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One day I was working in the Governor’s garden, painting an arbour there to look like marble. The Governor, walking in the garden, came up to the arbour and, having nothing to do, entered into conversation with me, and I reminded him how he had once summoned me to an interview with him. He looked into my face intently for a minute, then made his mouth like a round “O,” flung up his hands, and said: “I don’t remember!”

I have grown older, have become silent, stern, and austere, I rarely laugh, and I am told that I have grown like Radish, and that like him I bore the workmen by my useless exhortations.

Mariya Viktorovna, my former wife, is living now abroad, while her father is constructing a railway somewhere in the eastern provinces, and is buying estates there. Dr. Blagovo is also abroad. Dubetchnya has passed again into the possession of Madame Tcheprakov, who has bought it after forcing the engineer to knock the price down twenty per cent. Moisey goes about now in a bowler hat; he often drives into the town in a racing droshky on business of some sort, and stops near the bank. They say he has already bought up a mortgaged estate, and is constantly making enquiries at the bank about Dubetchnya, which he means to buy too. Poor Ivan Tcheprakov was for a long while out of work, staggering about the town and drinking. I tried to get him into our work, and for a time he painted roofs and put in window-panes in our company, and even got to like it, and stole oil, asked for tips, and drank like a regular painter. But he soon got sick of the work, and went back to Dubetchnya, and afterwards the workmen confessed to me that he had tried to persuade them to join him one night and murder Moisey and rob Madame Tcheprakov.

My father has greatly aged; he is very bent, and in the evenings walks up and down near his house. I never go to see him.

During an epidemic of cholera Prokofy doctored some of the shopkeepers with pepper cordial and pitch, and took money for doing so, and, as I learned from the newspapers, was flogged for abusing the doctors as he sat in his shop. His shop boy Nikolka died of cholera. Karpovna is still alive and, as always, she loves and fears her Prokofy. When she sees me, she always shakes her head mournfully, and says with a sigh: “Your life is ruined.”

On working days I am busy from morning till night. On holidays, in fine weather, I take my tiny niece (my sister reckoned on a boy, but the child is a girl) and walk in a leisurely way to the cemetery. There I stand or sit down, and stay a long time gazing at the grave that is so dear to me, and tell the child that her mother lies here.

Sometimes, by the graveside, I find Anyuta Blagovo. We greet each other and stand in silence, or talk of Kleopatra, of her child, of how sad life is in this world; then, going out of the cemetery we walk along in silence and she slackens her pace on purpose to walk beside me a little longer. The little girl, joyous and happy, pulls at her hand, laughing and screwing up her eyes in the bright sunlight, and we stand still and join in caressing the dear child.

When we reach the town Anyuta Blagovo, agitated and flushing crimson, says good-bye to me and walks on alone, austere and respectable.… And no one who met her could, looking at her, imagine that she had just been walking beside me and even caressing the child.

OTHER TITLES IN THE ART OF THE NOVELLA SERIES

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER

HERMAN MELVILLE

THE LESSON OF THE MASTER

HENRY JAMES

MY LIFE

ANTON CHEKHOV

THE DEVIL

LEO TOLSTOY

THE TOUCHSTONE

EDITH WHARTON

THE HOUND OF THE

BASKERVILLES

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

THE DEAD

JAMES JOYCE

FIRST LOVE

IVAN TURGENEV

A SIMPLE HEART

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

RUDYARD KIPLING

MICHAEL KOHLHAAS

HEINRICH VON KLEIST

THE BEACH OF FALESÁ

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

THE HORLA

GUY DE MAUPASSANT

THE ETERNAL HUSBAND

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED

HADLEYBURG

MARK TWAIN

THE LIFTED VEIL

GEORGE ELIOT

THE GIRL WITH THE

GOLDEN EYES

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A SLEEP AND A FORGETTING

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

BENITO CERENO

HERMAN MELVILLE

MATHILDA

MARY SHELLEY

STEMPENYU: A JEWISH ROMANCE

SHOLEM ALEICHEM

FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES

JOSEPH CONRAD

HOW THE TWO IVANS QUARRELLED

NIKOLAI GOGOL

MAY DAY

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

RASSELAS, PRINCE ABYSSINIA

SAMUEL JOHNSON

THE DIALOGUE OF THE DOGS

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

THE LEMOINE AFFAIR

MARCEL PROUST

THE COXON FUND

HENRY JAMES

THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH

LEO TOLSTOY

TALES OF BELKIN

ALEXANDER PUSHKIN

THE AWAKENING

KATE CHOPIN

ADOLPHE

BENJAMIN CONSTANT

THE COUNTRY OF

THE POINTED FIRS

SARAH ORNE JEWETT

PARNASSUS ON WHEELS

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

THE NICE OLD MAN

AND THE PRETTY GIRL

ITALO SVEVO

LADY SUSAN

JANE AUSTEN

JACOB’S ROOM

VIRGINIA WOOLF

THE DUEL

GIACOMO CASANOVA

THE DUEL

ANTON CHEKHOV

THE DUEL

JOSEPH CONRAD

THE DUEL

HEINRICH VON KLEIST

THE DUEL

ALEXANDER KUPRIN

THE ALIENIST

MACHADO DE ASSIS

ALEXANDER’S BRIDGE

WILLA CATHER

FANFARLO

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

THE DISTRACTED PREACHER

THOMAS HARDY

THE ENCHANTED WANDERER

NIKOLAI LESKOV