The Divine and the Human

I

It was in the 1870s in Russia, at the very height of the struggle between the revolutionaries and the government.

The governor-general of the southern region, a healthy German with mustaches drooping downward, a cold gaze, and an expressionless face, sat in the evening in his study at a desk with four candles in green shades, reviewing and signing papers left for him by his chief clerk. “General-Adjutant So-and-so,” he wrote out with a long flourish and set them aside.

Among the papers was also the death sentence by hanging of Anatoly Svetlogub, a candidate of Novorossiysk University, for participation in a conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the existing government. The general, frowning especially deeply, signed this one too. With his white fingers, wrinkled from age and soap, well-manicured, he neatly aligned the edges of the papers and set them aside. The next paper concerned the allocation of funds for transporting provisions. He was attentively reading this paper, thinking about whether the sums were correctly or incorrectly calculated, when suddenly he remembered his conversation with his assistant about the Svetlogub case. The general had believed that the dynamite found at Svetlogub’s did not yet prove his criminal intent. But his assistant had insisted that besides the dynamite there was much evidence proving that Svetlogub was the head of a gang. And, remembering this, the general became lost in thought, and under his coat with wadding on the chest and lapels as stiff as cardboard, his heart began to beat unevenly, and he began to breathe so heavily that the large white cross, the object of his joy and pride, stirred on his chest. He could still call back the chief clerk and if not cancel, then postpone the sentence.

“Call him back? Not call him back?”

His heart beat still more unevenly. He rang. With a quick, noiseless step the messenger entered.

“Has Ivan Matveyich left?”

“No, sir, Your High Excellency, he went to the chancery.”

The general’s heart now stopped, now gave rapid beats. He remembered the warning of the doctor who had recently listened to his heart.

“The main thing,” the doctor had said, “as soon as you feel that there is a heart, stop working, distract yourself. Agitation is the worst thing. Under no circumstances allow yourself to reach that point.”

“Shall I call him?”

“No, don’t,” said the general. “Yes,” he said to himself, “indecision is what agitates most of all. It’s signed and done. Ein jeder macht sich sein Bett und muss drauf schlafen”—Everyone makes his own bed and must lie in it—he said to himself his favorite proverb. “And besides, this doesn’t concern me. I am the executor of a higher will and must stand above such considerations,” he added, drawing his brows together to call up in himself the cruelty that was not in his heart.

And then he remembered his last meeting with the sovereign, how the sovereign, putting on a stern face and fixing his glassy gaze on him, had said: “I’m counting on you: just as you did not spare yourself in war, so you will act decisively in the struggle with the reds—you will not let yourself be either deceived or frightened. Farewell!” And the sovereign, embracing him, had offered him his shoulder to kiss.

The general remembered this, and how he had answered the sovereign: “My only desire is to give my life in service to my sovereign and fatherland.”

And, remembering the feeling of obsequious emotion he had experienced before the consciousness of his self-sacrificing devotion to his sovereign, he drove away the thought that had confused him for a moment, signed the remaining papers, and rang once more.

“Is tea served?” he asked.

“It is being served now, Your High Excellency.”

“Good, go.”

The general sighed deeply and, rubbing with his hand the place where his heart was, walked with a heavy gait into the large empty hall and across the freshly waxed parquet of the hall into the drawing room, from which voices were heard.

The general’s wife had guests: the governor with his wife, an old princess, a great patriot, and a guards officer, the fiancé of the general’s last unmarried daughter.

The general’s wife, a dry woman with a cold face and thin lips, sitting at a low table on which stood a tea service with a silver teapot on a spirit lamp, was telling the fat, youthful-looking lady, the governor’s wife, in a falsely sad tone about her worry over her husband’s health.

“Every day new and new reports reveal conspiracies and all sorts of horrible things… And all this falls on Basil—he must decide everything.”

“Oh, don’t speak of it!” said the princess. “Je deviens féroce quand je pense à cette maudite engeance”—I become ferocious when I think of that accursed breed.

“Yes, yes, terrible! Can you believe, he works twelve hours a day, and with his weak heart. I’m simply afraid…”

She did not finish, seeing her husband entering.

“Yes, you must definitely hear him. Barbini is an amazing tenor,” she said, smiling pleasantly to the governor’s wife about a newly arrived singer so naturally, as if they had only been talking about this.

The general’s daughter, a pretty, plump young woman, was sitting with her fiancé in a far corner of the drawing room behind Chinese screens. She rose and together with her fiancé approached her father.

“Imagine, we haven’t even seen each other today!” said the general, kissing his daughter and shaking hands with her fiancé.

Having greeted the guests, the general sat down at the table and fell into conversation with the governor about the latest news.

“No, no, talking about business is not allowed—it’s forbidden!” the general’s wife interrupted the governor’s speech. “But here, just in time, is Kopyov; he’ll tell us something amusing. Hello, Kopyov.”

And Kopyov, a well-known wit and jester, did indeed tell the latest anecdote, which made everyone laugh.

II

“No, this can’t be, can’t be, can’t be! Let me go!” screamed, shrieking, Svetlogub’s mother, tearing herself away from the hands of the gymnasium teacher, her son’s comrade, and the doctor, who were trying to restrain her.

Svetlogub’s mother was a not old, attractive woman with graying curls and a star of wrinkles around her eyes. The teacher, Svetlogub’s comrade, having learned that the death sentence had been signed, wanted to prepare her carefully for the terrible news, but as soon as he began to speak about her son, she, from the tone of his voice, from the timidity of his gaze, guessed that what she feared had happened.

This was taking place in a small room of the best hotel in the city.

“Why are you holding me, let me go!” she cried, tearing herself from the doctor, an old friend of their family, who with one hand held her by her thin elbow, with the other was placing on the oval table before the sofa a bottle of drops. She was glad they were holding her, because she felt she had to do something, but what—she did not know and was afraid of herself.

“Calm yourself. Here, drink some valerian drops,” said the doctor, offering her a small glass of murky liquid.

She suddenly became quiet and almost doubled over, bowing her head to her sunken chest, and, closing her eyes, sank onto the sofa.

And she remembered how her son three months ago had said goodbye to her with a mysterious and sad face. Then she remembered an eight-year-old boy in a velvet jacket with bare little legs and long curling ringlets of blond hair.

“And him, him, this very same boy… they will do this to him!”

She jumped up, pushed the table away, and tore herself from the doctor’s hands. Reaching the door, she again fell into an armchair.

“And they say there is a God! What kind of God is he if he permits this! To hell with him, that God!” she cried, now sobbing, now breaking into hysterical laughter. “They will hang, hang the one who gave up everything, his whole career, gave all his fortune to others, to the people, gave everything,” she said, she who had always before reproached her son for this, but now holding up before herself the merit of his self-renunciation. “And him, him, they will do this to him! And you say there is a God!” she cried out.

“But I don’t say anything, I only ask you to drink the drops.”

“I don’t want anything. Ha-ha-ha!” she laughed and sobbed, reveling in her despair.

By night she had so exhausted herself that she could no longer speak or cry, but only stared before her with a fixed, mad gaze. The doctor gave her an injection of morphine, and she fell asleep.

The sleep was without dreams, but the awakening was even more terrible. Most terrible of all was that people could be so cruel—not only these horrible clean-shaven generals and gendarmes, but everyone, everyone: the chambermaid who came with a calm face to clean the room, and the neighbors in the hotel who merrily greeted each other and laughed about something, as if nothing had happened.

III

Svetlogub had been sitting in solitary confinement for two months and during this time had lived through much.

