The Horse-Stealers and other stories

s own farm, and who had once been young, strong, and vigorous, but now was old, dried up, and bent, with sh

way carriage he was haunted by melancholy, serious thoughts of approaching death, of the vanity of vanities, of the transitoriness of all things earthly. At the station of Provalye—

not everyone tells the truth, because, you know, people are ashamed of an unhappy home life and conceal it. It’s ‘Manya this’ and ‘Manya that’ with many a man by his wife’s side, but if he had his way he’d put that Manya in a sack and drop her in the water. It’s dull with one’s wife, it’s mere foolishness. And it

w voice, and was apparently a gentleman of gentle and modest disposition. He menti

ting with him. “But excuse me, you won’t find horses at the station now. To my mind, the very best thing you can

a moment and acce

ad driven five or six miles there came into view in the distance a low-pitched house and a yard enclosed by a fence made of dark, flat stones standing on end; the roof was green, the stucco was peeling off, and the windows were little narrow slits like screwed-up eyes. The farm stood in the full sunshine, and there was no sign either of water or tr

etchenyeg,*

omads who made frequent inroads upon the Russians in

n’s boys grew up and began to make raids on the orchards and kitchen-gardens. Ivan Abramitch was c

barefoot and bareheaded. Just at the moment when the trap drove into the yard the younger one flung high up a hen

arning to shoot birds

woman with a pale face, still young and beautiful; f

oung cubs. Come, Lyubov Osipovna,” he said, addressing her, “you must be sp

the labourers had their meals; here geese and turkey-hens were sitting on their eggs under the benches, and here were the beds of Lyubov Osipovna and her two sons. The furniture in the parlour was unpainted and evidently roughly made by a car

d handed ham, then beetroot soup. The visitor

ham?” ask

t,” answered the visitor,

is

Killing animals is a

inute and then said

go on always shooting and slaughtering, you know; we must give it up some day and leave even the beasts in peace. It’s a sin to kill, it’s

im; animals suffer ju

only there is this one thing I don’t understand: suppose, you know, everyone gave up

ould live in freed

l live in freedom, rejoicing, you know, and praising God; and they will not fear us, peace and concord will come. Only there is one th

the rest—that is, the

ood-bye to the kitchen-gardens and the meadows. Why, a pig, if you let it free and don’t look after i

reassured, that he might not be so frightened of dying. He had a longing for meekness, spiritual calm, and confidence in himself, such as this guest of theirs had, who had satisfied his hunger on cucumbers and bread, and believed that doing so made him more perfect; he was sit

To be sure. . . . By now it was dark, and here and there stars could be seen in the sky. They had not yet lighted up indoors.

” she asked timidly, no

live in

rned way, sir; be so kind as to advis

” asked t

y as common Cossacks. It’s not right, sir! They can’t read and write, they are worse than peasants, and Ivan Abramitch himself can’t stand them and won’t let them indoors. But they are not to blame. The younger one, at any

your affair,” said Zhmuhin, appearing in the doorway. “Do

entry repeated once more in a thin

he was a very earnest, deep thinker, and that nothing in this world interested him but serious questions. And now he kept thinking and he longed to pitch upon some one significant thought unlike others, which would be a guide to him in life, and he wanted to think out principles of some sort for himself so as to make his life as deep and earnest as he imagined that he felt himself to be. It would be

ercy upon us,” he muttered, sighing

N

with nothing but his shirt on, displaying to his g

couldn’t sleep a second; well, we got sick of it. And from a common-sense point of view you really can’t go without your sleep for the devil knows what (excuse the expression). We took that princess and gave her a good thrashing, and she gave up coming. There’s an instance for you. Nowadays, of course, there is not the same class of people, and they are not given to thrashing and they live in cleaner style, and there is more learning, but, you know, the soul is just the same: there is no change. Now, look here, there’s a landowner living here among us; he has mines, you know; all sorts of tramps without passports who don’t know where to go work for him. On Saturdays he has to settle up with the workmen, but he doesn’t care to pay them, you know, he grudges the money. So he’s got hold of a foreman who is a tramp too, though he does wear a hat. ‘Don’t you pay them anyt

er side with his face to the back

the earth, that lime was to be thrown over them, and so on, you know, on scientific principles. My horse died too. I buried it with every precaution, and threw over three hundredweight of lime over it. And what do you think? My fine fellows—my precious sons, I mean—

oming, the gnats were biting, and Zhmuhin, as he lay in his bedroom meditating, sighed and groaned and said to himself: “Y

you a

wered the

ls walked through the parlour and the ent

ou may break the floor beating your head against it, but if you haven’t got it you haven’t. And the other reason she prays is because, you know, every woman imagines there is no one in the world as unhappy as she is. I am a plain-spoken man, and I don’t want to conceal anything from you. She comes of a poor family, a village priest’s daughter. I married her when she was seventeen, and they accepted my offer chiefly because they hadn’t enough to eat; it was nothi

up abruptly an

stifled,” he said;

the black shadows. Far away on the right could be seen the steppe, above it the stars were softly glowing —and it was all mysterious, infinitely far away, as though one were gazing into a deep abyss; while on the left heavy storm-clouds, black as soot, were piling up one upon another abo

se a little night-owl

ep! a

it now?” ask

afte

it is stil

ld be, as death was near at hand, for the sake of his soul to give up the idleness which so imperceptibly swallowed up day after day, year after year, leaving no trace; to think out for himself some great exploit—for instance, to walk on foot far, far away, or to giv

softly pattering on the roof. Zhmuhin got up, stretching and groaning with old ag

went shooting, and would not let his servants catch fish. Of course, I understand that every animal ought to live in fre

nd vexation; it was evident that he was exhausted, and only his gentleness an

id mildly. “Please have the

little and the r

in horror, with a supplicating voice;

an hurried

d it seemed paler than the day before, with tear-stained eyes, looked at him intently without blinking, with the na?ve expression of a little girl, and it was evident from her dejected face that she was envying him his freedom—oh, with what joy she would have gone away from there! —and she wanted to say something to him, most likely to ask advice about her children. And what a piti

d man kept repeating incessantly; “what

ously rattled the pail that was tied on at the back. He glanced round at Zhmuhin with a peculiar expression; it looked as though he wanted to call him a Petchenyeg, as the surveyor had once done, o

bored me

peared throu

erel with a bright red comb. The younger flung up the cockerel with all his might; the bird flew upwards higher

the table he spent a long while meditating on the intellectual tendencies of the day, on the universal immorality, on the telegraph, on the telephone, on vel