The Black Monk, and Other Stories

"I know I'm ruining you, Bórenka," stammered the father. "My poor, poor children! What an affliction to be cursed with such a father! Bórenka, angel mine, I cannot lie when I se...

Yakob had never been in a good humour. He was always overwhelmed by the sense of the losses which he suffered. For instance, on Sundays and saints' days it was a sin to work, Mo...

Abógin did not answer. The calêche, swaying and banging over the stones, crossed a sandy bank, and rolled onward. Kiríloff, wrapped in weariness, looked around him. Behind, in t...

On top of all came the bustle over Tánya's trousseau, to which the Pesótskys attributed infinite significance. With the eternal snipping of scissors, rattle of sewing-machines,...

"They will tell me that this parable acted by means of beauty and artistic form," he speculated. "That may be so, but that is no consolation.... That does not make it an honest...

"If I were only unhappy I should be thankful to God," he continued, looking at Mdlle. Ilováisky. "But my personal unhappiness fades away when I remember how often in my infatuat...

The official of the Crown Council muttered something in reply. Then Ivan Markovitch began to speak softly and fluently. The Colonel impatiently shifted his chair, and smothered...

"Akh!" sighed Mikhail Averyanitch, "why seek intellect among the men of the present day?" And he began to relate how in the old days life was wholesome, gay, and interesting, ho...

The conspect calmed him, but the tom letter lay upon the floor and hindered the concentration of his thoughts. He rose, picked up the fragments, and threw them out of the window...

Next day Andréi Yéfimitch said he was still ill, and remained in his loom. He lay with his face to the back of the sofa, was bored when he was listening to conversation, and hap...

"Understand!" frowned Iván Dmítritch. "External, internal.... Excuse me, but I cannot understand you. I know only one thing," he continued, rising and looking angrily at the doc...

A wave passed over the rye, and the light evening breeze blew softly on his uncovered head. Yet a minute more and the breeze blew again, this time more strongly, the rye rustled...

But nothing is so tiresome as to stand at the kitchen-table and peel potatoes. Varka's head falls on the table, the potatoes glimmer in her eyes, the knife drops from her hand,...

For a time, Iván Dmítritch spent his days and nights in torture. Every man who passed the window or entered the yard was a spy or detective. Every day at twelve o'clock the Chie...

In the up-bringing of children, domestic animals play an unnoticed but unquestionably beneficent part. Which of us cannot remember strong but magnanimous dogs, lazy lapdogs, bir...

Anton Tchekhoff, the writer of the stories and sketches here translated, although hardly known in this country, and but little better known on the western continent of Europe, h...

Nikita banged the door and set his back against it. "But if I go out what harm will it do?" asked Andréi Yéfimitch. "I don't understand! Nikita, I must go out!" he cried in a tr...