The Forged Coupon, And Other Stories

Book 7 : The Young Tsar
The young Czar had just ascended the throne. For five weeks he had worked without ceasing, in the way that Czars are accustomed to work. He had been attending to reports, signing papers, receiving ambassadors and high officials who came to be presented to him, and reviewing troops. He was tired, and as a traveler exhausted by heat and thirst longs for a draft of water and for rest, so he longed for a respite of just one day at least from receptions, from speeches, from parades—a few free hours to spend like an ordinary human being with his young, clever, and beautiful wife, to whom he had been married only a month before. It was Christmas Eve. The young Czar had arranged to have a complete rest that evening. The night before he had worked till very late at documents which his ministers of state had left for him to examine. In the morning he was present at the Te Deum, and then at a military service. In the afternoon he received official visitors; and later he had bee... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Book 6, Chapter 2
Alexander Ivanovich Volgin, a bachelor and a clerk in a Moscow bank at a salary of eight thousand rubles a year, a man much respected in his own set, was staying in a country-house. His host was a wealthy landowner, owning some twenty-five hundred acres, and had married his guest’s cousin. Volgin, tired after an evening spent in playing vint for small stakes with [ A game of cards similar to auction bridge.] members of the family, went to his room and placed his watch, silver cigarette-case, pocket-book, big leather purse, and pocket-brush and comb on a small table covered with a white cloth, and then, taking off his coat, waistcoat, shirt, trousers, and underclothes, his silk socks and English boots, put on his nightshirt and dressing-gown. His watch pointed to midnight. Volgin smoked a cigarette, lay on his face for about five minutes reviewing the day’s impressions; then, blowing out his candle, he turned over on his side and fell asleep about one o’clock, i... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Book 6, Chapter 1 : There Are No Guilty People
I Mine is a strange and wonderful lot! The chances are that there is not a single wretched beggar suffering under the luxury and oppression of the rich who feels anything like as keenly as I do either the injustice, the cruelty, and the horror of their oppression of and contempt for the poor; or the grinding humiliation and misery which befall the great majority of the workers, the real producers of all that makes life possible. I have felt this for a long time, and as the years have passed by the feeling has grown and grown, until recently it reached its climax. Although I feel all this so vividly, I still live on amid the depravity and sins of rich society; and I cannot leave it, because I have neither the knowledge nor the strength to do so. I cannot. I do not know how to change my life so that my physical needs—food, sleep, clothing, my going to and fro—may be satisfied without a sense of shame and wrongdoing in the position which I fill. There was... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Book 5 : My Dream
“As a daughter she no longer exists for me. Can’t you understand? She simply doesn’t exist. Still, I cannot possibly leave her to the charity of strangers. I will arrange things so that she can live as she pleases, but I do not wish to hear of her. Who would ever have thought . . . the horror of it, the horror of it.” He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and raised his eyes. These words were spoken by Prince Michael Ivanovich to his brother Peter, who was governor of a province in Central Russia. Prince Peter was a man of fifty, Michael’s junior by ten years. On discovering that his daughter, who had left his house a year before, had settled here with her child, the elder brother had come from St. Petersburg to the provincial town, where the above conversation took place. Prince Michael Ivanovich was a tall, handsome, white-haired, fresh colored man, proud and attractive in appearance and bearing. His family consisted of... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Book 4 : Alyosha the Pot
Alyosha was the younger brother. He was called the Pot, because his mother had once sent him with a pot of milk to the deacon’s wife, and he had stumbled against something and broken it. His mother had beaten him, and the children had teased him. Since then he was nicknamed the Pot. Alyosha was a tiny, thin little fellow, with ears like wings, and a huge nose. “Alyosha has a nose that looks like a dog on a hill!” the children used to call after him. Alyosha went to the village school, but was not good at lessons; besides, there was so little time to learn. His elder brother was in town, working for a merchant, so Alyosha had to help his father from a very early age. When he was no more than six he used to go out with the girls to watch the cows and sheep in the pasture, and a little later he looked after the horses by day and by night. And at twelve years of age he had already begun to plow and to drive the cart. The skill was there though the strength was not. H... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Everyone tried to look as if Isidor’s sermon contained nothing unpleasant, and nobody mentioned it. It seemed to the Czar that the hermit’s words had not made any impression on himself; but once or twice during that day he caught himself thinking of the two peasants who had been hanged, and the widow of Sventizky who had asked an amnesty for them. That day the Emperor had to be present at a parade; after which he went out for a drive; a reception of ministers came next, then dinner, after dinner the theater. As usual, the Czar fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow. In the night an awful dream awoke him: he saw gallows in a large field and corpses dangling on them; the tongues of the corpses were protruding, and thei... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

During the first month in prison Stepan suffered from the same agonizing vision. He saw the gray wall of his cell, he heard the sounds of the prison; the noise of the cell below him, where a number of convicts were confined together; the striking of the prison clock; the steps of the sentry in the passage; but at the same time he saw HER with that kindly face which conquered his heart the very first time he met her in the street, with that thin, strongly-marked neck, and he heard her soft, lisping, pathetic voice: “To destroy somebody’s soul . . . and, worst of all, your own. . . . How can you? . . .” After a while her voice would die away, and then black faces would appear. They would appear whether he had his eyes open o... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Natalia Ivanovna Sventizky's telegram proved useless. The committee appointed to deal with the petitions in the Emperor’s name, decided not even to make a report to the Czar. But one day when the Sventizky case was discussed at the Emperor’s luncheon-table, the chairman of the committee, who was present, mentioned the telegram which had been received from Sventizky’s widow. “C’est tres gentil de sa part,” said one of the ladies of the imperial family. The Emperor sighed, shrugged his shoulders, adorned with epaulets. “The law,” he said; and raised his glass for the groom of the chamber to pour out some Moselle. All those present pretended to admire the wisdom of the sovereign’s words. Th... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

In the meantime Mahin, the schoolboy who had taught his friend Smokovnikov to forge the coupon, had finished his career at school and then at the university, where he had studied law. He had the advantage of being liked by women, and as he had won favor with a vise-minister’s former mistress, he was appointed when still young as examining magistrate. He was dishonest, had debts, had gambled, and had seduced many women; but he was clever, sagacious, and a good magistrate. He was appointed to the court of the district where Stepan Pelageushkine had been tried. When Stepan was brought to him the first time to give evidence, his sincere and quiet answers puzzled the magistrate. He somehow unconsciously felt that this man, brought to him i... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

In a small district town, some distance away from the other buildings, an old man, a former official, who had taken to drink, lived in his own house with his two daughters and his son-in-law. The married daughter was also addicted to drink and led a bad life, and it was the elder daughter, the widow Maria Semenovna, a wrinkled woman of fifty, who supported the whole family. She had a pension of two hundred and fifty rubles a year, and the family lived on this. Maria Semenovna did all the work in the house, looked after the drunken old father, who was very weak, attended to her sister’s child, and managed all the cooking and the washing of the family. And, as is always the case, whatever there was to do, she was expected to do it, and ... (From : Gutenberg.org.)