannot be otherwise (since no other
object exists),—to seduce man in order to pos-
sess him. Imagine courses of instruction for
women and feminine science without men,—that
is, learned women, and men not
knowing
them
as learned. Oh, no! No education, no instruc-
tion can change woman as long as her highest
ideal shall be marriage and not virginity, free-
dom from sensuality. Until that time she will
remain a serf. One need only imagine, forget-
ting the universality of the case, the conditions
in which our young girls are brought up, to
avoid astonishment at the debauchery of the
women of our upper classes. It is the opposite
that would cause astonishment.

"Follow my reasoning. From infancy gar-
ments, ornaments, cleanliness, grace, dances,
music, reading of poetry, novels, singing, the
theatre, the concert, for use within and without,
according as women listen, or practice them-
selves. With that, complete physical idleness,
an excessive care of the body, a vast consump-
tion of sweetmeats; and God knows how the
poor maidens suffer from their own sensuality,
excited by all these things. Nine out of ten are
tortured intolerably during the first period of
maturity, and afterward provided they do not
marry at the age of twenty. That is what we
are unwilling to see, but those who have eyes see
it all the same. And even the majority of these
unfortunate creatures are so excited by a hidden
sensuality (and it is lucky if it is hidden) that
they are fit for nothing. They become animated
only in the presence of men. Their whole life is
spent in preparations for coquetry, or in co-
quetry itself. In the presence of men they be-
come too animated; they begin to live by sen-
sual energy. But the moment the man goes
away, the life stops.

"And that, not in the presence of a certain

man, but in the presence of any man, provided
he is not utterly hideous. You will say that this
is an exception. No, it is a rule. Only in some
it is made very evident, in other less so. But
no one lives by her own life; they are all depend-
ent upon man. They cannot be otherwise, since
to them the attraction of the greatest number of
men is the ideal of life (young girls and married
women), and it is for this reason that they have
no feeling stronger than that of the animal need
of every female who tries to attract the largest
number of males in order to increase the oppor-
tunities for choice. So it is in the life of young
girls, and so it continues during marriage. In
the life of young girls it is necessary in order to
selection, and in marriage it is necessary in
order to rule the husband. Only one thing sup-
presses or interrupts these tendencies for a time,
—namely, children,—and then only when the
woman is not a monster,—that is, when she
nurses her own children. Here again the doc-
tor interferes.

"With my wife, who desired to nurse her own
children, and who did nurse six of them, it hap-
pened that the first child was sickly. The doc-

tors, who cynically undressed her and felt of her
everywhere, and whom I had to thank and pay
for these acts,—these dear doctors decided that
she ought not to nurse her child, and she was
temporarily deprived of the only remedy for
coquetry. A nurse finished the nursing of this
first-born,—that is to say, we profited by the
poverty and ignorance of a woman to steal her
from her own little one in favor of ours, and for
that purpose we dressed her in a
kakoschnik

trimmed with gold lace. Nevertheless, that is
not the question; but there was again awakened
in my wife that coquetry which had been sleep-
ing during the nursing period. Thanks to that,
she reawakened in me the torments of jealousy
which I had formerly known, though in a much
slighter degree.

15. CHAPTER XV.

"YES, jealousy, that is another of the secrets
of marriage known to all and concealed by all.

Besides the general cause of the mutual hatred
of husbands and wives resulting from complicity
in the pollution of a human being, and also from

other causes, the inexhaustible source of marital
wounds is jealousy. But by tacit consent it is
determined to conceal them from all, and we
conceal them. Knowing them, each one sup-
poses in himself that it is an unfortunate pecu-
liarity, and not a common destiny. So it was
with me, and it had to be so. There cannot fail
to be jealousy between husbands and wives
who live immorally. If they cannot sacrifice
their pleasures for the welfare of their child,
they conclude therefrom, and truly, that they
will not sacrifice their pleasures for, I will not
say happiness and tranquillity (since one may sin
in secret), but even for the sake of conscience.

Each one knows very well that neither admits
any high moral reasons for not betraying the
other, since in their mutual relations they fail in
the requirements of morality, and from that
time distrust and watch each other.

"Oh, what a frightful feeling of jealousy! I
do not speak of that real jealousy which has
foundations (it is tormenting, but it promises an
issue), but of that unconscious jealousy which
inevitably accompanies every immoral marriage,
and which, having no cause, has no end. This

jealousy is frightful. Frightful, that is the
word.

"And this is it. A young man speaks to my
wife. He looks at her with a smile, and, as it
seems to me, he surveys her body. How does
he dare to think of her, to think of the possibility
of a romance with her? And how can she, see-
ing this, tolerate him? Not only does she toler-
ate him, but she seems pleased. I even see that
she puts herself to trouble on his account. And
in my soul there rises such a hatred for her that
each of her words, each gesture, disgusts me.

She notices it, she knows not what to do, and
how assume an air of indifferent animation?

Ah! I suffer! That makes her gay, she is con-
tent. And my hatred increases tenfold, but I do
not dare to give it free force, because at the
bottom of my soul I know that there are no real
reasons for it, and I remain in my seat, feigning
indifference, and exaggerating my attention and
courtesy to
him
.

"Then I get angry with myself. I desire to
leave the room, to leave them alone, and I do,
in fact, go out; but scarcely am I outside when I
am invaded by a fear of what is taking place

within my absence. I go in again, inventing
some pretext. Or sometimes I do not go in; I
remain near the door, and listen. How can she
humiliate herself and humiliate me by placing
me in this cowardly situation of suspicion and
espionage? Oh, abomination! Oh, the wicked
animal! And he too, what does he think of
you? But he is like all men. He is what I was
before my marriage. It gives him pleasure.

He even smiles when he looks at me, as much
as to say: 'What have you to do with this? It
is my turn now.'

"This feeling is horrible. Its burn is unen-
durable. To entertain this feeling toward any
one, to once suspect a man of lusting after my
wife, was enough to spoil this man forever in
my eyes, as if he had been sprinkled with vitriol.

Let me once become jealous of a being, and
nevermore could I re-establish with him simple
human relations, and my eyes flashed when I
looked at him.

"As for my wife, so many times had I en-
veloped her with this moral vitriol, with this
jealous hatred, that she was degraded thereby.

In the periods of this causeless hatred I grad-

ually uncrowned her. I covered her with shame
in my imagination.

"I invented impossible knaveries. I suspected,

I am ashamed to say, that she, this queen of
'The Thousand and One Nights,' deceived me
with my serf, under my very eyes, and laughing
at me. Thus, with each new access of jealousy
(I speak always of causeless jealousy), I en-
tered into the furrow dug formerly by my filthy
suspicions, and I continually deepened it. She
did the same thing. If I have reasons to be
jealous, she who knew my past had a thousand
times more. And she was more ill-natured in
her jealousy than I. And the sufferings that I
felt from her jealousy were different, and like-
wise very painful.

"The situation may be described thus. We
are living more or less tranquilly. I am even
gay and contented. Suddenly we start a conver-
sation on some most commonplace subject, and
directly she finds herself disagreeing with me
upon matters concerning which we have been
generally in accord. And furthermore I see that,
without any necessity therefor, she is becoming
irritated. I think that she has a nervous attack,

or else that the subject of conversation is really
disagreeable to her. We talk of something else,
and that begins again. Again she torments me,
and becomes irritated. I am astonished and
look for a reason. Why? For what? She
keeps silence, answers me with monosyllables,
evidently making allusions to something. I
begin to divine that the reason of all this is that
I have taken a few walks in the garden with her
cousin, to whom I did not give even a thought.

I begin to divine, but I cannot say so. If I say
so, I confirm her suspicions. I interrogate her,

I question her. She does not answer, but she
sees that I understand, and that confirms her
suspicions.

"'What is the matter with you?' I ask.

"'Nothing, I am as well as usual,' she an-
swers.

"And at the same time, like a crazy woman,
she gives utterance to the silliest remarks, to
the most inexplicable explosions of spite.

"Sometimes I am patient, but at other times
I break out with anger. Then her own irritation
is launched forth in a flood of insults, in charges
of imaginary crimes and all carried to the

highest degree by sobs, tears, and retreats
through the house to the most improbable spots.

I go to look for her. I am ashamed before peo-
ple, before the children, but there is nothing to
be done. She is in a condition where I feel that
she is ready for anything. I run, and finally find
her. Nights of torture follow, in which both of
us, with exhausted nerves, appease each other,
after the most cruel words and accusations.

"Yes, jealousy, causeless jealousy, is the con-
dition of our debauched conjugal life. And
throughout my marriage never did I cease to
feel it and to suffer from it. There were two
periods in which I suffered most intensely. The
first time was after the birth of our first child,
when the doctors had forbidden my wife to
nurse it. I was particularly jealous, in the first
place, because my wife felt that restlessness pe-
culiar to animal matter when the regular course
of life is interrupted without occasion. But
especially was I jealous because, having seen
with what facility she had thrown off her moral
duties as a mother, I concluded rightly, though
unconsciously, that she would throw off as easily
her conjugal duties, feeling all the surer of this

because she was in perfect health, as was shown
by the fact that, in spite of the prohibition of
the dear doctors, she nursed her following chil-
dren, and even very well."

"I see that you have no love for the doctors,"
said I, having noticed Posdnicheff's extraordina-
rily spiteful expression of face and tone of voice
whenever he spoke of them.

"It is not a question of loving them or of not
loving them. They have ruined my life, as they
have ruined the lives of thousands of beings
before me, and I cannot help connecting the con-
sequence with the cause. I conceive that they
desire, like the lawyers and the rest, to make
money. I would willingly have given them half
of my income—and any one would have done it
in my place, understanding what they do—if
they had consented not to meddle in my conjugal
life, and to keep themselves at a distance. I
have compiled no statistics, but I know scores of
cases—in reality, they are innumerable—where
they have killed, now a child in its mother's
womb, asserting positively that the mother could
not give birth to it (when the mother could give
birth to it very well), now mothers, under the

pretext of a so-called operation. No one has
counted these murders, just as no one counted
the murders of the Inquisition, because it was
supposed that they were committed for the bene-
fit of humanity. Innumerable are the crimes of
the doctors! But all these crimes are nothing
compared with the materialistic demoralization
which they introduce into the world through
women. I say nothing of the fact that, if it were
to follow their advice,—thanks to the microbe
which they see everywhere,—humanity, instead
of tending to union, would proceed straight to
complete disunion. Everybody, according to
their doctrine, should isolate himself, and never
remove from his mouth a syringe filled with
phenic acid (moreover, they have found out now
that it does no good). But I would pass over all
these things. The supreme poison is the perver-
sion of people, especially of women. One can
no longer say now: 'You live badly, live better.'

One can no longer say it either to himself or to
others, for, if you live badly (say the doctors),
the cause is in the nervous system or in some-
thing similar, and it is necessary to go to con-
sult them, and they will prescribe for you thirty-

five copecks' worth of remedies to be bought at
the drug-store, and you must swallow them.

Your condition grows worse? Again to the
doctors, and more remedies! An excellent busi-
ness!

"But to return to our subject. I was saying
that my wife nursed her children well, that the
nursing and the gestation of the children, and
the children in general, quieted my tortures of
jealousy, but that, on the other hand, they pro-
voked torments of a different sort.

16.
CHAPTER XVI.

"THE children came rapidly, one after an-
other, and there happened what happens in our
society with children and doctors. Yes, children,
maternal love, it is a painful thing. Children,
to a woman of our society, are not a joy, a pride,
nor a fulfilment of her vocation, but a cause of
fear, anxiety, and interminable suffering, tor-
ture. Women say it, they think it, and they feel
it too. Children to them are really a torture, not
because they do not wish to give birth to them,

nurse them, and care for them (women with a
strong maternal instinct—and such was my wife
—are ready to do that), but because the children
may fall sick and die. They do not wish to give
birth to them, and then not love them; and when
they love, they do not wish to feel fear for the
child's health and life. That is why they do not
wish to nurse them. 'If I nurse it,' they say, 'I
shall become too fond of it.' One would think
that they preferred india-rubber children, which
could neither be sick nor die, and could always
be repaired. What an entanglement in the
brains of these poor women! Why such abom-
inations to avoid pregnancy, and to avoid the
love of the little ones?

"Love, the most joyous condition of the soul,
is represented as a danger. And why? Be-
cause, when a man does not live as a man, he is
worse than a beast. A woman cannot look upon
a child otherwise than as a pleasure. It is true
that it is painful to give birth to it, but what
little hands! . . . Oh, the little hands! Oh, the
little feet! Oh, its smile! Oh, its little body!

Oh, its prattle! Oh, its hiccough! In a word,
it is a feeling of animal, sensual maternity. But

as for any idea as to the mysterious significance
of the appearance of a new human being to re-
place us, there is scarcely a sign of it.

"Nothing of it appears in all that is said and
done. No one has any faith now in a baptism
of the child, and yet that was nothing but a
reminder of the human significance of the new-
born babe.

