The duel

Alexander Kuprin was born in 1870. He passed through the Cadet School and Military College at Moscow, entered the Army as lieutenant in 1890, and resigned after seven years to d...

Colonel Shulgovich was evidently not in a good humour. He wandered about the platoons, growling and swearing, all the while repeatedly trying to worry the life out of the unhapp...

But it was not long before he began to conjure up fresh pictures in his imagination. The cruel war with Prussia and Austria, long expected and prepared for, had come. An enormou...

Nikoläiev sat with his back to them at the table that was almost hidden by piles of books, drawings, and maps. Before the year was out he had to make another attempt to get admi...

The lights in their drawing-room were now extinguished. "They are in their bedroom now," thought Romashov, and at once he began fancying that Nikoläiev and Shurochka were then t...

"Oh, my dear fellow, what does that matter?" cried Nasanski passionately. "Perhaps--who knows?--one might then attain to that state of bliss one reads of in stories. Which is be...

He smiled unnaturally; but, in the next instant, he frowned, and turned pale with emotion and strain of thought. Such small crises had not infrequently happened to him during th...

Bondarenko glided through the door. He was a typical Colonel's servant, with an impudently condescending look, hair pomaded and parted in the middle, dandified, with white glove...

The first thundering notes of the overture to "Long live the Tsar" rolled through the open windows of the music gallery across the ballroom, and the flames of the candelabra vib...

"How do you do, Yuri Alexievich? Why don't you come and speak to me?" Romashov went up to her. With a venomous glance from her small, sharp eyes she pressed his hand. The pupils...

This officer was a survival of the barbaric times when an iron discipline, idiotic pedantry--parade march in three time--and inhuman martial laws were virtually epidemic. Even i...

Before Romashov's mind's eye appeared Osadchi's peculiar but well-formed features and his heavy, brutal expression. "No, anybody else in the world except him. Second Company, Ta...

"Please--don't let us talk of this to-day! No doubt you will be pleased to hear that I have been watching for you. I know what a coward you are, you see. Don't you dare to look...

She sank down on the grass, and began with both hands to arrange her hair at the back. Romashov laid himself at her feet, but, as the ground just there sloped downwards, he saw...

Precisely at ten minutes to 10 a.m., the 5th Company marched out of camp. With brisk, long, measured steps, that made the earth tremble, these hundred men marched past all the o...

A new line of bayonets assumed a leaning position and departed. The thunder of the drums grew more and more faint, and was just about to sink down, as it were, and be absorbed i...

The two officers did not shake hands, and their salute at parting was very curt. Romashov stood still for a moment, and stared, through the cloud of dust, at the hurrying _drosh...

"Wrong! Do you mean to tell me you would call it a gun? At home you might call it a gun, certainly, but in the service it is called simply a sharp-shooting infantry rifle of sma...

One evening Nikoläiev was invited to a whist party at the commander's. Romashov was aware of this. When, as usual of a night, he passed Nikoläiev's dwelling, he smelt, from the...

This insult was hurled by the same bare-headed woman with naked arms as had just embraced Lieschtschenko. This was the first time that Romashov had noticed her. She was standing...

At 6 p.m. Romashov put in an appearance at the mess, and told the orderly to send in his name to the president. The answer was to the effect that he was to wait. Romashov sat do...

"No, even if I were to fall under the railway train, and were left lying on the line with broken and bleeding limbs, and any one were to ask me if life were beautiful, I should...

"Come, come," replied he in a melancholy and tender tone. "There's a certain inward light in you, Georgi Alexievich; I don't know what to call it properly; but in this bear-pit...