From childhood Svetlogub had unconsciously felt the wrongness of his exceptional position as a rich man, and although he tried to suppress this consciousness in himself, often, when he encountered the poverty of the common people, and sometimes simply when he himself felt especially well and joyful, he felt ashamed before those people—peasants, old men, women, children—who were born, grew up, and died not only without knowing all the joys he enjoyed without valuing them, but who never escaped from strenuous labor and poverty. When he finished university, to free himself from this consciousness of his wrongness, he established a school on his estate in the country, a model school, a store of a consumer cooperative, and a shelter for homeless old men and women. But, strangely, while occupied with these matters, he felt even more ashamed before the people than when he dined with comrades or acquired an expensive riding horse. He felt that all this was not right, and worse than not right: there was something bad in it, something morally impure.

In one such state of disillusionment with his country activity, he came to Kiev and met one of his closest university comrades. This comrade, three years after this meeting, was shot in the moat of the Kiev fortress.

This comrade, a passionate, excitable man with enormous gifts, entirely devoted to the cause, drew him into participation in a society whose aim was the enlightenment of the people, awakening in them consciousness of their rights, and forming among them united circles striving to free themselves from the power of landlords and government. Conversations with this man and his friends seemed to bring to clear consciousness all that until then had been vaguely felt by Svetlogub. He now understood what he had to do. Without breaking off relations with his new comrades, he went to the country and began there an entirely new activity. He himself became a schoolteacher, organized classes for adults, read them books and pamphlets, explained to the peasants their situation; besides this, he published illegal popular books and pamphlets and gave all he could, without taking from his mother, for establishing such centers in other villages.

From the very first steps of this new activity, Svetlogub encountered two unexpected obstacles: one was that the majority of the common people were not only indifferent to his preaching but looked on him almost with contempt. (Only exceptional individuals understood and sympathized with him, and often people of doubtful morality.) The other obstacle came from the government. His school was closed by order, and searches were made at his home and at the homes of people close to him, and books and papers were confiscated.

Svetlogub paid little attention to the first obstacle—the indifference of the people—because he was too outraged by the second: the oppression of the government, senseless and insulting. The same was experienced by his comrades in their activity in other places, and the feeling of irritation against the government, mutually inflamed, reached the point where the greater part of this circle decided to fight the government by force.

The head of this circle was a certain Mezhenetsky, a man whom everyone considered of unshakable willpower, invincible logic, and entirely devoted to the cause of revolution.

Svetlogub submitted to the influence of this man and with the same energy with which he had formerly worked among the people, gave himself to terrorist activity. This activity was dangerous, but it was precisely this danger that most attracted Svetlogub.

He said to himself: “Victory or martyrdom, and if martyrdom, then martyrdom is the same victory, only in the future.” And the fire that had kindled in him not only did not die out during the seven years of his revolutionary activity, but flared ever more brightly, sustained by the love and respect of those people among whom he moved.

To the fact that he had given away almost all his fortune—the fortune inherited from his father—for this cause, he attached no importance, nor to the labors and the poverty he often endured in this activity. One thing only grieved him: the sorrow he caused by this activity to his mother and to the girl, his mother’s ward, who lived with his mother and loved him.

Recently a comrade terrorist whom he did not much like and who was unpleasant to him, being pursued by the police, asked him to hide some dynamite. Svetlogub agreed without hesitation, precisely because he did not like this comrade, and the next day a search was made of Svetlogub’s apartment and the dynamite was found. To all questions about how and where he had obtained the dynamite, Svetlogub refused to answer.

And so the martyrdom he had expected had begun for him. Recently, when so many of his friends had been executed, imprisoned, exiled, when so many women had suffered, Svetlogub had almost wished for martyrdom. And in the first minutes of his arrest and interrogations he felt a special excitement, almost joy.

He experienced this feeling when they undressed him, searched him, and when they led him into the prison and locked the iron door behind him. But when a day passed, and another, and a third, when a week, and another, and a third passed in a dirty, damp cell filled with insects, in solitude and involuntary idleness broken only by knocking communications with imprisoned comrades, who transmitted nothing but unkind and unjoyful news, and occasionally by interrogations from cold, hostile men trying to extract from him accusations against his comrades, his moral strength together with his physical strength constantly weakened, and he only grieved and wished, as he said to himself, for some end to this tormenting situation. His anguish was increased by his doubts about his own strength. In the second month of his imprisonment he began to catch himself thinking of telling the whole truth, if only to be freed. He was horrified at his weakness, but no longer found in himself his former strength and hated and despised himself and grieved still more.

But most terrible was that in his imprisonment he began to feel so sorry for those youthful powers and joys which he had so lightly sacrificed while free, and which now seemed so enchanting to him, that he repented of what he had considered good, repented sometimes of all his activity. Thoughts came to him of how happily, how well he could have lived in freedom—in the country, at liberty, abroad, among loved and loving friends. To marry her, or perhaps another, and live with her a simple, joyful, bright life.

IV

On one of the painfully monotonous days of imprisonment in the second month, the warden on his usual rounds gave Svetlogub a small book with a gilded cross on a brown cover, saying that the governor’s wife had visited the prison and left Gospels, which were permitted to be given to the prisoners.

Svetlogub thanked him and smiled slightly as he placed the book on the small table fastened to the wall.

When the warden left, Svetlogub communicated by knocks with his neighbors about the warden coming with nothing new to say, only bringing Gospels, and his neighbor replied that he too had received one.

After dinner Svetlogub opened the little book, its pages stuck together from dampness, and began to read. Svetlogub had never read the Gospels as a book. All he knew of it was what the religion teacher had taught in gymnasium and what priests and deacons sang out in church.

“Chapter One. The genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah”… he read. “Zerubbabel begot Abiud,” he continued reading. All this was exactly what he had expected: some confused, useless nonsense. If this had not been in prison, he could not have finished one page, but here he continued reading for the process of reading: “like Gogol’s Petrushka,” he thought to himself. He read the first chapter about the virgin birth and about the prophecy consisting in the fact that the one born would be called Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us.” “And where is the prophecy here?” he thought, and continued reading. He read the second chapter about the traveling star and the third about John living on locusts, and the fourth about some devil proposing to Christ a gymnastic exercise from the rooftop. All this seemed so uninteresting to him that, despite the boredom of prison, he was about to close the book and begin his usual evening occupation—catching fleas on his removed shirt—when suddenly he remembered that at the exam in the fifth class of gymnasium he had forgotten one of the Beatitudes, and the rosy-faced, curly-haired priest had suddenly become angry and given him a two. He could not remember which Beatitude it was, and he read the Beatitudes. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” he read. “This perhaps applies to us too,” he thought. “Blessed are you when people shall revile you and persecute you. Rejoice and be glad: for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You are the salt of the earth. If the salt loses its strength, how shall it be made salty again? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

“This definitely applies to us,” he thought and continued reading further. Having read all of the fifth chapter, he fell to thinking. “Do not be angry, do not commit adultery, endure evil, love your enemies.”

“Yes, if everyone lived this way,” he thought, “there would be no need for revolution either.”

Reading on, he entered more and more into the meaning of those passages of the book which were fully comprehensible. And the further he read, the more he came to the thought that in this book something especially important was said. Something both important and simple and touching, something he had never heard before, but which seemed to have been long familiar to him.

“And he said to all: If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his soul will lose it, but whoever loses his soul for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose or forfeit himself?”