"They have rejected all that, but they have not
replaced it, and there remain only the dresses,
the laces, the little hands, the little feet, and
whatever exists in the animal. But the animal
has neither imagination, nor foresight, nor rea-
son, nor a doctor. No! not even a doctor! The
chicken droops its head, overwhelmed, or the
calf dies; the hen clucks and the cow lows for
a time, and then these beasts continue to live,
forgetting what has happened. With us, if the
child falls sick, what is to be done, how to care
for it, what doctor to call, where to go? If it
dies, there will be no more little hands or little
feet, and then what is the use of the sufferings
endured? The cow does not ask all that, and
this is why children are a source of misery. The
cow has no imagination, and for that reason can-

not think how it might have saved the child if it
had done this or that, and its grief, founded in
its physical being, lasts but a very short time.

It is only a condition, and not that sorrow which
becomes exaggerated to the point of despair,
thanks to idleness and satiety. The cow has not
that reasoning faculty which would enable it to
ask the why. Why endure all these tortures?

What was the use of so much love, if the little
ones were to die? The cow has no logic which
tells it to have no more children, and, if any
come accidentally, to neither love nor nurse
them, that it may not suffer. But our wives
reason, and reason in this way, and that is why
I said that, when a man does not live as a man,
he is beneath the animal."

"But then, how is it necessary to act, in your
opinion, in order to treat children humanly?" I
asked.

"How? Why, love them humanly."

"Well, do not mothers love their children?"

"They do not love them humanly, or very
seldom do, and that is why they do not love
them even as dogs. Mark this, a hen, a goose,
a wolf, will always remain to woman inaccessible

ideals of animal love. It is a rare thing for a
woman to throw herself, at the peril of her life,
upon an elephant to snatch her child away,
whereas a hen or a sparrow will not fail to fly
at a dog and sacrifice itself utterly for its chil-
dren. Observe this, also. Woman has the
power to limit her physical love for her children,
which an animal cannot do. Does that mean that,
because of this, woman is inferior to the animal?

No. She is superior (and even to say superior
is unjust, she is not superior, she is different),
but she has other duties, human duties. She
can restrain herself in the matter of animal love,
and transfer her love to the soul of the child.

That is what woman's
rôle
should be, and that
is precisely what we do not see in our society.

We read of the heroic acts of mothers who sac-
rifice their children in the name of a superior
idea, and these things seem to us like tales of the
ancient world, which do not concern us. And
yet I believe that, if the mother has not some
ideal, in the name of which she can sacrifice the
animal feeling, and if this force finds no employ-
ment, she will transfer it to chimerical attempts
to physically preserve her child, aided in this

task by the doctor, and she will suffer as she
does suffer.

"So it was with my wife. Whether there was
one child or five, the feeling remained the same.

In fact, it was a little better when there had been
five. Life was always poisoned with fear for the
children, not only from their real or imaginary
diseases, but even by their simple presence.

For my part, at least, throughout my conjugal
life, all my interests and all my happiness de-
pended upon the health of my children, their
condition, their studies. Children, it is needless
to say, are a serious consideration; but all ought
to live, and in our days parents can no longer
live. Regular life does not exist for them. The
whole life of the family hangs by a hair. What
a terrible thing it is to suddenly receive the news
that little Basile is vomiting, or that Lise has a
cramp in the stomach! Immediately you aban-
don everything, you forget everything, every-
thing becomes nothing. The essential thing is
the doctor, the enema, the temperature. You
cannot begin a conversation but little Pierre
comes running in with an anxious air to ask if
he may eat an apple, or what jacket he shall put

on, or else it is the servant who enters with a
screaming baby.

"Regular, steady family life does not exist.

Where you live, and consequently what you do,
depends upon the health of the little ones, the
health of the little ones depends upon nobody,
and, thanks to the doctors, who pretend to aid
health, your entire life is disturbed. It is a
perpetual peril. Scarcely do we believe our-
selves out of it when a new danger comes: more
attempts to save. Always the situation of
sailors on a foundering vessel. Sometimes it
seemed to me that this was done on purpose,
that my wife feigned anxiety in order to conquer
me, since that solved the question so simply for
her benefit. It seemed to me that all that she
did at those times was done for its effect upon
me, but now I see that she herself, my wife, suf-
fered and was tortured on account of the little
ones, their health, and their diseases.

"A torture to both of us, but to her the chil-
dren were also a means of forgetting herself,
like an intoxication. I often noticed, when she
was very sad, that she was relieved, when a child
fell sick, at being able to take refuge in this in-

toxication. It was involuntary intoxication, be-
cause as yet there was nothing else. On every
side we heard that Mrs. So-and-so had lost chil-
dren, that Dr. So-and-so had saved the child of
Mrs. So-and-so, and that in a certain family all
had moved from the house in which they were
living, and thereby saved the little ones. And
the doctors, with a serious air, confirmed this,
sustaining my wife in her opinions. She was not
prone to fear, but the doctor dropped some
word, like corruption of the blood, scarlatina, or
else—heaven help us—diphtheria, and off she
went.

"It was impossible for it to be otherwise.

Women in the old days had the belief that 'God
has given, God has taken away,' that the soul of
the little angel is going to heaven, and that it is
better to die innocent than to die in sin. If the
women of to-day had something like this faith,
they could endure more peacefully the sickness
of their children. But of all that there does not
remain even a trace. And yet it is necessary to
believe in something; consequently they stupidly
believe in medicine, and not even in medicine,
but in the doctor. One believes in X, another

in Z, and, like all believers, they do not see the
idiocy of their beliefs. They believe
quia ab-
surdum
, because, in reality, if they did not be-
lieve in a stupid way, they would see the vanity
of all that these brigands prescribe for them.

Scarlatina is a contagious disease; so, when one
lives in a large city, half the family has to move
away from its residence (we did it twice), and
yet every man in the city is a centre through
which pass innumerable diameters, carrying
threads of all sorts of contagions. There is no
obstacle: the baker, the tailor, the coachman, the
laundresses.

"And I would undertake, for every man who
moves on account of contagion, to find in his
new dwelling-place another contagion similar, if
not the same.

"But that is not all. Every one knows rich
people who, after a case of diphtheria, destroy
everything in their residences, and then fall sick
in houses newly built and furnished. Every one
knows, likewise, numbers of men who come in
contact with sick people and do not get infected.

Our anxieties are due to the people who cir-
culate tall stories. One woman says that she

has an excellent doctor. 'Pardon me,' answers
the other, 'he killed such a one,' or such a one.

And
vice versa
. Bring her another, who knows
no more, who learned from the same books, who
treats according to the same formulas, but who
goes about in a carriage, and asks a hundred
roubles a visit, and she will have faith in him.

"It all lies in the fact that our women are
savages. They have no belief in God, but some
of them believe in the evil eye, and the others in
doctors who charge high fees. If they had faith
they would know that scarlatina, diphtheria, etc.,
are not so terrible, since they cannot disturb that
which man can and should love,—the soul.

There can result from them only that which
none of us can avoid,—disease and death. With-
out faith in God, they love only physically, and
all their energy is concentrated upon the pres-
ervation of life, which cannot be preserved, and
which the doctors promise the fools of both
sexes to save. And from that time there is noth-
ing to be done; the doctors must be summoned.

"Thus the presence of the children not only
did not improve our relations as husband and
wife, but, on the contrary, disunited us. The

children became an additional cause of dispute,
and the larger they grew, the more they became
an instrument of struggle. One would have said
that we used them as weapons with which to
combat each other. Each of us had his favorite.

I made use of little Basile (the eldest), she of
Lise. Further, when the children reached an
age where their characters began to be defined,
they became allies, which we drew each in his
or her own direction. They suffered horribly
from this, the poor things, but we, in our per-
petual hubbub, were not clear-headed enough to
think of them. The little girl was devoted to
me, but the eldest boy, who resembled my wife,
his favorite, often inspired me with dislike.

17.
CHAPTER XVII.

"WE lived at first in the country, then in the
city, and, if the final misfortune had not hap-
pened, I should have lived thus until my old age
and should then have believed that I had had a
good life,—not too good, but, on the other hand,

not bad,—an existence such as other people lead.

I should not have understood the abyss of mis-
fortune and ignoble falsehood in which I floun-
dered about, feeling that something was not
right. I felt, in the first place, that I, a man,
who, according to my ideas, ought to be the
master, wore the petticoats, and that I could
not get rid of them. The principal cause of my
subjection was the children. I should have
liked to free myself, but I could not. Bringing
up the children, and resting upon them, my wife
ruled. I did not then realize that she could not
help ruling, especially because, in marrying, she
was morally superior to me, as every young girl
is incomparably superior to the man, since she is
incomparably purer. Strange thing! The ordi-
nary wife in our society is a very commonplace
person or worse, selfish, gossiping, whimsical,
whereas the ordinary young girl, until the age of
twenty, is a charming being, ready for every-
thing that is beautiful and lofty. Why is this
so? Evidently because husbands pervert them,
and lower them to their own level.

"In truth, if boys and girls are born equal, the
little girls find themselves in a better situation.

In the first place, the young girl is not subjected
to the perverting conditions to which we are sub-
jected. She has neither cigarettes, nor wine, nor
cards, nor comrades, nor public houses, nor pub-
lic functions. And then the chief thing is that
she is physically pure, and that is why, in marry-
ing, she is superior to her husband. She is
superior to man as a young girl, and when she
becomes a wife in our society, where there is no
need to work in order to live, she becomes supe-
rior, also, by the gravity of the acts of genera-
tion, birth, and nursing.

"Woman, in bringing a child into the world,
and giving it her bosom, sees clearly that her
affair is more serious than the affair of man,
who sits in the Zemstvo, in the court. She
knows that in these functions the main thing is
money, and money can be made in different
ways, and for that very reason money is not in-
evitably necessary, like nursing a child. Conse-
quently woman is necessarily superior to man,
and must rule. But man, in our society, not only
does not recognize this, but, on the contrary, al-
ways looks upon her from the height of his
grandeur, despising what she does.

"Thus my wife despised me for my work at
the Zemstvo, because she gave birth to children
and nursed them. I, in turn, thought that
woman's labor was most contemptible, which one
might and should laugh at.

"Apart from the other motives, we were also
separated by a mutual contempt. Our relations
grew ever more hostile, and we arrived at that
period when, not only did dissent provoke hostil-
ity, but hostility provoked dissent. Whatever
she might say, I was sure in advance to hold a
contrary opinion; and she the same. Toward
the fourth year of our marriage it was tacitly de-
cided between us that no intellectual community
was possible, and we made no further attempts
at it. As to the simplest objects, we each held
obstinately to our own opinions. With strangers
we talked upon the most varied and most inti-
mate matters, but not with each other. Some-
times, in listening to my wife talk with others in
my presence, I said to myself: 'What a woman!

Everything that she says is a lie!' And I was
astonished that the person with whom she was
conversing did not see that she was lying. When
we were together; we were condemned to silence,

or to conversations which, I am sure, might have
been carried on by animals.

"'What time is it? It is bed-time. What is
there for dinner to-day? Where shall we go?

What is there in the newspaper? The doctor
must be sent for, Lise has a sore throat.'

"Unless we kept within the extremely narrow
limits of such conversation, irritation was sure to
ensue. The presence of a third person relieved
us, for through an intermediary we could still
communicate. She probably believed that she
was always right. As for me, in my own eyes, I
was a saint beside her.

"The periods of what we call love arrived as
often as formerly. They were more brutal, with-
out refinement, without ornament; but they were
short, and generally followed by periods of irri-
tation without cause, irritation fed by the most
trivial pretexts. We had spats about the coffee,
the table-cloth, the carriage, games of cards,—
trifles, in short, which could not be of the least
importance to either of us. As for me, a terrible
execration was continually boiling up within me.

I watched her pour the tea, swing her foot, lift
her spoon to her mouth, and blow upon hot

liquids or sip them, and I detested her as if these
had been so many crimes.

"I did not notice that these periods of irrita-
tion depended very regularly upon the periods of
love. Each of the latter was followed by one of
the former. A period of intense love was fol-
lowed by a long period of anger; a period of
mild love induced a mild irritation. We did not
understand that this love and this hatred were
two opposite faces of the same animal feeling.

To live thus would be terrible, if one understood
the philosophy of it. But we did not perceive
this, we did not analyze it. It is at once the
torture and the relief of man that, when he lives
irregularly, he can cherish illusions as to the mis-
eries of his situation. So did we. She tried to
forget herself in sudden and absorbing occupa-
tions, in household duties, the care of the furni-
ture, her dress and that of her children, in the
education of the latter, and in looking after
their health. These were occupations that did
not arise from any immediate necessity, but she
accomplished them as if her life and that of her
children depended on whether the pastry was
allowed to burn, whether a curtain was hanging

properly, whether a dress was a success, whether
a lesson was well learned, or whether a medicine
was swallowed.

"I saw clearly that to her all this was, more
than anything else, a means of forgetting, an
intoxication, just as hunting, card-playing, and
my functions at the Zemstvo served the same
purpose for me. It is true that in addition I had
an intoxication literally speaking,—tobacco,
which I smoked in large quantities, and wine,
upon which I did not get drunk, but of which I
took too much. Vodka before meals, and during
meals two glasses of wine, so that a perpetual
mist concealed the turmoil of existence.

"These new theories of hypnotism, of mental
maladies, of hysteria are not simple stupidities,
but dangerous or evil stupidities. Charcot, I am
sure, would have said that my wife was hysteri-
cal, and of me he would have said that I was an
abnormal being, and he would have wanted to
treat me. But in us there was nothing requiring
treatment. All this mental malady was the sim-
ple result of the fact that we were living im-
morally. Thanks to this immoral life, we suf-
fered, and, to stifle our sufferings, we tried ab-

The Kreutzer Sonata 103

normal means, which the doctors call the 'symp-
toms' of a mental malady,—
hysteria
.

