The Precipice

ns. In the evening he sat in the club with his friends, hot-headed, good-hearted indi

students. But as soon as the lecture touched actual life and brought living men, Romans, Germans or Russians on the scene, whether

ntiquity, but understood nothing of the life going on around him. Raisky felt himself drawn to this young man, at first because of his loneliness, his reserve, simplicity and kindness; later he discovered in him passion, the sacred fire, profundity of comprehens

s, examined their dark recesses, the blackened pictures of the saints and martyrs; his

ved. Moscow seemed to him to be a miniature tsardom. Here was conflict, here the death pun

rsity. He was helped by the reputation for talent he had won by certain

sked him one day. "In a week's time you will be

was s

sion have yo

d in time the reception that this proposition had received from his gu

ofession. You may wri

ries

. You have talent and means to develop it

ards, later on the Civil Service-I m

hat is comprehensible. You and Leonid Koslov are

would like to be a schoolmaster somewhere in the interio

After a time his dreams and his artistic consciousness revived. He seemed to see the Volga flowing between its steep banks, the shady garden, and the wooded precipice. He abandoned the Civil Service in its turn to enter the Academy of Arts.

atre, indulged in wild dissipation, and at the same time did some musical composition, and drew a portrait of a lady. He would spend one week in dissipation and the

e found two letters awaiting him, one from Tatiana Markovna, the other from his comrade at the Univ

t him statements of accounts. His answers were short but affectio

tor. Think, too, of the estate. I am old, and can no longer be your bailiff. To whom do you intend to entrust the estate? The place will be ruined and the estate dissipated. It breaks my heart to think that your family silver, bronzes, pictures, diamonds, lace, china and glass will come into the hands of the servants, or the Jews, or the usurers. So long as your Grandmother lives, you may be sure that not a thread goes astray, but after that I can give no guarantee. And my two nieces, what is to become of them? Vera is a goo

ood, but you were then a good nephew. Come, if only to see your sisters, and perhaps happiness will reward your coming. If God grants me the joy of seeing you married and laying the estate in your hands I shall die happy. Marry, Borushka; you are lon

h pleasant manners that none of the young dandies can hold a candle to him. Bring him, please, a vest and hose of Samian leather; it is worn n