“Yes, yes, that is it!” he suddenly cried out with tears in his eyes. “That is what I wanted to do. Yes, I wanted this very thing: to give away my soul; not to save it but to give it away. In this is joy, in this is life. Much I did for people, for the glory of people’s opinion,” he thought, “not the glory of the crowd, but the glory of the good opinion of those I respected and loved: Natasha, Dmitry Shelomov, and then there were doubts, there was anxiety. I felt well only when I did something because my soul demanded it, when I wanted to give myself away, all of myself”…

From that day Svetlogub spent most of his time reading and thinking about what was said in this book. This reading evoked in him not only an emotion that lifted him above the conditions in which he found himself, but also such mental work as he had never before been conscious of in himself. He thought about why people, all people, did not live as was said in this book. “After all, to live this way is good not for one but for all. Just live this way—and there will be no grief, no want, there will be only blessedness. If only this would end, if only I could be free again,” he sometimes thought, “they will release me sometime, or send me to hard labor. It doesn’t matter, everywhere one can live this way. And I will live this way. It is possible and necessary to live this way; not to live this way is madness.”

V

On one of those days when he was in such a joyful, excited state, at an unusual hour the warden came into his cell and asked whether he was comfortable and whether he wanted anything. Svetlogub was surprised, not understanding what this change meant, and asked for cigarettes, expecting a refusal. But the warden said he would send some immediately, and indeed the guard brought him a packet of cigarettes and matches.

“Someone must have interceded for me,” thought Svetlogub, and, lighting a cigarette, began walking back and forth in his cell, thinking about the meaning of this change.

The next day he was taken to court. In the courtroom, where he had already been several times, he was not questioned. But one of the judges, not looking at him, rose from his chair, the others rose too, and, holding a paper in his hand, began to read in a loud, unnaturally expressionless voice.

Svetlogub listened and watched the judges’ faces. They all did not look at him and listened with significant, gloomy faces.

The paper said that Anatoly Svetlogub, for proven participation in revolutionary activity aimed at overthrowing—in the nearer or more distant future—the existing government, was sentenced to deprivation of all rights and to death by hanging.

Svetlogub heard and understood the meaning of the words pronounced by the officer. He noticed the absurdity of the words: in the nearer or more distant future, and the deprivation of rights of a man sentenced to death, but completely did not understand the significance that what had been read had for him.

Only long after he was told he could go, and he went out with the gendarme onto the street, did he begin to understand what had been announced to him.

“Something is wrong here, wrong… This is some kind of absurdity. This cannot be,” he said to himself, sitting in the carriage that was taking him back to the prison.

He felt in himself such a force of life that he could not imagine death: he could not connect the consciousness of his “I” with death, with the absence of “I.”

Returning to his prison, Svetlogub sat on the cot and, closing his eyes, tried to vividly imagine what awaited him, and could not do so. He could not imagine that he would not exist, could not imagine that people could want to kill him.

“Me, young, kind, happy, loved by so many people,” he thought—he remembered the love for him of his mother, of Natasha, of friends—“me they will kill, hang! Who, why will they do this? And then, what will happen when I will not exist? It cannot be,” he said to himself.

The warden came. Svetlogub did not hear him enter.

“Who is it? What do you want?” said Svetlogub, not recognizing the warden. “Ah, yes, it’s you! When will this be?” he asked.

“I cannot know,” said the warden and, standing silently for several seconds, suddenly said in an ingratiating, gentle voice: “Our priest here would like… to administer… would like to see you…”

“I don’t need it, don’t need it, I need nothing! Go away!” cried Svetlogub.

“Don’t you need to write to someone? That is permitted,” said the warden.

“Yes, yes, send someone. I will write.”

The warden left.

“So it’s in the morning,” thought Svetlogub. “They always do it that way. Tomorrow morning I will not exist… No, this cannot be, this is a dream.”

But the guard came, the real, familiar guard, and brought two pens, an inkwell, a packet of writing paper and bluish envelopes, and placed a stool at the table. All this was real and not a dream.

“I must not think, not think. Yes, yes, write. I will write to mama,” thought Svetlogub, sat down on the stool and immediately began to write.

“Dear, darling!”—he wrote and began to cry. “Forgive me, forgive me for all the grief I have caused you. Whether I was mistaken or not, I could not do otherwise. One thing I ask: forgive me.” “But I’ve already written this,” he thought. “Well, it doesn’t matter, there’s no time to rewrite now.” “Do not grieve for me,” he wrote on. “A little sooner, a little later… isn’t it all the same? I am not afraid and do not repent of what I did. I could not do otherwise. Only you forgive me. And do not be angry at them, neither at those with whom I worked, nor at those who are executing me. Neither the one nor the other could do otherwise: forgive them, they know not what they do. I do not dare repeat these words about myself, but they are in my soul and they lift me up and calm me. Forgive me, I kiss your dear, wrinkled, old hands!” Two tears one after another fell on the paper and spread on it. “I am crying, but not from grief or fear, but from emotion before the most solemn moment of my life and because I love you. Do not reproach my friends, but love them. Especially Prokhorov, precisely because he was the cause of my death. It is so joyful to love one who is not so much guilty, but whom one can reproach, hate. To love such a man—an enemy—is such happiness. Tell Natasha that her love was my consolation and joy. I did not understand this clearly, but in my heart I was conscious of it. It was easier for me to live knowing that she existed and loved me. Well, I’ve said everything. Farewell!”

He reread the letter and, at the end of it reading the name Prokhorov, suddenly remembered that the letter might be read, would certainly be read, and this would destroy Prokhorov.

“My God, what have I done!” he suddenly cried out and, tearing the letter into long strips, began carefully burning them at the lamp.

He had sat down to write in despair, and now he felt calm, almost joyful.

He took another sheet and immediately began to write. Thoughts crowded one after another in his head.

“Dear, darling mama!”—he wrote, and again his eyes clouded with tears, and he had to wipe them with the sleeve of his robe to see what he was writing. “How I did not know myself, did not know all the force of that love for you and gratitude that always lived in my heart! Now I know and feel it, and when I remember our quarrels, my unkind words said to you, it hurts and shames me and is almost incomprehensible. Forgive me then and remember only the good, if there was any such thing in me.

“I am not afraid of death. To tell the truth, I do not understand it, do not believe in it. After all, if there is death, destruction, isn’t it all the same to die thirty years or minutes sooner or later? But if there is no death, then it’s all the same anyway, sooner or later.”

“But why am I philosophizing,” he thought, “I must say what was in that letter—something good at the end. Yes.” “Do not reproach my friends, but love them, and especially the one who was the unwitting cause of my death. Kiss Natasha for me and tell her that I always loved her.”

He folded the letter, sealed it, and sat on the bed, placing his hands on his knees and swallowing tears.

He still did not believe he must die. Several times, again asking himself whether he was sleeping, he vainly tried to wake up. And this thought led him to another: that all life in this world might also be a dream, the awakening from which would be death. And if this is so, then is not the consciousness of life in this world only an awakening from the dream of a previous life, the details of which I do not remember? So that life here is not a beginning, but only a new form of life. I will die and pass into a new form. This thought pleased him; but when he wanted to rely on it, he felt that this thought, and indeed any thought whatsoever, could not give fearlessness before death. At last he grew tired of thinking. His brain no longer worked. He closed his eyes and sat for a long time without thinking.

“But what then? What will happen?” he remembered again. “Nothing? No, not nothing. But what then?”

And suddenly it became perfectly clear to him that to these questions there is not and cannot be an answer for a living person.

“Then why do I ask myself about this? Why? Yes, why? One must not ask, one must live as I lived just now, when I was writing that letter. After all, we are all sentenced long ago, always, and we live. We live well, joyfully, when… we love. Yes, when we love. Here I was writing the letter, I loved, and I felt well. So that is how one must live. And one can live everywhere and always, both in freedom and in prison, and today and tomorrow, and to the very end.”

He wanted now to speak tenderly, lovingly with someone. He knocked on the door, and when the sentry looked in, he asked him what time it was and when he would be relieved, but the sentry did not answer. Then he asked to call the warden. The warden came, asking what he needed.