"There was no occasion in all this to apply
for treatment to Charcot or to anybody else.

Neither suggestion nor bromide would have
been effective in working our cure. The needful
thing was an examination of the origin of the
evil. It is as when one is sitting on a nail; if you
see the nail, you see that which is irregular in
your life, and you avoid it. Then the pain stops,
without any necessity of stifling it. Our pain
arose from the irregularity of our life, and also
my jealousy, my irritability, and the necessity of
keeping myself in a state of perpetual semi-in-
toxication by hunting, card-playing, and, above
all, the use of wine and tobacco. It was because
of this irregularity that my wife so passionately
pursued her occupations. The sudden changes
of her disposition, from extreme sadness to ex-
treme gayety, and her babble, arose from the
need of forgetting herself, of forgetting her life,
in the continual intoxication of varied and very
brief occupations.

"Thus we lived in a perpetual fog, in which
we did not distinguish our condition. We were

like two galley-slaves fastened to the same ball,
cursing each other, poisoning each other's exist-
ence, and trying to shake each other off. I was
still unaware that ninety-nine families out of
every hundred live in the same hell, and that it
cannot be otherwise. I had not learned this fact
from others or from myself. The coincidences
that are met in regular, and even in irregular
life, are surprising. At the very period when
the life of parents becomes impossible, it be-
comes indispensable that they go to the city to
live, in order to educate their children. That is
what we did."

Posdnicheff became silent, and twice there es-
caped him, in the half-darkness, sighs, which at
that moment seemed to me like suppressed sobs.

Then he continued.

18.
CHAPTER XVIII.

"SO WE lived in the city. In the city the
wretched feel less sad. One can live there a
hundred years without being noticed, and be
dead a long time before anybody will notice it.

People have no time to inquire into your life.

All are absorbed. Business, social relations, art,
the health of children, their education. And
there are visits that must be received and made;
it is necessary to see this one, it is necessary to
hear that one or the other one. In the city there
are always one, two, or three celebrities that it is
indispensable that one should visit. Now one
must care for himself, or care for such or such
a little one, now it is the professor, the private
tutor, the governesses, . . . and life is absolute-
ly empty. In this activity we were less conscious
of the sufferings of our cohabitation. Moreover,
in the first of it, we had a superb occupation,—
the arrangement of the new dwelling, and then,
too, the moving from the city to the country, and
from the country to the city.

"Thus we spent a winter. The following
winter an incident happened to us which passed
unnoticed, but which was the fundamental cause
of all that happened later. My wife was suffer-
ing, and the rascals (the doctors) would not per-
mit her to conceive a child, and taught her how
to avoid it. I was profoundly disgusted. I
struggled vainly against it, but she insisted

frivolously and obstinately, and I surrendered.

The last justification of our life as wretches was
thereby suppressed, and life became baser than
ever.

"The peasant and the workingman need chil-
dren, and hence their conjugal relations have
a justification. But we, when we have a few
children, have no need of any more. They make
a superfluous confusion of expenses and joint
heirs, and are an embarrassment. Consequently
we have no excuses for our existence as
wretches, but we are so deeply degraded that we
do not see the necessity of a justification. The
majority of people in contemporary society give
themselves up to this debauchery without the
slightest remorse. We have no conscience left,
except, so to speak, the conscience of public
opinion and of the criminal code. But in this
matter neither of these consciences is struck.

There is not a being in society who blushes at it.

Each one practices it,—X, Y, Z, etc. What is
the use of multiplying beggars, and depriving
ourselves of the joys of social life? There is no
necessity of having conscience before the crimi-
nal code, or of fearing it: low girls, soldiers'

wives who throw their children into ponds or
wells, these certainly must be put in prison. But
with us the suppression is effected opportunely
and properly.

"Thus we passed two years more. The
method prescribed by the rascals had evidently
succeeded. My wife had grown stouter and
handsomer. It was the beauty of the end of
summer. She felt it, and paid much attention to
her person. She had acquired that provoking
beauty that stirs men. She was in all the brill-
iancy of the wife of thirty years, who conceives
no children, eats heartily, and is excited. The
very sight of her was enough to frighten one.

She was like a spirited carriage-horse that has
long been idle, and suddenly finds itself without
a bridle. As for my wife, she had no bridle, as
for that matter, ninety-nine hundredths of our
women have none."

19.
CHAPTER XIX.

POSDNICHEFF'S face had become transformed;
his eyes were pitiable; their expression seemed

strange, like that of another being than himself;
his moustache and beard turned up toward the
top of his face; his nose was diminished, and his
mouth enlarged, immense, frightful.

"Yes," he resumed "she had grown stouter
since ceasing to conceive, and her anxieties about
her children began to disappear. Not even to
disappear. One would have said that she was
waking from a long intoxication, that on coming
to herself she had perceived the entire universe
with its joys, a whole world in which she had not
learned to live, and which she did not under-
stand.

"'If only this world shall not vanish! When
time is past, when old age comes, one cannot
recover it.' Thus, I believe, she thought, or
rather felt. Moreover, she could neither think
nor feel otherwise. She had been brought up in
this idea that there is in the world but one thing
worthy of attention,—love. In marrying, she
had known something of this love, but very far
from everything that she had understood as
promised her, everything that she expected.

How many disillusions! How much suffering!

And an unexpected torture,—the children! This

torture had told upon her, and then, thanks to
the obliging doctor, she had learned that it is
possible to avoid having children. That had
made her glad. She had tried, and she was now
revived for the only thing that she knew,—for
love. But love with a husband polluted by jeal-
ousy and ill-nature was no longer her ideal.

She began to think of some other tenderness;
at least, that is what I thought. She looked
about her as if expecting some event or some
being. I noticed it, and I could not help being
anxious.

"Always, now, it happened that, in talking
with me through a third party (that is, in talking
with others, but with the intention that I should
hear), she boldly expressed,—not thinking that
an hour before she had said the opposite,—half
joking, half seriously, this idea that maternal
anxieties are a delusion; that it is not worth
while to sacrifice one's life to children. When
one is young, it is necessary to enjoy life. So
she occupied herself less with the children, not
with the same intensity as formerly, and paid
more and more attention to herself, to her face,
—although she concealed it,—to her pleasures,

and even to her perfection from the worldly
point of view. She began to devote herself
passionately to the piano, which had formerly
stood forgotten in the corner. There, at the
piano, began the adventure.

"The
man
appeared."

Posdnicheff seemed embarrassed, and twice
again there escaped him that nasal sound of
which I spoke above. I thought that it gave
him pain to refer to the
man
, and to remember
him. He made an effort, as if to break down
the obstacle that embarrassed him, and continued
with determination.

"He was a bad man in my eyes, and not be-
cause he has played such an important
rôle
in my
life, but because he was really such. For the
rest, from the fact that he was bad, we must con-
clude that he was irresponsible. He was a mu-
sician, a violinist. Not a professional musician,
but half man of the world, half artist. His
father, a country proprietor, was a neighbor of
my father's. The father had become ruined, and
the children, three boys, were all sent away. Our
man, the youngest, was sent to his godmother at
Paris. There they placed him in the Conserva-

tory, for he showed a taste for music. He came
out a violinist, and played in concerts."

On the point of speaking evil of the other,
Posdnicheff checked himself, stopped, and said
suddenly:

"In truth, I know not how he lived. I only
know that that year he came to Russia, and came
to see me. Moist eyes of almond shape, smil-
ing red lips, a little moustache well waxed, hair
brushed in the latest fashion, a vulgarly pretty
face,—what the women call 'not bad,'—feebly
built physically, but with no deformity; with hips
as broad as a woman's; correct, and insinuating
himself into the familiarity of people as far as
possible, but having that keen sense that quickly
detects a false step and retires in reason,—a
man, in short, observant of the external rules of
dignity, with that special Parisianism that is re-
vealed in buttoned boots, a gaudy cravat, and
that something which foreigners pick up in
Paris, and which, in its peculiarity and novelty,
always has an influence on our women. In his
manners an external and artificial gayety, a way,
you know, of referring to everything by hints,
by unfinished fragments, as if everything that

one says you knew already, recalled it, and could
supply the omissions. Well, he, with his music,
was the cause of all.

"At the trial the affair was so represented that
everything seemed attributable to jealousy. It is
false,—that is, not quite false, but there was
something else. The verdict was rendered that
I was a deceived husband, that I had killed in
defence of my sullied honor (that is the way
they put it in their language), and thus I was
acquitted. I tried to explain the affair from my
own point of view, but they concluded that I
simply wanted to rehabilitate the memory of my
wife. Her relations with the musician, whatever
they may have been, are now of no importance
to me or to her. The important part is what I
have told you. The whole tragedy was due to
the fact that this man came into our house at a
time when an immense abyss had already been
dug between us, that frightful tension of mutual
hatred, in which the slightest motive sufficed to
precipitate the crisis. Our quarrels in the last
days were something terrible, and the more as-
tonishing because they were followed by a brutal
passion extremely strained. If it had not been

he, some other would have come. If the pretext
had not been jealousy, I should have discovered
another. I insist upon this point,—that all hus-
bands who live the married life that I lived must
either resort to outside debauchery, or separate
from their wives, or kill themselves, or kill their
wives as I did. If there is any one in my case
to whom this does not happen, he is a very rare
exception, for, before ending as I ended, I was
several times on the point of suicide, and my
wife made several attempts to poison herself.

20.
CHAPTER XX.

"IN order that you may understand me, I
must tell you how this happened. We were liv-
ing along, and all seemed well. Suddenly we
began to talk of the children's education. I do
not remember what words either of us uttered,
but a discussion began, reproaches, leaps from
one subject to another. 'Yes, I know it. It has
been so for a long time.' . . . 'You said that.'
. . . 'No, I did not say that.' . . . 'Then I lie?'
etc.

"And I felt that the frightful crisis was ap-

proaching when I should desire to kill her or else
myself. I knew that it was approaching; I was
afraid of it as of fire; I wanted to restrain my-
self. But rage took possession of my whole be-
ing. My wife found herself in the same condi-
tion, perhaps worse. She knew that she inten-
tionally distorted each of my words, and each of
her words was saturated with venom. All that
was dear to me she disparaged and profaned.

The farther the quarrel went, the more furious
it became. I cried, 'Be silent,' or something like
that. She bounded out of the room and ran
toward the children. I tried to hold her back to
finish my insults. I grasped her by the arm, and
hurt her. She cried: 'Children, your father is
beating me.' I cried: 'Don't lie' She continued
to utter falsehoods for the simple purpose of ir-
ritating me further. 'Ah, it is not the first time,'
or something of that sort. The children rushed
toward her and tried to quiet her. I said: 'Don't
sham.' She said: 'You look upon everything
as a sham. You would kill a person and say he
was shamming. Now I understand you. That
is what you want to do.' 'Oh, if you were only
dead!' I cried.

"I remember how that terrible phrase fright-
ened me. Never had I thought that I could utter
words so brutal, so frightful, and I was stupefied
at what had just escaped my lips. I fled into my
private apartment. I sat down and began to
smoke. I heard her go into the hall and prepare
to go out. I asked her: 'Where are you going?

She did not answer. 'Well, may the devil take
you!' said I to myself, going back into my pri-
vate room, where I lay down again and began
smoking afresh. Thousands of plans of ven-
geance, of ways of getting rid of her, and how
to arrange this, and act as if nothing had hap-
pened,—all this passed through my head. I
thought of these things, and I smoked, and
smoked, and smoked. I thought of running
away, of making my escape, of going to Amer-
ica. I went so far as to dream how beautiful it
would be, after getting rid of her, to love an-
other woman, entirely different from her. I
should be rid of her if she should die or if I
should get a divorce, and I tried to think how
that could be managed. I saw that I was getting
confused, but, in order not to see that I was not
thinking rightly, I kept on smoking.

"And the life of the house went on as usual.

The children's teacher came and asked: 'Where
is Madame? When will she return?' The ser-
vants asked if they should serve the tea. I en-
tered the dining-room. The children, Lise, the
eldest girl, looked at me with fright, as if to
question me, and she did not come. The whole
evening passed, and still she did not come. Two
sentiments kept succeeding each other in my
soul,—hatred of her, since she tortured myself
and the children by her absence, but would final-
ly return just the same, and fear lest she might
return and make some attempt upon herself.

But where should I look for her? At her sis-
ter's? It seemed so stupid to go to ask where
one's wife is. Moreover, may God forbid, I
hoped, that she should be at her sister's! If she
wishes to torment any one, let her torment her-
self first. And suppose she were not at her
sister's. Suppose she were to do, or had already
done, something.

"Eleven o'clock, midnight, one o'clock. . . .

I did not sleep. I did not go to my chamber.

It is stupid to lie stretched out all alone, and to
wait. But in my study I did not rest. I tried to

busy myself, to write letters, to read. Impossi-
ble! I was alone, tortured, wicked, and I lis-
tened. Toward daylight I went to sleep. I
awoke. She had not returned. Everything in
the house went on as usual, and all looked at me
in astonishment, questioningly. The children's
eyes were full of reproach for me. And always
the same feeling of anxiety about her, and of
hatred because of this anxiety.

