Three Men: A Novel

Masha felt insulted, and turned away. Looking small and delicate, she shook back her dark hair from time to time, coughing and blinking when the smoke from the samovar she was t...

He was actually begging, his lips quivered, and in his eyes was an expression of fear. Ilya looked at him and could not determine if his uncle really distressed him or no.

"To Heaven," added Masha, and looked up into the sky, while she nestled closer to Jakov. The stars were already flaming; one of them a great bright star that did not twinkle, se...

Matiza said nothing, but looked at him with her mouth open, and her neck outstretched, and an expression of dull-witted astonishment in her eyes. Ilya strode to the door, drew b...

Deafened with the noise of the bar, Ilya betook himself to the courtyard. Here Savel was striking great blows on the anvil with his hammer and quarrelling with his mates. Out of...

Beaming with happiness, Ilya set to at his usual evening's task, the distribution of the treasures he had collected in the day. The children had been waiting for him for ever so...

Petrusha's duplicity did not in the least lessen Ilya's heightened self-confidence. He felt exactly like a hero, and was convinced that he had behaved very well with regard to t...

They came to a one-storied house on the outskirts of the town. Its six windows were fast shut with thick shutters so that the house had the look of an old straggling granary. Th...

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Kirik Avtonomov. And every one praised Fedorovna for her acuteness, and blamed the poor, because of their lying and greed, and want of respect towards thei...

After two or three speeches of this kind the question began to busy Ilya, why this rich and respected man should stay all day in a dirty shop and breathe the sharp, unpleasant r...

Next day Ilya felt like the quarry that finds the huntsman on its track. Petrusha met him in the bar room early; he answered Ilya's greeting with a nod, and looked at him strang...

He felt that Jakov's dark sayings gripped his heart more strongly than of old, and waked very strange thoughts in him. He felt as though there were a being in his mind, the same...

"Petrusha is married, his wife is like--like a beetroot, and the stepson like a carrot. Quite a vegetable garden, by God! The wife is thick and short and red, and her face is bu...

"Cook's wages, three roubles, and what she'd cost, seven--makes ten roubles. She'd steal at least three roubles' worth a month--thirteen roubles. Then I let her room to you--eig...

Tatiana Vlassyevna regarded him with the look of the cat who lies in wait for the bird, ravished by his own song. A greenish fire gleamed in her eyes and her lips twitched; Kiri...

Everything spoke of spring, of fine warm, clear days, but in the little room it smelt damp and close. From time to time a melancholy, sorrowful word was uttered, the samovar hum...

"I? Quite simply. I don't know any prayers. I knew 'the Virgin Mother of God' once, but I forgot it long ago. There's a beggar's prayer: 'O Lord Jesus,' and so on, I know that b...

"No, wait a minute," Jakov went on. "Everything is beyond our understanding. Take the lamp, for instance--I see there is fire in it, but where does the fire come from? One minut...

There are many solitary graves amid the woods of Kerschentz; within them moulder the bones of old men, men of an ancient piety, and of one of these old men, Antipa, this tale is...

He went quickly from the shop and in the doorway, for some reason, took off his cap. Ilya sprang from behind the counter after him, but already Gratschev was away down the stree...

So Pavel wrote. Lunev read the verse and before his eyes he seemed to see the lively face of his comrade; now restless, with bright bold eyes, now sad and darkened, concentrated...

His thoughts circled in his brain slowly and heavily, and the picture wavered before his eyes. Then he crumpled it up and threw it under the counter, but it rolled out again und...

"What," answered Kirik, "a plate of pasty--that's nothing! No, brother, if I were chief of police--then you might perhaps thank me, but I'm not. I shall give up the police altog...

"Of course; anyway, justice so-called is mostly a pretty good farce," he said shrugging. "The fat people improve the criminal tendencies of the hungry people. I often come to th...

For the time being, however, he lived with the cobbler, and every evening the children gathered there. It was quieter and more cosy in the cellar than in Terenti's room. Perfish...

"Who's going to see it in the night? They're all asleep, the world is all quiet. I'm very little and God can't hear my prayer at the end of the day, but He'll hear it at night w...

"How do you get on with your step-brother?" asked Ilya when Jakov ceased coughing. His friend raised his face, quite blue with the exertion of coughing, and said, struggling to...

Kirik paid no attention, but bent his head forward and attacked again. The guests looked on silently; no one moved except Travkin, who went quietly on tiptoe into a corner, sat...