“Here, I’ve written a letter to my mother, please deliver it,” he said, and tears came to his eyes at the memory of his mother.

The warden took the letter and, promising to deliver it, was about to leave, but Svetlogub stopped him.

“Listen, you are kind. Why do you serve in such a difficult position?” he said, gently touching him by the sleeve.

The warden smiled with an unnaturally pitiful smile and, lowering his eyes, said:

“One must live somehow.”

“But you could leave this position. After all, one can always find something. You are so kind. Perhaps I could…”

The warden suddenly sobbed, quickly turned, and went out, slamming the door.

The warden’s emotion moved Svetlogub still more, and, holding back tears of joy, he began walking from wall to wall, no longer feeling any fear, but only an emotion that lifted him above the world. That very question of what would happen to him after death, which he had tried so hard and could not answer, seemed resolved for him, not by any positive, rational answer, but by the consciousness of that true life which was in him.

And he remembered the words of the Gospel: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” “And so I am falling into the earth. Yes, truly, truly,” he thought.

“If only I could sleep,” he suddenly thought, “so as not to weaken afterward.” He lay down on the cot, closed his eyes, and immediately fell asleep.

He woke at six in the morning, all under the impression of a bright, cheerful dream. He dreamed that he with some little blond girl was climbing through spreading trees covered with ripe black cherries, gathering them into a large copper basin. The cherries did not fall into the basin but poured onto the ground, and some strange animals, like cats, caught the cherries and tossed them up and caught them again. And watching this, the little girl went off into such infectious laughter that Svetlogub too laughed merrily in his sleep, not knowing at what. Suddenly the copper basin slipped from the girl’s hands; Svetlogub tried to catch it but was too late, and the basin, clanging against the branches, fell to the ground with a copper crash. And he woke up, smiling and listening to the continuing crash of the basin. This crash was the sound of iron bolts being opened in the corridor. Footsteps were heard in the corridor and the clatter of rifles. He suddenly remembered everything. “Oh, if only I could fall asleep again!” thought Svetlogub, but it was no longer possible to sleep. The footsteps approached his door. He heard the key searching for the lock and, as it opened, the door creaking.

The gendarme officer, the warden, and the convoy entered.

“Death? Well, so what? I am leaving. Yes, this is good. All is good,” thought Svetlogub, feeling the return of that tender, solemn state he had been in yesterday.

VI

In the same prison where Svetlogub was held, there was also held an old man, a schismatic, a priestless Old Believer, who had doubted his spiritual leaders and was seeking the true faith. He rejected not only the Nikonian church but also the government since the time of Peter, whom he considered the Antichrist—he called the tsar’s power “the tobacco realm”—and boldly spoke out what he thought, denouncing priests and officials, for which he was tried and kept in prison and transferred from one prison to another. That he was not at liberty but in prison, that the wardens abused him, that they put him in chains, that his fellow prisoners mocked him, that all of them, like the authorities, had renounced God and abused one another and defiled the image of God in themselves in every way—all this did not occupy him; all this he had seen everywhere in the world when he was free. All this, he knew, happened because people had lost the true faith and had all scattered like blind puppies from their mother. And yet he knew that true faith existed. He knew this because he felt this faith in his heart. And he sought this faith everywhere. Most of all he hoped to find it in the Revelation of John.

“Let the evildoer still do evil, and let the filthy still be filthy; but let the righteous still do right, and let the holy still be holy. Behold, I am coming soon, and my reward is with me, to repay each one for what he has done.” And he constantly read this mysterious book and every minute awaited “Him who is coming,” who would not only repay each according to his deeds, but would also reveal all divine truth to people.

On the morning of Svetlogub’s execution he heard drums and, climbing onto the window, saw through the bars how they brought up the cart and how a youth with bright eyes and curling locks came out of the prison and, smiling, mounted the cart. In the youth’s small white hand was a book. The youth pressed the book to his heart—the Old Believer recognized that it was the Gospel—and, nodding to the prisoners at the windows, smiling, exchanged glances with him. The horses started, and the cart with the youth sitting in it, bright as an angel, surrounded by guards, rumbling over the cobblestones, drove out the gates.

The Old Believer climbed down from the window, sat on his cot, and fell to thinking. “That one knew the truth,” he thought. “The servants of Antichrist will strangle him with a rope so that he won’t reveal it to anyone.”

VII

It was an overcast autumn morning. The sun was not visible. A moist, warm wind blew from the sea.

The fresh air, the sight of the houses, the city, the horses, the people looking at him—all this distracted Svetlogub. Sitting on the bench of the cart, with his back to the coachman, he involuntarily peered into the faces of the soldiers escorting him and the inhabitants he met.

It was an early morning hour; the streets along which they took him were almost empty, and only workers were encountered. Masons spattered with lime in aprons, hurrying toward him, stopped and turned back, keeping pace with the cart. One of them said something, waved his hand, and they all turned and went back to their work. Draymen carrying clattering strips of iron, having turned their large horses aside to make way for the cart, stopped and looked at him with bewildered curiosity. One of them took off his cap and crossed himself. A cook in a white apron and cap, with a basket in her hand, came out of a gate, but seeing the cart, quickly returned to the courtyard and ran out again with another woman, and both, not catching their breath, followed the cart with widely opened eyes as long as they could see it. Some raggedly dressed, unshaven, grayish man was evidently expressing something disapproving with energetic gestures to a doorman, pointing at Svetlogub. Two boys at a trot caught up with the cart and, with turned heads, not looking ahead, strode alongside it on the sidewalk. One, older, walked with quick steps; the other, small, hatless, holding onto the older one and looking fearfully at the cart, with his short little legs with difficulty, stumbling, kept up with the older one. Meeting his eyes, Svetlogub nodded to him. This gesture from the terrible man being carried in the cart so confused the boy that, popping his eyes and opening his mouth, he was about to cry. Then Svetlogub, kissing his hand, smiled at him tenderly. And the boy suddenly unexpectedly answered with a sweet, kind smile.

During the whole journey the consciousness of what awaited him did not disturb Svetlogub’s calmly solemn mood.

Only when the cart approached the gallows and they led him down from it and he saw the posts with the crossbeam and the rope swaying slightly on it from the wind, did he feel as if a physical blow to the heart. He suddenly felt nauseated. But this did not last long. Around the scaffold he saw black rows of soldiers with rifles. In front of the soldiers officers walked about. And as soon as they began to lead him down from the cart, there came an unexpected, startling crash of drum roll. Behind the rows of soldiers Svetlogub saw carriages of gentlemen and ladies who had obviously come to watch the spectacle. The sight of all this at first surprised Svetlogub, but immediately he remembered himself as he was before prison, and he felt sorry that these people did not know what he now knew. “But they will know. I will die, but the truth will not die. They will know. And how all—not I now, but all of them—could be and will be happy.”

He was led onto the scaffold, and after him came an officer. The drums fell silent, and the officer read in an unnatural voice, sounding especially weak in the wide field and after the crash of the drums, that stupid death sentence which had been read to him at the trial, about the deprivation of rights of one who was being killed, and about the near and distant future. “Why, why do they do all this?” thought Svetlogub. “What a pity that they do not yet know and that I can no longer convey it all to them, but they will know. All will know.”

A thin priest with long sparse hair in a purple cassock approached Svetlogub, with one small gilded cross on his chest and with another large silver cross which he held in a weak, white, sinewy, thin hand extending from a black velvet cuff.

“The merciful Lord—” he began, transferring the cross from his left hand to his right and bringing it to Svetlogub.

Svetlogub shuddered and drew back. He nearly said an unkind word to the priest, who was participating in what was being done to him and speaking of mercy, but, remembering the words of the Gospel: “they know not what they do,” he made an effort and timidly said:

“Forgive me, I don’t need this. Please, forgive me, but really, I don’t need it! Thank you.”

