me out; I shall be certainly discovered,' she
said in a voice that trembled with terror.
Then, passing from one emotion to another,
she added, 'I thank you, Peotre Pétrovitch;
never in my life shall I forget this mark of
your attachment. But fate has driven me
here, and here I will remain.' — 'Matrèna,
Matrèna! I thought you had some little force
of character, and here you stand, half-dead
with fright. You have not the slightest spark
of courage.'

"She did not really want for courage; she
had plenty. She did not want for soul; hers
was a heart of gold, monsieur, I assure you.
I returned to my proposition. 'Good God!
what makes you determine to remain here?
If you will have to undergo suffering in
consequence of making your escape, it all only
comes to the same thing. You cannot be
worse off anywhere than you are in this wild
and desert spot, I am certain that this brute
of an elder kicks you and gives you blows of
the fist for the mere pleasure of bullying and
beating some one.'

"Matrèna blushed deeply and ground her
teeth. She made no reply; then, thinking of
the consequences of her flight, were she to
take that decided step, she turned pale, and
said, 'If I run away, I shall bring misfortune
on everyone belonging to me.'— 'How so? Do
you believe they would persecute your whole
family? Would they send your relations into
banishment?'— 'In the first place, my brother
would be certainly sent here in my stead;
and what a cruel lot that would be for him!'—
'But your father?'—  'My father would not
be sent away; my lady has only one good
tailor belonging to her, and that is he.'—
'Ah! that's all right, then. And your brother,
you may be sure, would not remain long in
the Steppe. Your father would urge every
day that the lad, at least, has not committed
any crime; he would beg for his release, and
he would be soon sent back again.'— 'Perhaps
it might turn out so; but you, you— they
would make you responsible— they would
bring you into trouble. I would sooner die
than be the cause of what might happen.'—
'As to that, that's my affair, dear girl, and
not yours.'

"She turned and re-turned her objections
over and over again, but she already began to
hesitate. I carried her off, not this time, but
after another visit. I arrived one night with
my chariot; she had taken her resolution, and
I drove away with her.

"Did she step into your chariot of her own
free will?" I asked of M. Karataëf.

"Entirely of her own free will. I reached
home next day at dusk, and I installed her in
her new abode. My house consisted of eight
rooms in all, and I employed only a very small
number of persons in my service. My people,
I may tell you without the slightest scruple,
respected me, and were so devoted to me that,
I declare, they would not have betrayed me
for all the wealth in the world. I was singularly
happy. Matrèna, while she remained
with me, remembered her past sufferings
only to enhance the enjoyment of her present
life, and soon regained her health and her
fresh complexion; and I, beholding her so
handsome, so happy, so grateful for my attentions,
became more attached to her than ever.
What an excellent girl she was, monsieur!
Let those who can, explain the matter, but I
found that she could sing, dance, and play the
guitar. I was careful not to let the
neighbouring landowners catch sight of her; for
how was I to prevent their gossiping, even
without their meaning to do us any harm?
But I had a friend, quite an intimate friend,
his name is Gornostaëf Panteleï— don't you
know him?

"'No.'

"Gornostaëf was quite charmed with her;
he kissed her hands as he would have done to
a handsome lady, I assure you. I confess
that Gornostaëf was quite a different sort of
man to me— he was a man of learning— he
had read all Pouchkine through and when
he conversed with Matrèna and myself, there
we were, all ears, devouring his discourse
with open mouth. He taught my little
Matrèna to write— he was a very original fellow.
As for me, I set her up with such a wardrobe
that she might, in point of dress, have checkmated
his excellence the governor's wife.
She had, especially, a manteau of raspberry-
coloured velvet, with a collar and lining of
black fox fur— ah! how well she looked in
that! A Moscow madame made that
manteau, in the newest fashion, with a waist to it.
Many were the days when, from morning till
night, I was occupied with one single idea,
namely, how to procure her some great
pleasure. And, will you believe it, when I
loaded her with presents, it was only for the
sake of seeing her dance with joy, blush with
delight, try on the dresses or ornaments,
advance towards me radiant with satisfaction,
bend smiling before me, and, at last, throw
her arms round my neck.

"Her father Koulik, I cannot tell how, got
wind of the affair, and strongly denied the
truth of it to everyone that mentioned it.
But he came secretly to see us, his daughter,
and myself. You can imagine how we treated
him. He shed a good many tears of pleasure,
and departed mysteriously as he came. In
this way, we spent five months; I need not
tell you that I should have liked it to last
our whole lives long. But I was born an
exceedingly unlucky fellow"—

"What bad luck occurred to you afterwards?"
I inquired with sympathy, observing
that he was in some sort embarrassed at
having talked about himself so long.

"All my happiness went to the devil," he
answered, making a gesture of renunciation
of very familiar use in Russia by all except
persons of education who have travelled or
who habitually frequent the saloons of the
three capitals— a gesture which commences