"Toward eleven o'clock in the morning came
her sister, her ambassadress. Then began the
usual phrases: 'She is in a terrible state. What
is the matter?' 'Why, nothing has happened.'

I spoke of her asperity of character, and I added
that I had done nothing, and that I would not
take the first step. If she wants a divorce, so
much the better! My sister-in-law would not
listen to this idea, and went away without having
gained anything. I was obstinate, and I said
boldly and determinedly, in talking to her, that I
would not take the first step. Immediately she
had gone I went into the other room, and saw
the children in a frightened and pitiful state, and
there I found myself already inclined to take this
first step. But I was bound by my word. Again

I walked up and down, always smoking. At
breakfast I drank brandy and wine, and I
reached the point which I unconsciously desired,
the point where I no longer saw the stupidity
and baseness of my situation.

"Toward three o'clock she came. I thought
that she was appeased, or admitted her defeat.

I began to tell her that I was provoked by her
reproaches. She answered me, with the same
severe and terribly downcast face, that she had
not come for explanations, but to take the chil-
dren, that we could not live together. I an-
swered that it was not my fault, that she had put
me beside myself. She looked at me with a
severe and solemn air, and said: 'Say no more.

You will repent it.' I said that I could not tol-
erate comedies. Then she cried out something
that I did not understand, and rushed toward
her room. The key turned in the lock, and she
shut herself up. I pushed at the door. There
was no response. Furious, I went away.

"A half hour later Lise came running all in
tears. 'What! Has anything happened? We
cannot hear Mamma!' We went toward my
wife's room. I pushed the door with all my

might. The bolt was scarcely drawn, and the
door opened. In a skirt, with high boots, my
wife lay awkwardly on the bed. On the table an
empty opium phial. We restored her to life.

Tears and then reconciliation! Not reconcilia-
tion; internally each kept the hatred for the
other, but it was absolutely necessary for the
moment to end the scene in some way, and life
began again as before. These scenes, and even
worse, came now once a week, now every month,
now every day. And invariably the same inci-
dents. Once I was absolutely resolved to fly, but
through some inconceivable weakness I re-
mained.

"Such were the circumstances in which we
were living when the
man
came. The man was
bad, it is true. But what! No worse than we
were.

21.
CHAPTER XXI.

"WHEN we moved to Moscow, this gentle-
man—his name was Troukhatchevsky—came to
my house. It was in the morning. I received
him. In former times we had been very famil-

iar. He tried, by various advances, to re-estab-
lish the familiarity, but I was determined to keep
him at a distance, and soon he gave it up. He
displeased me extremely. At the first glance I
saw that he was a filthy
débauché
. I was
jealous of him, even before he had seen my wife. But,
strange thing! some occult fatal power kept me
from repulsing him and sending him away, and,
on the contrary, induced me to suffer this ap-
proach. What could have been simpler than to
talk with him a few minutes, and then dismiss
him coldly without introducing him to my wife?

But no, as if on purpose, I turned the conversa-
tion upon his skill as a violinist, and he answered
that, contrary to what I had heard, he now
played the violin more than formerly. He re-
membered that I used to play. I answered that
I had abandoned music, but that my wife played
very well.

"Singular thing! Why, in the important
events of our life, in those in which a man's fate
is decided,—as mine was decided in that mo-
ment,—why in these events is there neither a
past nor a future? My relations with Trouk-
hatchevsky the first day, at the first hour, were

such as they might still have been after all that
has happened. I was conscious that some fright-
ful misfortune must result from the presence of
this man, and, in spite of that, I could not help
being amiable to him. I introduced him to my
wife. She was pleased with him. In the begin-
ning, I suppose, because of the pleasure of the
violin playing, which she adored. She had even
hired for that purpose a violinist from the thea-
tre. But when she cast a glance at me, she
understood my feelings, and concealed her im-
pression. Then began the mutual trickery and
deceit. I smiled agreeably, pretending that all
this pleased me extremely. He, looking at my
wife, as all
débauchés
look at beautiful women,
with an air of being interested solely in the sub-
ject of conversation,—that is, in that which did
not interest him at all.

"She tried to seem indifferent. But my ex-
pression, my jealous or false smile, which she
knew so well, and the voluptuous glances of the
musician, evidently excited her. I saw that, after
the first interview, her eyes were already glitter-
ing, glittering strangely, and that, thanks to my
jealousy, between him and her had been immedi-

ately established that sort of electric current
which is provoked by an identity of expression
in the smile and in the eyes.

"We talked, at the first interview, of music, of
Paris, and of all sorts of trivialities. He rose to
go. Pressing his hat against his swaying hip,
he stood erect, looking now at her and now at
me, as if waiting to see what she would do. I
remember that minute, precisely because it was
in my power not to invite him. I need not have
invited him, and then nothing would have hap-
pened. But I cast a glance first at him, then at
her. 'Don't flatter yourself that I can be jealous
of you,' I thought, addressing myself to her
mentally, and I invited the other to bring his
violin that very evening, and to play with my
wife. She raised her eyes toward me with as-
tonishment, and her face turned purple, as if she
were seized with a sudden fear. She began to
excuse herself, saying that she did not play well
enough This refusal only excited me the more.

I remember the strange feeling with which I
looked at his neck, his white neck, in contrast
with his black hair, separated by a parting, when,
with his skipping gait, like that of a bird, he left

my house. I could not help confessing to myself
that this man's presence caused me suffering.
'It is in my power,' thought I, 'to so arrange
things that I shall never see him again. But can
it be that I,
I
, fear him? No, I do not fear him.

It would be too humiliating!'

"And there in the hall, knowing that my wife
heard me, I insisted that he should come that
very evening with his violin. He promised me,
and went away. In the evening he arrived with
his violin, and they played together. But for a
long time things did not go well; we had not the
necessary music, and that which we had my wife
could not play at sight. I amused myself with
their difficulties. I aided them, I made pro-
posals, and they finally executed a few pieces,—
songs without words, and a little sonata by Mo-
zart. He played in a marvellous manner. He
had what is called the energetic and tender tone.

As for difficulties, there were none for him.

Scarcely had he begun to play, when his face
changed. He became serious, and much more
sympathetic. He was, it is needless to say, much
stronger than my wife. He helped her, he ad-
vised her simply and naturally, and at the same

time played his game with courtesy. My wife
seemed interested only in the music. She was
very simple and agreeable. Throughout the
evening I feigned, not only for the others, but
for myself, an interest solely in the music.

Really, I was continually tortured by jealousy.

From the first minute that the musician's eyes
met those of my wife, I saw that he did not
regard her as a disagreeable woman, with whom
on occasion it would be unpleasant to enter into
intimate relations.

"If I had been pure, I should not have
dreamed of what he might think of her. But I
looked at women, and that is why I understood
him and was in torture. I was in torture, espe-
cially because I was sure that toward me she
had no other feeling than of perpetual irritation,
sometimes interrupted by the customary sen-
suality, and that this man,—thanks to his ex-
ternal elegance and his novelty, and, above all,
thanks to his unquestionably remarkable talent,
thanks to the attraction exercised under the in-
fluence of music, thanks to the impression that
music produces upon nervous natures,—this man
would not only please, but would inevitably, and

without difficulty, subjugate and conquer her,
and do with her as he liked.

"I could not help seeing this. I could not
help suffering, or keep from being jealous. And
I was jealous, and I suffered, and in spite of
that, and perhaps even because of that, an un-
known force, in spite of my will, impelled me to
be not only polite, but more than polite, amiable.

I cannot say whether I did it for my wife, or to
show him that I did not fear
him
, or to deceive
myself; but from my first relations with him I
could not be at my ease. I was obliged, that I
might not give way to a desire to kill him imme-
diately, to 'caress' him. I filled his glass at the
table, I grew enthusiastic over his playing, I
talked to him with an extremely amiable smile,
and I invited him to dinner the following Sun-
day, and to play again. I told him that I would
invite some of my acquaintances, lovers of his
art, to hear him.

"Two or three days later I was entering my
house, in conversation with a friend, when in the
hall I suddenly felt something as heavy as a
stone weighing on my heart, and I could not ac-
count for it. And it was this, it was this: in

passing through the hall, I had noticed some-
thing which reminded me of
him
. Not until I
reached my study did I realize what it was, and
I returned to the hall to verify my conjecture.

Yes, I was not mistaken. It was his overcoat
(everything that belonged to him, I, without
realizing it, had observed with extraordinary at-
tention). I questioned the servant. That was it.

He had come. I passed near the parlor, through
my children's study-room. Lise, my daughter,
was sitting before a book, and the old nurse,
with my youngest child, was beside the table,
turning the cover of something or other. In the
parlor I heard a slow
arpeggio
, and his voice,
deadened, and a denial from her. She said: 'No,
no! There is something else!' And it seemed
to me that some one was purposely deadening
the words by the aid of the piano.

"My God! How my heart leaped! What
were my imaginations! When I remember the
beast that lived in me at that moment, I am
seized with fright. My heart was first com-
pressed, then stopped, and then began to beat
like a hammer. The principal feeling, as in
every bad feeling, was pity for myself. 'Before

the children, before the old nurse,' thought I,
'she dishonors me. I will go away. I can en-
dure it no longer. God knows what I should do
if. . . . But I must go in.'

The old nurse raised her eyes to mine, as if
she understood, and advised me to keep a sharp
watch. 'I must go in,' I said to myself, and,
without knowing what I did, I opened the door.

He was sitting at the piano and making
arpeg-
gios
with his long, white, curved fingers. She
was standing in the angle of the grand piano,
before the open score. She saw or heard me
first, and raised her eyes to mine. Was she
stunned, was she pretending not to be fright-
ened, or was she really not frightened at all?

In any case, she did not tremble, she did not stir.

She blushed, but only a little later.

"'How glad I am that you have come! We
have not decided what we will play Sunday,' said
she, in a tone that she would not have had if she
had been alone with me.

"This tone, and the way in which she said
'we' in speaking of herself and of him, revolted
me. I saluted him silently. He shook hands
with me directly, with a smile that seemed to me

full of mockery. He explained to me that he
had brought some scores, in order to prepare for
the Sunday concert, and that they were not in
accord as to the piece to choose,—whether diffi-
cult, classic things, notably a sonata by Beetho-
ven, or lighter pieces. And as he spoke, he
looked at me. It was all so natural, so simple,
that there was absolutely nothing to be said
against it. And at the same time I saw, I was
sure, that it was false, that they were in a con-
spiracy to deceive me.

"One of the most torturing situations for the
jealous (and in our social life everybody is jeal-
ous) are those social conditions which allow a
very great and dangerous intimacy between a
man and a woman under certain pretexts. One
must make himself the laughing stock of every-
body, if he desires to prevent associations in the
ball-room, the intimacy of doctors with their pa-
tients, the familiarity of art occupations, and
especially of music. In order that people may
occupy themselves together with the noblest art,
music, a certain intimacy is necessary, in which
there is nothing blameworthy. Only a jealous
fool of a husband can have anything to say

against it. A husband should not have such
thoughts, and especially should not thrust his
nose into these affairs, or prevent them. And
yet, everybody knows that precisely in these oc-
cupations, especially in music, many adulteries
originate in our society.

"I had evidently embarrassed them, because
for some time I was unable to say anything. I
was like a bottle suddenly turned upside down,
from which the water does not run because it is
too full. I wanted to insult the man, and to
drive him away, but I could do nothing of the
kind. On the contrary, I felt that I was disturb-
ing them, and that it was my fault. I made a
presence of approving everything, this time also,
thanks to that strange feeling that forced me to
treat him the more amiably in proportion as his
presence was more painful to me. I said that I
trusted to his taste, and I advised my wife to do
the same. He remained just as long as it was
necessary in order to efface the unpleasant im-
pression of my abrupt entrance with a fright-
ened face. He went away with an air of satis-
faction at the conclusions arrived at. As for me,
I was perfectly sure that, in comparison with

that which preoccupied them, the question of
music was indifferent to them. I accompanied
him with especial courtesy to the hall (how can
one help accompanying a man who has come to
disturb your tranquillity and ruin the happiness
of the entire family?), and I shook his white,
soft hand with fervent amiability.

22.
CHAPTER XXII.

"ALL that day I did not speak to my wife. I
could not. Her proximity excited such hatred
that I feared myself. At the table she asked me,
in presence of the children, when I was to start
upon a journey. I was to go the following week
to an assembly of the Zemstvo, in a neighboring
locality. I named the date. She asked me if
I would need anything for the journey. I did
not answer. I sat silent at the table, and silently
I retired to my study. In those last days she
never entered my study, especially at that hour.

Suddenly I heard her steps, her walk, and then
a terribly base idea entered my head that, like
the wife of Uri, she wished to conceal a fault

already committed, and that it was for this rea-
son that she came to see me at this unseasonable
hour. 'Is it possible,' thought I, 'that she is
coming to see me?' On hearing her step as it
approached: 'If it is to see me that she is com-
ing, then I am right.'

"An inexpressible hatred invaded my soul.