He held out his hand to the priest. The priest transferred the cross again to his left hand and, shaking Svetlogub’s hand, trying not to look into his face, descended from the scaffold. The drums again began to rattle, drowning out all other sounds. Following the priest, shaking the boards of the scaffold with rapid steps, a middle-aged man with sloping shoulders and muscular arms in a jacket over a Russian shirt approached Svetlogub. This man, quickly looking Svetlogub over, came very close to him and, enveloping him with the unpleasant smell of wine and sweat, seized his hands with tenacious fingers above the wrist and, squeezing them so that it hurt, bent them behind his back and tightly bound them. Having bound the hands, the executioner stopped for a moment, as if deliberating, looking now at Svetlogub, now at some things he had brought with him and laid on the scaffold, now at the rope hanging from the crossbeam. Having decided what he needed to do, he approached the rope, did something with it, moved Svetlogub forward closer to the rope and the edge of the scaffold.

Just as at the announcement of the death sentence Svetlogub could not understand all the meaning of what was announced to him, so now he could not grasp all the meaning of the approaching moment and looked with surprise at the executioner, hastily, deftly, and anxiously performing his terrible task. The executioner’s face was the most ordinary face of a Russian working man, not evil, but concentrated, such as people have when trying to execute as accurately as possible a necessary and complicated task.

“Move over here a little more… or please move over…” said the executioner in a hoarse voice, pushing him toward the gallows. Svetlogub moved.

“Lord, help me, have mercy on me!” he said.

Svetlogub did not believe in God and had often laughed at people who believed in God. He did not believe in God now either—did not believe because he could not only not express in words, but could not embrace with thought Him. But what he now understood by Him to whom he appealed—he knew—was something most real of all that he knew. He knew also that this appeal was necessary and important. He knew this because this appeal immediately calmed and strengthened him.

He moved toward the gallows and, involuntarily taking in with his gaze the rows of soldiers and motley spectators, once more thought: “Why, why do they do this?” And he felt sorry both for them and for himself, and tears came to his eyes.

“And don’t you pity me?” he said, catching the glance of the executioner’s brisk gray eyes.

The executioner stopped for a moment. His face suddenly became angry.

“Enough! Talking,” he muttered and quickly bent down to the floor where his coat and some cloth lay, and with a deft movement of both hands from behind, embracing Svetlogub, threw a canvas bag over his head and hastily pulled it down to the middle of his back and chest.

“Into thy hands I commend my spirit,” Svetlogub remembered the words of the Gospel.

His spirit did not resist death, but his strong young body did not accept it, did not submit, and wanted to struggle.

He wanted to cry out, to tear himself free, but at that same moment he felt a push, the loss of a foothold, the animal terror of suffocation, noise in his head, and the disappearance of everything.

Svetlogub’s body, swaying, hung on the rope. Twice his shoulders rose and fell.

Having waited about two minutes, the executioner, gloomily frowning, put his hands on the corpse’s shoulders and with a powerful movement pulled it down. All movements of the corpse ceased, except for the slow swaying of the puppet hanging in the bag with its unnaturally thrust-forward head and outstretched legs in prison socks.

Descending from the scaffold, the executioner announced to the officer in charge that the corpse could be taken down from the noose and buried.

An hour later the corpse was taken down from the gallows and taken to the unconsecrated cemetery.

The executioner had accomplished what he wanted and had undertaken to accomplish. But the accomplishment was not easy. Svetlogub’s words: “And don’t you pity me?”—would not leave his head. He was a murderer, a convict, and the title of executioner gave him relative freedom and a luxurious life, but from this day he refused henceforth to perform the obligation he had taken on, and that same week drank away not only all the money received for the execution but all his relatively rich clothing and came to the point where he was put in a punishment cell, and from the punishment cell transferred to the hospital.

VIII

One of the leaders of the terrorist party of revolutionaries, Ignaty Mezhenetsky, the very one who had drawn Svetlogub into terrorist activity, was being transferred from the province where he had been arrested to Petersburg. In the same prison sat the old schismatic who had seen Svetlogub’s execution. He was being transferred to Siberia. He still thought about how and where he might learn what the true faith was, and sometimes remembered that bright youth who, going to his death, joyfully smiled.

Learning that in the same prison with him sat a comrade of that youth, a man of the same faith with him, the Old Believer was glad and begged the guard to take him to Svetlogub’s friend.

Mezhenetsky, despite all the strictness of prison discipline, did not cease communicating with people of his party and every day awaited news of that tunnel which he himself had devised and planned for blowing up the tsar’s train. Now, remembering some details he had overlooked, he was thinking up ways to convey them to his associates. When the guard came to his cell and quietly, cautiously, told him that a prisoner wanted to see him, he was glad, hoping that this meeting would give him a means of communicating with his party.

“Who is he?” he asked.

“A peasant.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants to talk about faith.”

Mezhenetsky smiled.

“Well, all right, send him to me. “They, the Old Believers, also hate the government. Perhaps he might be useful,” he thought.

The guard left and in a few minutes, opening the door, admitted into the cell a dry, short old man with thick hair and a sparse, graying, goat-like beard, with kind, tired blue eyes.

“What do you want?” asked Mezhenetsky.

The old man raised his eyes to him and, hastily lowering them, extended a small, energetic, dry hand.

“What do you want?” repeated Mezhenetsky.

“I have a word for you.”

“What word?”

“About faith.”

“What faith?”

“They say you are of the same faith as that youth whom the servants of Antichrist strangled with a rope in Odessa.”

“What youth?”

“The one strangled in Odessa in autumn.”

“You must mean Svetlogub?”

“That’s him. Was he your friend?” The old man at each question searchingly glanced with his kind eyes into Mezhenetsky’s face and immediately lowered them again.

“Yes, he was close to me.”

“And of the same faith?”

“Must be the same,” said Mezhenetsky, smiling.

“About this very thing is my word to you.”

“What exactly do you want?”

“To know your faith.”

“Our faith… Well, sit down,” said Mezhenetsky, shrugging his shoulders. “Our faith is this. We believe that there are people who have seized power and torment and deceive the people, and that one must not spare oneself, must fight these people in order to free the people whom they exploit,” said Mezhenetsky out of habit, “torment,” he corrected himself. “And so one must destroy them. They kill, and they must be killed until they come to their senses.”

The old schismatic sighed, not raising his eyes.

“Our faith is in not sparing oneself, in overthrowing the despotic government and establishing a free, elected, popular one.”

The old man sighed heavily, stood up, straightened the skirts of his robe, got down on his knees, and prostrated himself at Mezhenetsky’s feet, striking his forehead against the dirty boards of the floor.

“Why are you bowing?”

“Don’t deceive me, reveal what your faith is,” said the old man, not rising and not lifting his head.

“I have told you what our faith is. But do get up, or else I won’t talk.”

The old man rose.

“Was that youth’s faith the same?” he said, standing before Mezhenetsky and now and then glancing at his face with his kind eyes and immediately lowering them again.

“The very same, and for it they hanged him. And me for the same faith they are now taking to the Peter and Paul Fortress.”

The old man bowed from the waist and silently left the cell.

“No, that youth’s faith was not in that,” he thought. “That youth knew the true faith, but this one either boasted that he was of the same faith with him, or does not want to reveal it… Well, I will keep seeking. Here and in Siberia. God is everywhere, people are everywhere. If you have set out on a road, ask about the road,” thought the old man, and again took up the New Testament, which opened by itself to Revelation, and putting on his spectacles, sat by the window and began to read.

IX

Another seven years passed. Mezhenetsky had served out his solitary confinement in the Peter and Paul Fortress and was being transferred to hard labor.

