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

they held her, because she felt that she ought to do something, but did not know what to do, and was afraid of herself.

“Don’t be so agitated.⁠ ⁠… Here, take these valerian drops,” said the doctor, handing her a glass of turbid liquid.

She suddenly grew quiet, and, bent almost double, her head drooping onto her hollow chest, she closed her eyes and sank onto the sofa.

She remembered how, three months ago, her son had taken leave of her with a look of mystery and sorrow on his face. Then she recalled him as an eight-year-old boy, dressed in a velvet jacket, with bare legs and long fair ringlets.

“And him⁠ ⁠… him, that very boy⁠ ⁠… they are going to destroy!⁠ ⁠…”

She jumped up, pushing away the table, and tore herself from the doctor; but on reaching the door she again sank onto a chair.

“And they say there is a God!⁠ ⁠… What God is He, if He allows it?⁠ ⁠… May the devil take Him, that God!” she screamed, now sobbing, now breaking into hysterical laughter. “To hang him⁠ ⁠… who gave up all⁠—his whole career, all his property⁠—to others⁠ ⁠… gave it all to the people!⁠ ⁠…” She, who had formerly reproached her son for this, was now speaking of his self-abnegation as a merit. “And him⁠—him⁠ ⁠… they will do it to him!⁠ ⁠… And you say there is a God!” she cried.

“But I do not say anything: I only ask you to take these drops.”

“I want nothing.⁠ ⁠… Ha, ha, ha!” she laughed and sobbed, beside herself with despair.

Towards night she was so exhausted with suffering that she could neither speak nor weep, but only stared in front of her with a fixed, insane gaze. The doctor injected morphia, and she fell asleep.

It was a dreamless sleep, but the awakening was worse than what had gone before. What appeared most terrible was that people could be so cruel: not only those dreadful Generals with their shaved cheeks, and the gendarmes, but everybody, everybody: the maid who came to do the room, with her quiet face, and the people in the next room, who greeted one another cheerfully, and laughed as if nothing had happened.

III

Svetlogoúb had lived through a great deal during the three months of his solitary confinement. From his very childhood he had unconsciously felt the injustice of the exceptional position he held as a rich man; and though he tried to stifle this feeling, often when he came in contact with the poverty of the common people⁠—or sometimes even when he was particularly happy and comfortable himself⁠—he felt rather ashamed of his relation to the people: to peasants, old men, women, and children, who were born, grew up and died, not only without knowing the pleasures he enjoyed, but without even understanding them, and never free from toil and hardship. When he had finished his studies at the University⁠—in order to liberate himself from the consciousness of this injustice⁠—he organized a school in the village on his estate: a model school, a Cooperative Store, and a Home for the aged poor. Yet, strange to say, when occupied with all this, he felt even more ashamed than when he was at supper with his comrades or when he purchased an expensive riding horse. He felt that it was not the right thing, and, even worse than that: there seemed to be something bad about it, something morally impure.

In one of these fits of disillusionment about his village activities he went to Kiev, where he met a fellow-University student. Three years later that fellow-student was shot in the moat of Kiev fortress.

That comrade, an ardent and extremely gifted young man, drew Svetlogoúb into a society the object of which was to enlighten the people, to awaken them to a consciousness of their rights, and to form them into federated groups aiming at freeing the people from the landlords and the Government. His conversation with this man and this man’s friends, seemed to ripen into a clear perception all that Svetlogoúb had been vaguely feeling. He understood now what he had to do. Without breaking off his intercourse with his new comrades, he returned to the country, and there began quite a fresh line of activity. He himself took the place of schoolmaster, arranged adult classes, read books and pamphlets to the peasants, and explained to them their true position. Besides all this, he published illegal323 books and pamphlets for the people, and gave all that, without taking anything from his mother, he could give for the formation of similar centres in other villages.

From the first, Svetlogoúb was faced in this activity by two unexpected obstacles: the first was the fact that the majority of the people treated his preaching with indifference, or even with a certain contempt. Only exceptional men (often men of doubtful morality) listened and sympathized with him. The other obstacle came from the side of the Government. They closed his school; and the police searched his house and the dwellings of all who were connected with him, and confiscated books and papers.

Svetlogoúb was too indignant with the second obstacle⁠—the senseless and humiliating oppression of the Government⁠—to pay much attention to the first. The same was felt by his comrades who were active in other centres, and the feeling of irritation they fomented in one another reached such a pitch of intensity that the great majority of their Group decided to fight the Government by force. The head of that Group was a certain Mezhenétsky, regarded by everybody as a man of indomitable power, incontestable logic, and entirely devoted to the cause of Revolution.

Svetlogoúb submitted to this man’s influence, and with the same energy with which he had worked among the people, now gave himself up to terrorist activity. That activity was dangerous, but the danger more than anything else attracted Svetlogoúb.

He said to himself: “Victory or martyrdom⁠ ⁠… and if it is to be martyrdom it will still be victory in the future!” And the fire that had been kindled