The steps drew nearer, and nearer, and nearer
yet. Would she pass by and go on to the other
room? No, the hinges creaked, and at the door
her tall, graceful, languid figure appeared. In
her face, in her eyes, a timidity, an insinuating
expression, which she tried to hide, but which I
saw, and of which I understood the meaning. I
came near suffocating, such were my efforts to
hold my breath, and, continuing to look at her, I
took my cigarette, and lighted it.

"'What does this mean? One comes to talk
with you, and you go to smoking.'

"And she sat down beside me on the sofa,
resting against my shoulder. I recoiled, that I
might not touch her.

"'I see that you are displeased with what I
wish to play on Sunday,' said she.

"'I am not at all displeased,' said I.

"'Can I not see?'

"'Well, I congratulate you on your clairvoy-
ance. Only to you every baseness is agreeable,
and I abhor it.'

"'If you are going to swear like a trooper, I
am going away.'

"'Then go away. Only know that, if the
honor of the family is nothing to you, to me it
is dear. As for you, the devil take you!'

"'What! What is the matter?'

"'Go away, in the name of God.'

"But she did not go away. Was she pretend-
ing not to understand, or did she really not un-
derstand what I meant? But she was offended
and became angry.

"'You have become absolutely impossible,'
she began, or some such phrase as that regard-
ing my character, trying, as usual, to give me as
much pain as possible. 'After what you have
done to my sister (she referred to an incident
with her sister, in which, beside myself, I had
uttered brutalities; she knew that that tortured
me, and tried to touch me in that tender spot)
nothing will astonish me.'

"'Yes, offended, humiliated, and dishonored,

and after that to hold me still responsible,'
thought I, and suddenly a rage, such a hatred in-
vaded me as I do not remember to have ever felt
before. For the first time I desired to express
this hatred physically. I leaped upon her, but at
the same moment I understood my condition,
and I asked myself whether it would be well for
me to abandon myself to my fury. And I an-
swered myself that it would be well, that it
would frighten her, and, instead of resisting, I
lashed and spurred myself on, and was glad to
feel my anger boiling more and more fiercely.

"'Go away, or I will kill you!' I cried, pur-
posely, with a frightful voice, and I grasped her
by the arm,. She did not go away. Then I
twisted her arm, and pushed her away violently.

"'What is the matter with you? Come to
your senses!' she shrieked.

"'Go away,' roared I, louder than ever, rolling
my eyes wildly. 'It takes you to put me in such
a fury. I do not answer for myself! Go away!'

"In abandoning myself to my anger, I became
steeped in it, and I wanted to commit some vio-
lent act to show the force of my fury. I felt a
terrible desire to beat her, to kill her, but I real-

ized that that could not be, and I restrained my-
self. I drew back from her, rushed to the table,
grasped the paper-weight, and threw it on the
floor by her side. I took care to aim a little to
one side, and, before she disappeared (I did it so
that she could see it), I grasped a candlestick,
which I also hurled, and then took down the
barometer, continuing to shout:

"'Go away! I do not answer for myself!'

"She disappeared, and I immediately ceased
my demonstrations. An hour later the old ser-
vant came to me and said that my wife was in a
fit of hysterics. I went to see her. She sobbed
and laughed, incapable of expressing anything,
her whole body in a tremble. She was not sham-
ming, she was really sick. We sent for the
doctor, and all night long I cared for her. To-
ward daylight she grew calmer, and we became
reconciled under the influence of that feeling
which we called 'love.' The next morning, when,
after the reconciliation, I confessed to her that I
was jealous of Troukhatchevsky, she was not at
all embarrassed, and began to laugh in the most
natural way, so strange did the possibility of be-
ing led astray by such a man appear to her.

"'With such a man can an honest woman en-
tertain any feeling beyond the pleasure of enjoy-
ing music with him? But if you like, I am ready
to never see him again, even on Sunday, al-
though everybody has been invited. Write him
that I am indisposed, and that will end the mat-
ter. Only one thing annoys me,—that any one
could have thought him dangerous. I am too
proud not to detest such thoughts.'

"And she did not lie. She believed what she
said. She hoped by her words to provoke in
herself a contempt for him, and thereby to de-
fend herself. But she did not succeed. Every-
thing was directed against her, especially that
abominable music. So ended the quarrel, and
on Sunday our guests came, and Troukhatchev-
sky and my wife again played together.

23.
CHAPTER XXIII.

"I THINK that it is superfluous to say that I
was very vain. If one has no vanity in this life
of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living.

So for that Sunday I had busied myself in taste-

fully arranging things for the dinner and the
musical
soirée
. I had purchased myself numer-
ous things for the dinner, and had chosen the
guests. Toward six o'clock they arrived, and
after them Troukhatchevsky, in his dress-coat,
with diamond shirt-studs, in bad taste. He bore
himself with ease. To all questions he respond-
ed promptly, with a smile of contentment and
understanding, and that peculiar expression
which was intended to mean: 'All that you may
do and say will be exactly what I expected.'

Everything about him that was not correct I
now noticed with especial pleasure, for it all
tended to tranquillize me, and prove to me that
to my wife he stood in such a degree of in-
feriority that, as she had told me, she could not
stoop to his level. Less because of my wife's
assurances than because of the atrocious suffer-
ings which I felt in jealousy, I no longer al-
lowed myself to be jealous.

"In spite of that, I was not at ease with the
musician or with her during dinner-time and the
time that elapsed before the beginning of the
music. Involuntarily I followed each of their
gestures and looks. The dinner, like all dinners,

was tiresome and conventional. Not long after-
ward the music began. He went to get his
violin; my wife advanced to the piano, and
rummaged among the scores. Oh, how well I
remember all the details of that evening! I
remember how he brought the violin, how he
opened the box, took off the serge embroidered
by a lady's hand, and began to tune the instru-
ment. I can still see my wife sit down, with a
false air of indifference, under which it was
plain that she hid a great timidity, a timidity that
was especially due to her comparative lack of
musical knowledge. She sat down with that
false air in front of the piano, and then began
the usual preliminaries,—the
pizzicati
of the vio-
lin and the arrangement of the scores. I re-
member then how they looked at each other, and
cast a glance at their auditors who were taking
their seats. They said a few words to each
other, and the music began. They played
Beethoven's 'Kreutzer Sonata.' Do you know
the first
presto?
Do you know it? Ah!" . . .

Posdnicheff heaved a sigh, and was silent for
a long time.

"A terrible thing is that sonata, especially the

presto!
And a terrible thing is music in gen-
eral. What is it ? Why does it do what it does?

They say that music stirs the soul. Stupidity!

A lie! It acts, it acts frightfully (I speak for
myself), but not in an ennobling way. It acts
neither in an ennobling nor a debasing way, but
in an irritating way. How shall I say it? Music
makes me forget my real situation. It trans-
ports me into a state which is not my own. Un-
der the influence of music I really seem to feel
what I do not feel, to understand what I do not
understand, to have powers which I cannot have.

Music seems to me to act like yawning or laugh-
ter; I have no desire to sleep, but I yawn when
I see others yawn; with no reason to laugh, I
laugh when I hear others laugh. And music
transports me immediately into the condition of
soul in which he who wrote the music found
himself at that time. I become confounded with
his soul, and with him I pass from one condition
to another. But why that? I know nothing
about it? But he who wrote Beethoven's 'Kreut-
zer Sonata' knew well why he found himself in a
certain condition. That condition led him to
certain actions, and for that reason to him had a

meaning, but to me none, none whatever. And
that is why music provokes an excitement which
it does not bring to a conclusion. For instance,
a military march is played; the soldier passes
to the sound of this march, and the music is fin-
ished. A dance is played; I have finished danc-
ing, and the music is finished. A mass is sung;

I receive the sacrament, and again the music is
finished. But any other music provokes an ex-
citement, and this excitement is not accompanied
by the thing that needs properly to be done, and
that is why music is so dangerous, and some-
times acts so frightfully.

"In China music is under the control of the
State, and that is the way it ought to be. Is it
admissible that the first comer should hypnotize
one or more persons, and then do with them as
he likes? And especially that the hypnotizer
should be the first immoral individual who
happens to come along? It is a frightful power
in the hands of any one, no matter whom. For
instance, should they be allowed to play this
'Kreutzer Sonata,' the first
presto,
—and there
are many like it,—in parlors, among ladies wear-
ing low necked dresses, or in concerts, then

finish the piece, receive the applause, and then
begin another piece? These things should be
played under certain circumstances, only in cases
where it is necessary to incite certain actions
corresponding to the music. But to incite an
energy of feeling which corresponds to neither
the time nor the place, and is expended in noth-
ing, cannot fail to act dangerously. On me in
particular this piece acted in a frightful manner.

One would have said that new sentiments, new
virtualities, of which I was formerly ignorant,
had developed in me. 'Ah, yes, that's it! Not
at all as I lived and thought before! This is the
right way to live!'

"Thus I spoke to my soul as I listened to that
music. What was this new thing that I thus
learned? That I did not realize, but the con-
sciousness of this indefinite state filled me with
joy. In that state there was no room for jeal-
ousy. The same faces, and among them
he
and
my wife, I saw in a different light. This music
transported me into an unknown world, where
there was no room for jealousy. Jealousy and
the feelings that provoke it seemed to me trivial-
ities, nor worth thinking of.

"After the
presto
followed the
andante
, not
very new, with commonplace variations, and the
feeble
finale
. Then they played more, at the
request of the guests,—first an elegy by Ernst,
and then various other pieces. They were all
very well, but did not produce upon me a tenth
part of the impression that the opening piece
did. I felt light and gay throughout the even-
ing. As for my wife, never had I seen her as
she was that night. Those brilliant eyes, that
severity and majestic expression while she was
playing, and then that utter languor, that weak,
pitiable, and happy smile after she had finished,
—I saw them all and attached no importance to
them, believing that she felt as I did, that to her,
as to me, new sentiments had been revealed, as
through a fog. During almost the whole even-
ing I was not jealous.

"Two days later I was to start for the assem-
bly of the Zemstvo, and for that reason, on tak-
ing leave of me and carrying all his scores with
him, Troukhatchevsky asked me when I should
return. I inferred from that that he believed it
impossible to come to my house during my ab-
sence, and that was agreeable to me. Now I

was not to return before his departure from the
city. So we bade each other a definite farewell.

For the first time I shook his hand with pleas-
ure, and thanked him for the satisfaction that
he had given me. He likewise took leave of my
wife, and their parting seemed to me very nat-
ural and proper. All went marvellously. My
wife and I retired, well satisfied with the even-
ing. We talked of our impressions in a general
way, and we were nearer together and more
friendly than we had been for a long time.

24.
CHAPTER XXIV.

"TWO DAYS later I started for the assembly,
having bid farewell to my wife in an excellent
and tranquil state of mind. In the district there
was always much to be done. It was a world
and a life apart. During two days I spent ten
hours at the sessions. The evening of the sec-
ond day, on returning to my district lodgings,
I found a letter from my wife, telling me of the
children, of their uncle, of the servants, and,
among other things, as if it were perfectly nat-

ural, that Troukhatchevsky had been at the
house, and had brought her the promised scores.

He had also proposed that they play again, but
she had refused.

"For my part, I did not remember at all that
he had promised any score. It had seemed to
me on Sunday evening that he took a definite
leave, and for this reason the news gave me a
disagreeable surprise. I read the letter again.

There was something tender and timid about it.

It produced an extremely painful impression
upon me. My heart swelled, and the mad beast
of jealousy began to roar in his lair, and
seemed to want to leap upon his prey. But I
was afraid of this beast, and I imposed silence
upon it.

"What an abominable sentiment is jealousy!
'What could be more natural than what she
has written?' said I to myself. I went to bed,
thinking myself tranquil again. I thought of
the business that remained to be done, and I
went to sleep without thinking of her.

"During these assemblies of the Zemstvo I
always slept badly in my strange quarters. That
night I went to sleep directly, but, as sometimes

happens, a sort of sudden shock awoke me. I
thought immediately of her, of my physical love
for her, of Troukhatchevsky, and that between
them everything had happened. And a feeling
of rage compressed my heart, and I tried to
quiet myself.

"'How stupid!' said I to myself; 'there is no
reason, none at all. And why humiliate our-
selves, herself and myself, and especially myself,
by supposing such horrors? This mercenary
violinist, known as a bad man,—shall I think of
him in connection with a respectable woman, the
mother of a family,
my
wife? How silly!' But
on the other hand, I said to myself: 'Why
should it not happen?'

"Why? Was it not the same simple and in-
telligible feeling in the name of which I mar-
ried, in the name of which I was living with
her, the only thing I wanted of her, and that
which, consequently, others desired, this mu-
sician among the rest? He was not married,
was in good health (I remember how his teeth
ground the gristle of the cutlets, and how
eagerly he emptied the glass of wine with his
red lips), was careful of his person, well fed,

and not only without principles, but evidently
with the principle that one should take advan-
tage of the pleasure that offers itself. There
was a bond between them, music,—the most re-
fined form of sensual voluptuousness. What
was there to restrain them? Nothing. Every-
thing, on the contrary, attracted them. And
she, she had been and had remained a mystery.

I did not know her. I knew her only as an
animal, and an animal nothing can or should
restrain. And now I remember their faces on
Sunday evening, when, after the 'Kreutzer
Sonata,' they played a passionate piece, written
I know not by whom, but a piece passionate to
the point of obscenity.