He had endured much in these seven years, but the direction of his thoughts had not changed and his energy had not weakened. During interrogations, before his confinement in the fortress, he had amazed the investigators and judges with his firmness and contemptuous attitude toward those in whose power he found himself. In the depths of his soul he suffered from having been caught and being unable to finish the work he had begun, but he did not show this: as soon as he came into contact with people, the energy of malice rose in him. To the questions put to him he remained silent and spoke only when there was an opportunity to wound the interrogators—the gendarme officer or prosecutor.

When they said to him the usual phrase: “You can ease your situation by a sincere confession,” he smiled contemptuously and, after a pause, said:

“If you think you can make me betray my comrades by advantage or fear, then judge by yourselves. Do you really think that, doing the work for which you are trying me, I was not prepared for the worst? So you can neither surprise nor frighten me with anything. Do with me what you want, but I will not talk.”

And it pleased him to see how they exchanged embarrassed glances.

When in the Peter and Paul Fortress he was placed in a small cell with a dark glass in a high window, a damp cell, he understood that this was not for months but for years—and horror came over him. Horrible was this well-organized, dead silence and the consciousness that he was not alone, but that here behind these impenetrable walls sat the same prisoners, sentenced for ten, twenty years, destroying themselves and being hanged and going mad and slowly dying of consumption. Here there were women and men and friends, perhaps… “Years will pass, and you too will go mad, hang yourself, or die, and no one will know about you,” he thought.

And in his soul arose malice against all people and especially against those who were the cause of his imprisonment. This malice demanded the presence of objects of malice, demanded movement, noise. But here there was dead silence, soft footsteps of silent people who did not answer questions, sounds of doors being opened and locked, at the usual hours food, visits from silent people, and through the dim glass light from the rising sun, darkness, and the same silence, the same soft footsteps, and the same sounds. So today, tomorrow… And the malice, finding no outlet, gnawed at his heart.

He tried knocking, but no one answered, and his knocking evoked only again the same soft footsteps and the even voice of a man threatening punishment.

The only time of rest and relief was sleep. But in return the awakening was terrible. In his sleep he always saw himself at liberty and mostly occupied with such things as he considered inconsistent with revolutionary activity. Now he played some strange violin, now he courted girls, now he went boating, now hunting, now for some strange scientific discovery he was proclaimed a doctor of a foreign university and delivered a speech of thanks at dinner. These dreams were so vivid, and reality so tedious and monotonous, that memories were little different from reality.

Hard in his dreams was only that mostly he woke at the moment when what he strove for, what he desired, was about to be accomplished. Suddenly a beat of the heart—and all the joyful surroundings vanished; there remained only the tormenting, unsatisfied desire, again this gray wall with streaks of dampness, lit by the little lamp, and under his body the hard cot with the mattress pressed down on one side.

Sleep was the best time. But the longer the imprisonment continued, the less he slept. He awaited sleep as the greatest happiness, desired it, and the more he desired, the more wakeful he became. And he had only to ask himself the question: “Am I falling asleep?” and all sleepiness passed.

Running and jumping about his cage did not help. From strenuous movement only weakness and still greater nervous excitement resulted, a headache in the crown of the head, and he had only to close his eyes for faces to appear on the dark background with sparkles—shaggy, bald, large-mouthed, crooked-mouthed faces, one more terrible than another. The faces made the most terrible grimaces. Then the faces began to appear with his eyes open, and not only faces but whole figures; they began to speak and dance. It became frightening; he jumped up, beat his head against the wall, and cried out. The little window in the door opened.

“Shouting is not allowed,” said a calm, even voice.

“Call the warden!” cried Mezhenetsky.

No one answered, and the little window closed.

And such despair seized Mezhenetsky that he desired one thing—death.

Once in such a state he decided to take his life. In the cell there was a ventilator on which a rope with a noose could be fastened, and standing on the cot, he could hang himself. But there was no rope. He began to tear the sheet into narrow strips, but these strips proved too few. Then he decided to starve himself to death and did not eat for two days, but on the third day he weakened, and the fit of hallucinations was repeated with especial force. When they brought him food, he lay on the floor unconscious with open eyes.

The doctor came, placed him on the cot, gave him bromide and morphine, and he fell asleep.

When the next day he woke up, the doctor was standing over him, shaking his head. And suddenly Mezhenetsky was seized by the familiar, formerly bracing feeling of malice, which he had not experienced for a long time.

“Aren’t you ashamed,” he said to the doctor while the latter, bowing his head, was counting his pulse, “to serve here! Why are you treating me, so as to torment me again! After all, it’s the same as being present at a flogging and permitting the operation to be repeated.”

“Kindly lie on your back,” said the imperturbable doctor, not looking at him and taking an instrument for auscultation from his side pocket.

“They dressed wounds so as to give the remaining five thousand strokes. Go to hell, to the devil!” he suddenly shouted, swinging his legs off the cot. “Get out, I’ll die without you!”

“It’s not good, young man; for rudeness we have our own answers.”

“To hell, to hell!”

And Mezhenetsky was so terrible that the doctor hastened to leave.

X

Whether this resulted from taking the medicines, or he had passed through a crisis, or the malice that had risen against the doctor had cured him, from this time he took himself in hand and began a completely different life.

“They cannot and will not keep me here forever,” he thought. “Sometime they will release me. Perhaps—what is most likely—the regime will change (our people continue to work), and therefore I must preserve my life so as to come out strong, healthy, and able to continue the work.”

He thought for a long time about the best way of life for this purpose and decided as follows: he went to bed at nine o’clock and made himself lie—sleep or not sleep, it was all the same—until five o’clock in the morning. At five he got up, tidied himself, washed, did gymnastics, and then, as he said to himself, went about his business. And in imagination he walked through Petersburg from the Nevsky to the Nadezhdinsky, trying to imagine everything he might encounter on this passage: signs, houses, policemen, carriages and pedestrians he met. On the Nadezhdinsky he entered the house of an acquaintance and associate, and there they, together with comrades who had come, discussed the coming undertaking. There were debates, arguments. Mezhenetsky spoke both for himself and for others. Sometimes he spoke aloud, so that the sentry at the little window made remarks to him, but Mezhenetsky paid no attention and continued his imaginary Petersburg day. Having spent about two hours at his friend’s, he returned home and had dinner, first in imagination, and then in reality, with the dinner they brought him, and always ate moderately. Then, in imagination, he sat at home and studied now history, mathematics, and sometimes, on Sundays, literature. The study of history consisted in his selecting some era and people and recalling facts and chronology. The study of mathematics consisted in his doing by heart calculations and geometry problems. (He especially liked this occupation.) On Sundays he recalled Pushkin, Gogol, Shakespeare, and composed himself.

Before sleep he made another small excursion, in imagination conducting with male and female comrades joking, merry, sometimes serious conversations, sometimes those that had taken place before, sometimes newly invented. And so it went until night. Before sleep he for exercise actually walked 2,000 steps in his cage and lay down on his cot and mostly fell asleep.

The next day was the same. Sometimes he went south and agitated the people, started a revolt, and together with the people drove out the landowners and distributed the land to the peasants. All this, however, he imagined not suddenly but gradually, with all the details. In his imagination the revolutionary party everywhere triumphed, governmental power weakened and was forced to convoke a council. The royal family and all the oppressors of the people disappeared, and a republic was established, and he, Mezhenetsky, was elected president. Sometimes he reached this too quickly, and then he began again from the beginning and achieved the goal by another way.

So he lived for one year, two, three, sometimes departing from this strict order of life, but mostly returning to it. By controlling his imagination, he freed himself from involuntary hallucinations. Only occasionally did fits of insomnia and visions, faces, come upon him, and then he looked at the ventilator and considered how he would fasten the rope, make a noose, and hang himself. But these fits did not last long. He overcame them.

