Poor People

In a fisherman’s hut sits Jeanne, the fisherman’s wife, by the fire, mending an old sail. Outside the wind whistles and howls, and the waves splash and break against the shore with a roar… Outside it is dark and cold, a storm rages on the sea, but in the fisherman’s hut it is warm and cozy. The earthen floor is cleanly swept; the fire in the stove has not yet gone out; dishes gleam on the shelf. On a bed with a lowered white canopy, five children sleep to the howling of the stormy sea. The fisherman-husband went out on his boat into the sea in the morning and has not yet returned. The fisherman’s wife hears the roar of the waves and the howl of the wind. Jeanne feels uneasy.

The old wooden clock struck ten with a hoarse chime, then eleven… Still no husband. Jeanne sits thinking. Her husband does not spare himself, in cold and storm he catches fish. She sits from morning to evening at her work. And what of it? They barely make ends meet. And the children still have no shoes: summer and winter they run barefoot; and the bread they eat is not wheat bread—it’s good enough that the rye bread lasts. Fish is the only relish for their food. “Well, thank God, the children are healthy. There’s nothing to complain about,” thinks Jeanne, and again listens to the storm. “Where is he now? Preserve him, Lord, save and have mercy!” she says, crossing herself.

It is still too early to sleep. Jeanne gets up, throws a thick shawl over her head, lights a lantern, and goes outside to see whether the sea has quieted, whether dawn is breaking, whether the lamp is burning on the lighthouse, and whether her husband’s boat can be seen. But nothing is visible on the sea. The wind tears the shawl from her head and something torn off bangs against the door of the neighboring hut, and Jeanne remembers that she wanted to stop by that evening to look in on her sick neighbor. “No one to look after her,” Jeanne thought, and knocked at the door. She listened… No one answers.

“It’s hard, a widow’s lot,” thinks Jeanne, standing at the threshold. “Even if she doesn’t have many children—just two—she still has to figure everything out alone. And then there’s her illness! Oh, it’s hard, a widow’s lot. I’ll go in and look in on her.”

Jeanne knocked again and again. No one answered.

“Hey, neighbor!” called Jeanne. “Has something happened?” she thought and pushed the door open.

In the hut it was damp and cold. Jeanne raised the lantern to look around for where the sick woman was. And the first thing that caught her eye was the bed directly across from the door, and on the bed she lay, the neighbor, on her back, so quietly and motionlessly as only the dead lie. Jeanne brought the lantern still closer. Yes, it was she. Her head was thrown back; on the cold, bluish face was the calm of death. A pale, dead hand, as if it had reached for something, had fallen and hung down from the straw. And right there, not far from the dead mother, two small children, curly-haired and chubby-cheeked, covered with an old dress, sleep curled up and pressing their blond heads together. Evidently the mother, while dying, still managed to wrap up their little feet with an old shawl and cover them with her dress. Their breathing is even and peaceful. They sleep sweetly and soundly.

Jeanne takes down the cradle with the children and, wrapping them in the shawl, carries them home. Her heart beats hard; she herself does not know how or why she did this, but she knows that she could not have failed to do what she did.

At home she puts the unawakened children on the bed with her own children and hurriedly draws the canopy. She is pale and agitated. It is as if her conscience torments her. “What will he say?…” she says to herself. “It’s no joke, five of our own children—wasn’t that enough for him to worry about… Is that him?.. No, not yet!.. And why did I take them!.. He’ll beat me! And I deserve it, I’m worth no better. Here he is! No!.. Well, so much the better!..”

The door creaked, as if someone entered. Jeanne started and half rose from her chair. “No. No one again! Lord, why did I do this?.. How can I look him in the eye now?..” And Jeanne sinks into thought and sits long in silence by the bed.

The rain has stopped; dawn has broken, but the wind howls and the sea roars as before.

Suddenly the door flew open, a rush of fresh sea air burst into the room, and a tall, swarthy fisherman, dragging behind him wet, torn nets, enters the room with the words:

“Here I am, Jeanne!”

“Ah, it’s you!” says Jeanne and stops, not daring to raise her eyes to him.

“Well, what a night! Terrible!”

“Yes, yes, the weather was awful! Well, how was the catch?”

“Rotten, completely rotten! Caught nothing. Only tore the nets. Bad, bad!.. Yes, I tell you, what weather it was! I don’t think I can remember such a night. What fishing could there be! Thank God I made it home alive… Well, and what did you do here without me?”

The fisherman dragged the nets into the room and sat down by the stove.

“Me?” said Jeanne, turning pale. “What do I… I sat sewing… The wind was howling so frightfully. I was afraid for you.”

“Yes, yes,” muttered the husband, “the weather was devilishly bad! But what can you do!”

Both were silent.

“And you know,” said Jeanne, “our neighbor Simon died.”

“No!”

“I don’t know when; probably yesterday. Yes, it must have been hard for her to die. And her heart must have ached for the children! After all, there are two children—little ones… One still doesn’t talk, and the other is just beginning to crawl…”

Jeanne fell silent. The fisherman frowned; his face became serious, troubled.

“Well, that’s a situation!” he said, scratching his head. “Well, but what can we do! We’ll have to take them in, otherwise they’ll wake up, and how would it be for them with a corpse? Well, we’ll manage somehow! Hurry up then!”

But Jeanne did not move from her place.

“What is it? Don’t you want to? What’s the matter with you, Jeanne?”

“Here they are,” said Jeanne and drew back the canopy.

—Victor Hugo. Retold by L. N. Tolstoy

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Translator’s Notes:

• This story is Tolstoy’s Russian adaptation of Victor Hugo’s poem “Les Pauvres Gens” (“The Poor People”) from his collection La Légende des siècles (1859).
• Tolstoy transformed Hugo’s verse narrative into simple prose suitable for his readers for common people and children.
• The story exemplifies Tolstoy’s conviction that genuine goodness springs from instinct rather than reasoning—Jeanne cannot articulate why she took the children, only that she “could not have failed to do what she did.”
• The husband’s immediate acceptance of the additional burden, without reproach, illustrates the same moral instinct at work.
• Tolstoy included this story in his Azbuka (Primer) and later in The Circle of Reading, viewing it as a model of the unreflective virtue he valued most.