"'How could I have gone away?' said I to
myself, as I recalled their faces. 'Was it not
clear that between them everything was done
that evening? Was it not clear that between
them not only there were no more obstacles, but
that both—especially she—felt a certain shame
after what had happened at the piano? How
weakly, pitiably, happily she smiled, as she
wiped the perspiration from her reddened face!

They already avoided each other's eyes, and

only at the supper, when she poured some water
for him, did they look at each other and smile
imperceptibly.'

"Now I remember with fright that look and
that scarcely perceptible smile. 'Yes, every-
thing has happened,' a voice said to me, and
directly another said the opposite. 'Are you
mad? It is impossible!' said the second voice.

"It was too painful to me to remain thus
stretched in the darkness. I struck a match, and
the little yellow-papered room frightened me.

I lighted a cigarette, and, as always happens,
when one turns in a circle of inextricable con-
tradiction, I began to smoke. I smoked cigar-
ette after cigarette to dull my senses, that I
might not see my contradictions. All night I
did not sleep, and at five o'clock, when it was
not yet light, I decided that I could stand this
strain no longer, and that I would leave direct-
ly. There was a train at eight o'clock. I
awakened the keeper who was acting as my ser-
vant, and sent him to look for horses. To the
assembly of Zemstvo I sent a message that I
was called back to Moscow by pressing busi-
ness, and that I begged them to substitute for

me a member of the Committee. At eight
o'clock I got into a
tarantass
and started off.

25.
CHAPTER XXV.

"I HAD to go twenty-five versts by carriage
and eight hours by train. By carriage it was a
very pleasant journey. The coolness of autumn
was accompanied by a brilliant sun. You know
the weather when the wheels imprint themselves
upon the dirty road. The road was level, and
the light strong, and the air strengthening. The

tarantass
was comfortable. As I looked at the
horses, the fields, and the people whom we
passed, I forgot where I was going. Sometimes
it seemed to me that I was travelling without an
object,—simply promenading,—and that I
should go on thus to the end of the world. And
I was happy when I so forgot myself. But
when I remembered where I was going, I said
to myself: 'I shall see later. Don't think about
it.'

"When half way, an incident happened to dis-
tract me still further. The
tarantass, though

new, broke down, and had to be repaired. The
delays in looking for a
télègue, the repairs, the
payment, the tea in the inn, the conversation
with the
dvornik, all served to amuse me. To-
ward nightfall all was ready, and I started off
again. By night the journey was still pleasanter
than by day. The moon in its first quarter, a
slight frost, the road still in good condition, the
horses, the sprightly coachman, all served to put
me in good spirits. I scarcely thought of what
awaited me, and was gay perhaps because of
the very thing that awaited me, and because I
was about to say farewell to the joys of life.

"But this tranquil state, the power of con-
quering my pre-occupation, all ended with the
carriage drive. Scarcely had I entered the cars,
when the other thing began. Those eight hours
on the rail were so terrible to me that I shall
never forget them in my life. Was it because
on entering the car I had a vivid imagination of
having already arrived, or because the railway
acts upon people in such an exciting fashion?

At any rate, after boarding the train I could no
longer control my imagination, which inces-
santly, with extraordinary vivacity, drew pic-

tures before my eyes, each more cynical than its
predecessor, which kindled my jealousy. And
always the same things about what was hap-
pening at home during my absence. I burned
with indignation, with rage, and with a peculiar
feeling which steeped me in humiliation, as I
contemplated these pictures. And I could not
tear myself out of this condition. I could not
help looking at them, I could not efface them,
I could not keep from evoking them.

"The more I looked at these imaginary pict-
ures, the more I believed in their reality, forget-
ting that they had no serious foundation. The
vivacity of these images seemed to prove to me
that my imaginations were a reality. One
would have said that a demon, against my will,
was inventing and breathing into me the most
terrible fictions. A conversation which dated
a long time back, with the brother of Trouk-
hatchevsky, I remembered at that moment, in
a sort of ecstasy, and it tore my heart as I con-
nected it with the musician and my wife. Yes,
it was very long ago. The brother of Trouk-
hatchevsky, answering my questions as to
whether he frequented disreputable houses, said

that a respectable man does not go where he
may contract a disease, in a low and unclean
spot, when one can find an honest woman. And
here he, his brother, the musician, had found
the honest woman. 'It is true that she is no
longer in her early youth. She has lost a tooth
on one side, and her face is slightly bloated,'
thought I for Troukhatchevsky. 'But what is
to be done? One must profit by what one has.'

"'Yes, he is bound to take her for his mis-
tress,' said I to myself again; 'and besides, she
is not dangerous.'

"'No, it is not possible' I rejoined in fright.
'Nothing, nothing of the kind has happened,
and there is no reason to suppose there has.

Did she not tell me that the very idea that I
could be jealous of her because of him was hu-
miliating to her?' 'Yes, but she lied,' I cried,
and all began over again.

"There were only two travellers in my com-
partment: an old woman with her husband,
neither of them very talkative; and even they
got out at one of the stations, leaving me all
alone. I was like a beast in a cage. Now I
jumped up and approached the window, now I

began to walk back and forth, staggering as if
I hoped to make the train go faster by my ef-
forts, and the car with its seats and its windows
trembled continually, as ours does now."

And Posdnicheff rose abruptly, took a few
steps, and sat down again.

"Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid of railway car-
riages. Fear seizes me. I sat down again, and
I said to myself: 'I must think of something
else. For instance, of the inn keeper at whose
house I took tea.' And then, in my imagination
arose the
dvornik
, with his long beard, and his
grandson, a little fellow of the same age as my
little Basile. My little Basile! My little Basile!

He will see the musician kiss his mother! What
thoughts will pass through his poor soul! But
what does that matter to her! She loves.

"And again it all began, the circle of the same
thoughts. I suffered so much that at last I did
not know what to do with myself, and an idea
passed through my head that pleased me much,
—to get out upon the rails, throw myself under
the cars, and thus finish everything. One thing
prevented me from doing so. It was pity! It
was pity for myself, evoking at the same time a

hatred for her, for him, but not so much for
him. Toward him I felt a strange sentiment of
my humiliation and his victory, but toward her
a terrible hatred.

"'But I cannot kill myself and leave her free.

She must suffer, she must understand at least
that I have suffered,' said I to myself.

"At a station I saw people drinking at the
lunch counter, and directly I went to swallow a
glass of Vodka. Beside me stood a Jew, drink-
ing also. He began to talk to me, and I, in
order not to be left alone in my compartment,
went with him into his third-class, dirty, full of
smoke, and covered with peelings and sunflower
seeds. There I sat down beside the Jew, and,
as it seemed, he told many anecdotes.

"First I listened to him, but I did not under-
stand what he said. He noticed it, and exacted
my attention to his person. Then I rose and en-
tered my own compartment.

"'I must consider,' said I to myself, 'whether
what I think is true, whether there is any reason
to torment myself.' I sat down, wishing to re-
flect quietly; but directly, instead of the peace-
ful reflections, the same thing began again. In-
stead of the reasoning, the pictures.

"'How many times have I tormented myself
in this way,' I thought (I recalled previous and
similar fits of jealousy), 'and then seen it end in
nothing at all? It is the same now. Perhaps,
yes, surely, I shall find her quietly sleeping. She
will awaken, she will be glad, and in her words
and looks I shall see that nothing has happened,
that all this is vain. Ah, if it would only so turn
out!' 'But no, that has happened too often!

Now the end has come,' a voice said to me.

"And again it all began. Ah, what torture!

It is not to a hospital filled with syphilitic
patients that I would take a young man to de-
prive him of the desire for women, but into my
soul, to show him the demon which tore it. The
frightful part was that I recognized in myself
an indisputable right to the body of my wife, as
if her body were entirely mine. And at the
same time I felt that I could not possess this
body, that it was not mine, that she could do
with it as she liked, and that she liked to do with
it as I did not like. And I was powerless against
him and against her. He, like the Vanka of the
song, would sing, before mounting the gallows,
how he would kiss her sweet lips, etc., and he
would even have the best of it before death.

With her it was still worse. If she
had not done
it
, she had the desire, she wished to do it, and
I knew that she did. That was worse yet. It
would be better if she had already done it, to
relieve me of my uncertainty.

"In short, I could not say what I desired. I
desired that she might not want what she
must

want. It was complete madness.

26.
CHAPTER XXVI.

"AT the station before the last, when the con-
ductor came to take the tickets, I took my bag-
gage and went out on the car platform, and the
consciousness that the climax was near at hand
only added to my agitation. I was cold, my jaw
trembled so that my teeth chattered. Mechani-
cally I left the station with the crowd, I took a

tchik
, and I started. I looked at the few people
passing in the streets and at the
dvorniks
. I
read the signs, without thinking of anything.

After going half a verst my feet began to feel
cold, and I remembered that in the car I had
taken off my woollen socks, and had put them in

my travelling bag. Where had I put the bag?

Was it with me? Yes, and the basket?

"I bethought myself that I had totally for-
gotten my baggage. I took out my check, and
then decided it was not worth while to return. I
continued on my way. In spite of all my efforts
to remember, I cannot at this moment make out
why I was in such a hurry. I know only that
I was conscious that a serious and menacing
event was approaching in my life. It was a case
of real auto-suggestion. Was it so serious be-
cause I thought it so? Or had I a presenti-
ment? I do not know. Perhaps, too, after
what has happened, all previous events have
taken on a lugubrious tint in my memory.

"I arrived at the steps. It was an hour past
midnight. A few
isvotchiks
were before the
door, awaiting customers, attracted by the
lighted windows (the lighted windows were
those of our parlor and reception room). With-
out trying to account for this late illumination,
I went up the steps, always with the same ex-
pectation of something terrible, and I rang. The
servant, a good, industrious, and very stupid
being, named Gregor, opened the door. The

first thing that leaped to my eyes in the hall, on
the hat-stand, among other garments, was an
overcoat. I ought to have been astonished, but
I was not astonished. I expected it. 'That's it!'

I said to myself.

"When I had asked Gregor who was there,
and he had named Troukhatchevsky, I inquired
whether there were other visitors. He an-
swered: 'Nobody.' I remember the air with
which he said that, with a tone that was intend-
ed to give me pleasure, and dissipate my doubts.
'That's it! that's it!' I had the air of saying to
myself. 'And the children?'

"'Thank God, they are very well. They
went to sleep long ago.'

"I scarcely breathed, and I could not keep
my jaw from trembling. Then it was not as I
thought. I had often before returned home
with the thought that a misfortune had awaited
me, but had been mistaken, and everything was
going on as usual. But now things were not
going on as usual. All that I had imagined, all
that I believed to be chimeras, all really existed.

Here was the truth.

"I was on the point of sobbing, but straight-

way the demon whispered in my ear: 'Weep
and be sentimental, and they will separate
quietly, and there will be no proofs, and all
your life you will doubt and suffer.' And pity for
myself vanished, and there remained only the
bestial need of some adroit, cunning, and ener-
getic action. I became a beast, an intelligent
beast.

"'No, no,' said I to Gregor, who was about to
announce my arrival. 'Do this, take a carriage,
and go at once for my baggage. Here is the
check. Start.'

"He went along the hall to get his overcoat.

Fearing lest he might frighten them, I accom-
panied him to his little room, and waited for
him to put on his things. In the dining-room
could be heard the sound of conversation and
the rattling of knives and plates. They were
eating. They had not heard the ring. 'Now if
they only do not go out,' I thought.

"Gregor put on his fur-collared coat and went
out. I closed the door after him. I felt anxious
when I was alone, thinking that directly I
should have to act. How? I did not yet know.

I knew only that all was ended, that there could

be no doubt of
his
innocence, and that in an in-
stant my relations with her were going to be
terminated. Before, I had still doubts. I said
to myself: 'Perhaps this is not true. Perhaps
I am mistaken.' Now all doubt had disap-
peared. All was decided irrevocably. Secretly,
all alone with him, at night! It is a violation
of all duties! Or, worse yet, she may make a
show of that audacity, of that insolence in
crime, which, by its excess, tends to prove inno-
cence. All is clear. No doubt. I feared but
one thing,—that they might run in different di-
rections, that they might invent some new lie,
and thus deprive me of material proof, and of
the sorrowful joy of punishing, yes, of execut-
ing them.

"And to surprise them more quickly, I started
on tiptoe for the dining-room, not through the
parlor, but through the hall and the children's
rooms. In the first room slept the little boy.

In the second, the old nurse moved in her bed,
and seemed on the point of waking, and I won-
dered what she would think when she knew all.

And pity for myself gave me such a pang that I
could not keep the tears back. Not to wake the

children, I ran lightly through the hall into my
study. I dropped upon the sofa, and sobbed.
'I, an honest man, I, the son of my parents,
who all my life long have dreamed of family
happiness, I who have never betrayed! . . .

And here my five children, and she embrac-
ing a musician because he has red lips! No,
she is not a woman! She is a bitch, a dirty
bitch! Beside the chamber of the children,
whom she had pretended to love all her life!

And then to think of what she wrote me! And
how do I know? Perhaps it has always been
thus. Perhaps all these children, supposed to
be mine, are the children of my servants. And
if I had arrived to-morrow, she would have
come to meet me with her
coiffure
, with her

corsage
, her indolent and graceful movements
(and I see her attractive and ignoble features),
and this jealous animal would have remained
forever in my heart, tearing it. What will the
old nurse say? And Gregor? And the poor
little Lise? She already understands things.