So he lived almost seven years. When his term of imprisonment ended and he was taken to hard labor, he was quite fresh, healthy, and in full possession of his mental faculties.

XI

They transported him as a particularly important criminal alone, not allowing him to communicate with others. And only in the Krasnoyarsk prison did he for the first time manage to come into contact with other political prisoners who were also being exiled to hard labor; there were six of them—two women and four men. These were all young people of a new type, unfamiliar to Mezhenetsky. They were revolutionaries of the generation following his, his heirs, and therefore they especially interested him. Mezhenetsky expected to find in them people following in his footsteps and therefore bound to highly value all that had been done by their predecessors, especially by him, Mezhenetsky. He prepared to treat them kindly and condescendingly. But to his unpleasant surprise, these young people not only did not consider him their predecessor and teacher but treated him as if condescendingly, overlooking and excusing his outdated views. In the opinion of these new revolutionaries, all that Mezhenetsky and his friends had done, all the attempts to rouse the peasants and especially the terror and all the assassinations: of Governor Kropotkin, of Mezentsov, and of Alexander II himself—all this was a series of mistakes. All this had only led to reaction, which had triumphed under Alexander III and set society back almost to serfdom. The path to liberating the people, in the view of these new ones, was entirely different.

For two days and almost two nights the disputes between Mezhenetsky and his new acquaintances did not cease. One especially, the leader of all of them, Roman, as everyone called him only by his first name, painfully grieved Mezhenetsky with his unshakeable confidence in his own rightness and his condescending, even mocking, rejection of all the past activity of Mezhenetsky and his comrades.

The people, in Roman’s conception, were a coarse mob, “cattle,” and with the people standing at the level of development where they now stood, nothing could be done. All attempts to rouse the Russian rural population were like trying to ignite a stone or ice. The people needed to be educated, needed to be accustomed to solidarity, and only large-scale industry and the socialist organization of the people growing out of it could do this. Land was not only not needed by the people, but it was precisely land that made them conservatives and slaves. Not only in Russia, but in Europe too. And he quoted from memory the opinions of authorities and statistical figures. The people must be freed from the land. And the sooner this happens, the better. The more of them go to the factories and the more the capitalists take over the land and the more they oppress them, the better. Despotism, and above all capitalism, can be destroyed only by the solidarity of the common people, and this solidarity can be achieved only through unions, corporations of workers—that is, only when the masses of the people cease to be landowners and become proletarians.

Mezhenetsky argued and grew heated. One of the women especially irritated him, a not bad-looking brunette with very bright eyes, who, sitting on the windowsill and as if not taking direct part in the conversation, occasionally inserted words confirming Roman’s arguments, or only smiled contemptuously at Mezhenetsky’s words.

“Can the entire agricultural people really be turned into factory workers?” said Mezhenetsky.

“Why can’t they?” objected Roman. “It’s a general economic law.”

“How do we know this law is universal?” said Mezhenetsky.

“Read Kautsky,” inserted the brunette with a contemptuous smile.

“Even if we allow,” said Mezhenetsky (I don’t allow it), “that the people will be turned into proletarians, why do you think they will form themselves into that shape predetermined for them by you?”

“Because it is scientifically established,” inserted the brunette, turning from the window.

When talk turned to the form of activity needed to achieve the goal, the disagreement became still greater. Roman and his friends maintained that one must prepare an army of workers, promote the transition of peasants to factory workers, and propagandize socialism among the workers. And not only not fight openly with the government, but make use of it to achieve one’s goals. Mezhenetsky said that one must fight directly with the government, terrorize it, that the government is both stronger and more cunning than you. “It won’t be you who deceives the government, but it that deceives you. We both propagandized the people and fought the government.”

“And how much you accomplished!” the brunette said ironically.

“Well, I think that direct struggle with the government is a wrong expenditure of energy,” said Roman.

“The first of March a waste of energy!” cried Mezhenetsky. “We sacrificed ourselves, our lives, while you sit calmly at home, enjoying life, and only preach.”

“We don’t enjoy life all that much,” Roman said calmly, looking around at his comrades, and triumphantly burst into his uninfectious but loud, distinct, self-confident laugh.

The brunette, shaking her head, smiled contemptuously.

“We don’t enjoy life all that much,” said Roman. “And if we are sitting here, we owe this to the reaction, and the reaction is precisely the product of the first of March.”

Mezhenetsky fell silent. He felt he was choking with malice and went out into the corridor.

XII

Trying to calm himself, Mezhenetsky began pacing back and forth along the corridor. The cell doors before evening roll call were open. A tall, fair-haired prisoner, whose good-natured expression was not disturbed by his half-shaven head, approached Mezhenetsky.

“There’s a prisoner here in our cell who saw your honor, ‘Call him to me,’ he says.”

“What prisoner?”

“‘The Tobacco Realm,’ that’s his nickname. He’s an old man, an Old Believer. ‘Call him to me,’ he says, ‘that gentleman.’ Meaning your honor.”

“Where is he?”

“Right here in our cell. ‘Call that gentleman,’ he says.”

Mezhenetsky entered with the prisoner into a small cell with bunks on which prisoners sat and lay.

On the bare boards, under a gray robe, at the edge of the bunks, lay the same old schismatic who seven years before had come to Mezhenetsky to ask about Svetlogub. The old man’s face, pale, had all dried up and wrinkled; his hair was still just as thick; his sparse beard was completely gray and stuck upward. His eyes were blue, kind, and attentive. He lay on his back and was obviously feverish: there was a sickly flush on the cheekbones. Mezhenetsky approached him.

“What do you want?” he asked.

The old man with difficulty raised himself on his elbow and held out a trembling dry, small hand. Preparing to speak, as if swaying, he began to breathe heavily and, with difficulty catching his breath, quietly began to speak:

“You didn’t reveal it to me then—God be with you, but I reveal it to everyone.”

“What do you reveal?”

“About the lamb… I reveal about the lamb… that youth was with the lamb. And it is said: the lamb will overcome them, will overcome all… And those who are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.”

“I don’t understand,” said Mezhenetsky.

“But you understand in the spirit. The kings will receive power with the beast for one hour. But the lamb will overcome them.”

“What kings?” said Mezhenetsky.

“And there are seven kings: five have fallen, and one is, and the other has not yet come; and when he comes, for a short while he must remain… that means his end will come… do you understand?”

Mezhenetsky shook his head, thinking the old man was delirious and his words were senseless. So too thought the prisoners, his cellmates. The shaven prisoner who had called Mezhenetsky approached him and, slightly nudging him with his elbow and drawing his attention, winked at the old man.

“He keeps babbling, keeps babbling, our tobacco realm,” he said. “And what about, he himself doesn’t know.”

So thought Mezhenetsky too, looking at the old man, and his cellmates too. But the old man knew well what he was saying, and what he said had for him a clear and deep meaning. The meaning was that evil did not have long to reign, that the lamb by goodness and meekness overcomes all, that the lamb will wipe away every tear, and there will be no more crying, nor sickness, nor death. And he felt that this was already being accomplished, being accomplished in the whole world, because it was being accomplished in his soul, illumined by the nearness of death.

“Yea, come quickly! Amen. Yea, come, Lord Jesus!” he said and smiled slightly, significantly, and, as it seemed to Mezhenetsky, madly.

XIII

“There he is, a representative of the people,” thought Mezhenetsky, leaving the old man. “This is the best of them. And what darkness! They”—meaning Roman and his friends—“say: with such people as they are now, nothing can be done.”

