A House of Gentlefolk

Lisa had a room to herself on the second story of her mother’s house, a clean bright little room with a little white bed, with pots of flowers in the corners and before the wind...

Fedor Ivanitch Lavretsky--we must ask the reader’s permission to break off the thread of our story for a time--came of an old noble family. The founder of the house of Lavretsky...

Marya Dmitrievna was much agitated when she received the announcement of the arrival of Varvara Pavlovna Lavretsky, she did not even know whether to receive her; she was afraid...

When Lavretsky reached home, he was met at the door of the drawing-room by a tall, thin man, in a thread-bare blue coat, with a wrinkled, but lively face, with disheveled grey w...

Marya Dmitrievna dropped her cards and moved restlessly in her arm-chair; Varvara Pavlovna looked at her with a half-smile, then turned her eyes towards the door. Panshin made h...

The reader knows how Lavretsky grew up and developed. Let us say a few words about Lisa’s education. She was in her tenth year when her father died; but he had not troubled hims...

Lisa had not uttered a word in the course of the dispute between Lavretsky and Panshin, but she had followed it attentively and was completely on Lavretsky’s side. Politics inte...

Lisa had written to Lavretsky the day before, to tell him to come in the evening; but he first went home to his lodgings. He found neither his wife nor his daughter at home; fro...

Marya Dmitrievna was sitting alone in her boudoir in an easy-chair, sniffing eau de cologne; a glass of orange-flower-water was standing on a little table near her. She was agit...

Until Ivan Petrovitch’s return from abroad, Fedya was, as already related, in the hands of Glafira Petrovna. He was not eight years old when his mother died; he did not see her...

The name of the young man whom we have just introduced to the reader was Vladimir Nikolaitch Panshin. He served in Petersburg on special commissions in the department of interna...

Two days later, Marya Dmitrievna visited Vassilyevskoe according to her promise, with all her young people. The little girls ran at once into the garden, while Marya Dmitrievna...

“You don’t recognise me,” he said, taking off his hat, “but I recognise you in spite of its being seven years since I saw you last. You were a child then. I am Lavretsky. Is you...

And so his offer was accepted, but on certain conditions. In the first place, Lavretsky was at once to leave the university; who would be married to a student, and what a strang...

In the course of a fortnight, Fedor Ivanitch had brought Glafira Petrovna’s little house into order and had cleared the court-yard and the garden. From Lavriky comfortable furni...

Happening to go one day in Varvara Pavlovna’s absence into her boudoir, Lavretsky saw on the floor a carefully folded little paper. He mechanically picked it up, unfolded it, an...

The morning after the day we have described, at ten o’clock, Lavretsky was mounting the steps of the Kalitins’ house. He was met by Lisa coming out in her hat and gloves.

For a long time the old Lavretsky could not forgive his son for his marriage. If six months later Ivan Petrovitch had come to him with a penitent face and had thrown himself at...

For more than two hours Lavretsky wandered about the streets of town. The night he had spent in the outskirts of Paris returned to his mind. His heart was bursting and his head,...

Marya Dmitrievna did not give Lavretsky an over-cordial welcome when he made his appearance the following day. “Upon my word, he’s always in and out,” she thought. She did not m...

The next morning, over their tea, Lemm asked Lavretsky to let him have the horses to return to town. “It’s time for me to set to work, that is, to my lessons,” observed the old...

Panshin, who was playing bass, struck the first chords of the sonata loudly and decisively, but Lisa did not begin her part. He stopped and looked at her. Lisa’s eyes were fixed...

The small manor-house to which Lavretsky had come and in which two years before Glafira Petrovna had breathed her last, had been built in the preceding century of solid pine-woo...

As he was coming away from the Kalitins, Lavretsky met Panshin; they bowed coldly to one another. Lavretsky went to his lodgings, and locked himself in. He was experiencing emot...

The following day was Sunday. The sound of bells ringing for early mass did not wake Lavretsky--he had not closed his eyes all night--but it reminded him of another Sunday, when...

On the following day at twelve o’clock, Lavretsky set off to the Kalitins. On the way he met Panshin, who galloped past him on horseback, his hat pulled down to his very eyebrow...

The day of the arrival of Lavretsky’s wife at the town of O-----, a sorrowful day for him, had been also a day of misery for Lisa. She had not had time to go down-stairs and say...

A bright spring day was fading into evening. High overhead in the clear heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be sinking into its depths of blue.

Painful days followed for Fedor Ivanitch. He found himself in a continual fever. Every morning he made for the post, and tore open letters and papers in agitation, and nowhere d...

After burying his father and intrusting to the unchanged Glafira Petrovna the management of his estate and superintendence of his bailiffs, young Lavretsky went to Moscow, whith...

A tall man entered, wearing a tidy overcoat, rather short trousers, grey doeskin gloves, and two neckties--a black one outside, and a white one below it. There was an air of dec...

Four days later, he set off for home. His coach rolled quickly along the soft cross-road. There had been no rain for a fortnight; a fine milk mist was diffused in the air and hu...

One day Lavretsky, according to his habit, was at the Kalitins’. After an exhaustingly hot day, such a lovely evening had set in that Marya Dmitrievna, in spite of her aversion...

He found them all at home, but he did not at once disclose his plan to them; he wanted to discuss it first with Lisa alone. Fortune favoured him; they were left alone in the dra...

Christopher Theodor Gottlieb Lemm was born in 1786 in the town of Chemnitz in Saxony. His parents were poor musicians. His father played the French horn, his mother the harp; he...

Meanwhile the evening had come on, Marya Dmitrievna expressed a desire to return home, and the little girls were with difficulty torn away from the pond, and made ready. Lavrets...

Lavretsky was not a young man; he could not long delude himself as to the nature of the feeling inspired in him by Lisa; he was brought on that day to the final conviction that...

Lavretsky spent a day and a half at Vassilyevskoe, and employed almost all the time in wandering about the neighbourhood. He could not stop long in one place: he was devoured by...

The next day Lavretsky got up rather early, had a talk with the village bailiff, visited the threshing-floor, ordered the chain to be taken off the yard dog, who only barked a l...

He began talking about music, about Lisa, then of music again. He seemed to enunciate his words more slowly when he spoke of Lisa. Lavretsky turned the conversation on his compo...

Varvara Pavlovna’s father, Pavel Petrovitch Korobyin, a retired general-major, had spent his whole time on duty in Petersburg. He had had the reputation in his youth of a good d...

Ivan Petrovitch returned to Russia an Anglomaniac. His short-cropped hair, his starched shirt-front, his long-skirted pea-green overcoat with its multitude of capes, the sour ex...

The young Spartan’s legs shook under him when Mihalevitch conducted him into the rather shabbily furnished drawing-room of the Korobyins, and presented him to them. But his over...

“For the nuptials of Mr. Panshin and Lisa. Did you notice what attention he paid her yesterday? It seems as though things were in a fair way with them already.”

“Orlando.... But it’s a stupid name; I want to change.... Eh bien, eh bien, mon garçon.... What a restless beast it is!” The horse snorted, pawed the ground, and shook the foam...