And this impudence, this falsehood, this bestial
sensuality, that I know so well,' I said to myself.

"I tried to rise. I could not. My heart was

beating so violently that I could not hold myself
upon my legs. 'Yes, I shall die of a rush of
blood. She will kill me. That is what she
wants. What is it to her to kill? But that
would be too agreeable to him, and I will not
allow him to have this pleasure. Yes, here I
am, and there they are. They are laughing,
they. . . . Yes, in spite of the fact that she is
no longer in her early youth, he has not dis-
dained her. At any rate, she is by no means
ugly, and above all, not dangerous to his dear
health, to him. Why did I not stifle her then?'
said I to myself, as I remembered that other
scene of the previous week, when I drove her
from my study, and broke the furniture.

"And I recalled the state in which I was then.

Not only did I recall it, but I again entered into
the same bestial state. And suddenly there
came to me a desire to act, and all reasoning,
except such as was necessary to action, vanished
from my brain, and I was in the condition of a
beast, and of a man under the influence of phy-
sical excitement pending a danger, who acts
imperturbably, without haste, and yet without
losing a minute, pursuing a definite object.

"The first thing that I did was to take off my
boots, and now, having only stockings on, I ad-
vanced toward the wall, over the sofa, where
firearms and daggers were hanging, and I took
down a curved Damascus blade, which I had
never used, and which was very sharp. I took
it from its sheath. I remember that the sheath
fell upon the sofa, and that I said to myself:
'I must look for it later; it must not be lost.'

"Then I took off my overcoat, which I had
kept on all the time, and with wolf-like tread
started for
the room. I do not remember how I
proceeded, whether I ran or went slowly,
through what chambers I passed, how I ap-
proached the dining-room, how I opened the
door, how I entered. I remember nothing about
it.

27.
CHAPTER XXVII.

"I REMEMBER only the expression of their
faces when I opened the door. I remember
that, because it awakened in me a feeling of
sorrowful joy. It was an expression of terror,
such as I desired. Never shall I forget that

desperate and sudden fright that appeared on
their faces when they saw me. He, I believe,
was at the table, and, when he saw or heard me,
he started, jumped to his feet, and retreated to
the sideboard. Fear was the only sentiment that
could be read with certainty in his face. In
hers, too, fear was to be read, but accompanied
by other impressions. And yet, if her face had
expressed only fear, perhaps that which hap-
pened would not have happened. But in the
expression of her face there was at the first mo-
ment—at least, I thought I saw it—a feeling
of
ennui
, of discontent, at this disturbance of
her love and happiness. One would have said
that her sole desire was not to be disturbed
in
the moment of her happiness
. But these ex-
pressions appeared upon their faces only for a
moment. Terror almost immediately gave place
to interrogation. Would they lie or not? If
yes, they must begin. If not, something else
was going to happen. But what?

"He gave her a questioning glance. On her
face the expression of anguish and
ennui changed, it seemed to me, when she looked at
him, into an expression of anxiety for
him.

For a moment I stood in the doorway, holding
the dagger hidden behind my back. Suddenly
he smiled, and in a voice that was indifferent
almost to the point of ridicule, he said:

"'We were having some music.'

"'I did not expect—,' she began at the same
time, chiming in with the tone of the other.

"But neither he nor she finished their re-
marks. The same rage that I had felt the pre-
vious week took possession of me. I felt the
need of giving free course to my violence and
'the joy of wrath.'

"No, they did not finish. That other thing
was going to begin, of which he was afraid, and
was going to annihilate what they wanted to
say. I threw myself upon her, still hiding the
dagger, that he might not prevent me from
striking where I desired, in her bosom, under
the breast. At that moment he saw . . . and,
what I did not expect on his part, he quickly
seized my hand, and cried:

"'Come to your senses! What are you doing?

Help! Help!'

"I tore my hands from his grasp, and leaped
upon him. I must have been very terrible, for

he turned as white as a sheet, to his lips. His
eyes scintillated singularly, and—again what I
did not expect of him—he scrambled under the
piano, toward the other room. I tried to follow
him, but a very heavy weight fell upon my left
arm. It was she.

"I made an effort to clear myself. She clung
more heavily than ever, refusing to let go. This
unexpected obstacle, this burden, and this re-
pugnant touch only irritated me the more. I
perceived that I was completely mad, that I
must be frightful, and I was glad of it. With
a sudden impulse, and with all my strength, I
dealt her, with my left elbow, a blow squarely
in the face.

"She uttered a cry and let go my arm. I
wanted to follow the other, but I felt that it
would be ridiculous to pursue in my stockings
the lover of my wife, and I did not wish to be
grotesque, I wished to be terrible. In spite of
my extreme rage, I was all the time conscious
of the impression that I was making upon
others, and even this impression partially guided
me.

"I turned toward her. She had fallen on the

long easy chair, and, covering her face at the
spot where I had struck her, she looked at me.

Her features exhibited fear and hatred toward
me, her enemy, such as the rat exhibits when
one lifts the rat-trap. At least, I saw nothing in
her but that fear and hatred, the fear and hatred
which love for another had provoked. Perhaps
I still should have restrained myself, and should
not have gone to the last extremity, if she had
maintained silence. But suddenly she began to
speak; she grasped my hand that held the dag-
ger.

"'Come to your senses! What are you do-
ing? What is the matter with you? Nothing
has happened, nothing, nothing! I swear it to
you!'

"I might have delayed longer, but these last
words, from which I inferred the contrary of
what they affirmed,—that is, that
everything

had happened,—these words called for a reply.

And the reply must correspond to the condition
into which I had lashed myself, and which was
increasing and must continue to increase. Rage
has its laws.

"'Do not lie, wretch. Do not lie!' I roared.

"With my left hand I seized her hands. She
disengaged herself. Then, without dropping
my dagger, I seized her by the throat, forced
her to the floor, and began to strangle her. With
her two hands she clutched mine, tearing them
from her throat, stifling. Then I struck her a
blow with the dagger, in the left side, between
the lower ribs.

"When people say that they do not remember
what they do in a fit of fury, they talk nonsense.

It is false. I remember everything. I did not
lose my consciousness for a single moment. The
more I lashed myself to fury, the clearer my
mind became, and I could not help seeing what
I did. I cannot say that I knew in advance
what I would do, but at the moment when I
acted, and it seems to me even a little before,
I knew what I was doing, as if to make it possi-
ble to repent, and to be able to say later that I
could have stopped.

"I knew that I struck the blow between the
ribs, and that the dagger entered.

"At the second when I did it, I knew that I
was performing a horrible act, such as I had
never performed,—an act that would have

frightful consequences. My thought was as
quick as lightning, and the deed followed imme-
diately. The act, to my inner sense, had an ex-
traordinary clearness. I perceived the resist-
ance of the corset and then something else, and
then the sinking of the knife into a soft sub-
stance. She clutched at the dagger with her
hands, and cut herself with it, but could not re-
strain the blow.

"Long afterward, in prison when the moral
revolution had been effected within me, I
thought of that minute, I remembered it as far
as I could, and I co-ordinated all the sudden
changes. I remembered the terrible conscious-
ness which I felt,—that I was killing a wife,

my
wife.

"I well remember the horror of that con-
sciousness and I know vaguely that, having
plunged in the dagger, I drew it out again im-
mediately, wishing to repair and arrest my
action. She straightened up and cried:

"'Nurse, he has killed me!'

"The old nurse, who had heard the noise, was
standing in the doorway. I was still erect, wait-
ing, and not believing myself in what had hap-

pened. But at that moment, from under her
corset, the blood gushed forth. Then only did
I understand that all reparation was impossible,
and promptly I decided that it was not even
necessary, that all had happened in accordance
with my wish, and that I had fulfilled my desire.

I waited until she fell, and until the nurse, ex-
claiming, 'Oh, my God!' ran to her; then only I
threw away the dagger and went out of the
room.

"'I must not be agitated. I must be conscious
of what I am doing,' I said to myself, looking
neither at her nor at the old nurse. The latter
cried and called the maid. I passed through the
hall, and, after having sent the maid, started for
my study.

"'What shall I do now?' I asked myself.

"And immediately I understood what I should
do. Directly after entering the study, I went
straight to the wall, took down the revolver, and
examined it attentively. It was loaded. Then
I placed it on the table. Next I picked up the
sheath of the dagger, which had dropped down
behind the sofa, and then I sat down. I re-
mained thus for a long time. I thought of

nothing, I did not try to remember anything.

I heard a stifled noise of steps, a movement of
objects and of tapestries, then the arrival of a
person, and then the arrival of another person.

Then I saw Gregor bring into my room the
baggage from the railway; as if any one needed
it!

"'Have you heard what has happened?' I
asked him. 'Have you told the
dvornik to in-
form the police?'

"He made no answer, and went out. I rose,
closed the door, took the cigarettes and the
matches, and began to smoke. I had not fin-
ished one cigarette, when a drowsy feeling came
over me and sent me into a deep sleep. I surely
slept two hours. I remember having dreamed
that I was on good terms with her, that after a
quarrel we were in the act of making up, that
something prevented us, but that we were
friends all the same.

"A knock at the door awoke me.

"'It is the police,' thought I, as I opened my
eyes. 'I have killed, I believe. But perhaps it
is she
; perhaps nothing has happened.'

"Another knock. I did not answer. I was

solving the question: 'Has it happened or not?

Yes, it has happened.'

"I remembered the resistance of the corset,
and then. . . . 'Yes, it has happened. Yes, it
has happened. Yes, now I must execute my-
self,' said I to myself.

"I said it, but I knew well that I should not
kill myself. Nevertheless, I rose and took the
revolver, but, strange thing, I remembered that
formerly I had very often had suicidal ideas,
that that very night, on the cars, it had seemed
to me easy, especially easy because I thought
how it would stupefy her. Now I not only
could not kill myself, but I could not even
think of it.

"'Why do it?' I asked myself, without an-
swering.

"Another knock at the door.

"'Yes, but I must first know who is knock-
ing. I have time enough.'

"I put the revolver back on the table, and hid
it under my newspaper. I went to the door and
drew back the bolt.

"It was my wife's sister,—a good and stupid
widow.

"'Basile, what does this mean?' said she, and
her tears, always ready, began to flow.

"'What do you want?' I asked roughly.

"I saw clearly that there was no necessity of
being rough with her, but I could not speak in
any other tone.

"'Basile, she is dying. Ivan Fedorowitch
says so.'

"Ivan Fedorowitch was the doctor,
her
doc-
tor, her counsellor.

"'Is he here?' I inquired.

"And all my hatred of her arose anew.

"Well, what?

"'Basile, go to her! Ah! how terrible it is!'
said she.

"'Go to her?' I asked myself; and immedi-
ately I made answer to myself that I ought to
go, that probably that was the thing that is
usually done when a husband like myself kills
his wife, that it was absolutely necessary that I
should go and see her.

"'If that is the proper thing, I must go,' I re-
peated to myself. 'Yes, if it is necessary, I shall
still have time,' said I to myself, thinking of my
intention of blowing my brains out.

"And I followed my sister-in-law. 'Now
there are going to be phrases and grimaces, but
I will not yield,' I declared to myself.

"'Wait,' said I to my sister-in-law, 'it is
stupid to be without boots. Let me at least put
on my slippers.'

28.
CHAPTER XXVIII.

"STRANGE thing! Again, when I had left my
study, and was passing through the familiar
rooms, again the hope came to me that nothing
had happened. But the odor of the drugs, iodo-
form and phenic acid, brought me back to a
sense of reality.

"'No, everything has happened.'

"In passing through the hall, beside the chil-
dren's chamber, I saw little Lise. She was look-
ing at me, with eyes that were full of fear. I
even thought that all the children were looking
at me. As I approached the door of our sleep-
ing-room, a servant opened it from within, and
came out. The first thing that I noticed was
her

light gray dress upon a chair, all dark with
blood. On our common bed she was stretched,

with knees drawn up. She lay very high, upon
pillows, with her chemise half open. Linen had
been placed upon the wound. A heavy smell of
iodoform filled the room. Before, and more
than anything else, I was astonished at her face,
which was swollen and bruised under the eyes
and over a part of the nose. This was the re-
sult of the blow that I had struck her with my
elbow, when she had tried to hold me back. Of
beauty there was no trace left. I saw some-
thing hideous in her. I stopped upon the thres-
hold.

"'Approach, approach her,' said her sister.

"'Yes, probably she repents,' thought I;
'shall I forgive her? Yes, she is dying, I must
forgive her,' I added, trying to be generous.

"I approached the bedside. With difficulty
she raised her eyes, one of which was swollen,
and uttered these words haltingly:

"'You have accomplished what you desired.

You have killed me.'

"And in her face, through the physical suffer-
ings, in spite of the approach of death, was ex-
pressed the same old hatred, so familiar to me.

"'The children . . . I will not give them to

you . . . all the same. . . . She (her sister)
shall take them.' . . .

"But of that which I considered essential, of
her fault, of her treason, one would have said
that she did not think it necessary to say even a
word.

"'Yes, revel in what you have done.'

"And she sobbed.

