A Desperate Character and Other Stories

‘Why, is life so sweet, then? Even your friend Vladimir Nikolaitch, I may say, I’ve come to love from being wretched and dull: and then Paramon Semyonitch with his offers of mar...

I had living in my house at that time an old aunt with her niece; both of them were extremely disturbed when they heard of Misha’s presence; they could not comprehend how I coul...

I must own I had the gravest doubts as to his having gone to the Caucasus. But it turned out that he really had gone there, had, by favour, got into the T---- regiment as a cade...

The old woman clutched it at once in her fat, crooked fingers, which recalled the fleshy claws of an owl, quickly slipped it into her sleeve, pondered a little, and as though sh...

‘She said she was leaving us because she loved some one else! Dear, good friend, you know, surely, where she is? Save her, let us go to her; we will persuade her. Only think wha...

It was no easy matter to make all this plain to her ... but at last she understood my arguments; she understood, too, that I was not prompted by egoistic feeling, when I showed...

The landlady went up to her with the spoonful of oil. She finished her operation, and, getting up from the floor, asked if there were a clean loft and a little hay.... ‘Vassily...

Alexey Sergeitch died in his eighty-eighth year--in the year 1848, which apparently disturbed even him. His death, too, was rather strange. He had felt well the same morning, th...

Alexey Sergeitch could not endure smoking; and moreover, he could not endure dogs, especially little dogs. ‘If you’re a Frenchman, to be sure, you may well keep a lapdog: you ru...

I fell to watching closely--not him, but his reflection in the pond. It was as clearly reflected as in a looking-glass--a little darker, a little more silvery. The wide stretch...

He plunged into the bushes and vanished, while I sat on some time longer on the seat. I felt perplexity and another feeling, rather an agreeable one ... I had never met nor spok...

We went out of the kitchen-garden ... but there involuntarily I stopped short. Between us and the lodge stood a huge bull. With his head down to the ground, and a malignant glea...

Seven years had passed by. We were living as before at Moscow--but I was by now a student in my second year--and the authority of my grandmother, who had aged very perceptibly i...

i. Rudin. ii. A House of Gentlefolk. iii. On the Eve. iv. Fathers and Children. v. Smoke. vi. & vii. Virgin Soil. 2 Vols. viii, & ix. A Sportsman’s Sketches. 2 Vols. x. Dream Ta...

In the evening Pyetushkov returned home, and began rummaging in his boxes. He found several odd numbers of the Library of Good Reading, five grey Moscow novels, Nazarov’s arithm...

At this point they were overtaken by a dapper little shopman, with a little goat’s beard, and with his fingers held apart like antlers, so as to keep his sleeves from slipping o...

The major was a man of sixty, corpulent and clumsily built, with a red and bloated face, a short neck, and a continual trembling in his fingers, resulting from excessive indulge...