Short Fiction by Leo Tolstoy (book reader for pc TXT) 📕

was it you did not know me?” he answered, also in a whisper.

“I do not know. It was not my fault,” continued she, weeping yet more bitterly.

“How could I know you?” he said again. “You were so different when I left home! But you should have known me!”

She threw up her hands in despair.

“Ah! I see so many of them⁠—these men. They all look alike to me now!”

His heart contracted so painfully and so strongly that he wanted to cry aloud, as a little boy does when he is beaten.

He rose and held her at arm’s length; then, seizing her head in his great sailor paws, he gazed intently into her face.

Little by little he recognized in her the small, slender, merry maiden he had left at home with those others whose eyes it had been her lot to close.

“Yes, you are Françoise! My sister!” he exclaimed. And suddenly sobs⁠—the sobs of a strong man, sounding like the hiccups of a drunkard⁠—rose in his throat. He let go of her head, and striking the table so that the glasses upset and broke to atoms, he cried out in a wild voice.

His comrades, astonished, turned towards him.

“See how he’s swaggering,” said one.

“Stop that shouting,” said another.

“Eh, Duclos! What are you bawling about? Let’s get upstairs again,” said a third, plucking Celestin by the sleeve with one hand while his other arm encircled a flushed, laughing, black-eyed lass, in a rose-coloured, low cut, silk dress.

Duclos suddenly became quiet, and holding his breath looked at his comrades. Then, with the same strange and resolute expression with which he used to enter on a fight, he staggered up to the sailor who was embracing the girl, and struck down with his hand⁠—dividing them apart.

“Away! Do you not see that she is your sister! Each of them is someone’s sister. See, here is my sister, Françoise! Ha, ha⁠ ⁠… ha⁠ ⁠… and he broke into sobs that almost sounded like laughter. Then he staggered, raised his hands, and fell with a crash to the floor, where he rolled about, striking the floor with his hands and feet and choking as though about to die.

“He must be put to bed,” said one of his comrades. “We shall be having him taken up if we go out into the streets.”

So they lifted Celestin and dragged him upstairs to Françoise’s room, where they laid him on her bed.

The Empty Drum

(A Folktale Long Current in the Region of the Volga)

Emelyán was a labourer and worked for a master. Crossing the meadows one day on his way to work, he nearly trod on a frog that jumped right in front of him, but he just managed to avoid it. Suddenly he heard someone calling to him from behind.

Emelyán looked round and saw a lovely lassie, who said to him: “Why don’t you get married, Emelyán?”

“How can I marry, my lass?” said he. “I have but the clothes I stand up in, nothing more, and no one would have me for a husband.”

“Take me for a wife,” said she.

Emelyán liked the maid. “I should be glad to,” said he, “but where and how could we live?”

“Why trouble about that?” said the girl. “One only has to work more and sleep less, and one can clothe and feed oneself anywhere.”

“Very well then, let us marry,” said Emelyán. “Where shall we go to?”

“Let us go to town.”

So Emelyán and the lass went to town, and she took him to a small hut on the very edge of the town, and they married and began housekeeping.

One day the King, driving through the town, passed by Emelyán’s hut. Emelyán’s wife came out to see the King. The King noticed her and was quite surprised.

“Where did such a beauty come from?” said he, and stopping his carriage he called Emelyán’s wife and asked her: “Who are you?”

“The peasant Emelyán’s wife,” said she.

“Why did you, who are such a beauty, marry a peasant?” said the King. “You ought to be a queen!”

“Thank you for your kind words,” said she, “but a peasant husband is good enough for me.”

The King talked to her awhile and then drove on. He returned to the palace, but could not get Emelyán’s wife out of his head. All night he did not sleep, but kept thinking how to get her for himself. He could think of no way of doing it, so he called his servants and told them they must find a way.

The King’s servants said: “Command Emelyán to come to the palace to work, and we will work him so hard that he will die. His wife will be left a widow, and then you can take her for yourself.”

The King followed their advice. He sent an order that Emelyán should come to the palace as a workman, and that he should live at the palace, and his wife with him.

The messengers came to Emelyán and gave him the King’s message. His wife said, “Go, Emelyán; work all day, but come back home at night.”

So Emelyán went, and when he got to the palace the King’s steward asked him, “Why have you come alone, without your wife?”

“Why should I drag her about?” said Emelyán. “She has a house to live in.”

At the King’s palace they gave Emelyán work enough for two. He began the job not hoping to finish it; but when evening came, lo and behold! it was all done. The steward saw that it was finished, and set him four times as much for next day.

Emelyán went home. Everything there was swept and tidy; the oven was heated, his supper was cooked and ready, and his wife sat by the table sewing and waiting for his return. She greeted him, laid the table, gave him to eat and drink, and then began to ask him about his work.

“Ah!” said he, “it’s a bad business: they give me tasks beyond my strength, and want to kill me with work.”

“Don’t fret about the work,” said she,