"At the door stood her sister with the chil-
dren.

"'Yes, see what you have done!'

"I cast a glance at the children, and then at
her bruised and swollen face, and for the first
time I forgot myself (my rights, my pride), and
for the first time I saw in her a human being, a
sister.

"And all that which a moment before had
been so offensive to me now seemed to me so
petty,—all this jealousy,—and, on the contrary,
what I had done seemed to me so important that
I felt like bending over, approaching my face to
her hand, and saying:

"'Forgive me!'

"But I did not dare. She was silent, with
eyelids lowered, evidently having no strength to

speak further. Then her deformed face began
to tremble and shrivel, and she feebly pushed
me back.

"'Why has all this happened? Why?'

"'Forgive me,' said I.

"'Yes, if you had not killed me,' she cried
suddenly, and her eyes shone feverishly. 'For-
giveness—that is nothing. . . . If I only do not
die! Ah, you have accomplished what you de-
sired! I hate you!'

"Then she grew delirious. She was fright-
ened, and cried:

"'Fire, I do not fear . . . but strike them all
. . . He has gone. . . . He has gone.' . . .

"The delirium continued. She no longer rec-
ognized the children, not even little Lise, who
had approached. Toward noon she died. As
for me, I was arrested before her death, at eight
o'clock in the morning. They took me to the
police station, and then to prison, and there,
during eleven months, awaiting the verdict, I
reflected upon myself, and upon my past, and
I understood it. Yes, I began to understand
from the third day. The third day they took
me to the house." . . .

Posdnicheff seemed to wish to add something,
but, no longer having the strength to repress his
sobs, he stopped. After a few minutes, having
recovered his calmness, he resumed:

"I began to understand only when I saw her
in the coffin." . . .

He uttered a sob, and then immediately con-
tinued, with haste:

"Then only, when I saw her dead face, did
I understand all that I had done. I under-
stood that it was I, I, who had killed her. I under-
stood that I was the cause of the fact that she,
who had been a moving, living, palpitating
being, had now become motionless and cold, and
that there was no way of repairing this thing.

He who has not lived through that cannot un-
derstand it."

—

We remained silent a long time. Posdnicheff
sobbed and trembled before me. His face had
become delicate and long, and his mouth had
grown larger.

"Yes," said he suddenly, "if I had known

what I now know, I should never have married
her, never, not for anything."

Again we remained silent for a long time.

"Yes, that is what I have done, that is my ex-
perience, We must understand the real mean-
ing of the words of the Gospel,—Matthew, V. 28,—
'that whosoever looketh on a woman to
lust after her hath committed adultery'; and
these words relate to the wife, to the sister, and
not only to the wife of another, but especially
to one's own wife."

THE END.

If the reading of this book has interested you,
do not fail to get its sequel, entitled "KREUTZER
SONATA BEARING FRUIT, by Pauline Grayson,
which is an exceedingly interesting narrative show-
ing one of the results of the ideas set forth in
"Kreutzer Sonata." It is bound in paper covers
and will be sent by mail, postage paid, upon receipt
of 25 cents. Address all orders to J. S. OGILVIE
PUBLISHING COMPANY, 57 Rose Street, New York.

LESSON OF "THE KREUTZER
SONATA."

—

I have received, and still continue to receive,
numbers of letters from persons who are per-
fect strangers to me, asking me to state in plain
and simple language my own views on the sub-
ject handled in the story entitled "The Kreutzer
Sonata." With this request I shall now en-
deavor to comply.

My views on the question may be succinctly
stated as follows: Without entering into details,
it will be generally admitted that I am accurate
in saying that many people condone in young
men a course of conduct with regard to the
other sex which is incompatible with strict
morality, and that this dissoluteness is par-
doned generally. Both parents and the govern-
ment, in consequence of this view, may be said
to wink at profligacy, and even in the last re-

source to encourage its practice. I am of opin-
ion that this is not right.

It is not possible that the health of one class
should necessitate the ruin of another, and, in
consequence, it is our first duty to turn a deaf
ear to such an essential immoral doctrine, no
matter how strongly society may have estab-
lished or law protected it. Moreover, it needs
to be fully recognized that men are rightly to
be held responsible for the consequences of their
own acts, and that these are no longer to be
visited on the woman alone. It follows from
this that it is the duty of men who do not wish
to lead a life of infamy to practice such con-
tinence in respect to all woman as they would
were the female society in which they move
made up exclusively of their own mothers and
sisters.

A more rational mode of life should be adopt-
ed which would include abstinence from all al-
coholic drinks, from excess in eating and from
flesh meat, on the one hand, and recourse to
physical labor on the other. I am not speaking
of gymnastics, or of any of those occupations
which may be fitly described as playing at work;

I mean the genuine toil that fatigues. No one
need go far in search of proofs that this kind
of abstemious living is not merely possible, but
far less hurtful to health than excess. Hun-
dreds of instances are known to every one. This
is my first contention.

In the second place, I think that of late years,
through various reasons which I need not enter,
but among which the above-mentioned laxity of
opinion in society and the frequent idealization
of the subject in current literature and painting
may be mentioned, conjugal infidelity has be-
come more common and is considered less rep-
rehensible. I am of opinion that this is not
right. The origin of the evil is twofold. It is
due, in the first place, to a natural instinct, and,
in the second, to the elevation of this instinct to
a place to which it does not rightly belong. This
being so, the evil can only be remedied by ef-
fecting a change in the views now in vogue
about "falling in love" and all that this term
implies, by educating men and women at home
through family influence and example, and
abroad by means of healthy public opinion, to
practice that abstinence which morality and

Christianity alike enjoin. This is my second
contention.

In the third place I am of opinion that an-
other consequence of the false light in which
"falling in love," and what it leads to, are
viewed in our society, is that the birth of chil-
dren has lost its pristine significance, and that
modern marriages are conceived less and less
from the point of view of the family. I am of
opinion that this is not right. This is my third
contention.

In the fourth place, I am of opinion that the
children (who in our society are considered an
obstacle to enjoyment—an unlucky accident, as
it were) are educated not with a view to the
problem which they will be one day called on to
face and to solve, but solely with an eye to the
pleasure which they may be made to yield to
their parents. The consequence is, that the chil-
dren of human beings are brought up for all the
world like the young of animals, the chief care
of their parents being not to train them to such
work as is worthy of men and women, but to
increase their weight, or add a cubit to their
stature, to make them spruce, sleek, well-fed,

and comely. They rig them out in all manner
of fantastic costumes, wash them, over-feed
them, and refuse to make them work. If the
children of the lower orders differ in this last
respect from those of the well-to-do classes, the
difference is merely formal; they work from
sheer necessity, and not because their parents
recognize work as a duty. And in over-fed
children, as in over-fed animals, sensuality is
engendered unnaturally early.

Fashionable dress to-day, the course of read-
ing, plays, music, dances, luscious food, all the
elements of our modern life, in a word, from
the pictures on the little boxes of sweetmeats up
to the novel, the tale, and the poem, contribute
to fan this sensuality into a strong, consuming
flame, with the result that sexual vices and dis-
eases have come to be the normal conditions of
the period of tender youth, and often continue
into the riper age of full-blown manhood. And
I am of opinion that this is not right.

It is high time it ceased. The children of
human beings should not be brought up as if
they were animals; and we should set up as the
object and strive to maintain as the result of our

labors something better and nobler than a well-
dressed body. This is my fourth contention.

In the fifth place, I am of opinion that, owing
to the exaggerated and erroneous significance
attributed by our society to love and to the
idealized states that accompany and succeed it,
the best energies of our men and women are
drawn forth and exhausted during the most
promising period of life; those of the men in
the work of looking for, choosing, and winning
the most desirable objects of love, for which
purpose lying and fraud are held to be quite ex-
cusable; those of the women and girls in allur-
ing men and decoying them into
liaisons
or mar-
riage by the most questionable means conceiv-
able, as an instance of which the present fash-
ions in evening dress may be cited. I am of
opinion that this is not right.

The truth is, that the whole affair has been
exalted by poets and romancers to an undue
importance, and that love in its various develop-
ments is not a fitting object to consume the best
energies of men. People set it before them and
strive after it, because their view of life is as
vulgar and brutish as is that other conception

frequently met with in the lower stages of de-
velopment, which sees in luscious and abundant
food an end worthy of man's best efforts. Now,
this is not right and should not be done. And,
in order to avoid doing it, it is only needful to
realize the fact that whatever truly deserves to
be held up as a worthy object of man's striving
and working, whether it be the service of hu-
manity, of one's country, of science, of art, not
to speak of the service of God, is far above and
beyond the sphere of personal enjoyment.

Hence, it follows that not only to form a
liaison
,
but even to contract marriage, is, from a Chris-
tian point of view, not a progress, but a fall.

Love, and all the states that accompany and
follow it, however we may try in prose and
verse to prove the contrary, never do and never
can facilitate the attainment of an aim worthy
of men, but always make it more difficult. This
is my fifth contention.

How about the human race? If we admit
that celibacy is better and nobler than mar-
riage, evidently the human race will come to an
end. But, if the logical conclusion of the argu-
ment is that the human race will become ex-

tinct, the whole reasoning is wrong. To that I
reply that the argument is not mine; I did not
invent it. That it is incumbent on mankind so
to strive, and that celibacy is preferable to mar-
riage, are truths revealed by Christ 1,900 years
ago, set forth in our catechisms, and professed
by us as followers of Christ.

Chastity and celibacy, it is urged, cannot con-
stitute the ideal of humanity, because chastity
would annihilate the race which strove to realize
it, and humanity cannot set up as its ideal its
own annihilation. It may be pointed out in re-
ply that only that is a true ideal, which, being
unattainable, admits of infinite gradation in de-
grees of proximity. Such is the Christian ideal
of the founding of God's kingdom, the union of
all living creatures by the bonds of love. The
conception of its attainment is incompatible with
the conception of the movement of life. What
kind of life could subsist if all living creatures
were joined together by the bonds of love?

None. Our conception of life is inseparably
bound up with the conception of a continual
striving after an unattainable ideal.

But even if we suppose the Christian ideal of

perfect chastity realized, what then? We should
merely find ourselves face to face on the one
hand with the familiar teaching of religion, one
of whose dogmas is that the world will have an
end; and on the other of so-called science, which
informs us that the sun is gradually losing its
heat, the result of which will in time be the ex-
tinction of the human race.

Now there is not and cannot be such an insti-
tution as Christian marriage, just as there can-
not be such a thing as a Christian liturgy (Matt.
vi. 5-12; John iv. 21), nor Christian teachers,
nor church fathers (Matt. xxiii. 8-10), nor
Christian armies, Christian law courts, nor
Christian States. This is what was always
taught and believed by true Christians of the
first and following centuries. A Christian's
ideal is not marriage, but love for God and for
his neighbor. Consequently in the eyes of a
Christian relations in marriage not only do not
constitute a lawful, right, and happy state, as
our society and our churches maintain, but, on
the contrary, are always a fall.

Such a thing as Christian marriage never was
and never could be. Christ did not marry, nor

did he establish marriage; neither did his disci-
ples marry. But if Christian marriage cannot
exist, there is such a thing as a Christian view of
marriage. And this is how it may be formu-
lated: A Christian (and by this term I under-
stand not those who call themselves Christians
merely because they were baptized and still re-
ceive the sacrament once a year, but those whose
lives are shaped and regulated by the teachings
of Christ), I say, cannot view the marriage rela-
tion otherwise than as a deviation from the
doctrine of Christ,—as a sin. This is clearly
laid down in Matt. v. 28, and the ceremony
called Christian marriage does not alter its char-
acter one jot. A Christian will never, therefore,
desire marriage, but will always avoid it.

If the light of truth dawns upon a Christian
when he is already married, or if, being a Chris-
tian, from weakness he enters into marital rela-
tions with the ceremonies of the church, or
without them, he has no other alternative than
to abide with his wife (and the wife with her
husband, if it is she who is a Christian) and to
aspire together with her to free themselves of
their sin. This is the Christian view of mar-

riage; and there cannot be any other for a man
who honestly endeavors to shape his life in ac-
cordance with the teachings of Christ.

To very many persons the thoughts I have
uttered here and in "The Kreutzer Sonata"
will seem strange, vague, even contradictory.

They certainly do contradict, not each other,
but the whole tenor of our lives, and involun-
tarily a doubt arises, "on which side is truth,—
on the side of the thoughts which seem true
and well-founded, or on the side of the lives of
others and myself?" I, too, was weighed down
by that same doubt when writing "The Kreutzer
Sonata." I had not the faintest presentiment
that the train of thought I had started would
lead me whither it did. I was terrified by my
own conclusion, and I was at first disposed to
reject it, but it was impossible not to hearken
to the voice of my reason and my conscience.

And so, strange though they may appear to
many, opposed as they undoubtedly are to the
trend and tenor of our lives, and incompatible
though they may prove with what I have here-
tofore thought and uttered, I have no choice
but to accept them. "But man is weak," people

will object. "His task should be regulated by
his strength."

This is tantamount to saying, "My hand is
weak. I cannot draw a straight line,—that is, a
line which will be the shortest line between two
given points,—and so, in order to make it more
easy for myself, I, intending to draw a straight,
will choose for my model a crooked line."

The weaker my hand, the greater the need
that my model should be perfect.