Mezhenetsky had at one time done his revolutionary work among the people and knew all the, as he expressed it, “inertness” of the Russian peasant; he had dealt with soldiers both in service and retired and knew their dull faith in the oath, in the necessity of obedience, and the impossibility of influencing them by reasoning. He knew all this but had never drawn from this knowledge the conclusion that inevitably followed from it. The conversation with the new revolutionaries had upset and irritated him.

“They say that everything we did, that Khalturin, Kibalchich, Perovskaya did, all this was unnecessary, even harmful, that this is what evoked the reaction of Alexander III, that thanks to them the people are convinced that all revolutionary activity comes from the landlords who killed the tsar because he took their serfs away. What nonsense! What misunderstanding and what audacity to think so!” he thought, continuing to pace the corridor.

All the cells were closed except one, the one with the new revolutionaries. Approaching it, Mezhenetsky heard the laugh of the brunette hateful to him and the crackling, decisive voice of Roman. They were obviously talking about him. Mezhenetsky stopped to listen. Roman was saying:

“Not understanding economic laws, they did not account to themselves for what they were doing. And a large part of it was…”

Mezhenetsky could not and did not want to hear what there was a large part of, but he did not need to know this either. The very tone of this man’s voice alone showed the complete contempt these people felt for him, for Mezhenetsky, the hero of the revolution, who had ruined twelve years of life for this cause.

And in Mezhenetsky’s soul arose such terrible malice as he had never yet experienced. Malice at everyone, at everything, at this whole senseless world in which only people like animals could live, like that old man with his lamb, and the same half-animal executioners and jailers, these insolent, self-assured, stillborn doctrinaires.

The duty guard came in and led the political women to the women’s section. Mezhenetsky moved to the far end of the corridor so as not to meet them. Returning, the guard locked the door of the new politicals and suggested that Mezhenetsky go to his own cell. Mezhenetsky mechanically obeyed but asked that his door not be locked.

Returning to his cell, Mezhenetsky lay down on the cot, face to the wall. “Can it really be that all my powers have been wasted for nothing: energy, willpower, genius (he never considered anyone higher than himself in spiritual qualities) wasted for nothing!” He remembered the letter from Svetlogub’s mother, received recently, already on the way to Siberia, reproaching him in a womanly, stupid way, as he thought, for having ruined her son by drawing him into the terrorist party. On receiving the letter he had only smiled contemptuously: what could this stupid woman understand about those goals that had stood before him and Svetlogub. But now, remembering the letter and the dear, trusting, ardent personality of Svetlogub, he fell to thinking first about him, then about himself. Could his whole life have been a mistake? He closed his eyes and wanted to fall asleep, but suddenly with horror felt that the state he had experienced the first month in the Peter and Paul Fortress had returned. Again pain in the crown of his head, again faces, large-mouthed, shaggy, terrible, on a dark background with little stars, and again figures appearing to his open eyes. What was new was that some convict in gray trousers with a shaved head was swaying over him. And again, by association of ideas, he began looking for the ventilator on which a rope could be fastened.

Unbearable malice demanding expression burned Mezhenetsky’s heart. He could not sit still, could not calm himself, could not drive away his thoughts.

“How?” he began to ask himself the question. “Cut an artery? I won’t be able. Hang myself? Of course, the simplest.”

He remembered the rope with which a bundle of firewood lying in the corridor was tied. “Stand on the wood or on a stool. The guard walks in the corridor. But he will fall asleep or go out. I must wait and then carry the rope to my cell and fasten it to the ventilator.”

Standing at his door, Mezhenetsky listened to the guard’s steps in the corridor and occasionally, when the guard went to the far end, looked out through the opening in the door. The guard kept not leaving and kept not falling asleep. Mezhenetsky listened greedily to the sounds of his steps and waited.

At this time in the cell where the sick old man was, in the darkness lit only by a smoking lamp, amid the sleepy night sounds of breathing, muttering, groaning, snoring, coughing, the greatest thing in the world was taking place.

The old schismatic was dying, and to his spiritual vision was being revealed all that he had so passionately sought and desired throughout his whole life. Amid blinding light he saw the lamb in the form of a bright youth, and a great multitude of people from all nations stood before him in white garments, and all rejoiced, and evil was no longer on the earth. All this had been accomplished, the old man knew, both in his soul and in the whole world, and he felt great joy and peace.

For the people in the cell, however, what was happening was that the old man was loudly gasping with the death rattle, and his neighbor woke up and woke the others; and when the gasping ceased and the old man grew quiet and cold, his cellmates began to knock on the door.

The guard unlocked the door and entered the prisoners’ cell. About ten minutes later two prisoners carried out the dead body and carried it down to the morgue. The guard went out after them and locked the door behind him. The corridor remained empty.

“Lock up, lock up,” thought Mezhenetsky, who had been following through his door all that was happening. “You won’t prevent me from escaping from all this senseless horror.”

Mezhenetsky no longer experienced the inner horror that had tormented him before. He was wholly absorbed in one thought: that something might prevent him from carrying out his intention.

With a trembling heart he approached the bundle of firewood, untied the rope, pulled it from under the wood, and, looking back at the door, carried it to his cell. In the cell he climbed on the stool and threw the rope over the ventilator. Tying both ends of the rope together, he pulled the knot tight and from the double rope made a noose. The noose was too low. He retied the rope, made the noose again, tried it on his neck, and, anxiously listening and looking back at the door, climbed onto the stool, thrust his head into the noose, adjusted it, and, pushing the stool away, hung…

Only at the morning inspection did the guard see Mezhenetsky standing on legs bent at the knees beside the stool lying on its side. He was taken out of the noose. The warden came running, and learning that Roman was a doctor, called him to render assistance to the hanged man.

All the usual methods of resuscitation were applied, but Mezhenetsky did not revive.

Mezhenetsky’s body was carried to the morgue and placed on the bunks next to the body of the old schismatic.

—L. N. Tolstoy

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Translator’s Notes:

• “The Divine and the Human” (Bozheskoe i chelovecheskoe) was written by Tolstoy in 1903-1904, during his final period of intensely religious writing. It was first published in 1906.
• The title encapsulates the story’s central contrast: Svetlogub’s discovery of the divine (through the Gospels and love) versus Mezhenetsky’s purely human revolutionary ideology, which ends in despair and suicide.
• The historical context includes references to actual terrorist acts: the assassinations of Governor Kropotkin (1879), General Mezentsev (1878), and Tsar Alexander II (1881). Tolstoy presents these as tragic misdirections of idealism.
• The “new revolutionaries” Roman encounters represent the rising Marxist social-democratic movement, with their emphasis on economic laws, the proletariat, and scientific socialism. Tolstoy shows the ideological conflict between generations of revolutionaries.
• Kautsky refers to Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), the leading Marxist theoretician whose works were widely read by Russian revolutionaries.
• The Old Believer (раскольник) represents traditional Russian popular religion. His mystical reading of Revelation (particularly chapters 17 and 21-22, about the Lamb conquering evil) provides the spiritual counterpoint to both revolutionary ideologies.
• The German proverb “Ein jeder macht sich sein Bett und muss drauf schlafen” (“Everyone makes his own bed and must lie in it”) ironically underscores the general’s self-deception about moral responsibility.
• Svetlogub’s spiritual awakening through the Gospels follows Tolstoy’s own experience and his belief that the ethical teachings of Jesus—particularly the Sermon on the Mount—contain the truth that makes political violence unnecessary.
• The final image of Mezhenetsky’s body lying beside the Old Believer’s body in the morgue crystallizes the story’s contrast: one died in despair after a life of hatred, the other in peace after a life of seeking God.
• The executioner’s moral transformation after Svetlogub’s words demonstrates Tolstoy’s conviction that love and non-resistance have greater power to change hearts than violence.