*To Russia.

with courteous but dignified and just speech, dressed modestly and nobly, with an obvious progressive tinge to his thinking, and explains in a few words the reason for his visit: he is a well-known lawyer; a certain young man has entrusted him with a case; he has come on his behalf. This young man was no more nor less than the son of the late P., though he bore a different name. The lascivious P., having seduced in his youth a poor, honest girl, a household serf but with European education (in part this was, naturally, a matter of baronial rights under the former serfdom), and having noticed the unavoidable but immediate consequences of his liaison, hastened to give her in marriage to a certain man, something of a dealer and even a functionary, of noble character, who had long been in love with this girl. At first he assisted the newlyweds; but soon the husband's noble character denied him the acceptance of this assistance. Time passed and P. gradually forgot the girl and the son he had had by her, and then, as we know, he died without leaving any instructions. Meanwhile his son, born in lawful wedlock, but raised under a different name and fully adopted by the noble character of his mother's husband, who had nevertheless died in the course of time, was left with no support but himself and with an ailing, suffering, crippled mother in one of our remote provinces; he himself earned money in the capital by daily noble labor, giving lessons to merchants' children, thus supporting himself through high school and then as an auditor at useful lectures, having a further purpose in mind. But how much can one earn from a Russian merchant for ten-kopeck lessons, and that with an ailing, crippled mother besides, whose death, finally, in her remote province, hardly made things any easier for him? Now a question: how should our scion have reasoned in all fairness? You think, of course, dear reader, that he spoke thus to himself: 'All my life I have enjoyed all sorts of gifts from P.; tens of thousands were spent on my upbringing, on governesses, and on my treatment for idiocy in Switzerland; and here I am now with millions, while the noble character of P.'s son, in no way guilty in the trespass of his frivolous and forgetful father, is perishing giving lessons. Everything that went to me should rightfully have gone to him. Those enormous sums spent on me were essentially not mine. It was merely a blind error of fortune; they were owing to P.'s son. He should have gotten them, not I—creature of a fantastic whim of the frivolous and forgetful P. If I were fully noble, delicate, and just, I ought to give his son half of my inheritance; but since I am first of all a calculating man and understand only too well that

it is not a legal matter, I will not give him half of my millions. But all the same it would be much too base and shameless (and ill calculated as well, the scion forgot that) on my part, if I did not now return to his son those tens of thousands that P. spent on my idiocy. Here it's not only a matter of conscience and justice! For what would have happened to me if P. had not taken charge of my upbringing, but had concerned himself with his son instead of me?'

"But no, gentlemen! Our scions do not reason that way. No matter how the lawyer presented the young man, saying that he had undertaken to solicit for him solely out of friendship and almost against his will, almost by force, no matter how he pictured for him the duties of honor, nobility, justice, and even simple calculation, the Swiss ward remained inflexible, and what then? All that would be nothing, but here is what was indeed unforgivable and inexcusable by any interesting illness: this millionaire, barely out of his professor's gaiters, could not even grasp that it was not charity or assistance that the young man's noble character, killing himself with lessons, asked of him, but his right and his due, though not juridically so, and he was not even asking, but his friends were merely soliciting for him. With a majestic air, intoxicated by the opportunity offered him to crush people with impunity by his millions, our scion takes out a fifty-rouble note and sends it to the noble young man in the guise of insolent charity. You do not believe it, gentlemen? You are indignant, you are insulted, a cry of resentment bursts from you; and yet he did do it! Naturally, the money was returned to him at once, was, so to speak, thrown in his face. What are we left with to resolve this case! The case is not a juridical one, all that is left is publicity! We convey this anecdote to the public, vouching for its veracity. They say one of our best-known humorists produced a delightful epigram on this occasion, worthy of a place not only in provincial but also in metropolitan articles on our morals:

"Little Lyova five years long In Schneider's overcoat did play, And the usual dance and song Filled his every day.

Comes home in gaiters, foreign-fashion, A million on his plate does find, So now he prays to God in Russian

And robs all student-kind."³⁸;

When Kolya finished, he quickly handed the newspaper to the prince and, without saying a word, rushed to a corner, huddled tightly into it, and covered his face with his hands. He was unbearably ashamed, and his child's impressionability, which had not yet had time to become accustomed to filth, was upset even beyond measure. It seemed to him that something extraordinary had happened, which had destroyed everything all at once, and that he himself had almost been the cause of it by the mere fact of this reading aloud.

But it seemed they all felt something similar.

The girls felt very awkward and ashamed. Lizaveta Prokofyevna held back her extreme wrath and also, perhaps, bitterly regretted having interfered in the affair; she was now silent. What occurred with the prince was what often happens with very shy people on such occasions: he was so abashed by what others had done, he felt so ashamed for his visitors, that he was afraid at first even to look at them. Ptitsyn, Varya, Ganya, even Lebedev—they all seemed to have a somewhat embarrassed look. The strangest thing was that Ippolit and "Pavlishchev's son" were also as if amazed at something; Lebedev's nephew was also visibly displeased. Only the boxer sat perfectly calm, twirling his moustaches, with an air of importance and his eyes slightly lowered, not from embarrassment, but, on the contrary, it seemed, as if out of noble modesty and all-too-obvious triumph. Everything indicated that he liked the article very much.

"This is the devil knows what," Ivan Fyodorovich grumbled in a half-whisper, "as if fifty lackeys got together to write it and wrote it."

"But al-low me to ask, my dear sir, how can you insult people with such suggestions?" Ippolit declared and trembled all over.

"That, that, that ... for a noble man . . . you yourself must agree, General, if he's a noble man, that is insulting!" grumbled the boxer, also suddenly rousing himself, twirling his moustache and twitching his shoulders and body.

"First of all, I am not 'my dear sir' to you, and second, I have no intention of giving you any explanation," Ivan Fyodorovich, terribly worked up, answered sharply, rose from his place and, without saying a word, went to the door of the terrace and stood on the top step, his back to the public, in the greatest indignation at Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who even now did not think of budging from her place.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, let me speak, finally, gentlemen," the prince exclaimed in anguish and agitation. "And do me a favor, let's talk so that we can understand each other. I don't mind the article, gentlemen, let it be; only the thing is, gentlemen, that it's all untrue, what's written in the article: I say that because you know it yourselves; it's even shameful. So that I'm decidedly amazed if it was any one of you who wrote it."